Sommaire pour August 2020 de Computer Shopper

Since the start of the lockdown, many enterprising organisations have been finding ways to carry on offering their services, in a bid to recoup a portion of lost revenues and hopefully come out the other side of this pandemic. Our local dance school is one such outfit, and since week two, it has transferred its entire timetable on to Zoom. Every Monday evening, I log into my virtual tap class, and follow the lesson in my lounge rather than the church hall. Except for a few Mondays, when the lessons were scuppered by Virgin Media outages. These left our tap-dance teacher with such a poor internet connection we could only see her dance routine in either extreme slo-mo, or sped up to x50. If you’re one of the many thousands…

Software guru and Shopper legend letters@computershopper.co.uk I’M WRITING THIS column from the depths of lockdown, and my social media is full of people doing creative things like baking sourdough bread, learning to play the Northumbrian bagpipes, and trying to improve their fluency in a variety of foreign languages in the optimistic hope of being allowed to travel at some point post-Covid. Because there’s a time lag between writing and publication, it may be that by the time this appears we’re all out on the beach or crowded into concerts, but probably not. If you want something different to out-lockdown your friends with, how about taking a course in quantum computing? That’ll beat Italian any day. SCHOOL OF THOUGHT The course is designed for school-age students, and is called Quantum Computing…

SAY WHAT? MICROSOFT HAS RELEASED its latest update to Windows 10, officially known as the Windows 10 May 2020 Update, despite calls for the company to delay its Spring Windows release as millions of people work from home during the pandemic. The update, also known as Windows 10 versions 2004 and 20H1, is the first of Microsoft’s significant bi-annual updates for 2020, and brings a number of new features to boost productivity, security and speed. One of the biggest changes is to Cortana, the digital AI assistant. The all-new Cortana now comes with a chat-based interface so you can type questions, rather than barking at your PC. It’s no longer tethered to the taskbar, and can be resized and moved around on your desktop. Windows Search, too, has been given…

A ROBOTIC DOG is patrolling one of Singapore’s parks in order to enforce social-distancing rules. Spot, built by US-based Boston Dynamics, has been assigned to patrol the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park in Singapore as part of a two-week trial to improve the enforcement of social distancing as the country contends with a recent spike in Covid-19 cases. “Let’s keep Singapore healthy,” says a recording from the four-legged robot as it wanders the park. “For your own safety, and those around you, please stand at least one metre apart. Thank you.” Spot, which can walk up to 3mph over uneven terrain and even get up after it falls, is controlled remotely, but has built-in sensors to stop collisions and will be accompanied by a guide during the trial. It also comes…

£279 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT Intel’s Comet Lake mid-ranger can’t beat AMD for multitasking, but top gaming power gives it a purpose THE ARRIVAL OF Intel’s 10th-gen, Comet Lake desktop processors comes at what feels like a crucial time. AMD’s Ryzen chips have always beaten the Core range for value and multithreading power, leaving Intel with a single-core performance advantage, but the most recent 3rd-gen Ryzens, such as the Ryzen 5 3600X and Ryzen 7 3700X, managed to close that gap as well. In the space of just three years, then, Intel finds itself in vital need of something that makes its CPUs special. And yet, initial inspection of the Core i5-10600K – the top-specced mid-range chip in the 10th-gen Core line-up – doesn’t point towards much in the way…

£550 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT A finely crafted slimline laptop with premium power, all for less than some Chromebooks THE MAGICBOOK 14 is Honor’s first laptop to launch worldwide, and like many of the Chinese firm’s smartphones, it arrives with a rather attractive price. Of course, Honor is a subsidiary of Huawei, which has produced a fair few quality ultraportables of its own, like the MateBook X Pro (Shopper 389) and MateBook 14 (Shopper 376). Huawei also has the less encouraging distinction of being involved in an ongoing tussle with the US government, which has led to its most recent phones lacking Google apps. Nonetheless, in terms of software limitations, the MagicBook 14 has appeared to escape unscathed: this laptop offers the full Windows 10 Home experience and much more…

£430 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT A fine Z490 motherboard that’s just a little too similar to its cheaper competition HERE WE HAVE another high-end Z490 board for Intel’s 10th-gen Core chips, and an even more expensive one than the MSI MEG Z490 Ace (page 27). For this extra expenditure, you get one additional PCI-E x1 slot – there are three of these in total, plus three PCI-E x16 slots – and a moderately more grown-up look, using blacks and metallic silvers instead of the MEG’s gold-tinted colour scheme. Otherwise, however, they’re very similar. Both offer overclocking support, four DDR4 RAM slots supporting speeds up to 4,800MHz, and triple M.2 slots for fast storage. They even have the same number of four-pin cooling headers: a bountiful eight, enough for the most…

£436 • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT If you’re a photographer or video editor working in the sRGB space, this is a great monitor for a great price NEW MONITORS IN the Eizo ColorEdge CS range are always welcome: designed to be affordable while still providing the professional-grade quality you’d expect from Eizo, they offer a tempting entry into the world of colour-accurate monitors for people who have previously been priced out of the market. Their relatively low price makes them particularly worth looking at if you’re aiming to equip your desk with multiple new monitors, as well as replacing a single display. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are a few things you don’t get with the CS2410 that you might with a more premium monitor. For a start, there’s no hood in the…

£400 • From uk.jbl.com VERDICT Loud, bassy and rugged, the JBL Boombox 2 is a force to be reckoned with THE JBL BOOMBOX 2 is JBL’s second take on the portable speakers that became cultural status symbols in urban areas during the 1980s and 1990s. Unlike the previous Boombox (Shopper 369), it’s an update rather than another re-imagining, though there are plenty of small tweaks to go around. Power output, for instance, has been dialled up a notch, with the speaker’s two drivers outputting 40W RMS each when plugged into the mains and 30W RMS when used on battery power. That’s up from 30W and 20W respectively. The battery size has been cut from 20,000mAh to 10,000mAh, although JBL still promises the same 24 hours of playback as the original.…

£700 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT This phone’s hardware is good, but Android without Google apps takes some serious getting used to HUAWEI’S TUMULTUOUS RELATIONSHIP with the US government has led to its newest flagship duo, the P40 and P40 Pro (page 40), releasing with a very peculiar software issue: although both run Android 10, they don’t include Google’s actual apps, including Gmail, Maps and YouTube. There’s no Play Store either, so any apps you download must come from the rather limited selection in Huawei’s own app gallery. This might, understandably, be an instant dealbreaker for anyone already absorbed in Android, Google’s services or both. If you think you can live without them, however, you’ll at least find the P40 a very competent smartphone. BASE OPTION It’s £200 cheaper than the…

£289 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A modest update compared to the original, but a quality smartwatch regardless IN THE WORLD of wearable technology, it’s pretty rare to get a new model every year; only Apple really commits to an annual upgrade cycle. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch Active 2 is therefore an anomaly: it’s here just eight months after the original launched, let alone a full year. Besides an LTE option – we’re testing the standard Bluetooth version here – this new watch features a larger 360x360 screen, a 44mm model in addition to the standard 40mm model, a digital bezel as standard, and some fine-tuning upgrades to the heart-rate monitor and onboard GPS. There’s also support for echocardiograms, Apple Watch 4-style, though regulatory setbacks means this feature isn’t enabled yet. Otherwise,…

£48 per year • From www.tunnelbear.com VERDICT TunnelBear is a great VPN service that’s a pleasure to use, but its rivals offer more TUNNELBEAR HAS ALWAYS stood out from the crowd of VPNs, thanks to one secret ingredient: its charm. Not everyone will like the constant ursine references or the quirky animations of bears tunnelling underground, but they help make using this VPN seem almost fun. In fact, the whole style plays a large part in establishing TunnelBear as a brand you feel you can trust. HOME AND NATIVE LAND TunnelBear is based in Canada and operates servers in 23 countries around the world, which isn’t a huge number by the standards of most VPNs these days. What’s more, it doesn’t offer different cities for each country; click on the…

01 A network-attached storage (NAS) device lets you store documents, media, and other files on its hard disks so you can share them with other devices on your network. Some have disks already installed, while others are empty enclosures into which you install your own disks. Buying an empty NAS can often be the more cost-effective option, as they’re usually less expensive and give you the freedom to add disks at a later date. You should buy one with a Gigabit Ethernet interface, as these provide the highest transfer speeds. To use a NAS device at these speeds, you’ll need computers with Gigabit Ethernet network adaptors and a Gigabit Ethernet switch or router. Computers with Fast Ethernet adaptors can still access the NAS device, but only at the much slower…

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

01 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 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. 03 Consider the number of inputs 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…

01 A basic digital camera will suit someone who wants to take pictures to view on their computer and create 7x5in prints. It should cost around £80, but there may be hidden downsides such as slow performance and very basic user controls. 02 Spend a little more and you’ll get a higher resolution. A 16-megapixel sensor has the potential to produce sharp prints up to A3 size, but only if it and the lens are of a suitably high quality. Very high resolutions in compact cameras tend to boost noise more than detail levels, so many of the best models strike a sensible balance by using a 12-megapixel sensor. Back-illuminated CMOS sensors tend to produce less noise than CCDs, but check our reviews to find out how a particular model…

YOUR UNIQUE COUPON CODE FOR £4.99 ISSUES: CHECK THE SPINE Enter www.shopperdownload.co.uk/390 into your browser’s address bar. In the New user section, enter your email address and the coupon ode printed on the spine into the relevant boxes, then click the Register button. Browse through this month’s choices and follow the online instructions to download and register the software. You may need to register a user account for our software store and enter your coupon code more than once. The registration process varies from program to program, so read the instructions carefully – they explain exactly what you need to do for each program. ANY PROBLEMS? If you need help with any of the software this month, please send an email to support@creativemark.co.uk. We check this inbox regularly. Please include…

If you’re having internet or networking problems, the hardest job is trying to find out what’s causing them, as there are so many variables: it could be your ISP, an intermittent fault with your router, a single device not working, or just plain old dodgy Wi-Fi. We can help you fix all these issues, but you need to start with a bit of diagnostic work before you begin. First, is it one device on your network that’s having trouble or all of them? If everyone else in your house can get online without issue, then the problem is likely to be with the device that you’re using. Try moving position or rebooting it to see if that improves the situation, and then updating drivers on Windows if it’s running that…

£799 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This might replace your smart speaker, but it’s no substitute for a properly cinematic audio system BOSE IS A NATURAL source of potential soundbar goodness, having spent years producing some often class-leading headphones and speakers. That, however, is why it’s so surprising when the Soundbar 700 underwhelms. We’ll explain why shortly, but at least it gets the aesthetic parts right. It’s low profile and has an elegant-looking layer of glass along the top, with a stylish metal grille wrapping around the front and sides. Along the top left side of the bar, there are two touch-sensitive buttons: one to turn it on, the other to mute the voice assistant, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant both being available. Unfortunately, these are rather small, which we found…

£251 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Part soundbar, part smart speaker and amazingly good value, the Command Bar is an excellent living room addition THE MODERN LIVING room is inundated with remote controls. Remotes for your TV, remotes for your speakers, for your set-top box, home theatre receiver, Blu-ray player, robot vacuum and streaming sticks. And, no matter what you do, they never seem to be where you need them when you want to sit down, kick back and relax. As we’ve already seen from the Bose Soundbar 700 and Denon Heos Bar, some soundbars aim to avoid adding another remote to the pile with built-in smart assistants, allowing you to control the soundbar (and ideally the TV connected to it) with voice commands. Polk Audio’s Command Bar is another such…

£149 • From www.richersounds.com VERDICT It may be basic, but the SB362An-F6E delivers very high sound quality for the money VIZIO, THE TOP soundbar manufacturer in the US, is a name perhaps less familiar to consumers in the UK. The firm has been around since 2002 and is prolific in its native country, but it waited until 2019 to make its move in the UK with the launch of three TV audio systems. The Vizio SB362An-F6E sits in the middle of this new UK range, and it’s typical of Vizio’s approach, aiming to deliver decent sound quality and features for not much cash. SIX-SIDED STAR It’s not luxuriously made and, as you’d expect of a sub-£150 soundbar, it’s predominantly built from plastic. Even so, it does look pretty good and…

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers clive@computershopper.co.uk WHETHER IT’S AN unsupported codec, audio that doesn’t play or a strange file format, digital video is still far from foolproof. That’s why you’ll find VLC installed on so many PCs and laptops: this simple application is able to handle almost every video and audio fififile without fuss. But even perennial VLC users probably won’t know all the tools, options and features that VLC has acquired over the years. You can use it as a YouTube downloader, video converter or internet radio host, and you can add extra abilities via the huge Extensions library. It’s time to unleash this modest littttttle application. HAVING ONE APPLICATION that can do lots of different…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Sound advice The current issue of Computer Shopper(389) arrived through my letterbox the other day, and I found the section on improving TV sound very interesting. I have soundbar/subwoofer equipment connected to two of our TVs, and very good they are, too. However, my best TV sound system is connecting our large lounge TV to my hi-fi system. It is also the cheapest. You mentioned this option briefly, but I thought it might be useful to expand on external amplification. In the old days, TV sets usually had a pair of phono sound outputs, which made connecting to an analogue amplifier straightforward – and which I used for many years. Nowadays, the only connection I have seen for sound out on TVs is the Toslink digital optical connection, which…

James Archer RANTS AS MUCH OF the nation uses its staying-at-home time to create, I recently used mine to destroy: specifically, to destroy myself, or at least to purge the older and abandoned elements of my online presence from the internet. This was more of a spring-clean than a nervous cover-up. There was no deletion of shouldn’t-have-said-that tweets, no doctoring of old blog posts, and no removal of incriminating photos, even the ones from secondary school where I had straightened hair. My issue was one hopefully shared by many others who grew up alongside the rise of user-generated online content: a small handful of blogs and unnecessary personal sites, not particularly damning but clearly set up by a young person who hadn’t yet figured out their place in the world,…

Raspberry snaps The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched the 12.3MP High-Quality Camera for its DIY makers’ board, and it’s available for just £50 Huawei reaches peak 5G To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the first successful ascent of Mount Everest from the northern slope, Huawei has teamed up with China Mobile to bring 5G connectivity to the mountain’s peak GTA free With people still stuck at home during the pandemic, the Epic Games Store made 2013 classic GTA V available to download from its PC web store for free Broadband boost The UK’s average broadband speed is on the up, despite the recent surge in remote working. Figures from Ofcom show that the average speed of home broadband is now 64Mbit/s, up from 54.2Mbit/s in 2018 Thunderbolt security storm A…

MICROSOFT AND INTEL have teamed up on a research project that uses deep-learning techniques to identify malware through the analysis of images. The project, titled Static Malware-as-Image Network Analysis (STAMINA), examines whether malware can be classified at scale by performing static analysis on malware codes represented as images. Building on Intel’s previous work on deeptransfer learning for static malware classification and using a real-world dataset from Microsoft, the researchers converted the binary form of an input file into a stream of pixels, and turned that into a two-dimensional picture using pixel conversion, reshaping and resizing. These images were then fed into a pre-trained deep neural network that examines its textural and structural patterns to determine what, if anything, had infected the file, and to cluster malicious samples into respective threat…

£800 • From www.pcspecialist.co.uk VERDICT Both a reliable gaming PC and an auspicious debut for AMD’s shiny new Ryzen 3 3100 INTEL ISN’T THE only one with new silicon on the market, though AMD’s latest launch is a much smaller affair than an entire range of 10th-gen parts. The Ryzen 3 3100 is a solo release, and at £100 it’s a low-end one to boot. But with four cores, eight threads and clock speeds between 3.6GHz and 3.9GHz, it has some enticing specs for the money. It also forms the basis of the Magma R1, a gaming system that pairs the Ryzen 3 3100 with the Radeon RX 5600 XT (Shopper 389), packing both into a simple mid-tower chassis. There are only some relatively understated strips of multicolour LEDs down…

£1,799 • From store.hp.com VERDICT An expensive and visually striking convertible with all the latest mod cons, including an AMOLED screen THIS IS, AT least to begin with, two reviews in one: after HP sent in a version of the new Spectre x360 that wasn’t available in the UK, one with a Full IPS display, it provided us a more local-friendly spec, this time with a 4K AMOLED screen. With an Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor, 1TB SD and 16GB of RAM, this is very much a top-spec machine. If you want a Full HD screen you’ll need to also drop down to a 512GB SSD and 8GB of RAM for £1,399. Or move to the USA, where our original unit is from. THE BIGGER THEY ARE Put the two machines…

£228 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT It’s worth paying more for the KC2500’s superbly high speeds IT’S ONLY BEEN a few months since we tested the Kingston KC2000 (Shopper 386), but there’s already a successor to that professional-leaning SSD in the KC2500. Another NVMe drive for M.2 ports, it claims extremely fast sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,500MB/s and 2,900MB/s respectively – quite the upgrade from the KC2000’s 3,200MB/s and 2,200MB/s figures Looking at the specs, it’s hard to tell how: the KC2500 shares its 96-layer TLC memory and Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller with the KC2000, and its capacity options are all the same as well. That means a choice of 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB models, and these all even have the same durability ratings as those…

£264 • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT HP’s Neverstop 1202nw is a competent mono laser MFP with sensationally low running costs IT FEELS LIKE we’re constantly bemoaning high printer running costs, but some manufacturers are trying to offer better value. For example, both Epson and Canon will sell you an inkjet with refillable ink tanks, and much cheaper ink. Now HP is bringing the refillable approach to laser devices, with its Neverstop 1202nw. A mono laser MFP, it can print, scan and copy, but not fax. The Neverstop 1202nw is broadly comparable to any good entry-level mono laser MFP. It lacks automatic duplex printing, and its basic control panel doesn’t support advanced cloud features. That said, there’s support for wired and wireless networking, and HP’s quoted maximum printing speed of 21 pages…

£49 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT For both user-friendliness and its sheer range of included services, the Streaming Stick+ is unbeatable MOST NEW TVs come with the most popular streaming services built in, but it can still be worth buying a streaming stick to access apps or features your television is missing. The new Roku Streaming Stick+ is a perfect example, offering 4K HDR-enabled content from a truly gigantic range of sources, from Netflix and Disney Plus to the official NASA app. Like the first-gen model, the Roku Streaming Stick+ is slightly larger than the average USB flash drive and plugs directly into one of your TV’s HDMI ports. It needs a source of power, either the mains or a USB port on the TV, but once that’s sorted, setup becomes…

£900 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Another technically brilliant handset held back, regretfully, by missing Android apps THE PREMIUM VERSION of Huawei’s already-rather-premium P40 (page 39) shares its core problem, namely the lack of Google app support. Again, this is a shame, as you can tell the P40 Pro sits among the upper echelons of smartphone design as soon as you clap eyes on it. A major part of this is the new OLED display. Huawei calls this a ‘quad-curve’ design, because the 6.58in screen not only wraps around the sides of the phone, but also the top and bottom. The curvature isn’t quite as dramatic as the Mate 30 Pro’s 88° and there aren’t any tangible benefits when it comes to usability, but it’s a nice luxury touch nonetheless. THAT’S…

£129 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Fitbit Charge 4 may look familiar, but it’s learned some new tricks and is all the better forit THE CHARGE 4 follows a certain Fitbit patter of recent years, in that it looks almost exactly like the model it replaces; the 2018 Charge 3, i this case. When it comes to features, however there are upgrades and they’re significant. The big news is built-in GPS, making this th first Fitbit device to come with this feature since the ageing Ionic smartwatch (Shopper 360), and the first among Fitbit’s cheaper fitness bands. It also adds Fitbit Pay, includes Spotify playback and introduces Active Zone Minutes, a new way to track your fitness. WRIST AND REPEAT All of this comes in a very familiar design, albeit…

01 A basic PC costing around £350 will be able to run everyday office, multimedia and education software and will easily cope with surfing the internet. It might even be able to run some modern games. Many PCs can be sold either with or without a monitor. If you don’t like the display the manufacturer is offering, you can always use your current one, or buy another one separately. 02 If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 will cope well with many 3D games, but to play the latest 3D games smoothly (and enjoy the best-quality graphics) it’s worth upgrading to a more powerful card such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. 03 All modern…

01 As with Intel motherboards, you’ll need to make sure you match an AMD processor with a compatible motherboard. This is relatively simple for AMD hardware, as most of its recent chips use the same AM4 socket, and the most recent second-generation Ryzen processors are backwards-compatible with first-generation chipsets, such as the X370 and B350. 02 Budget APU and a minority of Ryzen processors have integrated graphics, so to make use of this, ensure that your motherboard comes with video outputs such as DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. For Ryzen chips that lack integrated graphics, or if you want more graphics power, install a dedicated graphics card into one of your motherboard’s PCI-E x16 slots. This also has the benefit of providing a greater range of video outputs to choose from.…

01 Laser printers used to be much more expensive than inkjets and were typically restricted to offices. They are now much more affordable, however, and offer several benefits over inkjets, including lower per-page printing costs and faster print speeds. 02 A decent laser printer will typically cost around £80, and will happily print hundreds of black-and-white pages per hour. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. However, you’ll probably be limited to black-and-white printing at this price. 03 Although you can still buy single-function laser printers, multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are now far more common. These models can scan and photocopy documents as well as print them, and some of them also have fax capabilities. Laser MFPs start from around £200. 04 Heavy-duty…

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 text 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 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 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…

Chat and Communication Evernote 6.24.2.8919 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. Mailbird 2.8.0 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 8.59.0.77 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. UPDATED Telegram 2.1.6 This free IM app syncs your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. NEW VERSION WhatsApp Desktop 2.2019.8 A PC and Mac version of the messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 19.1.4.107 Speed up your system with iolo’s PC optimisation suite. Rainmeter…

£699 • From www.sevenoakssoundandvision.co.uk VERDICT The HW-Q70R takes the HW-N650, improves the subwoofer and adds support for Dolby Atmos and DTS:X THE Q SERIES of Samsung soundbars is designed to take advantage of the Korean firm’s multimedia expertise; or, at the very least, simplify the buying process for Samsung devotees. The naming scheme mirrors that of the current generation of Samsung smart TVs, so the HW-Q70R we have here is intended to be a perfect match for the 49in Q70R QLED TV. Of course, you can pair it with whatever telly you want, though you might be thinking that £699 seems expensive, even for a soundbar that comes with a dedicated subwoofer, as this one does. However, the HW-Q70R supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, and is in fact Samsung’s cheapest…

£585 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With great sound quality, true surround sound and loads of features, the Vizio SB36512-F6E is a fantastic deal THE SB36512-F6E JOINS the SB362An-F6E among Vizio’s first UK-launched soundbars, though this is a very different package. Not just in terms of value – this is also very cheap considering what you’re getting – but instead of a standalone soundbar, you get the bar, a dedicated subwoofer and even two rear speakers. That’s a full 5.1.2 surround-sound system, for less than a single Samsung HW-Q70R, and it includes Dolby Atmos support to boot. THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW Despite all its add-on hardware, the soundbar itself is a modest presence in your front room, especially if you’ve got a big TV. It measures a relatively tight 914mm in…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk THIS PLACE IS neither a home nor a prison. It is some sort of institution. It drips a pallid 1980s atmosphere, and it makes me both afraid and excited. I am completely lost in a badly lit labyrinth of corridors. It feels as though I am being toyed with, and I want to leave. Of course I know the rules by now, and the most important rule of all is that I must keep my social distance of two arms-lengths and avoid physical contact with any other lost souls who wander these passages. They are creepy. They look more like ghosts than real people. Their eyes are disturbing. Sometimes they stare ahead vacantly, sometimes their staring gazes flick to the left and then…

SAY WHAT? CONTACT-TRACING APPS are vital tools in the fight against coronavirus, as countries, including the UK, begin to ease lockdown restrictions. However, privacy advocates have warned that these apps, which will keep a record of people a phone’s owner has been in contact with in order to track the spread of the disease, could be used for state surveillance. At the time of writing, the UK – unlike most other countries in Europe – has decided to adopt a centralised model for its contact-tracing app, as opposed to the more privacy-friendly decentralised model built by tech giants Apple and Google. Although the app would function in a similar way to the method proposed by Apple and Google – by using Bluetooth signals to identify when you are close to…

A TEAM OF programmers from Australia has been crowned the winners of the inaugural AI ‘Eurovision Song Contest’. The competition was the brainchild of Dutch broadcaster VPro after 2020’s official edition was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. It invited Eurovision countries to submit a three-minute song made partly or wholly by artificial intelligence (AI). The winning group, named Uncanny Valley, beat 12 other teams with their song Beautiful the World, which was created using a neural network trained on noises made by koalas, kookaburras and Tasmanian devils. Uncanny Valley, made up of maths, computer-science and social-anthropology students, as well as usic producers, said they were motivated o take part after collaborating on a project with Google’s Creative Lab in Sydney, which uses machine learning to advance music innovation. mu…

“More than 20-years ago, experts predicted that every company would become an ‘internet company’. I’m predicting today that every company will become an AI company, not because they can, but because they must”IBM CEO Arvind Krishna thinks AI will be crucial post-pandemic “FREE AMERICA NOW”Tech madman Elon Musk joins those protesting against the coronavirus lockdown of the US economy “If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen”Twitter VP Jennifer Christie announces that all employees will be allowed to work from home indefinitely “Bad companies are destroyed by crises; good companies survive them; great companies are improved by them”Intel CEO Bob Swan comments on what he said were ‘outstanding’…

£549 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Trim dimensions and high power make this a great low-cost laptop, though Honor’s MagicBook 14 is even better IN A SEA of luxurious, convertible 13.3in laptops, this 15in machine is a welcome relief. It’s unpretentious – there’s no cutting-edge processor, touchscreen or backlit keyboard – but it sets out to be a good-quality laptop for a low price, and does so exceptionally well. For a start, it’s made from an all-metal chassis rather than the plastic you would expect from the sub-£600 market. This gives the MateBook a solidity most of its rivals can’t match. When you consider that metallic build and the 15.6in screen, it’s light at 1.53kg; match that to a sleek 16.9mm height, and this machine is surprisingly portable. Huawei even keeps…

£390 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT This is a hardy motherboard with great networking features, though it should be paired exclusively with other premium components INTEL’S 10TH-GEN PROCESSORS have officially retired the LGA 1151 socket, a mainstay of its desktop chips going back years. Replacing it is the LGA 1200, so named for its 1,200 pins, and while the good news is that any LGA 1151 or LGA 1150-compatible CPU cooler will fit the new socket as well, the combination of a new socket and a new chipset in Z490 means that the new processors require new motherboards. The MEG Z490 Ace is one of the more luxurious models vying for the attention of early Comet Lake adopters: at £390, it’s about three times as expensive as the cheapest Z490 motherboards.…

£215 • From www.apricorn.com VERDICT A rugged and highly secure external hard disk, albeit one that will only be worth the money to a certain few WITH ITS INTEGRATED PIN pad and automatically applied encryption, the Apricorn Aegis Fortress L3 is a portable hard disk for sensitive files you absolutely, definitely don’t want stolen. It’s therefore very much like iStorage’s diskAshur and datAshur drives, especially the diskAshur2, right down to the blue/green/red LED indicators for setting and entering PIN codes. And, again like the diskAshur2, it’s extremely expensive by hard disk standards. SHIELD WIELD There’s a good range of capacities, starting at 500GB and counting up to 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 5TB, but these start at £187 and end at £384. The ‘cheapest’ 500GB model is particularly costly on…

£80 • From www.hyperxgaming.com VERDICT Digital surround sound is a double-edged sword for this headset, but at least it’s comfy and cheap THE CLOUD STINGER Core Wireless + 7.1 can be summarised by unpacking its somewhat unwieldy name. As a ‘Core’ model, it’s going to be more basic and affordable than HyperX’s other Cloud sets, ‘7.1’ indicates its use of digital surround-sound tech, and ‘Wireless’ – you can guess that bit. Indeed, this is the cable-free version of the £50 Cloud Stinger Core + 7.1, which it’s launching alongside. Happily, it connects via an included 2.4GHz USB dongle, so you don’t need to worry if your PC lacks wireless connectivity of its own. HEAD START The good first impression is maintained by its lightness, and combined with some decently thick…

£599 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Its changes are only modest, but the OnePlus 8 makes improvements where it needs to WITH A £100 price jump on the OnePlus 7 (Shopper 380) and a £50 increase on the 7T (Shopper 383), you might argue that the firm’s newest smartphone doesn’t manage the same cut-throat value proposition of past handsets. Don’t worry too much, however, as while the OnePlus 8 is a little more expensive than the 7T, it’s also much better. CHANGE PLACES It all starts with the design. The OnePlus 8’s rear triple-lens camera array is now arranged in a neat vertical line, a much more elegant solution than the 7T’s large circular camera bump, especially as the lenses don’t poke out as far. The front camera, which includes facial-recognition…

£199 • From en-uk.ring.com VERDICT While there’s little reason for existing Ring owners to upgrade, this is the best battery-powered smart doorbell you can get TO SAVE ON battery life, all battery-powered cameras and doorbells rely on PIR motion sensors to detect movement. These lowpower sensors then wake up the camera when motion is detected, powering up the full sensor and Wi-Fi connection. It’s a neat trick, but PIR sensors aren’t very easy to configure, as they pick up movement in their plane of view. Powered cameras can be set to watch certain parts of the image with activity zones. With the Video Doorbell 3 Plus, Ring’s new camera has a highly configurable PIR sensor. Using the image from the camera as a guide, you can enable or disable three…

£699 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT HTC’s latest headset is a zealous mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly THE VIVE COSMOS marks a turning point for HTC’s VR division. Like the excellent Oculus Rift S (Shopper 389), the Vive Cosmos requires no pesky base stations for tracking, and has a neat trick up its sleeve: a modular design that allows users to alter the number of built-in cameras on the headset’s removable front plate. The standard Vive Cosmos kit we’re testing here has six cameras on the headset plate. There’s also a lower-end Vive Cosmos Play model, which isn’t available to buy yet, and the £900 Vive Cosmos Elite – weirdly, both these have only four cameras, although the Elite set also includes extra tracking base stations and…

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 Building your own PC is often cheaper than buying a pre-made system, and gives full control over the components. You don’t need any special computer knowledge: just a few spare hours, a screwdriver and your choice of parts. Even things such as liquid-cooling systems can be found in user-friendly, easy-to-install packages, and for the most part it’s as simple as inserting each component into a particular slot. 02 Arguably the most important component is the CPU. These days you can get a quad-core chip even on a tight budget, which should provide more than enough brainpower for simple tasks such as web browsing, but hexa-core and octa-core chips are better for tougher jobs such as media editing, gaming and content creation. The CPU will also determine which motherboards 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…

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 Media streamers have come a long way from the hard disk-based set-top boxes of a few years ago. They now come in two main forms: flash drive-sized dongles that plug directly into the HDMI port in the back of your TV, and larger microconsoles that sit under it. Whichever model you choose, it will stream content from the internet rather than storing media files locally. 02 Most streamers use their own operating system, which you can navigate with a bundled remote control, but Google’s Chromecast dongle requires a paired smartphone, tablet or laptop to stream content on the big screen. If you’re looking to set up Netflix for someone who doesn’t have a smartphone, buy a standalone streamer such as a Roku or Amazon Fire TV device. 03 A…

DIGITAL ASSISTANTS Whether it’s Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, having an onboard digital assistant in your soundbar gives it plenty of new talents. Besides gaining most, if not all, of the functionality of a conventional smart speaker – such as voice-controlled music playback or smart home controls – you may even be able to use the assistant as a replacement for the TV’s remote control, playing, pausing or adjusting the volume with hands-free voice commands. ROOM CALIBRATION This is a much rarer party trick than a digital assistant, but some soundbars – including the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar and Samsung HW-Q70R – can adjust their sound output according to the room’s acoustics and even the exact position of where you’ll be sitting while watching TV. This adds to the initial setting-up…

£449 • From www.cramptonandmoore.co.uk VERDICT Dolby Atmos support makes this soundbar and subwoofer package remarkably good value DOLBY ATMOS SOUNDBARS have mostly existed at the more expensive end of manufacturers’ product ranges, but the prices are slowly coming down. The LG SL8YG is a fine example: while not particularly cheap for a soundbar in general, by Atmos standards it’s about as affordable as you can hope for at the moment. The SL8YG has more to offer, too. It comes with a sizable wireless subwoofer in the box and an infrared remote control, and it also has integrated Google Assistant support, which means you can ask it to turn on your TV or play music from your Spotify account using just your voice. ATTRACTIVE OFFER The SL8YG is reasonably attractive. It’s…

£2,199 • From www.richersounds.com VERDICT The Ambeo Soundbar will put adent in yourbank balance, but no other standalone unit sounds better ‘AMBEO’ IS A term coined by Sennheiser to describe 3D audio. There are a few different Ambeo-branded products out at the moment, and the biggest – quite literally – is the Ambeo Soundbar. At 135mm tall, 171mm deep and 1,265mm wide, it’s humongous: that’s what happens when you put a full 13 drivers in it. There’s support for Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and MPEG-H 3D, too The size will likely be a problem for anyone whose TV sits on a stand, making wallmounting both devices the only way to avoid obstruction. However, mounting the Ambeo Soundbar requires a separate £50 mounting kit, and this isn’t the only additional piece of…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk What’s the Outlook? Like many other people, I use an Android phone and a Windows 10 computer in my office. More or less since it was created, I have used Microsoft Outlook to organise my work, and I’m currently on Outlook 2016. It’s always been something of a challenge to synchronise Outlook with my phone. For periods I have had good results with AkrutoSync, but I’ve found it erratic unless I assign my computer a fixed IP address. I am aware that Windows 10 now offers apps for mail, contacts and tasks, and OneNote for notes. Is there any need for Outlook 2016, except to provide the Outlook Today overview? Can everything else be done more simply and as reliably with basic Windows or Android…