PC Pro的December 2025目录

Okay, settle down everyone. First up, I want to say a big, big thanks for coming to this spam and phishing convention. We really value your time, and if you could pop your bank account details into the online form, along with all your personal details and recent passwords, that would be great. No, but joking aside lads, we’re here today to talk about spam, phishing and deceiving the public. Now, I know you’ve had some success stories, but boys you need to step up your game. Let me share. “Dear Customer,” reads the email – yes, I kid you not, not even a first name extracted from the email address! Must do better, guys. “Dear Customer, We are unable to deliver your parcel GB9273467280 because your delivery address is…

If you’ve been smiling quietly to yourself every time you looked at your pension statement over the past couple of years, you’ve probably got AI to thank for the cushier retirement. For now, at least. The AI bubble is continuing to inflate at a rapid rate. In 2024, generative AI companies raised $56 billion from venture capitalists – close to double the figure from 2023, according to financial database PitchBook. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, AI startups secured $73.1 billion. The reason that your pension pot has been growing faster than Japanese knotweed is that many funds are tied to the fortunes of the “Magnificent Seven” – a collection of AI-linked companies that are lifting the broader market (see below). Nvidia alone is now worth more than $4…

AI companies are gambling with an awful lot – and I don’t mean the existential threat of AGI killing or enslaving all humans. The utility of AI is questionable, yet we’re chucking trillions of dollars at infrastructure, regardless of its impact on the landscape, water or energy. The firms building these systems don’t have the money to pay for it all, so they’re building increasingly circular deals that will pay off if it all works out, or lead to serious financial turmoil if not. OpenAI recently announced a $300 billion contract with Oracle as part of Stargate data centre plans. Analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets estimated Oracle will need to borrow $100 billion over the next few years to pay for it; if AI stumbles and OpenAI can’t pay, that’s…

The problem with being PC Pro’s features editor is you sometimes have to follow through on your own stupid ideas. So when, during a features meeting a few months ago, I idly speculated whether you could actually work full-time from a Raspberry Pi, editor Tim immediately gave it the thumbs up and slotted it into the schedule. Consequently, I’ve just spent a week doing as much work as possible from a computer that cost less than the backup SSD connected to my Mac. You’ll notice that “as much work as possible” caveat, because there are some jobs in my day-to-day existence – shuffling round magazine pages in InDesign and editing podcasts in Audition to name but two – that the Pi simply can’t cope with. Not only in terms of…

1 QR codes can encode You’re already familiar with QR codes as a quick and easy way to access a web link. All right, it can be fiddly to dig your phone out of your pocket, bring up the camera and point it at the code. Or, if you’re the one generating the code, it’s a little bit of a pain that you have to use a tool to create the image and embed it into your document, poster or wherever. Hopefully, though, we can all agree that using QR codes is a much better way to share addresses then expecting people to type in URLs manually. QR codes aren’t just for web addresses, however. You might also have come across them in the context of Wi-Fi connections. Some routers…

PRICE As reviewed, £1,427 (£1,712 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The obvious question when buying a 2-in-1 convertible laptop is what you’re going to use it for in tablet mode. Some basic units are only suitable for doodling and scribbling notes, but the Yoga 9i is here for creative tasks: the bundled stylus is one of the best, with minimal lag and a magnetic finish that means it sits firmly against the lid when in transit. However, you still need to charge it via USB-C. Lenovo’s top-end models include an OLED panel with a phenomenal 3,840 x 2,400 resolution. That would normally be overkill for a 14in laptop, but you may find yourself leaning in close to admire the results of your artistic creations. I couldn’t make out the pixels even…

PRICE £727 (£827 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Apple may be most famous for trailblazing new categories such as smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, but it also has a lucrative sideline in 5K 27in monitors. Lucrative for itself – the Studio Display (see issue 332, p62) costs a cool £1,499 – but also for the growing number of monitor makers who undercut it for price while matching it for specs. Philips is the latest, stuffing every known luxury and feature into the Brilliance 27E3U7903/00. Let’s start with the 27in IPS panel with its 5,120 x 2,880 resolution. That translates into 218 pixels per inch, compared to 81ppi for a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) panel, 109ppi for a 1440p display and 163ppi for a 4K 27in monitor. I will shake the hand…

Total value this month £145 Norton AntiVirus Plus 2025 Norton AntiVirus Plus 2025 offers everything you need to stay safe from online threats, with on-demand and real-time scanning, behavioural monitoring, browser protection and more. This latest version also includes Genie Scam Protection, an AI-powered scam detection system that helps protect you from text and web scams, whenever and wherever you come across them. Setup is a breeze: just download the installer from the web and step through the simple, short wizard. You can put off initialising the password manager and cloud storage if you want to jump straight to scanning your drives, and return to them when you have more time. Among other upgrades, AntiVirus Plus 2025 brings an update to the Norton Identity Safe password manager, with drag-and-drop support,…

PRICE Pro: 256GB, £916 (£1,099 inc VAT); Pro Max: 256GB, £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max showcase a new design, with the camera bump extending across the entire back of the phone. In my view, it’s a smart update: the full-width bar feels more “Pro”, and the aluminium unibody casing feels cooler in your hand than the old titanium edging. Enhanced Ceramic Shield coatings on the front and back provide better scratch- and crack-resistance than previous models, and Apple has introduced a bold new Cosmic Orange colour, along with Deep Blue and Silver for those who prefer a more serious look. The OLED display is perfect for sunny days. Both phones reached almost 1,000cd/m2 in our SDR tests with adaptive brightness on, with…

PRICE From £183 (£219 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The Apple Watch SE has always been an affordable way to get the essentials of fitness tracking and iPhone connectivity, and the SE 3 feels less like a compromise than ever, thanks to the addition of an always-on display and 5G. The latest model benefits from almost all the software upgrades in watchOS 26, including the on-wrist Notes app, live message translations and even “Workout Buddy”, the Apple Intelligence-powered fitness coach. Motion gestures and on-device Siri are supported, too: as well as protecting your privacy, that means Apple’s voice assistant can do some things even when the watch is disconnected from Wi-Fi or a smartphone. And in a fun upgrade, you can now play music straight out of the SE’s speaker, something…

We all know that Microsoft Defender works pretty well. Released in the days of Windows XP’s prime in 2006, it had a spluttery start compared to established tools, but thanks to Microsoft’s continued investment and the small fact it’s installed by default on hundreds of millions of computers – not a bad testbed – it traditionally holds its own in annual tests against malware. Take a look at the graphs on p94, however, and you’ll see that its latest set of results falls behind the rest. If you want the best protection but you don’t want to pay then it makes sense to switch to Avast, Avira or the others that we mention in our best free antivirus section on p92. So, why pay, other than to avoid those painful…

BEST PRICE 5 devices, 1yr, £28 (£34 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Avira is part of international cybersecurity giant Gen Digital, which formed in 2022 after US-based NortonLifeLock merged with Czech antimalware company Avast. Still headquartered in Germany, Avira was at the time a subsidiary of Avast and is now a subsidiary of the Gen Digital holding group. Avira is available in a number of different versions, including Avira Free Security. This costs nothing but uses the same malware detection engine as all the company’s commercial offerings: Avira Antivirus Pro, Avira Internet Security and Avira Prime. If you subscribe to Avira Prime directly from the company’s website, you’ll pay £60 for a one-year, five-device subscription, but this renews at £110. Such a steep increase means you should immediately disable automatic subscription…

BEST PRICE 3 devices, 1yr, £33 (£39 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Based in Finland, F-Secure is one of a handful of antivirus firms, along with Eset and Bitdefender, that is based in the EU. F-Secure uses a combination of malware detection engines, including its in-house Capricorn engine and Avira’s detection engine, as well as cloud-based analysis for its various scanning and real-time detection operations. It generally does well in tests by AV-Comparatives and AV-Test, and this quarter was no exception: it detected 100% of malicious files in real-time exposure and flat file scan tests by AV-Test, with no false positives, as did many of its rivals. AV-Comparatives’ latest realworld (live malware exposure) tests proved more challenging for most participants. Impressively, F-Secure still didn’t misidentify any benign files or websites as…

BEST PRICE 5 devices, £25 (£30 inc VAT) for first year from trendmicro.com Maximum Security is an apt name for this suite. Rather than let any misbehaving file escape its clutches, it’s twitchy to the point of paranoia: in AV-Comparatives’ test, it picked up a shocking 52 false positives. By comparison, Avast flagged five false positives and everything else here identified three or fewer. However, it’s extremely effective. It blocked 99.5% of genuine malware in the AV-Comparatives test, which is better than Microsoft Defender and most other services. The notable exceptions include our award winners, Avast and Norton 360. We had to refer back to AV-Test’s March/April 2025 results to obtain data for Trend Micro, as it doesn’t appear in the latest round of testing. This perhaps reflects the company’s…

Endpoint protection is rapidly becoming one of the most critical components of a business data security strategy. Client devices such as workstations, laptops and mobiles are the weakest link as they can easily present entry points into the network that can be exploited by cybercriminals. Today’s geographically distributed workforces pose even more challenges as they go beyond the safety net of network perimeter security solutions such as firewalls and UTM appliances. Endpoint protection software can close these gaps by keeping users secure regardless of whether they’re in the office, at home or on the road. In this month’s guide, we’ve reviewed business-class endpoint protection products from four of the biggest names in the industry – ManageEngine, Sophos, WatchGuard and WithSecure. All the products are ideally suited to budget-conscious SMBs, and…

PRICE 101-250 seats, £37 exc VAT each per year from broadbandbuyer.com WatchGuard offers a complete suite of endpoint protection solutions, and their modular design allows you to pick and choose the components you want. The family starts with the EPP (endpoint protection) edition, which includes virus, malware and exploit protection, web filtering and device controls, while EDR complements these with advanced threat protection plus WatchGuard’s unique zero-trust application and XDR (extended detection and response) services. The EPDR version on review bundles EPP and EDR into a single, more affordable package. Regardless of which module you choose, they’re all remotely managed from WatchGuard’s cloud portal, which is also used for its Firebox UTM appliances, Wi-Fi access points and ThreatSync XDR service. Unlike rivals that offer separately purchased modules for server and…

PRICE £311 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel offers an extensive range of network switches and, after providing sterling service since 2022, its XGS1930 series of four switches has been replaced by the XGS1935 family. Aimed squarely at small businesses with big connectivity plans, the new models offer an equally good range of options and are available in 24- and 48-port versions, while all of them have a quartet of 10GbE SFP+ uplink ports. You also have a choice of two PoE models, and in this review we look at the XGS1935-28HP. The series are all Layer 2 (L2) switches with “Lite-L3” capabilities that support static IPv4 and IPv6 routing, but not the dynamic routing offered in more expensive full Layer 3 (L3) switches. Performance specifications are identical to its predecessor,…

It’s been quite a bitty month. The trip to Berlin for IFA (see issue 374, p26) put a small crater in my workflow, so I’ve been busy catching up with various projects to ensure they’re delivered on time. But the late summer lull in IT news appears to be over, and vendors are moving full steam ahead. One of the biggest sources of news came from Apple, with its annual iPhone refresh to kick things off. I decided to upgrade my trusty iPhone 16 Pro Max to the new 17 version. This isn’t an upgrade I’d necessarily recommend, as usually a two-generation change should be considered the minimum. However, I had some specific technical interest in the new version, especially around its updated cameras and the Wi-Fi/modem chipset. So a…

Robotics demonstrations are always wild: you’ll have seen dancing robot dogs, backflipping humanoids and other nightmare-inducing but impressive feats. But the Robbyant R1 just wanted to cook dinner, with its maker Ant Group recently demoing the human-shaped robot assembling a meal of garlic shrimp. Dig in and even that basic task is less impressive than it sounds. While the robot takes the order, cooks the food and presents it, the prep is all completed beforehand. The Robbyant isn’t standing around shelling shrimp or mixing sauces; it merely picks up a small container of ready-made ingredients and dumps it into an appliance sitting on the countertop. Even that small bit of work happens at a pace so slow you’ll be full-on hangry before your meal arrives. Most of the videos on…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro M4 M4 beast from £1,599 from apple.com/uk This M4 update to the already brilliant MacBook Pro line is an easy recommendation, so the big question becomes do you choose the 14in version from £1,599 or 16in from £2,499? And then how much do you upgrade, as Apple isn’t afraid of high prices. But whatever you choose should last for years, and look great while it’s doing it.  REVIEW Issue 364, p50 NEW ENTRY Apple MacBook Air M4 If you don’t need the all-out power of the Pro, this is a brilliant, cheaper alternative despite the unchanged chassis and screen. 13in from £999, 15in from £1,199 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 368, p54 Honor MagicBook Art 14 (2025) This slim 1kg laptop packs Intel’s powerful Core Ultra…

There’s a crystal-clear indicator of whether I’m being productive when I work from home – it’s whether my invoices are paid at the end of the month. As generous as Tim doubtless is, the hard-nosed Alan Sugar side of him wouldn’t settle my invoices if the news and features pages weren’t filled with copy I’d written and edited. If I were sitting here playing Football Manager and watching Bargain Hunt all day, the Bank of Tim would decline payment. So it always make me want to thump my head into the desk when I read stories of companies struggling to work out if employees are actually doing their jobs when they let them work from home. We’re now five years on from the great work-from-home experiment that was Covid, and…

At some point, we must really let AI loose on the amazing amount of data we have about customer service in the UK. The PC Pro Technology Excellence Awards have been running for almost three decades, a period of history that has seen the launch of the iPod, Facebook and ChatGPT. During that time, several companies have achieved a level of consistency that puts Novak Djokovic to shame. Zen has pocketed almost 40 awards over the years, including an extra one this year for the all-new Digital Voice category. Brother and DrayTek are also well into double figures. That’s an incredible achievement for all concerned and testament to the priority each company gives to customer support and product quality. If only we could say the same for companies that come…

Just as we put the finishing touches to this feature, the sods announced a successor to the Raspberry Pi 500 that I’ve used here. The good news? It (theoretically, at least) deals with two of the biggest problems I experienced when using the Pi 500 as my office driver. The first improvement is the keyboard. The new Raspberry Pi 500+ has a mechanical keyboard, which should deal with the erratic spacebar and other issues I had with the chiclet design on the 500. Each of the keys on the 500+ “rests on a Gateron KS-33 Blue switch with a custom RAL 7001 Silver Grey stem, giving a satisfying sound and feel when pressed”, according to the company, and each of those keycaps is replaceable if you don’t like how they…

Looking for a particular past review? Visit our index at pcpro.link/index PRICE £416 (£499 inc VAT) from fairphone.com Fairphone has always sought to offer the most eco-friendly smartphones on the market. In the Fairphone 6, that shows in the use of recycled materials wherever possible, in production processes that support fair working conditions, and in using energy from renewable sources. What’s more, as with past models, it’s easy to replace and repair parts yourself, and with this new generation you can also add a range of accessories, such as a finger loop, a card holder or a lanyard. The standard handset costs £499 – a welcome step down from the £649 of 2023’s Fairphone 5 (see issue 355, p44). That makes this a competitive smartphone in its own right, especially…

PRICE £499 (£599 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk At £599, the HP OmniBook 5 is the cheapest Copilot+ PC we’ve tested. That assumes that Currys sticks to its price as we go to press, with the unit’s official RRP listed as £799, but that seems a fair assumption. One reason it’s so cheap is that it uses Qualcomm’s pared-back Snapdragon X X1-26-100 processor, which we first saw in the £999 Acer Aspire 16 AI (see issue 374, p56). Application performance is pretty good overall, being roughly equivalent to Intel’s Core Ultra 7 256V chips. What’s more, it has exactly the same NPU as the rest of the Qualcomm range, easily meeting Microsoft’s criteria for Copilot+ PC status. The big trade-off is GPU power. The Adreno X1-45 was between 45% and 50%…

◼ STORE.PCPRO.CO.UK NORTON 360 PREMIUM for £19.99 10 DEVICES 2YR LICENCE 75GB CLOUD STORAGE ◼ tinyurl.com/norton360premium We’ve negotiated this exclusive deal for PC Pro readers. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Security suite across ten devices, and there’s no danger of being hit with hiked renewal fees. Because it’s the Premium version, you get a host of extra tools. Top of the list is the full version of Norton VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching British TV while you’re abroad. There’s also 75GB of cloud storage for secure backups, while Norton’s Dark Web Monitoring service will alert you if private details – such as…

PRICE 256GB, £833 (£999 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The is the boldest new iPhone design in years. It replaces the iPhone 16 Plus in Apple’s lineup – but rather than going big, this model goes thin, with a claimed thickness of only 5.6mm. It’s a striking innovation, and one that comes with compromises, but depending on your priorities it could be your perfect iPhone. Slimmer by design Clearly, the point of the iPhone Air is its thinness, but when Apple says it’s 5.6mm thick, it somehow omits to mention the camera bump (which also contains many of the core components). This gives the phone a maximum thickness of 11.3mm – thicker than a regular iPhone 17 – but because it’s all up at the top of the body, the phone…

PRICE From £308 (£369 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk I’d stopped holding my breath for the Apple Watch to ever last a whole day. Eighteen hours has been the ceiling for as long as I’ve been wearing one; sure, low-power mode adds a little wiggle room, but it feels like a compromise. So imagine my delight when Apple revealed that the Apple Watch Series 11 delivers a full 24 hours of battery life. And it’s no empty promise. Even with the always-on display enabled, I could wear the watch overnight and recharge at my convenience during the day. It’s a revelation after having to work around an 18-hour battery. There are a few other improvements. The cellular model has now moved from LTE to 5G, enabling a faster, smoother data connection,…

PRICE £183 (£219 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk There are a few things I always carry with me. In my right-hand front jeans pocket goes my wallet, and both fast and slow insulin syringes. In the left goes my phone and the Apple AirPods Pro 2 case (let’s shorten that to the AP2), now supplanted by the Pro 3. For the past year I’ve carried the AP2 with me everywhere; its small, curved case design slips easily into my pocket. They’re ready for use for weeks at a time without recharging the case. So these earphones have been my constant companions, at the ready for a phone call I want to make or to listen to music while walking. Or when I realise that the band in the local pub is…

Modern security software packs in countless features, and we cover these as part of each review. But never forget that the key feature you’re looking for is protection against malicious software. That should always be your top priority. That means that real-time malware protection is the critical aspect of a security suite. This is a service that continuously monitors your PC for malicious software, primarily by scanning new files and websites your computer encounters. It’s also our minimum bar for inclusion in this group test. For example, the free edition of Malwarebytes is effective and justifiably popular, but, unlike its paid-for version, only provides on-demand scanning. Every single product in this group test will protect your computer against most malicious software. We know this thanks to the stalwart efforts of…

BEST PRICE 5 devices, 1 yr, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Romanian antivirus firm Bitdefender has grown to become a multinational cybersecurity vendor serving both home and enterprise customers. It’s first and foremost a European company, which may reassure those who would rather avoid the USA’s privacy and security climate, but is officially headquartered in both the US and Romania. It’s a regular in our group tests and has proven itself reliable over the years. A standard five-device Bitdefender Total Security subscription is £85 per year if you order via the company’s website, but the first year’s sub for new customers costs £50. If you pause for a minute or two on the site, you’ll probably be shown a pop-up with an additional discount code that takes it to…

BEST PRICE Individual, unlimited devices, £142 (£170 inc VAT) for first year from mcafee.com Compared to all the other products here, it may seem ridiculous that McAfee is charging £170 for its services, especially as that rises to £230 after the first year. However, those heady subscription fees buy you a huge amount of technical support and hands-on services, from assistance in setting up your protection to finding and removing your unused accounts – and having your personal information removed from data broker websites. You also get identity theft and ransomware insurance, along with access to one-on-one support from an identity theft restoration expert if necessary. If you have a family to protect then a McAfee+ Ultimate subscription costs £260 for the first year and £350 per year thereafter. That…

When we talk about Microsoft Defender this month, we’re talking about the basic out-of-the-box protection that comes with Windows 10 and 11 (not to be confused with the variety of Microsoft’s paid-for services by the same name, such as Microsoft Defender for Business). It’s pretty good, but it’s not currently the best free antivirus around in terms of malware detection and accurate assessment of benign but unknown or obscure software. We’re exclusively covering free antivirus software with a real-time protection component here. This rules out popular antivirus tools such as Malwarebytes Free, which only provides on-demand scanning. This can be useful to sit alongside your real-time malware defences, in case you want a second opinion on a suspicious file, for example, but doesn’t meet our requirements that malware protection must…

PRICE UEM Cloud Edition, 50 devices, from £1,035 exc VAT/yr from manageengine.com ManageEngine is a key player in the Zoho software and services empire and offers a host of IT management products. Its Endpoint Central is designed to provide a unified management, monitoring and security solution. It’s available in a range of licensing schemes, and you can choose either on-premises or cloud-hosted versions. ManageEngine offers a free version for 25 endpoints that enables everything Endpoint Central has to offer, and you can choose from four paid-for editions with differing levels of features. And there are features aplenty, with the endpoint security module including antivirus, anti-ransomware, vulnerability detection, data loss prevention and removable device controls. Modules are also available for device provisioning, mobile protection, patch management, app controls and even remote…

PRICE 100-499 workstations, £37 exc VAT each per year from withsecure.com WithSecure offers an extensive range of data security and endpoint protection solutions, and its Elements Cloud service provides a single web portal to manage them all. The suite is also completely modular so you can pick and choose the components to suit your requirements and budget. We review the Elements Endpoint Security (EES) component, which amalgamates WithSecure’s endpoint protection (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) modules. Platform support is excellent as WithSecure offers modules for protecting Windows and macOS workstations, Windows and Linux servers and Android and iOS mobiles, and the base product includes patch management for Windows OSes. The portal opens with an overview showing the status of protected endpoints and mobiles, software updates and open detections…

If there’s one aspect of IT management that ticks me off, it’s the weird world of subscriptions. I’m frequently amazed by what businesses will tolerate when it comes to restrictive contracts, and by the lengths suppliers will go to in order to lock you into their services. This month we’ll look at some warning signs that you’re about to be snagged in a situation without an easy exit – but first, I want to make sure you understand the scale of the risks we’re talking about, and to do that we need a quick diversion into the world of non-IT contracted services. That might seem outside of our remit, but my intention is to illustrate an important point. Part of the appeal of subscriptions is that they do away with…

It’s remarkable to note how long a gap there’s been between Windows versions. Windows 10 was released in 2015. I don’t know how you feel about this but I was more shocked by ten years of Windows 10 than I was to hear that Clint Eastwood is now 95 years old. I’m sorry to say that I have no concrete advice for Mr Eastwood, but I do have a few things to say about Windows 10 and its successors. How should you react to the propaganda, and what should you do to ensure a smooth migration? First of all, let’s agree that there’s an ideal number of nice new Windows 11 desktop PCs to buy when beginning a rollout. That ideal number isn’t zero, nor is it one per member…

ON SALE Thursday 4 December 2025  SUBSCRIBE.PCPRO.CO.UK Features Gifts for geeks We present a wishlist perfectly geared towards tech enthusiasts, whether for Christmas 2025 or into 2026. Features What’s new in Excel Discover the latest AI features and expert tricks in the ubiquitous spreadsheet application. Features Biometric secrets Fingerprints, facial recognition and more – how does the technology work, and is it really secure? Labs Tablets: iPads vs the rest! We pit the best Android tablets against the latest iPads to decide which should win for value, productivity and overall quality. Retro The surprising history of Ctrl-Alt-Delete You’ve probably used this three-fingered salute many times already this week, but we bet you don’t know where it came from or why it was created… Futures Who’s winning the AR race? From…

With the curtain coming down on Windows 10 support (at least officially), BackMarket is trying to keep machines out of landfill with the £99 Obsolete Computer. The refurbished PCs are being stripped of Windows and installed with ChromeOS Flex, effectively turning them into Chromebooks, albeit without access to the Android app store that most modern Chromebooks benefit from. The first batch of Obsolete Computers were 14in Lenovo ThinkPad T470 laptops, but they sold out almost immediately, according to BackMarket’s head of brand, Luke Forshaw. The company expects to continue releasing new waves of the devices as they arrive from recycling partner Zero Tech Waste. Forshaw claims the company’s research shows that around 400 million devices are likely to be made obsolete by the end of support for Windows 10. “We…

I love music and I love soldering. Here is a story that has both. I’ve explained my opinions about hi-fi here several times: I like good sound quality but I’m not a hi-fi nut, don’t buy oxygen-free cables or onyx cartridges or gold-plated anything, and definitely didn’t colour in the edges of my CDs with a green marker pen. I won’t spend thousands on any component, and if you happen to have issue 330 to hand you can read how my listening was transformed by connecting a cheap Fosi Class D Bluetooth amplifier to my vintage Castle speakers (legacy items from when Dennis Publishing used to publish Hi-Fi Choice magazine). All sound from my Chromebook Plus gets routed via Bluetooth through these speakers and I remain delighted by its quality,…

Disposable printers I thought Barry Collins treated printers a little casually in “Wipe all your devices” (see issue 374, p26). Modern printers aren’t dumb appendages; they’re computers in their own right, and the more sophisticated they are, the more complexity in their operations. And there have been plenty of stories about their vulnerabilities over the years. Some have non-volatile memory and may use it for storing your images while they manipulate them for printing. (Some have been known to hallucinate about what you were trying to print in an excess of zeal for economy of effort.) Best to perform a factory reset before letting go of a printer. David Singer News and features editor Barry Collins replies: I couldn’t agree more! To the extent that my advice was indeed to…

LAPTOP OF THE YEAR WINNER HONOR MAGICBOOK ART 14 (2025) HIGHLY COMMENDED LENOVO YOGA SLIM 7X We’re used to laptops being powerful, gorgeous and slim these days, but that often means a price to match. While the official price of the MagicBook Art is £1,500, by claiming a point-of-sale voucher the price drops to £1,100 – and although we can’t guarantee that voucher will stay forever, while it does this sub-1kg laptop is simply a bargain. “I’ve been using it for six weeks now,” said editor-in-chief Tim Danton, “and I’m consistently impressed by its power and the quality and sharpness of the AMOLED panel with its ridiculous 3,120 x 2,080 pixels.” Runners-up place goes to the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, a similarly priced ultra-slim laptop that’s based on a Snapdragon…

Most of us don’t ask much from a word processor. It’s been suggested that the original release of Word for Windows back in 1989 did everything most people need, so you might well wonder how Microsoft can possibly keep evolving the app in ways that are useful enough to justify a rolling subscription. Yet recent releases have brought some significant updates – and if you haven’t noticed them, that’s because Microsoft has taken the respectable approach of keeping most of them out of your way, unless you specifically call on them. As you surely know, Word is part of Microsoft 365, available as a monthly or annual subscription. Pricing for home users starts at £85 per year for a single user, £105 for a family of up to six. That’s…

PRICE £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Windows laptops must work hard to lift themselves from the pack these days. Sometimes that comes in ultra-slim designs such as the Honor MagicBook Art 14 (see issue 373, p59), sometimes in twistable form factors such as the Lenovo Yoga 9 2-in-1 opposite. Here, Acer complements its usual aggressive pricing with a striking white design – note the embossed zigzag patterns on the lid – and a high-quality matte display. The Swift Edge 14 AI isn’t slim by modern standards, measuring 16.6mm compared to 11.5mm for the MagicBook, but that creates more room for cooling. This is evident in the extra power Acer draws from the Core Ultra 7 258V processor compared to the Yoga, with 11,066 in Geekbench 6’s multicore section versus…

PRICE Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 Windforce OC, £200 (£240 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk In some ways, the GeForce RTX 5050 is stuck in time. Just like the RTX 3050, it has 2,560 CUDA cores, and while the latest Blackwell architecture is much more capable and clocked higher (2,572MHz boost versus 1,780MHz), that number feels low compare to the 3,840 CUDA cores of the RTX 5060 – a card that typically costs around £50 more. What’s more, unlike the RTX 5060 and every other RTX 50-series card, the 5050 sticks to GDDR6 memory rather than GDDR7. This affects memory bandwidth, with 320GB/sec versus 448GB/sec for the 5060, but AMD’s Radeon RX 9000-series cards all stick with GDDR6 and still deliver competitive performance with RTX 50-series products at similar price points.…

PRICE From £291 (£349 inc VAT) from store.google.com Like the Pixel Watch 3 (see issue 362, p61), the Pixel Watch 4 comes in 41mm and 45mm sizes, each available with or without cellular connectivity. It looks almost identical to its predecessor, but offers 10% more screen space thanks to a slimmer bezel. The domed display is easy to read at any angle, with a peak brightness of 3,000cd/m2. That’s 50% brighter than both the Watch 3 and the Apple Watch Series 11 (see p72). The familiar crown and button remain on the side of the device, but there are now two metal contacts on the other side that work with the new upright charger. This lets you use your watch as a mini alarm clock while it’s charging, but it…

PRICE 256GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk While the iPhone Air on the previous pages is the eye-catching new arrival, the entry-level iPhone hasn’t been neglected – in fact, it’s quietly received its biggest upgrade in years. For a start, the base model now comes with 256GB of storage, twice as much as the iPhone 16 (see issue 363, p68), for the same price. The display is larger, too, while the front and back benefit from a sturdier Ceramic Shield coating that’s supposedly three times as scratch-resistant as the old one. It still feels the same in the hand, neither noticeably larger nor heavier, although I’m not a fan of this year’s subdued colour options, which look rather apologetic next to the richer, bolder tones of the iPhone 16.…

PRICE From £624 (£749 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk I see the Apple Watch Ultra on a lot of wrists these days, and when I ask people why they chose it, their answers usually boil down to two things: the long battery life and the big display. Those are still great reasons to choose the Ultra, and both have become even better this year. Thanks to what Apple calls a “re-engineered” battery, the Watch Ultra 3 lasts a massive 42 hours on a charge; in low-power mode you can stretch it to around 72 hours. This doesn’t keep up with the likes of Garmin’s fitness watches, but if you’re coming from an older Series, the difference is night and day. Charging is faster, too, giving you about eight hours of use…

PRICE 256GB, £1,458 (£1,749 inc VAT) from store.google.com Talk about a tough act to follow. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold arrives in the wake of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 (see issue 372, p48), a phone so thin and light that it comprehensively raised the bar for foldable phones. Yet in my testing of Google’s new foldable, I’ve found it beats Samsung’s in several ways. It’s also cheaper. There’s no hiding from the fact that the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is chunkier than the Galaxy Z Fold7, but there’s a definite advantage to its design. Google’s new gearless hinge provides excellent protection against water and dust intrusion, making it more rugged than rivals: it’s the first foldable with an IP68 rating. The Z Fold7 only bears an IP48 rating, which…

BEST PRICE 10 devices, 2 years, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Avast and AVG use the same malware detection engine and tools, wrapped in different desktop clients. We’ve chosen to review Avast, as AV-Test data shows its client to have less of an impact on system performance than AVG’s. Avast came top of the malware protection tests we use, aggregated from three highly reputable testing houses. It detected 100% of threats in AV-Test’s real-time exposure and flat file scanning tests, with no false positives. It similarly scored a 100% total accuracy rating in SE Labs’ test, defending against all threats during live malware exposure tests, with no false positive identifications of legitimate software or websites. In AV-Comparatives’ real-world tests, it protected against all threats but picked up five false…

BEST PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) for first year from eset.com Eset was one of several antivirus suites whose malware detection engines put in a perfect performance during AV-Test’s real-world malware exposure test, during which PCs are exposed to threats as they would be when encountering them in the wild. Likewise its reference malware sample tests, where the antivirus software is instructed to scan a large set of recent samples of malicious files. Notably, it scored 100% in both tests across two months, with no false positives. Unfortunately, Eset had a worse time of it in AV-Comparatives’ latest real-world protection tests. Its protection score of 99.1% – the percentage of malware blocked – matches that of Windows Defender, which, as the default Windows antivirus that ships with the OS, is…

BEST PRICE 3 devices, 15 months, £8 (£10 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Norton is part of the Gen Digital group, making it a sibling company of Avast, AVG and Avira, but while Avast and AVG share detection engines, Norton and Avira continue to be developed independently. That’s good news for anyone who likes choice, especially as Norton’s engine is one of the best performers in our aggregation of results from three different anti-malware testing houses. Norton 360 was one of several antivirus suites to earn a perfect score in AV-Test’s latest real-world and flat file-scanning tests, correctly identifying and protecting against all the malicious programs thrown at it, and with no false positive identifications of benign software as potentially malicious. It also scored a perfect 100% in AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection…

Most top-of-the-range internet security suites offer a wide range of extra features that purport to keep you safe online, improve your PC’s performance or enhance your privacy. But are these just value adds to increase perceived value or genuinely useful? The current trend, which I’ve seen in tools such as McAfee Scam Detector, Norton Genie Scam Protection and Avast Scam Guardian, is to bundle an interactive scam and fraud detection tool with the antivirus suite. For now, these are often also available on the web or via mobile apps for free. The tools typically have a ChatGPT-style interface that allows you to ask anything about the safety of software to the latest security tips. You can also paste in suspicious emails and images for analysis against a machine-learning engine tuned…

PRICE 50-99 users, £52.88 exc VAT each per year from broadbandbuyer.com Along with its well-respected firewall appliances, Sophos offers an extensive portfolio of endpoint protection services, with the Intercept X Advanced on review delivering a complete workstation and laptop threat defence solution. Despite its name, the Advanced version is actually the entry-level offering in this family of three products, though a quick glance at its capabilities shows it is anything but. Along with anti-malware, anti-exploit and web protection, it includes application and peripheral controls, data loss prevention (DLP), malicious traffic detection and an intrusion prevention system. AI-based deep learning gives known and unknown malware a hard time, and ransomware protection has a high priority as the CryptoGuard feature can roll back changes if malicious encryption activity is detected. That’s a…

PRICE From £1,172 exc VAT from dell.co.uk Dell has traditionally had a very strong presence in the entry-level server market, and the PowerEdge T160 stands out as one of the best solutions we’ve yet seen. It packs an incredible hardware specification into a superbly designed chassis, with this latest version supporting Intel’s family of Xeon 6300 CPUs. It’s very affordable, too, with base systems offering a quad-core 2.8GHz Xeon 6315P CPU teamed up with 16GB of fast DDR5 memory. The T160 supports all eight models in the Xeon 6300 family, and although there’s little to be gained you can also specify it with an older Xeon E-2400 CPU. The T160 stands out from the crowd thanks to the silver zinc coating and targets “near edge” deployments as it’s available with…

“Carbon-aware”? What does that mean then? Just for once, it’s a fairly clear and helpful term, referring to how green your computing activities are, in terms of what sort of power they’re using. The underlying idea is to power everything from renewable energy sources, so far as possible. How do we do that? Our electricity all comes out of the same sockets. The easiest way is to schedule your workloads to run at “green” times, when the national grid is mostly powered by clean energy. Your power supplier can tell you when these times are; in the UK, they’re usually in the dead of night. Although solar panels naturally aren’t much use after sundown, wind generation can be most effective in the cool night air – and because overall demand…

Molotov cocktails arced through the foggy October air as Red Army tanks made their way down the frozen streets of Budapest. It was October 1956, and the city pulsed with fury. Crowds roared and urged the Soviets to leave, only for their cries to be drowned out by the rattle of machine gun fire. András Gróf was 20 years old and just starting his second year at the University of Budapest. His young life had been difficult. Mocked as a Jew at school before the Second World War, he’d been forced into hiding with his mother during the Nazi occupation from 1944, avoiding the brownshirts and living in a cellar with other families. When the war was over, Hungary emerged from the destruction under the USSR’s totalitarian sphere of influence,…

There are many things to be disappointed with in modern life. We could start with most politicians. Then move on to those people responsible for rolling out electric car-charging capabilities, especially in blocks of flats and roads with no off-street parking. Or Nextbase, which is still claiming that Roadwatch AI is “coming soon” for its flagship IQ dashcam after almost two years of waiting. Yesterday, I tried to order Indian food from a local place – friends and I were introducing one of our flock to the wonders of Thunderbirds and then a Bond film (The Spy Who Loved Me, of course). He had seen neither before, for some inexplicable reason. My local curry house has a website where you can order the food. This looked just what we needed,…