Computer Shopperの February 2020 の目次

Our star letter this issue (page 6) struck a chord with me. No spoilers – but the premise is the importance of product dimensions when it comes to choosing new tech kit. I faced a similar problem recently when needing to buy a new printer, which had to fit on a certain shelf in our hall cupboard, so could only be so tall and so wide. The reason for hiding the printer away in a cupboard is that neither my husband nor I want to dedicate the space in our home offices to a printer. There’s also the style element: I doubt many companies are that interested in whether a printer fits perfectly into the colour scheme of their workspace, but I’m sure those of us with home offices would…

Security suites on test Find out how well protected your computer really is Best in show We round up the most exciting and innovative technology due to launch in 2020 Hidden gems The best lesser known websites and tools to educate, help and entertain After Moore’s Law, what’s next? Optical, chemical, biological, analogue electronic, neural – we investigate the different computing paradigms that could become the next big thing COMPUTER SHOPPER ISSUE 385 ON SALE IN NEWSAGENTS FROM 9th JANUARY…

China’s computer control China plans to implement controls to limit when and how long under-18s can play online video games with the goal of reducing the potential for “harming the physical and mental health of minors”. Facebook foibles Facebook has admitted that over 100 third-party developers had improper access to the data of Facebook Groups members, despite its policy of forbidding such access Vue to the end Sony is calling time on its PlayStation Vue pay-TV service, with is scheduled to shut down in January 2020 after challenges in the market and expensive TV deals stymied adoption Slim Stadia showcase Google’s Stadia game-streaming service has only 12 games as part of its initial line-up, with some being several years old, but it does have the critically acclaimed Red Dead Redemption…

£2,000 • From www.razer.com VERDICT The Blade Stealth 13 stays sharp with its most powerful ever GeForce GTX graphics AS THE SLIMMEST member of Razer’s Blade series, the Blade Stealth has always made do with less bulky (and less powerful) graphics processors, like Nvidia’s MX150. This latest version, named the Blade Stealth 13, is therefore an exciting first: it’s just as portable as previous models but features proper GeForce GTX graphics, specifically the GTX 1650 Max-Q. At least, it does if you choose it as an option. We tested the absolute top-spec version, with the GTX 1650, a 4K touchscreen display and Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU, all for £2,000. This drops to£1,800 if you opt for a non-touch 1080p display. Intel UHD Graphics 620, Intel Iris Plus Graphics and the MX150…

£90 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT Expensive but effective, the MA620M is a good cooler, even if won’t suit everyone YOU’VE PROBABLY SEEN CPU air coolers with twin fans on either side of a radiator, but how about one with twin radiators on either side of a fan? The MasterAir MA620M is one such cooler, and in the flesh it’s even more visually arresting than it sounds. It’s an enormous piece of kit, measuring 165x125x135mm, so tall that even a lot of mid-tower PC cases won’t be big enough to accommodate it. What Cooler Master calls the ‘dual tower’ design means that two radiators – both individually large enough to be part of a simpler cooler – enclose a single, central 120mm fan like the two halves of a giant metallic…

£239 • From store.google.com VERDICT Powerful and with built-in smart speakers, the Google Nest Wifi is more than just another mesh system GOOGLE WAS ONE of the first companies to release a mesh Wi-Fi product, way back in December 2016, but subsequently went very quiet. Only now is it back with the Google Nest Wifi, an improved mesh product where all of the satellites (called ‘points’ here) are smart speakers. It’s a smarter, faster and neater product overall, but there are a few little annoyances that prevent this from getting top marks. PORT OUT Whereas the original Google Wifi had to plug into your existing home network, the new model comes as two distinct components. First, there’s the router, which can be bought standalone for £149, and plugs into your…

£129 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT These deceptively small speakers can put out great sound, if slightly lacking in bass SMALL SPEAKERS ARE always fighting against physics. Big sound and deep bass means moving a lot of air, and that’s one area where size really does matter. JBL’s One Series 104 aren’t designed to fill a room with chest-thumping sound, however. These compact speakers are designed to sit either side of a laptop or computer monitor and provide an accurate, tightly defined sound for sensible money – so do they deliver? FULL CIRCLES Inside the plastic, lozenge-shaped cabinets, there’s a single 4.5in concentric driver in each speaker – that’s a midrange woofer with a 0.75in tweeter mounted in its centre – and each is powered by 30W of Class D amplification.…

£599 • From www.ao.com VERDICT Hisense has done a good job for the money, but several issues keep this 120Hz TV from achieving true greatness HISENSE HAS PLENTY of experience in producing affordable big-screen TVs, and the U8B family is a perfect example. With the 55in H55U8BUK (on test here) costing £599 and the 65in H65U8BUK costing £699, it’s hard to go much bigger for less cash. This means you shouldn’t expect anything too flashy; for example, Hisense’s ULED branding just means the H55U8BUK has an LED-backlit LCD panel, like most TVs at this price, and not that it’s a unique technology like Samsung’s QLED. Still, it’s solidly built, so build quality hasn’t been scrimped on. You’ll find all the connections hidden on the left side of the TV, including…

£669 • From store.google.com VERDICT The Pixel 4 has an extra camera, a new design and radar-sensing abilities, but Google’s Android crown is beginning to slip THE PIXEL 4 represents a series of firsts for Google. It’s the first Pixel phone with more than one rear-mounted camera, the first with a Snapdragon 855 chip, the first with a 90Hz screen and the first to launch with Android 10. It’s also undergone a much more drastic design overhaul than the Pixel 3 (Shopper 372) did. Google has ditched the two-tone look of its previous three generations of flagships, and instead opted for a simpler single-tone colour scheme (available in black, white or orange). A softly curved, textured black trim surrounds the edges, and the lower bezel is now almost as thin…

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. 03…

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 directly…

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 TN…

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 media…

WINDOWS 10 Chances are, this – or a previous version of Windows – is the OS you’re already most familiar with. If that’s true, then it’s reason enough to stick with it. Windows 10 offers the quintessential desktop PC experience, and while that can include some frequent and lengthy updates, it’s the closest thing to a default choice for PCs for good reason. Windows 10 Home will give you all the files and software compatibility you need for everyday use, but Windows 10 Pro has its benefits, too. It includes BitLocker encryption for storage drives, and improved Remote Desktop support, which might come in useful if you need help fixing a problem. CHROME OS Google’s Linux-based operating system is more commonly found on Chromebook laptops than desktop devices, but what…

£729 • From www.dell.com VERDICT The small form factor has forced cuts to performance and connectivity, but both are fine for the price THE OPTIPLEX 7060 Micro is both the cheapest and most compact member of Dell’s 7060 family, which also includes conventional tower and mini-tower form factors. Shrinking to the size of hardback book has forced a degree of lost capability, with there being fewer ports on this model as well as a lower-power Intel T-series chip, but the dimensions create opportunities as well. Chiefly, this is a small enough PC to be VESA-mounted on the back of a monitor, to a wall or on the underside of a desk, much like the Acer Chromebox CXI3. It’s nice to get the full Windows 10 Pro experience from such a…

£1,300 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT One of the best mini PCs for gaming we’ve seen, especially if you don’t want to stray too far from desktop conventions LIKE THE MORE productivity-minded Asus ProArt PA90, the Overclockers Gaming Hydrogen isn’t so small that it can be tucked away on the rear of a monitor, but considering the calibre of components inside, it’s still a wonderfully compact system. What’s more, it’s a rare mini PC that includes a dedicated GPU specifically for games. Other than an SFF power supply and, depending on your perspective, the Mini-ITX motherboard, the Gaming Hydrogen is the only one of the eight in this roundup to rely completely on standard desktop internals. These include a hexa-core, 2.9GHz Intel Core i5-9400F processor, 16GB of full-size DDR4 RAM, a…

FOR AUDIOPHILES Creative Outlier Gold Where to buy www.uk.creative.com UK RRP £94.99 Go on wild adventures without worrying about subpar audio quality or short-lived battery life! The Outlier Gold, with its impressive 39 hours of battery life, ensures that you’ll always be on your A game while on the go. Together with Software Super X-Fi®, experience unmatched audio clarity even while you’re out and about. FOR UPGRADERS HyperX DDR4 FURY RGB Where to buy www.ebuyer.com UK RRP £60.11 for kit of two HyperX® FURY DDR4 RGB delivers a boost of performance and style with speeds of up to 3,466MHz, aggressive styling, and RGB lighting that runs the length of the module. FURY DDR4 RGB is XMP-ready and available in 2,400MHz to 3,466MHz speeds, CL15–16 latencies, single module capacities of 8GB…

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The only way is ethics In Shopper 383, Roland Moore-Coyler rants about short replacement cycles on mobile phones and asks when modular phones with replaceable parts will come about. Fairphone has been making phones on that basis for six years now, and has just brought out its third model. The company has a policy of offering spare or upgraded parts and software updates for as long as possible. They are not the latest, shiniest, highest-spec phones, nor are they the cheapest, but most of the parts are user replaceable, and all of the components are guaranteed to be free of child, slave or forced labour, and minerals from conflict zones. The company has won many awards for its revolutionary approach and demonstration that it is possible to build an ethical…

MEL CROUCHER Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk IT SEEMED SUCH a great idea when I started using that certain lump of technology designed to bring people together and make them happier. I would arrive in an exotic location like Scunthorpe, to be greeted by a perfect stranger in all senses. They would welcome me into their own home with a genuine warmth and hospitality. They would treat me as a friend, enquire with genuine interest if I had had a good journey, hand me the front door key to come and go as I please, act as my local guide for the best bars, dog-walks and music venues, and next morning they would send me on my way with a cheery wave, before cleaning up any bodily wastes…

iPADOS TABLET APPLE iPad 10.2in £349 •From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT The latest iPad focuses on being a better laptop alternative, becoming much more usable in the process EVEN WITH THE looming iPad Pro series, standard consumer-grade iPads have been viable productivity aids for some time now. If you’re on a tight budget – say, no more than £500 – and you can’t find a decent Windows laptop, the long battery life, high performance and top-quality display of the 9.7in iPad (Shopper 366) go a long way towards making it a workable alternative. All you need to do is add a keyboard, and you’re good to go. As if in acknowledgement of the iPad’s rising status as a potential 2-in-1, Apple has made things even easier by fitting the new 10.2in laptop…

£3,000 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Dual displays make this an intriguing laptop, but usability and battery life need improving IT’S FINALLY HERE: a laptop with not one, but two UHD touchscreens. Multi-display devices aren’t a new concept, of course, but the ZenBook Pro is the most ambitious one to date. The primary display is a 15.6in, 3,840x2,160 OLED touchscreen, while the lower display, known as the ScreenPad Plus, is an LCD touchscreen with a distinctly letterbox-shaped resolution of 3,840x1,100. The latter spans the full width of the base, positioned above the keyboard – it’s not a tiny display squeezed into the touchpad, although this can be turned into a number pad on the ZenBook Pro Duo. The catch, besides the price (we’re reviewing the top-spec model, but the absolute cheapest…

£80 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Richly featured in some places, basic in others, this is ultimately a respectable mouse and keyboard combo AT £80, THE Rapoo 9900M is on the expensive side for a mouse and keyboard set, especially one where the keyboard only uses simple scissor switches. That said, it’s also a cut above the kinds of dull, black plastic boards you usually get in such bundles. Sheets of gorgeous anodised aluminium (grey on top, silver underneath) create a thoroughly modern look, while also being lighter and more flex-resistant than plastic. The bulge at the back – a necessity to contain the two AA batteries and other internals, rather than a lapse in its otherwise extreme thinness – is also put to practical use by angling the keyboard upward,…

£107 • From uk.insight.com VERDICT Despite strong performance, the Pixma TS6350 is a little basic for the price THE TS6350 IS the latest upper-mid range inkjet MFP in Canon’s evergreen Pixma range. It replaces the TS6250 (Shopper 372), and while we’re used to printers getting a light refresh over the old model, the TS6350 is quite a departure. Gone is its predecessor’s full-width, tiltable control panel. Instead, the TS6350 has an unusually asymmetrical front panel that takes us back to the 1990s. But, while its lopsided looks aren’t bad, it seems the TS6350 has taken a small step backwards when it comes to features. Instead of a colour touchscreen, there’s a small mono display and a scattering of buttons. More significantly, with more basic controls this MFP supports fewer advanced…

£45 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The new Echo Dot takes a brilliant little Alexa speaker and adds a clock. What’s not to like? THE HISTORY OF Amazon’s own products – misguided attempt at a smartphone aside – is one of small iterations. Whether it’s Kindles, Fire Tablets or Echos, each new version brings small improvements you weren’t aware you needed until they arrived. The Echo Dot with Clock is a great example: it’s not an essential upgrade from the standard Echo Dot (Shopper 378), but it does fix one of its problems. The Echo Dot can be a handy tool for your bedside table: it can play soothing music to help you drift off, or turn on smart light bulbs when you need to get up. To check the time,…

VERDICT The GoPro Max’s footage quality, user-friendliness and easy editing make it the best 360° camera ever 360° CAMERAS CAN be fun to use, but have typically suffered from clunky software, disappointing image quality, having few ways of reliably sharing footage, or all three. The GoPro Max, however, changes everything. Not in terms of general design: with two fisheye lenses, one either side of a blocky body, it follows a similar formula to most other 360° cameras. There’s also a colour touchscreen, which can control the camera with tap and pinch gestures, as well as a flap on the right edge covering the microSD card slot. The whole thing is taller and heavier than any of GoPro’s action cameras, but it shows a comparable attention to detail. It’s solidly built,…

£829 • From store.google.com VERDICT The taller variant of the Pixel 4 doesn’t avoid many of the same weaknesses, but it’s a better smartphone on the whole THE PIXEL 4 XL has all of the smaller, cheaper Pixel 4’s key upgrades – the new camera, the 90Hz screen, the radar motion-sensing chip and so on – but also makes a few other tweaks that make it slightly more worthy of your money. That said, design-wise it’s pretty much the same phone, but larger. There’s the same glass-coated rear with a matt finish, the same three colour options and the same grippy black trim. Again, there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack nor a bundled adaptor, though at least you get IP68 waterproofing in exchange. A bigger loss is the fingerprint sensor: you’ll…

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 13.3in…

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

01 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. 02 A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can display a 1080p image. You can still buy TVs with a 720p (1,366x768) resolution, but they’re no cheaper and the image won’t be as sharp. 3,840x2,560 Ultra HD resolution, or 4K, TVs are finally available at reasonable prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for one over a 1080p model. 03 Consider the number of inputs you’ll need to connect the rest of…

01 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 performs.…

£528 • From uk.insight.com VERDICT Small, speedy and surprisingly well connected, this is the best-realised Chromebox yet WITHOUT WANTING TO sound too dramatic, we’ve been harbouring a feeling that Chromeboxes as a concept are on their way out. As far back as 2018, releases of new products had largely dried up, and while many are still available to buy, it’s not remotely clear that they’ll be replaced or replenished when stocks run out. This would be a big shame, as many of the best mini PCs have been Chromeboxes, including one of the very newest: the Acer Chromebox CXI3. WHAT’S IN THE BOX? The rarity with which new Chromeboxes launch is at least partially balanced by each design coming in about half a dozen different specs. The Chromebox CXI3 is…

£275 • From minix.com.hk VERDICT A decent low-profile PC with some nice individual touches, but the Neo J50C-4 is better overall ACCORDING TO ITS packaging, the Minix Neo G41V-4 is designed for commercial use: think the tiny PCs that power digital signage, or those self-service touchscreens in restaurants. This could have fooled us, as its dinky yet complete chassis, mix of input and output ports, and Windows 10 Pro operating system sound like all the ingredients for a space-saving home desktop. That’s with emphasis on space-saving, as this is a truly teensy PC: at 38x290x290mm, it’s even more petite than the Acer Chromebox CXI3. It’s also completely fanless, so when it’s switched on – and even when it’s running relatively intensive programs – you won’t hear a peep out of…

£770 • From www.quietpc.com VERDICT This silent system isn’t the most powerful for the money, but its neat design and speedy storage are worth having NOBODY COULD ACCUSE the Quiet PC UltraNUC Pro 8 Fanless of false advertising; it is indeed fanless and, as a result, is one very quiet PC. It’s essentially the innards of an Intel NUC8i3BEK barebones kit, transplanted into a nicer case – Akasa’s Turing Compact Fanless – and provided with the storage, memory and operating system needed to become a complete PC. The Intel kit’s Core i3-8109U processor is therefore joined by 8GB of DDR4 RAM, a 250GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus SSD and Windows 10 Home. CAREFUL WHISPER The CPU’s U suffix should give away that it’s a lower-power processor, but this comes with…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk If not that, then what? I’ve got a Tado heating system, which can detect whether anyone’s home or not. I just bought a couple of TP-Link Kasa smart lighting products, which can’t do the same thing. I wondered if I could link the two in some way so that, when the last person leaves, the lights are automatically turned off. I know both systems support If This Then That (IFTTT), which apparently might help, but I’ve no idea how to use it. Nick Barnes IFTTT links a number of smart systems – including Tado and Kasa – allowing a trigger from one to cause actions in another. Visit ifttt.com and create an account, then connect the Tado service to it by searching for Tado, clicking…

Inky blinders My wife’s printer (a Brother MFP inkjet) just died. It’s nearly four years old and out of warranty, so an ‘official’ repair wouldn’t be cost effective. I can find little useful help online; there is a reset suggestion, but that makes no difference. It doesn’t power on, but the mains cable checks out fine. Time to get the screwdriver out as it could be a simple fix like a burnt-out capacitor. It was difficult to work out how to take it to bits, but eventually I managed to get to the power supply (I guess I should add a ‘do not try this at home’ warning here). In the process I spotted the waste ink pad, theoretically a consumable, which would also require dismantling to replace. The soldered-in…

KAY EWBANK Software guru and Shopper legend letters@computershopper.co.uk THERE’S BEEN A major change in the world of databases, with an announcement that SQL (Structured Query Language) is about to get graphical. OK, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but what is true is that the international ISO committee responsible for the SQL standard has voted to make GQL (Graph Query Language) a new, official database query language. It’s difficult to describe how unsettling this announcement is. It’s like your granddad telling you he’s moving to Bali to take up kite surfing. SQL will carry on, of course, but this new language will be up there as just as official. SQL has been the standard way to put together questions about data for 30 years. It was developed at IBM…

Resurrecting the dead Microsoft has brought its OneNote Win32 desktop app back from the software bone orchard, with a refreshed version that works like its Universal Windows Platform counterpart and comes with a ‘dark mode’ All a-cardboard Google may have killed off its Daydream virtual reality headset and platform, but it’s open-sourcing its Cardboard VR goggles and designs so that others can tap into its budget take on a VR platform. There’s 4G in them thar hills The government has committed £1bn to fund the spread of 4G connectivity to rural areas of Britain to achieve 95% coverage by 2025 Team Red back in black AMD posted its highest third-quarter revenues in 14 years, thanks to the success of its Ryzen and Epyc CPUs…

“The @AppleCard is such a f*@!ing sexist program” Viral tweeter David Heinemeier Hansson is unhappy that Apple’s credit card offers him a $20,000 limit, but not his wife “The antitrust lawsuit was bad for Microsoft, and we would have been more focused on creating the phone operating system, so instead of using Android today you would be using Windows Mobile” Bill Gates reckons the fate of Microsoft’s phone platform could have been a lot different “But for all the good we’ve achieved, the web has evolved into an engine of inequity and division; swayed by powerful forces who use it for their own agendas” Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t like how his creation has evolved “This baby fell out of the sky and landed in our yard” Nancy Mumby-Welke of Gratiot…

£999 •From www.alphabetapc.com VERDICT A premium GPU and distinctive chassis make this a great gaming PC, both inside and out SOMETIMES IT’S HIP to be square, at least if the Intel i5 RTX – from the newly formed PC builder firm AlphaBetaPC – is any indication. By using the Tsunami Coolman Gorilla chassis, one that doesn’t appear to be otherwise available in the UK, it forgoes the usual desktop style of most gaming systems and puts everything into a classy, glassy box. It’s wider than the average mid-tower, but also shorter – both top to bottom and front to back – so won’t necessarily leave you with less desk or floor space. ASSEMBLE THE TEAM Inside, there’s nothing so radically out of the ordinary, but it’s an interesting bunch of…

£1,619 • From www.hp.com VERDICT A quick but by no means minor update to the G5, this convertible laptop is one of the best in its class MERE MONTHS AFTER the HP EliteBook x360 830 G5 was released, there’s a new version of HP’s flipping convertible in the G6 model. It’s a surprisingly wide-ranging update, adding a choice of Intel Whisky Lake-U processors, Wi-Fi 6 support, a privacy cover for the webcam and tweaks to HP’s pre-installed security software. What really makes this laptop shine, however, is how well it nails the basics. The metal chassis provides good looks, a pleasant feel and a reassuring hardiness, and the rotating hinge is nice and firm, too. At 1.36kg, the EliteBook x360 830 G6 is perhaps a little denser than it looks,…

£125 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT As long as you’ve got a USB3.1 port handy, the Pro Elite can reach blazing speeds – most of the time THE HIGHER SPEED benefits of choosing an external SSD over an external hard disk are obvious, but don’t forget that they can be a lot more compact as well. The PNY Pro Elite is a perfect example of how pocket-friendly solid-state storage can be: it’s barely thicker than the average smartphone, and is even less wide than a credit card. This drive is a faster, higher-capacity relative of the PNY Elite, and it proudly derives its speeds from the USB3.1 interface. USB2 and USB3 are both backwards-compatible, but throughput will be more limited. It’s not a full-on Thunderbolt 3 SSD like the Samsung X5…

£870 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This curved, ultrawide screen is expensive, but it has strong 144Hz gaming credentials and an extraordinary range of features THERE’S ONLY SO much performance that can be wrung out of existing display panel tech. The Optix MPG341CQR suggests MSI knows this: instead of trying to set new standards for quality and responsiveness, this hulking ultrawide monitor defines itself by a wealth of hardware features and software tools. Not that this is just a throwaway display with a load of taped-on trinkets. The Optix MPG341CQR uses a vast 34in, 3,440x1,440 VA panel, running at 144Hz for smoother gaming at high frame rates. It’s gently rounded with an 1800R curvature, and claims to meet the DisplayHDR 400 standard for brightness. Besides common qualities such as RGB lighting…

£49 • From store.google.com VERDICT Google’s smallest smart speaker benefits from performance and sound-quality boosts, albeit only modestly IT’S EASY TO see why Google hasn’t spent much time bigging up the Nest Mini compared to its other late 2019 launches, such as the Pixel 4 and Pixelbook Go. At a glance, the Nest Mini is no different to the original Home Mini smart speaker that was released well over a year ago (Shopper 360). Google insists, however, that this new speaker is more than just a name change and a light spring-clean. It says, in fact, that its latest smart speaker has been redesigned internally ‘from the ground up’ to deliver better sound quality, more sensitive voice recognition and faster Google Assistant responses. STAY HOME To all intents and purposes,…

£30 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Honor Band 5 proves that you don’t need to spend the earth to get a reliable fitness tracker THE HONOR BAND 5 is a fitness band for those who want to be a bit more active, but don’t need the advanced features of a running watch. That means no GPS, but you do get a heart-rate monitor, a step counter and notifications showing up on the 0.95in OLED screen. Fairly thick bezels surround this 282ppi touchscreen, which is par for the course with this type of fitness wearable, and you can bring it to life with a quick tap of the touch-sensitive panel beneath it. Because all the backgrounds are black, it’s not obvious where bezels end and screen begins, so those bezels don’t…

£699 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A quality smartphone is improved even further. This is a worthy purchase even with some faults ONEPLUS ORIGINALLY CAME to prominence for delivering high-end specifications in phones that significantly undercut the opposition but, in the past few years, it has shifted its sights upwards towards the premium sector of the market. The result is the Pro series, of which the new OnePlus 7T Pro is the newest model, joining the OnePlus 7T (Shopper 383) a couple of weeks late. Its most arresting feature by far is the enormous 6.7in edge-to-edge display. Thanks to the pop-up selfie camera, the display almost entirely fills the front of the phone, with no notch to get in the way. This vast screen makes for a very large handset, but…

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 speed…

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. 03Although 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 office lasers…

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 later.…

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…

£2,779 • From www.ballicom.co.uk VERDICT An expensive mini PC, but you’ll struggle to find as much high-end hardware in as small a space elsewhere PC TECHNOLOGY HASN’T quite progressed to the point where you can get full-blooded workstation performance out of a palm-sized miniature system; you’ll probably note that the absolute smallest PCs in this group test are also the slowest. Nonetheless, it is possible to squeeze professional-grade hardware into a chassis that’s significantly more compact than any conventional desktop form factor, including traditional mini towers. The Apple Mac Pro proved this years ago, and much more recently, the Asus ProArt PA90 provides a Windows-based take on the idea. Measuring 375x176x176mm, the ProArt PA90 might loom over the Minix J50C-4 and Quiet PC UltraNUC Pro 8 Fanless, but its cylindrical…

£300 • www.onbuy.com VERDICT Slightly faster and easier to upgrade, this is the better of Minix’s tiny box PCs THE NEO J50C-4 is clearly a close relative of the Neo G41V-4. Both are low-powered, very cheap Windows 10 Pro systems, and they even have the same squat shape, down to identical width and depth dimensions. Look closer and you’ll find differences, both inside and out. Besides having a completely distinct connection layout, the Neo J50C-4 adopts a more upgrade-friendly internal design and has an even more obscure CPU than the Neo G41V-4’s fanless Celeron chip. PRECIOUS METAL The Intel Pentium Silver J5005 is a quad-core, four-thread processor, and while it’s not the most popular of Intel CPUs, it has a handful of advantages over the Celeron N4100. Both the base…

£34 • From thepihut.com VERDICT A faster processor, quicker networking and dual HDMI outputs make the Pi 4 a proper desktop computer WITH THE RASPBERRY Pi 3 Model B+ (Shopper 364), the tiny project computer took a step forward, increasing in power and capability to the point where we said it was almost capable of operating as a full computer. This year, with the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, that dream is realised: you’re effectively getting a full desktop computer with the footprint of a book of stamps. Even better, the Pi 4 is the same low price as the old model. TWO’S COMPANY The Pi 4 is the same size as the Pi 3, but there are some quite major differences. The first is that the full-size HDMI output…

CACHE A small, separate partition of storage, this runs faster than the rest of the drive and is used to temporarily store your most-used files, making them more quickly accessible. CONTROLLER A chip that bridges an SSD’s memory and its connection interface, similar to the CPU in a PC. FAT (FILE ALLOCATION TABLE) A file system that lets Windows know where data is saved and how it can be accessed. You can format new drives to use systems such as FAT32 or exFAT, but NTFS (see right) is newer and more efficient. NAND This is a type of flash memory named after the NAND (NOT AND) logic gate. NAND flash comprises horizontal stacks of memory cells, typically with one to four bits of data saved in each cell. NTFS (NEW…

£29 • From uk.crucial.com VERDICT Dirt cheap and surprisingly fast, the BX500 is everything you could ask of an entry-level SSD NOW THAT NVME drives are so affordable, the humble 2.5in SATA SSD can look a lot less appealing. Why bother with something that’s effectively speed-limited to less than 600MB/s, yet doesn’t cost much less than a slimmer, faster M.2 SSD? However, there are still more than a few different answers to this. First and foremost is that M.2 has only become standard on very recent PC motherboards and laptops, so if you’re looking to upgrade the storage of an older desktop computer, you likely won’t have any way of even connecting an NVMe drive in the first place. Alternatively, you might have used your sole M.2 slot for your…

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers clive@computershopper.co.uk THERE ARE MANY tools and tricks to protect yourself from the most common methods of digital attack, but which are worth using and which cause more problems than they solve? You could hide your Wi-Fi name (its SSID), but this tends to be more of a hassle than a genuine safety measure. And you also invite the curiosity of anyone looking for a target. Among the dross and the urban myths are plenty of useful tools and techniques to increase your online security. By the end of this article, you should have a pretty robust security setup without flagging that fact to competitive hackers. THE RANGE OF online threats has unquestionably…