Tabla de contenidos para January 2024 en PC Pro

Has there ever been a more exciting time in technology than today? Even if you account for recency bias, I don’t think so. Not in the 1950s when the first commercial computers appeared, nor the PC revolution in the 1980s. Not even when the world woke up in the early 2000s to realise the internet had bound itself so tightly to the economy that Japanese knotweed clapped in admiration. Although it’s hard to avoid artificial intelligence, that isn’t the only technology in town. Quantum computing is starting to sprout – if you will allow me to continue my garden analogy – and by this time next year I expect the first blooms to appear. Then we have augmented reality. Following on from the Meta Quest 3 in the last issue,…

Sending a human to read your electricity or gas meter should already be a thing of the past. The government and utilities companies had hoped to finish the switchover by 2019, but today only 57% of the 57.1 million meters in the country are transmitting readings wirelessly. Now there’s another oncoming obstacle. According to a recent report from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, 7 million of the smart meters that have already been installed look set to go dark between now and 2030, during which time 2G and 3G are being gradually switched off by the phone networks. This means that despite being a long way behind the initial target, energy companies are going to have to fix existing installations, too. “There is an expectation that all technologies will come to…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS NEW ENTRY Apple MacBook Pro 16in (2023) M3 power from £1,699 from apple.com/uk The M3 chips give the already brilliant MacBook Pro series a boost in games with no sacrifices elsewhere, so power users who are happy with Apple must grapple with the big decisions: which M3 chip, which size of screen, and how much RAM and storage? REVIEW Issue 352, p46 ALTERNATIVES Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) The perfect 13in laptop? At 1kg, it packs power along with 1TB of storage, a top-quality OLED panel and superb battery life. £1,600 from uk.store.asus.com REVIEW Issue 348, p58 Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra Samsung packs everything into this 16in laptop, from a superb AMOLED panel and a slim 1.8kg chassis to a Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070 graphics.…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro. He hasn’t been this excited since T.J. Hooker hit British screens. Ⅹ @bazzacollins Never have I felt this torn over the topic of a column. On one hand, I’ve watched the prime minister turn into a Poundshop Parkinson in his eagerness to please the luminaries of the AI industry, leaving me yearning to gouge out my soul with a teaspoon; on the other, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time creating highly personalised AI assistants with OpenAI’s new GPT tools and I think they’re the best thing since the KitKat Chunky. This AI lark is more divisive than Brexit. James O’Malley does a fine job of dissecting the AI Safety Summit on p10, so let’s focus on the positives here (something…

Every week on the PC Pro podcast, one member of the team nominates their Hot Hardware of the Week. It’s not necessarily a brand spanking new item. It’s not necessarily hardware, as we choose software and services, too. But it is an interesting piece of tech that we think deserves wider attention. In this feature, we’re rounding up our 2023 Hot Hardware highlights. We’ve got more than 20 nominations from this year’s podcasts, plus a selection of more festive stocking fillers, if you’re still on the lookout for a gift for the techie in your life. Regular listeners to the podcast will know that not only do the other team members get to vote on whether an item is hot or not, but we let the listeners who join us…

The new Raspberry Pi is here, and it’s better than ever, with a big boost in processor power and enhanced peripheral support. What’s more, the price is still absurdly low. It’s hardly surprising that when the first shipment of Raspberry Pi 5 boards arrived in October, they sold out almost immediately – although that might also have something to do with the post-pandemic chip shortage, which for the past few years has made most Raspberry Pi models almost impossible to buy. Happily, more Raspberry Pi 5 boards are already hitting the shelves via suppliers such as Pimoroni (pimoroni.com) and The Pi Hut (thepihut.com), so you should have no difficulty getting hold of one. And perhaps for the first time, we’d encourage you to consider one not only for hobbyist projects,…

When Apple migrated the Mac platform from Intel CPUs to its own ARM-based chips in 2020, it spelt the end for the Boot Camp utility. Windows simply couldn’t boot on the new M1 hardware, so the popular dual-booting tool was quietly ditched. However, if you still want to run Windows applications on your Mac, there is a way. For more than a decade, Microsoft has been working on bringing Windows to the ARM platform, and its latest releases are now more than mature enough for day-to-day use (see “What next for Windows on ARM?” on p42). If you want to try out some cross-platform action on your own Apple Silicon Mac, you can buy an ARM edition of Windows 11 from the Microsoft online store (see pcpro.link/352win11) – or you…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,639 (£3,299 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk Surprise! After Apple updated its MacBook Pro laptops with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips earlier this year (see issue 342, p48), we weren’t expecting anything else new in 2023. But Apple always enjoys pulling something out of the bag (or envelope) and in this case that’s a new colour and a trio of updated chips: the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max. The new colour, Space Black, is exclusive to the M3 Pro and Max models. That’s true whether you buy the 14in or 16in option. Otherwise, the design and dimensions are nigh on identical to what came before. That means a weight of around 1.6kg for the 14in laptop and a shade under 2.2kg for the 16in version.…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,333 (£2,799 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk From looks alone, you’d be hard pressed to tell the 2023 iMac apart from its 2021 predecessor (see issue 322, p48). It comes in the same seven colours, has identical flaws (we’ll come on to those) and costs roughly the same; the price at the top of this review is for the tested spec with 24GB of unified memory and a 2TB SSD, but the base unit with 8GB and 256GB costs £1,399. What’s new is the M3 chip inside. There are no M3 Pro or M3 Max options as in the MacBook Pro (see p46)– but beware that the cheapest version includes an 8-core rather than 10-core GPU. If you want the latter, you’ll need to spend at least…

SCORE PRICE £583 (£700 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The Lenovo Legion Go is an all-in-one handheld PC, aimed primarily at gamers. So why, you might ask, is it basking in a two-page review within PC Pro? The answer is that it has enough versatility to also serve as a general-purpose computing companion. It’s not the only such system out there. Asus released its ROG Ally earlier this year – see “Also consider”, opposite – and the Steam Deck remains a great choice if all you want to do is play games from your Steam library. Where the Go stands apart is that this is a slick and well-engineered device that I can genuinely imagine someone choosing to bring with them on a business trip rather than a laptop. Big is…

SCORE PRICE $3,039 from lenovo.com (UK pricing and availability to be confirmed) The Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 is the most unusual laptop I’ve ever reviewed. Not only does it have a colour E Ink display on its lid, but it also features a hinge that lets you swivel the screen 180°. Note that isn’t 360°, which is a shame – I kept trying to twist it in the wrong direction. So, let’s address the obvious question: why? According to Lenovo, it offers four modes: laptop, tablet, e-paper and typewriting. It also ships with a stylus – although sadly there’s nowhere for it to be stowed – so you can write, annotate and draw on it. I find the Apple Pencil more enjoyable to write with thanks to its greater…

SCORE PRICE £517 (£620 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Over the years, I’ve seen several bold ideas at big trade shows such as CES. Few of them ever see the light of the day, but full credit to US manufacturer Mobile Pixels (mobilepixels.us): the Geminos display was nominated in the official CES 2023 innovation awards, and after a successful launch in the US it’s now on sale in the UK. As is the Mobile Pixels Deus Max (see p74), a second screen that piggybacks on a laptop. While I’m yet to be convinced by that concept, the Geminos display is more compelling, especially for anyone with limited desk space. It’s the equivalent of extending into the loft rather than trying to buy the house next door, as this product is effectively…

SCORE PRICE 2-pack, £958 (£1,150 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/352eero New technology klaxon! The Eero Max 7 is the first mesh we’ve seen – indeed the first router of any type – that works with Wi-Fi 7, also known as 802.11be. Yes, that’s right: it’s barely two years since we were welcoming Wi-Fi 6E as the latest and greatest wireless standard, but its successor is already here. And to be fair, this is real next generation stuff. Wi-Fi 6E was basically the same standard as Wi-Fi 6, merely extended into a new wireless frequency range. Wi-Fi 7 is a more fundamental upgrade, with features including a new ultra-fast 320MHz channel width on the 6GHz band and 4K-QAM encoding that packs more bits per second into the carrier signal. The most exciting…

SCORE PRICE £125 (£150 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The third-generation Amazon Echo Show 8 looks a lot like the 2021 model, but it brings a ton of improvements that make it the best Echo Show yet – and arguably the best Echo device, full stop. When I say it looks like the previous version, that’s not exactly a compliment. The 8in 1,280 x 800 display remains crisp and clean, with excellent brightness, but the thick bezels are starting to feel dated. Still, the front now has sleek edge-to-edge glass, and the sides and rear have been slimmed down, too. It feels robust, and is made from 29% recycled materials – so it’s not as green as, say, Apple’s latest devices, but it’s getting there. Another change is that the camera…

SCORE PRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk This is no ordinary webcam. Touting an elegant, lightweight and pocket-friendly design, the Obsbot Tiny 2 is sculpted from a magnesium alloy that feels luxurious to the touch. No expense has been spared here. Obsbot provides a robust case to protect it on the move, which makes sense as the camera is mounted on a gimbal; you wouldn’t want anything heavy breaking it off the axis. It comes with a magnetic mount for your monitor – the webcam snaps on and off in a fraction of a second, perfect for frequent travellers – while you can buy extra accessories such as a tripod (a mount is on its underside), remote control (£59) and even a mic. But where the Obsbot Tiny 2…

Tablets are rarely easy to repair. After all, the emphasis here is on svelte design, and that almost always translates into glues rather than screws. This is why it’s worth actually looking to see what warranty your tablet comes with (almost always a single year) and how well it fares for reliability. The best gauge for the latter is PC Pro’s annual Excellence Awards survey. We printed full results for all the biggest-selling tablet brands last month (see issue 351, p29). Apple leads the way for reliability with a 93% satisfaction score to Samsung’s 90%, while Lenovo scored 87% and Amazon 85%. All of this is also reflected in the prices of their respective tablets.…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £1,041 (£1,249 inc VAT) from apple.com The sixth-generation iPad Pro remains the benchmark by which other high-end tablets are judged, thanks to its 12.9in Liquid Retina XDR display and laptop-class M2 processor, which make it a formidably powerful device. It’s a handful at 281 x 215mm, with a slightly thicker shell than the smaller iPad to maintain rigidity, but at 682g it’s still a lot lighter than any laptop. Until you add the 710g Magic Keyboard, that is. The squarer shape also makes it feel well balanced and easier to hold than, say, the Lenovo Tab Extreme. The screen is one of the best you’ll find. It’s bright, hitting 591cd/m2 in everyday use and reaching over 1,200cd/m2 with HDR content, with a peak HDR luminance of up…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from samsung.com Even when other Android tablet manufacturers seemed to give up, Samsung kept plugging away, delivering bigger, better and more capable Galaxy Tab S tablets with each new generation. That really paid off with the Galaxy Tab S8 series, arguably the first set of Android tablets to give Apple’s iPad range serious competition. And now that goes double for the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, which is Samsung’s finest tablet yet. This isn’t just about the hardware. Samsung has nailed usability with its One UI, so that you can manage multiple windows and multitask between them, just as you would in Windows or macOS. Even the window-snapping features work in much the same way. And while Lenovo has followed Samsung in providing an…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £150 (£180 inc VAT) from hihonor.com/uk For a budget tablet, the Honor Pad 8 comes with some big ambitions. For a start, its all-aluminium unibody construction looks and feels as if it belongs to a more expensive model. Just 7.9mm thick and weighing a mere 520g, it’s also very easy in the hands. It packs in an unusually large 12in screen, and while it doesn’t have the kind of resolution you’ll find on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 9 or Lenovo P12, a pixel density of 194ppi still looks relatively crisp. The Pad 8 proves that you can have a big-screen tablet at an entry-level price. What’s more, that screen isn’t bad at all. We measured the maximum brightness at 406cd/m2 and strong contrast levels of 1,651:1. It…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from samsung.com The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra is one incredibly powerful tablet, but with its 14.6in screen and corresponding size, it isn’t for everyone. The Tab S9 is a more mainstream proposition, partly because its 11in size is closer to what most people expect from a tablet, and partly because, with prices starting from £799, it’s more affordable. You still get nearly the power of the S9 Ultra, as the Tab S9 features the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, though with 8GB rather than 12GB of RAM. In our benchmarks, this didn’t make a huge amount of difference. Both tablets are prodigiously powerful, and it’s only when working on 4K video files in Adobe Premiere Rush that we spotted any…

We put our tablets through a barrage of cross-platform benchmarks, starting with Geekbench 6 to test CPU performance. The single-core aspect puts the most powerful core to the test, while the multicore section reveals any weaknesses – while most ARM chips have eight cores, some are much faster than others. Geekbench’s Compute section is a synthetic test of the GPU. For more real-world-style tests, we use a selection of browser-based benchmarks. Basemark Web 3 and WebXprt 4 use a similar approach, with tasks such as photo enhancement, productivity and GPU acceleration. JetStream 2 gives a good indication of how tablets will cope with complex JavaScript and apps based on WebAssembly. And Kraken is an out-and-out JavaScript benchmark. We also use 3DMark and GFXBench to torture-test the graphics chips. 3DMark’s Wild…

SCORE PRICE Kit and Vidi 250, £7,718 exc VAT (RRP) from midwich.com Biamp recently made a splash in the video bar market with its stunningly good Parlé VBC 2500 (see issue 347, p102), but its main focus has always been the professional audio-visual (AV) space. It has a solution for every room size, with the MRB-M-X400-T kit on review providing all the audio components for a medium-sized meeting room with up to 11 participants. The Biamp kit comprises a TesiraFORTÉ X 400 digital signal processor (DSP) unit, a Tesira AMP-450BP speaker amplifier, a Parlé TTM-X beamtracking table microphone with expansion box, two Desono C-IC6 ceiling speakers and plenty of plenum-rated Cat5e cabling to connect it all together. Biamp has its own range of VC cameras and supplied us with the…

SCORE PRICE £1,999 exc VAT from owllabs.co.uk At first glance the Owl Bar looks unremarkable, but it has some neat tricks up its sleeve that make it stand out from the crowd of videoconferencing room bar solutions. It will work happily as a standalone VC device, but pairing it with the Owl Labs Meeting Owl 3 desktop unit delivers all-inclusive meetings. An annoying issue with meetings is when people around the desk talk among themselves and remote participants see only the side or back of their heads, making them feel excluded. The Owl Bar provides a front-of-room view, and placing an Owl 3 in the centre of the table brings its smart 360° panoramic and dynamic split-screen views into play. The Owl Bar has good credentials, teaming up its 4K…

On p34 we look at the ways in which home networks and personal devices are most likely to be attacked in 2024. But what about businesses? You might assume that cybercriminals would focus their attentions on the biggest organisations – after all, those are the ones best able to afford huge ransoms. In fact, smaller companies can and do get attacked all the time. “Regardless of the size of the business,” said Matt Cooke, strategist at cybersecurity specialist Proofpoint, “if they have a bank account, or sensitive information to steal, they are very much at risk.” Proofpoint’s researchers have found that 72% of organisations with fewer than 500 employees have dealt with a material loss of sensitive information within the past 12 months (see proofpoint.com for more information). Indeed, small…

I’m not claiming that I manifested the glitch in the Air Traffic Control system at the end of the summer because I’m so deeply attuned to the natural and digital world that my worries actualised as a blip on the radar. But I might have done. Fortune, fate or actualisation intervened and, because of that glitch, it wasn’t possible for me to fly. Phew! I say phew because, with only a few working days left to go before needing to travel to a cyber-resilience event, the organisers unilaterally changed the title of the upcoming discussion. That’s without consultation or agreement with the firm sponsoring the panel session. Or, indeed, agreement with all the panellists. Now, that might seem odd and inconvenient, but hardly the stuff of nightmares. Until you learn…

If anyone can be called a connoisseur of videogames, it’s Frank Gasking. One of his favourites is Deadlock for the Commodore 64. “When you look at the game and its level of detail, it’s one of the best-looking titles ever seen on the computer thanks to the artwork of Robin Levy,” Gasking told us. “It was made a few years before Super Metroid came out on the SNES and it’s almost like the team from that game had seen Deadlock running. Of course, they hadn’t.” There’s a strong reason why he’s so convinced that the team behind one of Nintendo’s most iconic games couldn’t have drawn inspiration from Deadlock. The latter game was never actually released. Like so many titles over the years, it was put in limbo, with the…

It’s expensive to be British these days, with the two-year-long cost of living crisis continuing to bite. How tough is the situation? Energy prices spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine, with average bills climbing 27%. Inflation peaked at 11% in October 2022, but remains high at almost 7% in September 2023, well above comparable economies in Europe or the US, with the cost of food up 12%. The Bank of England has responded the only way it knows how, hiking interest rates to 5.25%, adding to the pressure for those with mortgages. At the same time, household incomes are down in real terms by 4%, and those with the lowest incomes when this all started are among the worst hit, with fewer savings and less financial room to manoeuvre. How can…

I can stop any time I like. It’s under control. It’s not running my life. While it would hopefully surprise you were I to admit to a serious drugs habit, I confess my particular poison is Lego. I only got into Lego a few years ago. I never grew up on it, being more fascinated by how computers and networks worked. Sometimes this was frustrating: anyone who wrote programs for Windows 2 using the SDK and C compiler will remember the masochistic pleasure of writing your own WinMain() handler to dispatch messages around the various apps that were running. And how this was all undocumented, with a total reliance on the seminal Programming Windows book by Petzold. Then came the GUI programming languages from Borland and Microsoft’s own Visual Basic.…

Nik Rawlinson Can it really be possible to use a Raspberry Pi 5 as your main desktop computer? Not only does Nik believe the answer is yes, but he shows you how, too. See p38 Darien Graham-Smith Boot Camp may be history on Apple silicon Macs, but there are still ways to run Windows applications on a Mac. Darien walks you through your options from p42 Davey Winder Along with his regular column from p118, where Davey puts the boot into Threads and cars stealing your data, our security guru explains how to protect your business in 2024 from p104 Rois Ni Thuama After sitting next to a CEO who claimed his company had built a quantum computer, Rois has one simple message: beware of companies making big claims, as…

At the start of November, Britain was briefly the centre of the tech world as high-ranking politicians, Silicon Valley luminaries and respected academics all descended on Buckinghamshire for what was billed as the world’s first intergovernmental summit on AI safety. The meeting at Bletchley Park was the brainchild of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and was his dual attempt to establish Britain as a major player in the AI revolution and cement himself a political legacy. On the strength of the guest list, it certainly appeared to be a success. Representing tech was OpenAI founder Sam Altman, X CEO Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg’s top lieutenant and former Deputy PM Nick Clegg. The political attendees included US Vice-President Kamala Harris, EU President Ursula von der Leyen and, most controversially, China’s vice-minister…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro and sometimes feels his own internal memory is down to 30MB. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk I had a vague intuition that Android might become the number one operating system in the world – simply because of its ubiquity on smartphones – but I wasn’t prepared for the actual market share figures from gs.statcounter.com. In October 2023, Android devices accounted for 37% of the OS market, Windows 31%, iOS 17%, macOS 9%, ChromeOS 1.9% and “unknown” (much of which will be desktop Linux) 1.8%. This being so, I wasn’t surprised to read last week that Lenovo is teaming up with Android specialist Esper to revamp its ThinkCentre M70 line into an all-in-one desktop Android PC, using Intel Core processors all the way from entry-level i3…

Smart home, loose privacy I read with interest your article on smart homes (see issue 351, p76) as I have earned more scars than most in this arena. I note you recommend Home Assistant for those that don’t want to share their homes’ innermost workings with US tech giants, but there’s something more troubling at the hardware end of this market. What many people don’t realise, or perhaps don’t care, is that smart device manufacturers find it tricky to link devices in an unknown home network, so instead their devices phone home as soon as you connect them to your Wi-Fi and remain permanently connected. If you flick a switch in your living room it’s easier for the manufacturer if the data goes via its servers on its way to…

It might be a while since you last experienced a major malware attack – but the threat hasn’t gone away. Cybersecurity specialist SonicWall reports that there were more than 5.5 billion malware attacks recorded in 2022. And simply keeping your security software up to date may not keep you safe: cloud solutions provider Mimecast found that more than 90% of successful hacking attacks are now enabled not by traditional malware, but by someone unwittingly clicking on a phishing email. If you want to minimise your risks, you need to recognise the biggest threats, and know how to avoid them – whether that’s via your computer, your mobile devices, your website or your smart devices. YOUR COMPUTER If it seems like the days of major virus outbreaks are behind us, that’s…

The free LibreOffice suite interoperates very cleanly with Microsoft Office, but if you’re sharing files with Office users, you may hit formatting issues because the Raspberry Pi OS doesn’t include Microsoft’s proprietary fonts. You can improve matters by installing the Microsoft Core TrueType Fonts pack, which contains 11 fonts including Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman. To do this, open a Terminal window on your Pi (the quickest way is to press Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following two lines: sudo apt update sudo apt install ttf-mscorefonts-installer Unfortunately, the bundle doesn’t include Calibri or Cambria, which are the default fonts in Office, and Microsoft doesn’t offer a legal way to download and install them on your Pi. One workaround is to download Carlito and Caladea from Google Fonts instead. These typefaces…

When you first boot up Windows 11 on your Mac you may be rudely greeted by a banner telling you that your installation has expired. It seems Microsoft isn’t updating its installation images all that regularly, so the OS you’ve just installed could be out of date on day one. Don’t panic – you can keep using Windows for as long as you like. You simply need to periodically download the latest build via Windows Update, just as you would on an Intel-based PC. Even if you’ve left the Windows Insider Preview programme, your Insider OS will still receive the latest patches and builds as they become available. Note, though, that there’s currently no off-ramp: if you want to leave the testing track and switch to release code, you’ll need…

This month sees the full debut of Apple’s M3 chips, not only in the updated MacBook Pro but also in the iMac we review on p52. We print their results on the previous page, but here we focus on what’s changed compared to previous models. The M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips are the first personal computer processors to use TSMC’s 3nm process, compared to 5nm for the M2 family. The new chips also include an updated GPU that’s better suited for video editing and gaming, as covered in more detail below. The entry-level M3 chip features 25 billion transistors. This chip has a 10-core GPU that’s 65% faster than M1 for graphics performance, according to Apple. It features an 8-core CPU (four performance, four efficiency) and supports up…

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SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £441 (£529 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk AMD’s latest series of Ryzen mobile processors appear to be gaining traction with laptop manufacturers, with Dell choosing to update its Inspiron 14 convertible with a choice of Ryzen 5 7530U or Ryzen 7730U chips. This mirrors its Intel options (Core i5-1335U and i7-1355U) but with the advantage of costing £70 less. I tested the Ryzen 5 option, which includes 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, but if you upgrade to the Ryzen 7 (£649) those double to 16GB and 1TB. Note that you can upgrade the SSD yourself, but the RAM is integrated onto the board. I didn’t expect blistering speeds, but it held up well during my own use and in benchmarks. For example, I used the…

Total value this month £214 Audials One SE 2024 With so many sites offering streaming video and music, finding what you want to watch or listen to can mean a lot of tiresome jumping from one site to another – unless you use Audials One 2024 SE. This is a one-stop shop for all of your streaming media needs, through which you can listen to music, podcasts and online radio stations, and watch TV and movies – all in one handy interface. When you want to listen to a particular song, just search and Audials One will scour its catalogue of online resources to find it for you. You can also download tracks in MP3 format to keep them always available for offline listening. This is even possible with music…

SCORE PRICE £358 (£430 inc VAT) from lenovo.com Lenovo announced the Legion Glasses at the same time as the Legion Go (see p56), arguing that they make a fine companion for anyone gaming on the move. Even if you’re not interested in augmented reality (AR) features, you can simply as a virtual 86in display. But that underplays what Lenovo achieves with its first pair of AR glasses aimed at consumers. For, much like the Ray-Ban glasses opposite, they look reasonably stylish, with heavy emphasis on “reasonably”. With their simple all-black frames, the Legion Glasses could almost be mistaken for regular sunglasses, except for the USB cable trailing down from the left arm, and the thickness of the “lenses” – in reality a pair of micro-OLED 1080p displays. The assembly looks…

SCORE PRICE £242 (£290 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Mobile Pixels’ Geminos (see p65) aims to double the screen space of a desktop PC, and its Duex Max wants to achieve the same feat for your laptop. The trick is that it attaches to laptop lids using four round magnets – think chunkier versions of CR232 batteries – which are kept in place with strong adhesive stickers. You can remove them, but only 12 stickers are included in the box. With the magnets fixed (a two-minute procedure), you can attach and detach the Duex Max at will. It includes two strips of metal that the magnets hook onto, so you simply slot it into position. Once the Max is in place, you pull the screen out from its built-in sliding mechanism,…

Is it time for a tablet renaissance? After the initial explosion of devices in the wake of the Apple iPad’s launch back in 2010, tablets rapidly went out of fashion. Amazon carved out a niche for its family-friendly Kindle Fires geared towards content consumption, but only Samsung has shown greater ambitions. Now things are changing. The iPad Pro and iPad Air have proven there’s a strong case for creativity and productivity on tablets, while Lenovo and Samsung have both launched big-screen tablets designed to show that Android can do this stuff as well. This year’s Tablet Labs includes great premium devices you can use to watch blockbuster shows and movies or plan your next holiday online. And we still have plenty of budget-friendly offerings. But we’ve focused on tablets that…

SCORE PRICE 64GB, £208 (£250 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk After years of budget Fire and Fire HD tablets, it’s easy to forget that some of the initial Kindle Fire tablets were surprisingly premium affairs, running speedy Snapdragon 800-series CPUs and packing 1600p resolution screens. Now Amazon is back in the mid-range tablet business with the Fire Max 11. Where standard Fire HD tablets are content-consumption devices, the Fire Max 11 has grander ambitions. It’s built around an 11in screen with a 2,000 x 1,200 resolution, while the processor is a quad-core MediaTek MT8188J with two ARM Cortex A78 cores running at up to 2.2GHz, plus six A55 cores running at up to 2GHz. Paired with 4GB of RAM, there’s significantly more power on tap here than with the sometimes sluggish…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £292 (£350 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The Tab P12 slots in beneath the Pad Extreme and the P12 Pro in Lenovo’s tablet line, giving you a big 12.7in screen but no OLED technology, and a good spec without being exceptional. For example, rather than a high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 CPU, here the processor is a more modest MediaTek Dimensity 7050, while the panel is a 2,944 x 1,840 resolution IPS display. The design is typical Lenovo, with a slim but robust aluminium shell in a two-tone storm grey colour, and a narrow 8mm bezel around the screen. It doesn’t have the brightness, contrast or vivid colour of the OLED panel on the Tab Extreme, but on its own terms it’s perfectly respectable, with a maximum brightness of…

SCORE PRICE 64GB, £558 (£669 inc VAT) from apple.com Apple’s fifth-generation iPad Air comes at a steep premium over the base 10th-gen iPad, but it’s hard to grumble when it has so many of the strengths of the iPad Pro. These include best-in-class performance and a range of accessories that can transform it into a mobile powerhouse. The IPS screen isn’t as stunning as the Pro’s Liquid Retina XDR display, but it’s still one of the best you’ll find. There’s little difference between the 10th-gen iPad and the Air in terms of the design. Both have 10.9in screens with slender frames, a Touch ID button on the top (in portrait mode) and volume buttons on the right. The iPad Air’s screen is laminated, improving contrast and making it feel solid…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £133 (£160 inc VAT) from hihonor.com/uk At just £160 inc VAT, the Honor Pad X9 is the cheapest tablet in this Labs. To its credit, you’d be hard pressed to see that on first impressions. There’s not a hint of plastic in the casing, just a metallic unibody shell. It’s fairly slim and light at 6.9mm and 499g, and while the thicker bezels and overall fit and finish tell you that this isn’t a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9-beater, it’s by no means awful. The worst thing you can say is that Honor doesn’t specify whether the glass is toughened, though nothing suggests that it isn’t, and that it’s more prone to fingermarks and smudges than premium tablet screens. You won’t find much amiss with the display, either.…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £181 (£217 inc VAT) from techinn.com All credit to TCL. While other manufacturers are pushing out endless tablets that stick to similar designs, it’s gone for something a little more innovative. The clue is in the name. TCL’s NXTpaper 2 technology is designed to give you a display that looks and feels less like a super-bright, glossy tablet screen and more like a full-colour e-paper effort. With its narrow bezels, matte finish and minimalist aluminium shell, the NXTpaper 11 will never be mistaken for your average Android slate. Thankfully, at just 462g and 6.9mm thick, it’s very comfortable to hold. The screen works a treat for reading ebooks, digital magazines and comics. It’s easy on the eye like an ebook reader, but with the kind of brightness…

If there’s one takeaway from this month’s Labs, it’s that even as the tablet hardware gets better it’s increasingly the ecosystem that makes the most tangible difference. When I started reviewing tablets around 12 years ago, there was a huge gulf in quality between Apple’s hardware and everybody else’s. The Android competition was heavier, uglier and slower, with woeful low-resolution screens and limited processing power the norm. That’s no longer true. Metallic shells and unibody constructions are standard, and it’s rare to find anything without a decent screen. There’s good news on the software front as well. With a little help from Google, more Android manufacturers provide proper split-screen and floating window support, and UIs built with tablets in mind. It’s still frustrating to see so many iPad apps unavailable…

SCORE PRICE £1,915 exc VAT from misco.co.uk SMBs invested in Microsoft Teams and looking to improve their employees’ meeting room experience will find the Epos Expand Vision 5 Bundle a worthy contender. This well-specified room bar solution can swap between Android-powered Microsoft Teams Rooms and bring your own device (BYOD) modes in seconds, while the Expand Control touchscreen tablet provides easy meeting management. The Vision 5 video bar provides a solid foundation with its combination of a Sony 4K UHD camera and wide 110° horizontal field of view (FoV), dual speakers and quad beamforming MEMS microphones. It employs digital pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) functions for automated framing and speaker tracking, while noise reduction is handled by its integral Epos AI feature. An embedded 8-core Qualcomm 800-series Snapdragon CPU plus…

SCORE PRICE Appliance with base licence, £1,618 exc VAT from lambda-tek.com The AT-AR4050S-5G from Allied Telesis targets SMBs and remote offices seeking a single solution that combines tough network perimeter security with total WAN redundancy. This desktop firewall appliance sports dual 5G SIM slots and offers WAN failover services for businesses that cannot tolerate any internet downtime. You can add two 5G SIMs, which are automatically configured as primary and backup mobile network connections, and the appliance supports cards from different carriers. You can also use one of the appliance’s wired WAN ports as the primary internet link and back it up with a 5G connection. The appliance teams up its dual gigabit WAN ports with an eight-port gigabit network switch for LAN systems. It has plenty of power on…

5G networks and IoT devices “As smart tech and 5G networks expand, hackers will have more opportunities to target vulnerable IoT devices. Small businesses can counter this threat by installing firewalls, using VPNs to encrypt traffic and regularly updating router firmware. You should also segment your network to remove single-point-of-failure vulnerabilities, and ensure all IoT devices are running the latest versions of operating systems and security tools.” Jamie Akhtar, CyberSmart Advanced Persistent Threats “Our researchers have found that threat actors appear to be scaling existing tactics seen in enterprise-targeted phishing campaigns for less robust SMB environments. These include the use of compromised infrastructure in phishing campaigns; regional targeting by state-aligned actors for financial theft; and managed-services providers being targeted via phishing, introducing the threat of supply-chain attacks.” Matt Cooke, Proofpoint…

It was one of those phone calls that you immediately know isn’t going to have a happy ending. An elderly friend, who is moderately computer-literate, was telling me how she had plugged in one of her USB backup drives, and that Windows was telling her that the disk wasn’t recognised, and would she like to format it? Fortunately, my screams of panic down the phone persuaded her that saying “yes” to this dialog box would be a bad idea. And that the best thing to do would be to unplug it. We would collect it and see what could be done. Do I mention at this point that I asked whether the data was on any other drive? I could, but you can guess the answer: no, it wasn’t. These…

When Elon Musk decided to rebrand Twitter as X, a stupendously stupid idea even for him, the writing was on the wall. Not literally, as I seem to recall some problems with removing the Twitter signage from the HQ building, as well as that ridiculous stunt of the mega-bright giant X display on the roof. Anyhow, overnight the social network went from being one of the world’s best-known brands to X, and some months on people still refer to it as “Twitter” or, at best, “X formerly known as Twitter”. I’m not going to get into the political leanings of Twitter under Musk, along with his frankly mystifying takes on free speech and knee-jerk business decisions. What I am going to address is the slow death of Twitter, as someone…

Features ChatGPT masterclass: make AI work for you Find out why paying for the premium version of ChatGPT unlocks a host of powerful AI tools that could bring serious business benefits. Features Hassle-free backup Effortless ways to keep your files safe from accidents and worse – on Windows, Mac and mobile devices. Features 2FA masterclass Multi-factor authentication is a must in today’s world. We explore how 2FA works, how to make it easier to use and the technologies coming to replace it. Labs All-in-one printers We test 14 laser and inkjet MFPs from Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Kyocera, Lexmark and Xerox to see which deserves a place as your printer of choice. Retro 40 years of the Mac Released in January 1984, the Apple Macintosh soon became an iconic machine,…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. The one sure way she can get a photo of her toddler smiling is to turn the camera into selfie mode – her own face always elicits a grin. Kids these days, eh? Ⅹ @njkobie I have a friend back in Canada named Daorcey – yes, that’s how he spells it – and he can’t smile in a photo with his eyes open. Over our 25-year friendship I have amassed a large collection of photos of him with eyes scrunched shut. This has inspired a secondary set of photos of Daorcey in which someone stands behind and attempts to hold his eyelids open. As you can imagine, those are unflattering, terrible and hilarious. I wouldn’t give them up for anything. Yet Google believes…

When it comes to online services such as Gmail or OneDrive, privacy and security are generally handled entirely by the provider: you’ll get little or no visibility or control over the technical or architectural side of things. This is because the resources that power your cloud account are almost certainly shared with thousands or millions of other users; it’s simply not practical for the vendor to leave security up to individual users. If you’re buying into a software-as-a-service product, therefore, it’s critically important to do your due diligence, especially for businesses (see p104). Check for compliance with the ISO 27000 family of standards for information security management, and in particular ISO 27017 and ISO 27018. The former is a code of practice that aims to reduce the risk of security…

We’ve said that the Raspberry Pi 5 is fast enough to use as an everyday desktop machine, but what does that really mean? We used the Geekbench 6 benchmark to compare its performance to other low-cost computers. We started with a mini PC with 16GB of RAM, running Windows 11 Pro on an Intel N100 processor and costing £169 inc VAT. We then repeated the test on a second mini PC, this time on a much meatier quad-core AMD Ryzen 5 system with 8GB of RAM, costing £480 and running Ubuntu Linux. Next, we tested the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B revision 1.4, with its 1.8GHz ARM processor and 8GB of memory – previously the most powerful model available, before the arrival of the Pi 5. We fitted an anodised…

The first ARM-based version of Windows was Windows RT, created in 2012 for the original Microsoft Surface tablet. It looked almost identical to Windows 8, but it only supported ARM-native code, and couldn’t run existing Windows desktop apps. Unsurprisingly, it flopped. Thankfully, Microsoft learnt from that experience, adding an application translation framework to the ARM editions of Windows 10 and 11. Now that ARM PCs can run regular Windows software, the platform is finally working its way into the mainstream: Microsoft’s own Surface Pro 9 convertible is built on ARM silicon, as are a decent number of third-party Windows laptops. Even so, ARM remains a second-class platform in the Windows world. The chips in those systems can’t match the speeds of the latest processors from AMD and Intel, and running applications…

Laptops and PCs We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench and Cinebench R23 come into play. Both push the CPU to its limit, exposing how well cooled a system is. We run extra tests for Windows systems. We use our own benchmarks to test photo-editing, video-encoding and multitasking speeds. We then switch to PCMark 10 to benchmark systems in office tasks, content creation and basic tasks such as web browsing and video calls. We also run 3DMark Time Spy and a selection of benchmarks in games such as Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. For laptops, we test battery life with…

SCORE PRICE £1,666 (£1,999 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/cyber352 Although we think of gaming PCs as RGB monsters, am I alone in thinking they look best when lit in white? Especially so when you gaze into the innards of a powerhouse such as the Infinity X147 GRE and see braided matte black cables, Corsair Vengeance Black RAM and the looming black presence of AMD’s RX 7900 GRE graphics card. The GRE stands for Golden Rabbit Edition, and is only available to OEMs, but it might have been called an RX 7900 XT Lite. It has 80 rather than 84 ray-tracing units, 16GB of VRAM instead of 20GB (plus far less memory bandwidth), and a 2,245MHz boost clock to its brother’s 2,400MHz. But it also costs less, giving system manufacturers a far…

SCORE PRICE From £1,380 (£1,656 inc VAT) from hp.com The perfect laptop may not exist, but the HP Dragonfly G4 comes close. It’s a business laptop with style, with a lightweight yet robust design that makes it the ideal travel or commute companion, especially if you enjoy the attention of your fellow travellers. I took it on a month-long trip around Europe, moving from one city to another, with the Dragonfly G4 squashed inside my backpack’s laptop compartment. The premium-feeling outer shell, made of 90% recycled magnesium that helps keep its weight under 1kg, emerged without any scratches. The HP’s portable nature isn’t based on weight alone. This 13 in laptop’s sleek design makes it much easier not only to carry around but also to handle. It may not be…

Upgrade to Windows 11 Pro for just £49.99 ■ pcpro.link/win11upgrade If you’re using Windows 11 Home but fancy switching to Professional, we have great news. Not only is it a steal at £49.99, but it’s incredibly simple to do. Upgrading is a matter of typing “Change product key” and then entering your new Pro licence key into the dialog box. Windows will then update, reboot, and you’ll have a fully activated Windows 11 Pro. Within minutes, you’ll have access to extra business functionality: enhanced BitLocker encryption, remote logins and more. Perhaps best of all, you can create and host virtual machines using Hyper-V, which is ideal for testing new software or, if you’re a developer, checking how your software performs on other OSes. Windows 11 Pro also enables you to…

1 Visit pcprodownload.co.uk. First, enter the issue number (352 this month). Next, enter your email address and the coupon code printed on the cover’s spine (or directly on the front cover of digital issues of the magazine). We’ll then send an email to confirm that your code has been registered. Follow the instructions in the email to access the download area. 2 Once you’re in the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please make sure to read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register button, or follow the instructions…

SCORE PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from meta.com They’re called Smart Glasses, but don’t expect an immersive visual experience: these wearables have a built-in camera and speakers, but no display. This means they don’t suffer from the bulk of other smart headgear, such as the Lenovo Smart Glasses opposite. The Smart Glasses are just as stylish as a regular pair of Ray-Bans, and there are three frame types to choose from: Wayfarer, Wayfarer Large and the new Headliner style. Then pick a colour: matte or glossy black, or three transparent hues (black, blue or orange). You can also choose from clear, shaded, polarised, photochromic or prescription glass, giving you more than 150 possible ways to express your personal look. Whichever combination you opt for, the Smart Glasses are as light…

SCORE PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from box.co.uk If you say the words “mechanical keyboard” to most people, I suspect they’ll think of a gaming keyboard. Usually costing three figures, coming in eye-searing designs and packing so much RGB they need a mini power substation to keep running. The Cherry KC 200 MX is an extremely welcome alternative, with this wired keyboard coming in an understated bronze finish with minimal lights – white LED indicators for numlock, caps lock and scroll lock are your lot – and an attractive £80 price. That buys you keys with the latest Cherry MX2A Brown switches, with 4mm of travel, no “clack” noise and a lifetime of 100 million hits per key. Gamers aren’t entirely forgotten, as the keys support anti-ghosting (so all key…

You might think it doesn’t need saying, but buying a tablet is not like purchasing any other type of computer – or even like buying a new phone. Purchase a new laptop and you’re buying a standardised device that fits into a well-established ecosystem. Your “Windows experience” won’t differ greatly from one laptop to another, and the same is true if you’re a MacBook fan. You’ll have access to the same hardware accessories and software choices whether you spend £500 or £5,000. Tablets are different. The screen and ergonomics can transform the way your slate works and handles. The software may support multitasking and a wide range of creative and productivity applications, or it may focus more on content consumption. Some tablets have accessories that make them significantly more flexible…

SCORE PRICE 64GB, £416 (£499 inc VAT) from apple.com There are good reasons why the 10th generation iPad remains the most successful mainstream tablet out there. The updated design, which brings the basic model closer to the iPad Air, works as well held vertically in the hand for web browsing and email as it does placed horizontally on a stand or folio case for productivity work or creative apps. It looks and feels every inch the premium slate. The lack of an SD card slot for expanding storage won’t surprise anyone, but the fact that the single USB-C port is limited to charging and 480Mbits/sec data transfers is disappointing; you won’t be connecting to 4K displays at 60Hz. All the same, this is a highly capable device. What’s more, outside…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £372 (£449 inc VAT) from oneplus.com It’s taken a long time for OnePlus to get into the tablet game, but the OnePlus Pad shows it adopting the same successful approach as on its phones. This means not only selecting fast components for the budget and developing its own distinctive software, but also making smart design choices that focus on how people might actually use the OnePlus Pad. That starts with the 11.6in screen and its unusual 7:5 aspect ratio. Apple decided long ago that 16:9 widescreen wasn’t the best fit for tablets; it works brilliantly for watching movies, not so much for productivity or design work. Or for reading or browsing with the tablet held in portrait mode. OnePlus has gone even better. With its squarer aspect…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £479 (£599 inc VAT) from store.google.com Google’s premium tablet takes a different tack to Apple, Samsung and Lenovo, focusing less on mobile productivity, creativity and entertainment, and more on life at home. There’s no keyboard or stylus accessory for this one. Instead Google bundles in a speaker dock that charges up the tablet while it’s not in use. With its rounded contours, clamped magnetically to the dock at a slight upward angle, it resembles an over-sized smart display. This is a good thing providing you want to use the Pixel Tablet for the stuff it’s best at. It’s a great entertainer, for example, particularly as the speaker dock adds a warmth and power to the sound that can’t be replicated by a normal tablet – even if…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, £720 (£900 inc VAT) from lenovo.com There’s no getting away from it: the Tab Extreme is a bruiser of a tablet, equipped with a huge 14.5in OLED panel that would look big on a laptop. The spec is as impressive as the screen, with a MediaTek Dimensity 9000 processor, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage as standard. But then the Tab Extreme is priced to match, with a £900 tag that makes it the most expensive non-Samsung Android tablet. The display hits SDR brightness levels of 432cd/m2 and covers 100% of both the sRGB gamut and the wider DCI-P3. With perfect black levels comes fantastic contrast, and colours are as rich as you could wish for. Throw in a superb JBL speaker system, with a serviceable…

Videoconferencing (VC) is now woven into the fabric of every modern business. Since the pandemic, forward-thinking companies have seen the clear benefits of remote and flexible working, making VC an indispensable tool for communication and collaboration across the globe. This demand has pushed VC kit manufacturers to be more innovative, resulting in an impressive choice of sophisticated meeting room solutions. Intense competition has also pushed down prices, bringing professional audio/visual huddle, meeting and conference room solutions well within the reach of SMBs. All-in-one VC room bars are ideal for businesses with smaller meeting spaces as they’re easy to install and use. SMBs with much larger rooms may want to consider a kit solution with separate camera, speaker and microphone components that can be deployed to cover bigger spaces without any…

SCORE PRICE £1,799 exc VAT from meetingstore.co.uk Logitech’s traditional Rally Bar videoconferencing (VC) room solutions offer an incredible range of features, but smaller businesses may be put off by their size. Enter the Rally Bar Huddle, which steps in below the Mini model (see issue 340, p97), and is designed for meeting rooms of up to six participants. Width-wise, the Huddle is 170mm shorter than the Mini and weighs less than half as much. Its 4K UHD camera dispenses with the motorised pan, tilt and zoom (PTZ) functions used by its bigger brothers and goes fully digital. There’s room for Logitech’s standard six-microphone beamforming array for auto-framing of active participants, while audio output is handled by a single downward-firing ported speaker. The graphite fabric magnetic front cover can be swapped…

PRICE $449 (around £370) from firewalla.com Firewalla has a fine reputation for delivering highly affordable firewall appliances, and its Gold SE goes to the top of the class. Aimed at home workers and small business networks, it provides future-proofing for gradual increases in broadband speeds as it comes with a 2.5GbE multi-gigabit WAN port. Costing $449 (around £370), the Gold SE is a winner for both value and features, as this minuscule fan-less desktop unit offers three LAN ports, with the first one also of the 2.5GbE variety. There are no compromises on internal hardware, either, with a speedy 2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A55 CPU teamed up with 4GB of DDR4 and a 32GB SSD for internal storage. The Gold SE supports plenty of deployment scenarios and in the recommended router…

I’ve been hearing talk about Web3 for some time now – is this the next big thing? Well, Web3 isn’t exactly a single thing. It’s a collection of technologies intended to allow “next-generation” websites to embrace disruptive trends and aspirant standards – or, at least, the ones that were disruptive and aspirant at the time when people were coming up with the concept. You make it sound like it’s already out of date? The thing about Web3 is that it focuses heavily on decentralisation, and particularly on the blockchain model that underpins cryptocurrency. That dates it as very much a pre-pandemic initiative, from the days of cheap electricity and seemingly limitless growth in digital assets. Does that matter? Aren’t there still benefits to the Web3 approach? A decentralisation mindset isn’t…

We’re a little over 12 months away from the PSTN switch-off and, despite copper being old hat in many homes and businesses, I predict there will be chaos for those who attempt a VoIP transition without a plan. The cautionary tale that follows is my own. After all, this is Real World Computing, and if this helps only one reader avoid the same pitfalls, then I’ll be delighted. During the summer, I spotted that our broadband provider, Virgin Media Business (VMB), was offering a slightly faster speed for a slightly lower price. Our shop doesn’t require multi-gig synchronous phat-pipes like certain RWC contributors, because machines with smashed screens and wine dripping from USB sockets don’t go online. We’ve functioned adequately with VMB’s Zoom package, which gave around 350Mbits/sec, but the…

This month’s column is simple: it’s a bunch of things that people don’t do that really tick me off. A diver’s list of missed behaviours, abandoned opportunities and plain lack of common sense in working practices. Things you’ve all had quite long enough to get right by now. One machine, one login Stop this nonsense! Even though I agree with anyone puzzled by the vehemence of Apple’s and Microsoft’s long-standing advice, that disabling the default Administrator account slams the door on hackers and the like, that shouldn’t cast a huge shadow over all other account-making options and outcomes. My standard Mac build now has two accounts for me, one for my partner, the Administrator account, and something called “Fixer”. I use this because said partner is an incorrigible shutterbug, inclined…