Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2024 i APC

There’s a famous Xkcd web-comic that shows a pile of building blocks precariously balancing on top of a single, narrow brick. “All Modern Digital Infrastructure’’, the pile is captioned – with the brick labelled “A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003”. The message is, of course, that our digital infrastructure is more precarious than we might think. And this is especially true in the hobbyist smart home space, with sometimes single GitHub pages holding the crucial code that will connect your smart plugs, blinds and bulbs to the rest of your devices. Unsurprisingly, this can make the smartest of homes feel like precarious places to be, especially when we’re not just talking about devices that may well be mounted to the ceilings or embedded…

FUTURES We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future Charles Rosen, Ivan Sutherland, Ernst Dickmanns – have you heard of any of these names? Most people likely haven’t, though they should have. These are the geniuses behind remarkable engineering firsts and tech created decades ago that are still used today. AI, robotics, AR and driverless cars may all feel very now, but they’ve all been decades in the making. And once a few decades have passed, it’s easy to forget the people who first came up with the ideas that are powering what we’ll be using tomorrow (or whenever driverless cars are actually available). While writing a book about the history of future technologies, I met – sometimes over email, other times via university archives…

Unistellar Odyssey Pro (Red Edition) $6,800 | unistellar.com Point this smart telescope at the sky and you’ll be seeing stars for all the right reasons. Available in a limited edition Pantone 485 C red, the Odyssey Pro enables you to gaze in wonder at our solar system, with lots of clever tech onboard to enhance your view. Fitted with Nikon High Precision Optics, the Odyssey Pro also comes with autofocus, making it easy to see distant nebula. Plus it has Deep Dark and Multi-Depth technology, which not only helps reduce light pollution, but also enables to you shift focus from near-Earth objects to others millions of light years away without ever missing a beat. Helping you in your stargazing quest is a free iPhone app, which lets you know the…

PRICE $2,199 (13in/256GB) WEB apple.com/au The iPad Pro has long been the best tablet on the market, but Apple isn’t resting on its past success. This year’s models introduce a new processor, a striking ultra-slim design and the best ever tablet display. Visually, the new 11in and 13in tablets aren’t a radical departure from their M2-powered predecessors, released in 2022. Each one is still a solid slab of aluminium with a large display and a thin profile. However, the mini-LED panel has been replaced by an OLED display – or “Ultra Retina XDR”, as Apple dubs it – and it could be enough to justify the upgrade by itself thanks to its deep blacks, scorching whites and beautiful, dazzling colours. The sharp 264ppi resolution means everything from videos to games…

PRICE $2,650 WEB dell.com Aimed at professional users, the Dell Precision 3490 is a capable workstation that offers many features not found on traditional consumer products. It’s not the thinnest, lightest, or most affordable laptop around, but it is very customisable and components are upgradeable. The base spec of our review unit is equipped with an Ultra 7 155H CPU, or (as reviewed) an Intel Ultra 7 165H CPU, 16GB or 32GB of RAM and a 512GB or 1TB NVMe SSD. For those who need more graphics grunt than the Intel Arc GPU can handle, the Precision 3490 can also be outfitted with an Nvidia RTX 500 Ada GPU with 4GB of RAM. All models get dual Thunderbolt 4 port (40Gbps, DisplayPort and PD charging), two USB 3.2 USB-A ports,…

PRICE $2,749 WEB rog.asus.com/au ‘Tis truly the age of the QD-OLED gaming monitor and now here’s Asus with its ROG Swift OLED PG32UCDM which seeks to offer premium performance in a super-premium package. As we’ve come to expect, it’s simple to piece the three parts together thanks to a quick-release screen clip and a single screw for the stand. Once assembled and turned on you’re faced with a(nother) super-thin screen that’s got all the electronics housed in a box at the back. Being a ROG product means there’s RGB design flourishes everywhere including a large matrix logo at the rear and downlighting in the solid-metal base. It certainly talks the super-premium talk but does it have enough swaggering gait to justify its massive price tag? Ports include DisplayPort 1.4, two…

WEB diskanalyzer.com/ NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 WizTree has long been our favourite program for discovering which files and folders are taking up the most room on your hard drive, so you can delete them to free up storage. It’s impressively fast, free for personal use and makes it easy to identify space hogs using its colour-coded ‘tree map’. Previously, we’ve recommended using WizTree alongside a duplicate cleaner such as AllDup (www.alldup.de) to remove copies of large items from your PC, but this new version introduces WizTree’s own duplicate finder. To access the new feature, perform a scan of your hard drive and click the File View tab to switch from the default Tree View. Here you’ll see a new Duplicate Files option on the toolbar. Click its…

LABS 27in MONITORS$249 | acer.com We know that not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend on a monitor, and that some people prefer to buy a pair for an extended desktop. And you’ll struggle to find a better budget choice than this Full HD 27in panel. Of course, there are drawbacks. A pixel density of 81ppi means a lack of sharpness around text edges, while you lose the sheer definition in images; if you can afford it, we’d always recommend choosing a monitor with over 100ppi. And, unlike the AOC 27B3CA2, there’s no USB-C docking option here, with Acer providing a thoroughly traditional trio of video inputs instead: DisplayPort, HDMI and our old friend VGA. You can use it as a USB hub, though, with four USB-A 3.2 Gen…

LABS 27in MONITORS$739 | benq.com If you’re a graphic designer but your budget doesn’t reach Eizo levels, then there are some extremely compelling reasons to choose the BenQ PD2706U. Let’s start with the obvious: this is a 27in 4K screen, so that means you enjoy incredible amounts of detail. Unlike the Eizo ColorEdge CG2700X, it uses an 8-bit panel plus FRC to reach 1.07 billion colours, but if you’re happy to stick to the sRGB, Display P3 and DCI-P3 colour spaces then it covers them all with superb accuracy. For example, switch to sRGB and it covers 98% with a 100% volume, while DCI-P3 covers 92% with no overspill. With a maximum (not average) Delta E of 1.81, you can trust what your eyes show you. BenQ sweetens the deal…

LABS 32/34in MONITORS$899 | philips.com.au You can almost consider the Philips 34B1U5600CH as the spoilt older brother to some other 34in screens. It’s a 34in curved VA panels boasting a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution, and gives strong performances in our technical tests. Whites look good, DCI-P3 colour coverage is strong at 85%, and an average Delta E of 0.58 means you can trust that colours are accurate. The reason it’s spoilt is that this monitor gets many of the features that are missing on its rivals. There’s a respectable, albeit grainy, 1080p webcam that supports Windows Hello, a power sensor that switches the screen off if it detects no-one is there, plus an ambient light sensor. The speakers are also better; hardly hi-fi quality, but you can actually listen to…

PRO & LUXURY MONITORS$2,696 | eizo-apac.com Sometimes, numbers can’t do justice to products. In fact, if you judged this monitor by numbers alone then it wouldn’t even win an award, let alone the Labs Winner gong. No matter how well it might perform in technical tests, there was one number that would always rule them all: the price. It’s much more expensive than most other screens of this size and resolution, despite them sharing a 4K resolution and 31.5in screen diagonal, and scoring similarly in our tests. We think the Eizo will make you go “wow” in a way that no other monitor on test here can. Much of the credit for this must go to the combination of a 2,000:1 contrast ratio and the colour characteristics of an IPS…

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Manually delete temporary files from Windows• Wipe old Windows Update files that waste disk space• Clean up installation files in the Panther folder• Reclaim space by disabling the Hibernate feature• Delete downloads automatically after 60 days• Remove the OneDrive folder without losing important files Regularly deleting junk files from your PC frees up valuable storage space and makes your system run more smoothly. You probably have a favourite clean-up tool for the task – such as BleachBit, Wise Disk Cleaner or even the once-great CCleaner – which purges junk at the click of a button. However, it’s also useful to know how to delete unwanted files and folders manually, so you don’t have to rely on third-party software. The obvious problem with the DIY approach…

As opposed to music players, which can be used to enjoy your own music collection, radio exposes you to new and, sometimes, old wonders that you otherwise might not come across. While some graphical music players let you stream internet music, CLI warriors might occasionally want to move to the music, too. Thankfully, the Curses-based internet radio player PyRadio fits the bill perfectly. We interrupt this broadcast with a special shout-out to my colleague Neil. Refer to the box (opposite page) to learn how one email changed the course of this tutorial. But more importantly, tune in next month to read what would have been this issue’s tutorial. We return you now to the regular programming, so you can learn how to play internet radio stations from the comfort of…

GAMES The games we play PRICE $51.25 PLATFORM PC WEB paradoxinteractive.com/games/millennia Millennia’s a lot like Civilization. Like Amplitude’s recent remix of the classic Sid Meier experience Humankind, it promises an enticing shakeup of the decades-old formula and offers a fresh spin on things. Fresh blood in this sub-genre can only be a good thing. I must admit that sentiment wasn’t always foremost in my mind during several unilaterally savage campaigns in Millennia, however. It has a way of burying salient menus and mechanics within its UI, and of teaching you new systems by simply springing events on you. Whereas Civ generally rewards a really concentrated effort towards one of its victory conditions from the outset, Millennia wants you to be a generalist. There are juicy unlocks waiting in its labyrinthine…

RETRO Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past In the past, some computer firms looked to create machines for the masses. Others sought to produce systems aimed at businesses. But Atari, hot on the heels of a string of arcade hits and the VCS/2600 console, decided its first home computer would be aimed at a younger audience so, as well as considering what would go inside, its creators paid great attention to producing a head-turning, child-friendly design. “The Atari 400 wasn’t particularly powerful. It shipped in 1979 with an initial 8K of RAM, 12K ROM and a MOS Technology 6502 CPU running at 1.79MHz. It had a display resolution of 320 x 192 pixels, 128 colours, a cartridge slot and four controller jacks.” This was unusual. Most companies believed that games…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. Independent reviews Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage. That means identifying the best products…

PRICE $1,299 (13in/128GB) WEB apple.com/au While Apple’s M4-toting iPad Pro models have been grabbing the headlines, the iPad Air has also seen a major update, including the introduction of a 13in model. At $1,299, it’s far cheaper than the 13in iPad Pro, while the new 11in iPad Air costs $999. In both cases the price includes 128GB of storage, with 256GB, 512GB and 1TB versions costing an extra $190, $530 and $880 respectively. Picking up the new 13in iPad Air I felt instantly at home. It’s strikingly light for its size at 617g, and is basically a blown-up version of the last-gen 11in Air, with a larger frame but the same 6.1mm thickness. The 12MP rear camera is in the same spot, as are the volume buttons near the top…

PRICE $399 WEB www.asrock.com The Mini-ITX form factor has a dedicated fan following, and in fact has mostly displaced MicroATX from the premium segment. Most of the major manufacturers offer several ITX options, as Asrock does. The Asrock Z790I Lightning WiFi is a third generation LGA 1700 board. It’s been given some tweaks and an upgraded power delivery subsystem that’s better able to handle the demands of high-end 14th Generation Intel CPUs. At $399, the Z790I Lightning WiFi is very competitively priced when compared to the Gigabyte Z790I Aorus Ultra and MSI Z790I Edge. A key highlight is its support for DDR5-8600+ memory. DDR5 speeds are continually increasing, so that ability will come in handy in the years ahead. Its two slots will limit you to 96GB of memory, but…

PRICE $299 WEB au.turtlebeach.com Turtle Beach’s Atlas-branded gaming headset range has lain dormant since 2020’s Elite Atlas Aero, but now the PC-centric series has returned with the Atlas Air – its lightest, most comfortable wireless gaming headset to date. At 301 grams, the Atlas Air is around a third of the weight of the aforementioned Aero, which admittedly makes it feel a little flimsy. Combined with its “floating fit” mesh headband and ear cup cushions, the Atlas Air is shockingly comfortable for a mid-range headset. Tension can even be adjusted via easy-to-miss velcro straps along the inside of the headband. Contributing to Atlas Air’s immense level of comfort is an open-back ear cup design which not only provides improved situational awareness and breathability, but also a significant reduction in pressure…

MAC PRICE US$59.99; upgrades from US$29.99 NEEDS macOS 11 or later WEB barebones.com Let’s save time: BBEdit still doesn’t suck. The creator’s playful slogan as ever downplays the sheer quality of the app, which remains essential for anyone who works with text. If you’re a newcomer, you’ll find BBEdit is efficient and configurable for everything from programming to prose. It won’t blink when you open colossal files. And there are superb tools for chewing through comparisons and changes. Even if it’s not your daily driver for writing or coding, it’ll quickly become a vital part of your text-wrangling toolkit. So what’s new. First up, there’s ChatGPT integration via the Worksheet interface. With an API key and OpenAI credits, you can fire off commands to receive text snippets and chunks of…

LABS It’s tempting to say that monitors come in all shapes and sizes, but that isn’t quite true. You’ve probably already noticed that they tend to be rectangular. But the sizes generalisation does hold, which is why we had to lay down some ground rules for this test: a minimum size of 27in, a maximum of 34in. We’ve covered larger monitors in APC recently, and will continue to do so, but we wanted to stay focused on the mainstream in this month’s Labs. That means we also steer clear of gaming monitors; we’re quite happy to let others worry about ridiculous response times and refresh rates. And RGB. And headphone stands. As you’ll see, however, a few monitors on test would make excellent companions during the working day before transforming…

LABS 27in MONITORS$229 | acer.com You can usually be confident of aggressive pricing from Acer, and it doesn’t disappoint here. The next cheapest 4K screen, BenQ’s PD2706U, costs $739, while the BenQ BL2790QT costs $459 and includes a mere 1440p panel. No contest, surely? In some ways, no. Photographers or film lovers who love detail will appreciate the level of detail on show here, and if you have good eyesight and devour spreadsheets – or tend to work with two windows side by side – the same is true for business use. Technically, this is a superior panel too, as it’s a true 8-bit display that uses FRC to increase colour coverage to 1.07 billion colours. The BenQ BL2790QT, by contrast, is a 6-bit panel with FRC taking its colour…

LABS 27in MONITORS$284 | techinn.com The ProLite XUB2763HSU-B1 has one obvious rival here: the Acer Vero B277. Both include a 1,920 x 1,080 IPS panel and both lean heavily on their green credentials. In the Iiyama’s case, that means the plastic is 85% PCR, the packaging 100% recyclable and made from cardboard pulp, an EPEAT Silver rating and arguably most importantly an incredibly low power rating. Even at its peak 251cd/m2 brightness, it drew 11W dropping to 10W at our standard test brightness of 200cd/m2. That compares to the typical 16W to 18W for 27in panels in this test. Iiyama jettisons frills such as USB-C and RJ45 connectors in its quest to hit such a low price, but let’s concentrate on what you do get. Two video inputs, one HDMI…

LABS 32/34in MONITORS$699 | viewsonic.com The ViewSonic VG3456 is a highly affordable flat-screen monitor that you can now purchase for around $700. It’s built around a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution panel, giving you huge amounts of space on which to spread your windows, and it uses VA technology. The ViewSonic is a particularly stylish monitor, with slim bezels and a fuzzy speaker-like finish to the bottom edge of the monitor. We only wish the pair of 5W speakers could live up to the billing, but like so many others here they’re better suited to speech radio and web calls than listening to music or enjoying films. We were also struck by this monitor’s tilting skills: you can push it backwards by 40°, which may well be the killer feature for…

The recently released $3,499 Lenovo ThinkVision 27 3D is is the harbinger of what we expect to be a swathe of glasses-free 3D monitors, but these aren’t going to be aimed at gamers or movie fans. Instead, the target market is 3D designers, 3D modellers, schools, medical institutions and more. Nor is Lenovo on its own. Both Acer and Sony have already released portable monitors based on the technology, and we know that Acer has its own 27in desktop display – the Acer SpatialLabs View Pro 27 – on the way. Lenticular technology The basic concept behind these panels is nothing new. In fact, the idea of sending different signals to the eyes based on the viewer’s position dates back to “tabula scalata” paintings created in the 16th century, where…

LABS 1TB, $199 | crucial.com READ 1,951MB/sec WRITE 1,619MB/sec The X10 Pro is one of this month’s top-end drives thanks to its support for USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports. That’s great if you have them, or USB 4, but if not then your read and write speeds will roughly halve from our chart-topping results. The X9 Pro, not on test here, is the same hardware but it maxes out at USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds and is slightly cheaper. In terms of size, the X10 Pro is a fraction smaller than the X6, and that means it’s extremely pocketable. The top is a solid block of aluminium milled inside to make room for the SSD, while the underside has a rubberised finish that prevents it from sliding around. It also…

LABS 1TB, $120 | kingston.com READ 1,005MB/sec WRITE 927MB/sec Arriving 18 months after the XS2000, there are only two real differences to note between the drives: that the XS1000 comes in black and that it uses the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 standard rather than the XS2000’s Gen 2x2. That limits bandwidth to 10Gbits/sec rather than 20Gbits/sec, which is why its results are roughly half those of its sibling. However, as always, this only matters if you’ll be transferring data over a USB-C 4 or USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 port, and both remain rare. Actually, there are three other differences between the drives, too. First, the XS1000 is only available in 1TB and 2TB capacities. Second, it’s significantly cheaper, at $120 versus $229 for the smaller capacity and $199 rather than…

LABS 1TB, $168 | amazon.com.au READ 1,928MB/sec WRITE 1,732MB/sec The Lexar SL500, like the SL600, is part of a new generation of ultra-slim portable SSDs aimed at professionals needing to travel light while capturing and editing images and videos on the move. The SL500’s key selling point is a lightweight design coupled with a stylish but reassuringly tough metal casing. This makes it an excellent semi-permanent complement to cameras that need extra storage. It can also be linked to the iPhone 15 Pro and Max and used to store Apple Pro Res recordings at up to 4K at 60fps. Transfer speeds to and from a computer will depend on the connector. This is a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 SSD, with the promise of 2,000MB/sec reads and 1,800MB/sec writes, and that’s…

Alternative N100 board I’ve been enjoying the discussion about building a NAS system recently in these pages, and two possible N100 motherboards were mentioned. In doing research on the components in the system, I came across a third possibility, the IKuai OS N100 ITX motherboard. Looking at the specifications, it seems like a much better fit for a NAS build. Some advantages are that the IKuaiOS has six SATA ports, four Ethernet ports, and two M.2 ports built into the motherboard. It does lack audio output, but I don’t think this is a problem for a NAS server. Using the iKuai OS board would seem to eliminate the need for the M.2 SATA card, the Ethernet card, and the SATA SSD drive (an M.2 SSD would replace it and there’d…

BRAVE Access AI features from your right-click menu Brave 164, released in March, makes further improvements to the browser’s AI assistant Leo. When you click the ‘Show sidebar’ button in the top-right corner, the chatbot now launches by default, which saves you having to open the sidebar first to click the Leo button. Brave has also added Leo to its right-click context menu, to give you easier access to its AI features – including options that aren’t available in the sidebar. Highlight a section of text on a web page, then right-click and move your cursor to the new ‘Leo AI tools’ sub-menu (1 in our screenshot below). Under ‘Quick actions’, you can ask Leo to summarise the content of the selected text or explain it to you, by providing context…

GAMES PRICE $29.95 PLATFORM PC, PS5, XBS/X, Switch WEB ea.com/en-au/games/tales-of-kenzera/zau Most of the freshness in Tales of Kenzera stems from its southern and central African setting, given that African mythologies (ancient Egypt excepted) remain a largely untapped resource in games. Playing as young shaman Zau, there’s a real sense here that you’ve been dropped into a legend passed between distant ancestors. And Zau’s mission is as much about his personal growth as his quest to reclaim his deceased father from the land of the dead. As for the sun and the moon, their power is infused into a pair of masks, and our hero can quick-change between them to banish the hostile spirits loitering around the otherwise deserted lands. Don the moon mask and you can sling magic bullets as…

GAMES PRICE $17.56 PLATFORM PC, Switch, Mac, Linux WEB peppergrindergame.com Poor Pepper. She’s the star of Devolver Digital’s new platformer, but she would be laughed off the stage at the Annual Platforming Protagonist Awards. Not that she’d have much luck leaving that stage unassisted. Pepper’s hobbled by a pathetic jump, a mediocre little hop that can barely get her a few feet off the ground. So it’s a stroke of good fortune that she’s rammed her arm into a drill attachment that can send her swimming through dirt, then use her momentum to burst out and fly through the air. Pepper drills through dirt a little faster than you’d like, demanding quick reflexes to move in something close enough to the direction you wanted to go, or at least a…

The problem with trying to do something surreptitiously is that it risks drawing more attention to your actions, like struggling to change into your swimming trunks under a beach towel – which in my experience can attract a crowd of amused spectators. This is partly why I don’t use Tor Browser (www.torproject.org/download) more often, despite its many privacy benefits. Aside from using a VPN, it’s the most reliable way to stay anonymous online, because it not only hides your IP address and web activities, but adds extra layers of protection by routing your internet connection through a circuit of ‘relay nodes’. The catch is that while your internet provider can’t see what you’re doing in Tor, it can tell you’re using the network, by spotting the ‘entry node’ (the first…

HWMONITOR | PRICE Free / Starting from €20, WEB www.cpuid.com | GIMP | PRICE Free / Starting from US$29 WEB www.hwinfo.com Ah, these two titans. If you’ve spent any amount of time in the world of benchmarking, stress-testing your PC, or even if you’re just curious about how toasty that Ryzen 9 7950X is getting, you’ll have no doubt heard of HWMonitor and HWiNFO. On the surface, they serve a very similar purpose. Their job, as much as it is, is to tie into the mass of sensors that litter your motherboard and supporting components, reporting on all manner of temperatures, voltages, and clock speeds that your OS and system need to know about. At this point, they then relay that information directly back to you in an easily readable format.…

LABS PRICE $3,799 WEB lenovo.com Featuring a mighty Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU and large 16in 165Hz display, the Legion 5i is built to push your gaming experience to the next level. The laptop is also a very capable workstation, and blends in once you turn off the eye-catching RGB lighting. At 32 x 26 x 2.5cm, and weighing 2.3kg, it’s just barely what we would call ‘portable’, and slots into a larger backpack or laptop bag without too much fuss. At the time of writing, the three Legion 5i variants are sold with the Core i714650HX CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and either an RTX 4050, RTX 4060 or as tested, a RTX 4070 GPU. All three video card options use a 140W power profile. The 5600MHz DDR5…

PRICE $219 WEB apple.com/au Were it not for the “Pencil Pro” branding printed on the end of it, you could easily mistake Apple’s new stylus for its predecessor, the Pencil 2. However, the Pencil Pro introduces four major new features . The first is a squeezable sensor near the Pencil Pro’s tip, which provides contextual functions in different apps. In Apple’s Notes app, for instance, it makes the radial pen and colour selection tool pop up next to the Pencil’s tip. This is superbly convenient, saving wasted hand movements and allowing artists to stay focused on their work. A new haptic feedback motor gently rumbles to confirm the squeeze gesture, and can also provide physical feedback in apps, such as vibrating when aligning a canvas element to a snap grid.…

LABS PRICE $2,199 WEB www.aorus.com/en-au We recently reviewed the massive, 49-inch, ultra-wide Aorus CO49DQ which was a few-frills gaming monitor that impressed us with its performance and value albeit in a super-premium market. Now, here’s its smaller sibling, the 32-inch Aorus FO32U2P “Tactical” gaming monitor which has a faster, third-gen Samsung QD-OLED panel, additional features plus new, DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity. Will it be similarly attractive? First up, it’s worth noting that there’s very little benefit from having DP 2.1 right now. Only AMD’s top-end cards support it and there’s practically no real-world difference compared to DP 1.4 anyway. Still, it may be good for future proofing. The monitor is easy to assemble thanks to its three-piece-one-screw design. The panel is incredibly thin with all core electronics being isolated in a…

PRICE $750 WEB logitech.com In our never-ending pursuit of the one wireless headset to rule all my gaming devices, the obnoxiously named Logitech G Astro A50 X Lightspeed Wireless with Playsync Gaming Headset is the first to come close to that dream. Thanks to the innovative Playsync system, the Astro A50 X can connect Xbox, PlayStation, and PC/Mac and switch between them with a press of a button. The real party trick is that the A50 X can now switch video inputs at the same time saving you from manually changing display input from one device to another. Now throw in Pro-G Graphene drivers for 24-bit lossless, lag-free audio over Lightspeed wireless (similar to those used in the Logitech G Pro X 2 Lightspeed headset), simultaneous Bluetooth, a flip-down boom…

DEVELOPER Marcos Queiroz Gomes WEB https://get.regataos.com.br/ LICENCE Various There are two likely reasons we’ve not heard much about Regata OS. One: it’s from Brazil. Two: it’s based on OpenSUSE. In a world that seems to revolve around Debian/Ubuntu-based distros in the English language, stepping away from either is bound to create speed bumps. So, is offering a slick games-first distro enough to move past them? Under our gaze this month we have Regata OS 24 Arctic Fox, with the big update being KDE Plasma 6 desktop alongside a jump to kernel 6.7 and Mesa 24. Let’s tackle those last two, as between them they offer support for the latest gaming graphics hardware. Mesa 24 improves AMD Radeon Vulkan ray-tracing performance and new Vulkan extensions to the Intel ANV driver. This enables…

Colour giveaways The days when a bog-standard monitor produced terrible colours are long gone: even entry-level displays will cover a solid range of colours with respectable accuracy. But that doesn’t mean you need to settle for mediocrity. If you want a display with colours that punch you between the eyes, or you prize accuracy over wide gamuts, there are clues. The first clue comes in the type of panel (see IPS vs VA, below). This rule of thumb still holds: IPS produces the whitest whites, OLED the most vivid colours and richest blacks, and VA sits somewhere in the middle. But if you’re willing to dig into the specs you’ll find more hints. As we discuss in “The magic of FRC” opposite, a 10-bit panel will produce more colours than…

LABS 27in MONITORS$459 | benq.com There’s a lot to like about this 27in, 1440p monitor. Especially for owners of Apple laptops, as BenQ goes out of its way to colour-match its output with MacBook screens via the M-book mode. And that’s just the start: the brilliant OSD, arguably the best here, makes it simple to switch profiles between Coding, Movie, Game and sepia-tinted ePaper. Those who find their eyes are tired by the end of the day will appreciate the Care mode, which uses an ambient light sensor to keep the screen at sensible brightness and contrast levels. You can also manually adjust low blue light options, with five intensity levels to flick between, while BenQ says its Flicker-Free Technology “eliminates flickering... to reduce eye strain, fatigue and headaches”. A…

LABS 27in MONITORS$839 | viewsonic.com As a rule, we’re fans of 1440p 27in screens. They feel more spacious than 1080p rivals, making it a pleasure to work on two windows side by side, and text looks sharp. This is one reason the BenQ BL2790QT wins a Recommended award. The ViewSonic VG2756V-2K offers similarly high image quality, plus a bunch of extra features to justify its significantly higher price. Chief among these is its USB-C connection. This makes the monitor both more suited to office rollouts and more appealing to laptop users, with up to 90W of power delivery. ViewSonic even sweetens the deal by embedding a pop-up 1080p webcam into the top of the display, complete with LED lights, but the results are so grainy we would only use it…

PRO & LUXURY MONITORS$5,500 | eizo-apac.com The ColorEdge CG2700X stands out from other monitors in this group test for many reasons. First, this is a monitor absolutely and unapologetically designed for creative professionals. Second, and tied to that, its huge top bezel contains a built-in calibrator (more on that in a moment). Third, its price, which is close to eight times that of the BenQ PD2706U – which is also a 4K 27in monitor with its eye on the creative market. A 10-bit panel sits at this monitor’s foundation. As we mentioned in the buyer’s guide, this means it can cover 1.07 billion colours without the use of FRC, and it’s one of the indicators of professional-level quality here. Years ago, you would have needed a pro-quality graphics card to…

PRO & LUXURY MONITORS$2,299 | samsung.com On its website, Samsung lists this monitor as the S90PC ViewFinity 5K Smart Monitor, but it feels more like a smart TV on first “boot”. It asks to be connected to your Wi-Fi network, and once you’ve jumped through various hoops you’ll find yourself in Samsung’s TV Plus section with a huge selection of live channels. Just to hammer home the point, your first interactions are via a remote control rather than an OSD. The remote offers dedicated buttons for Disney Plus, Netflix and Prime Video. We watched the first few minutes of Top Gun: Maverick and the detail was so rich on the 5K panel that we picked up several details we didn’t spot in the cinema. Samsung backs up the visuals with…

Before you buy a portable SSD, you should consider several factors. Most obviously, speed. While they all use USB-C ports, there’s a huge difference in transfer rates, with two factors in play: one is the chips and electronics inside the drive, and the other is the standard supported by the connector. The fastest drives all support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, with its 20Gbits/sec bandwidth, but that’s only of use if the device you’re connecting it to also supports that standard (or USB 4, which is backwards-compatible). Most don’t, so you could end up wasting money. Then there’s how much storage you actually need. Generally, we’d play safe. If you think you can “get away” with 500GB, go for 1TB. The same is true if you think 1TB should be just…

LABS 1TB, $249 | samsung.com READ 1,899MB/sec WRITE 1,814MB/sec Although it shares the same slim, rectangular design as the T7, the much more recent T9 differs from its sibling in two key ways. The first is that Samsung embraces the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 standard, offering 20Gbits/sec compared to 10Gbits/sec for the plain Gen 2; the second is that it’s coated with wavy rubber. This is bonded to the metal interior shell of the drive, so you can’t remove it. The rubber adds significantly to the thickness and weight of the drive, and while Samsung doesn’t offer any IP ratings it does promise that it’s drop-resistant to 3m (it makes no drop-resistance claims at all for the T7). For extra reassurance, Samsung also boosts its usual warranty from three years…

HELP STATION | MAC IT WILL TAKE 1 hour YOU WILL LEARN To explore the various features of Microsoft Copilot YOU’LL NEED Microsoft Copilot (Free, IAPs), Microsoft 365 (optional) Everyone’s interested in artificial intelligence (AI) these days and we don’t want Mac users to miss out. Here, we’re going to shine a spotlight on an amazing tool created by Microsoft which, aside from letting you intelligently search the web using natural language, allows you to be creative and more productive while saving lots of time. Copilot can be used on its own. It’ll operate as a web page and a Safari-based web app. You can also install the Microsoft Edge browser, click the Copilot button and use the service in a sidebar, with the benefit of clicking Insights to find…

PRICE $32.96 PLATFORM PC WEB inkboundgame.com Inkbound is an isometric roguelike wherein battles start with enemies surrounding you and kindly telegraphing exactly how they’re going to attack. You’ve got a limited amount of movement and attack power each turn to deal as much damage as possible, build up enough shield to block incoming blows, or move out of the way so you avoid them entirely. A number hovers over your head telling you how much damage you’re going to take. Skull next to that number? Uh oh. Positioning yourself to avoid damage in a turn-based strategy game can’t help but remind me of Into the Breach. The genius of that game was in how clear and readable its little death dioramas were. You could have printed them in the puzzle…

Old games, new perspectives RELEASE August 23, 2016 DEVELOPER Eidos Montreal PUBLISHER Square Enix LINK eidosmontreal.com Chattering teeth. Laughing gas. And a homicidal clown pulling the strings in the backdrop. Batman: Arkham Asylum turns 15 this year and since its momentous release back in August 2009, the DC action-adventure has been looked upon as the de facto answer for what a modernised superhero videogame could be. And rightly so! After playing through the lacklustre Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, I felt what better time to go back to the original Arkhamverse outing to remind myself of the talent behind British developer Rocksteady. No battle pass. No currencies. No constant online connection. No live service elements in any way. Just a simple story about the Joker taking over an asylum,…