Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2019 i Computer Shopper

Even though I’m well aware that pretty much everything I do nowadays is tracked and stored on the internet somewhere, seeing the range of information gathered and in one place is quite shocking. The wake-up call for me came while I was editing our cover feature this month on how to reclaim your online privacy (page 94). The section on shopping history explains how Google stores a record of anything you’ve ever bought online, thanks to data gathered either through its web browser or Gmail service. I promptly logged into myaccount.google.com/purchases, and was shocked at the level of detail Google is storing about me, how far back this history goes, and how wide-ranging the purchases are. Everything from smartphone app subscriptions to theatre tickets, rolls of wallpaper to children’s clothes…

“Clothing that reveals an excess of bare skin, or body-conforming clothing that hugs genitalia must not be worn”CES organisers clamp down on scantily clad attendees at the next consumer tech showcase “Government is seriously lacking the leadership, strategy and coordination we need across the public sector to keep us and our data safe and secure”Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jo Platt isn’t impressed to hear Windows XP is still running on more than 2,000 NHS machines “Gouge your eyes out now, while you still can”Some Twitter users aren’t happy about the social media site’s recent redesign “It is safe to say that the personal data of practically the whole Bulgarian adult population has been compromised”Cyber security researcher Vesselin Bontchev on the effects of a hack on Bulgaria’s tax agency “To many…

£1,199 •From www.pcspecialist.co.uk VERDICT Brand-new components empower the Inferno R1 with premium-grade performance, without the expense THE INFERNO R1 isn’t just another mid-tower gaming PC. Thanks to our AMD Ryzen 3000 review kit being delayed, it gives us our first look at one of the new third-generation CPUs – the Ryzen 5 3600X – as well as the GeForce RTX 2060 Super graphics card, a souped-up version of Nvidia’s excellent RTX 2060 (Shopper 375). It’s almost as up to date a PC as it’s possible to get – but even so, it’s not all that expensive. That’s because, at least ostensibly, these two key components are mid-range parts. The Ryzen 5 3600X, for instance, is a replacement for the sub-£200 Ryzen 5 2600X (Shopper 367) from last year. It’s still…

£1,499 • From store.hp.com VERDICT HP tries to do something different with this leather-bound hybrid, and nearly misses the mark WHEN LAPTOPS AGE, they tend to get worse; when leather ages, it gets better. For HP to create a leather-clad 2-in-1 laptop is an unusual move, to say the least. Whether it’s class or crass is a matter of taste, but the Spectre Folio certainly pulls attention. This unusual machine is, at its core, a fairly standard low-powered ultraportable laptop that can pull double duties as an oversized Windows 10 tablet. Key specs include a 13.3in display, Intel’s Core i7-8500Y processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. This is a basic if potentially capable set of hardware, leaving the centrepiece to be the leather cladding. In chocolate brown –…

£90 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT Despite being a bit simple in places, this is a nicely spacious case with extensive cooling and cable management support FOR ANYONE WHO prefers a less showy PC case, the MPG Gungnir 100 might be more suitable than most of MSI’s other chassis designs. These include the MAG Vampiric series, which look like some kind of missile silo blast doors, and the MPG Sekira 500X, which is “inspired by the Axe of Perun”. Here, there’s not even a hint of the highest god of the Slavic pantheon, though it does have some more conventional flair in the form of addressable RGB lighting and a full-size tempered glass side window. It’s something of a mish-mash of different materials: besides the glass, the main chassis is made…

£90 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It’s tiny, fun and slightly better than HP’s Sprocket, but Canon’s Zoemini is still a bit of an indulgence The Zoemini is aimed at kids, students, and anyone else who might want to produce and share instant photos THE ZOEMINI PHOTO printer is Canon’s answer to the HP Sprocket (Shopper 378). About the size of a thick, small smartphone, it’s highly portable yet contains everything you need to print 2x3in photos, beamed via Bluetooth. We reviewed the standalone printer, but the range includes the Zoemini C and Zoemini S, each of which combines a printer and digital camera in a single device. This printer’s similarity with HP’s first-generation Sprocket is striking, and probably not a coincidence. Like the Sprocket family, the Zoemini uses Zink’s specialised…

£80 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Echo Show 5 delivers Alexa onscreen at a ludicrously low price, but it has its limitations IF ALL BATTLES were won purely by force of numbers, Amazon would have had the smart speaker market sewn up long ago. With the release of the Echo Show 5, it now has a full 13 Alexa speakers in its ranks. What, then, is special about this one? For one thing, it’s cheap – the cheapest display-equipped Echo device ever, in fact. It’s also a lot more compact than the Echo Show 2nd Generation (Shopper 378), without being truly tiny like the Echo Spot (Shopper 363). Instead, it has the same widescreen display and sloping angles of the Lenovo Smart Clock. The Smart Clock is even cheaper, but…

£499 • From www.oneplus.com VERDICT A low-key update for OnePlus’s signature phone, but the OnePlus 7 still has something to offer BOTH THE PREMIUM OnePlus 7 Pro (Shopper 379) and its upcoming 5G variant might be hogging the headlines, but the regular OnePlus 7 is still worth considering. It has the same screen size and resolution as the preceding OnePlus 6T (Shopper 373), 6.4in and 2,340x1,080 respectively, and it has the same style of notch housing for the front-facing camera. The chassis is identical, too, as is the positioning of all the buttons and the SIM card slot. This news isn’t necessarily all bad – the 6T wasn’t exactly ugly or impractical – but it means the screen is flat all the way to the edges, lacking the dramatic curve…

£179 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A fabulous smartwatch, but one that falls flat as a serious running wearable ALTHOUGH THE NEW Galaxy Watch Active looks like it’s come straight off the back of the reasonably impressive Samsung Galaxy Watch (Shopper 371), it actually has much more in common with the 2017 Gear Sport (Shopper 361). Besides the round face, it has the same 360x360 OLED screen, GPS and built-in heart-rate tracking as the Gear Sport, but there have been changes, too. Gone is the rotating bezel; instead, the Galaxy Watch Active is controlled by a pair of buttons on the side. The 1.1in display is smaller, although this ends up making it look slightly sharper, and at just 23g, weight is more than halved. This all comes with a much…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.19.2.8555 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.6.0.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. Miranda IM 0.10.80 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 8.49.0.49 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. UPDATED Telegram 1.7.14 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.3.3793 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation UPDATED iolo System Mechanic Free 18.7.3.176 Speed up your system with iolo’s…

£30 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Even if you’re not a gamer, the ROG Gladius’s comfort and customisation options give it plenty of appeal ALTHOUGH THE ASUS TUF range is all about durability, it’s the ROG family that contains Asus’s most premium peripherals. That includes the ROG Gladius, a right-handed wired mouse that – among other things – lets you open it up and replace its key parts. Initially the ROG Gladius doesn’t look too out-there, especially as a gaming mouse. It has a relatively high profile, which helps accommodate a range of grip styles, with slightly flared and grooved main buttons for comfortable finger resting. A pair of side buttons sit above the rubberised thumb grip, which is covered in Mayan-inspired patterning; this looks good, and adds texture to what…

£45 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Cooler Master MM830 is an incredibly feature-rich mouse that doesn’t forget about the basics of comfort IT MIGHT NOT have the more overtly quirky shape of the Contour Unimouse, but the Cooler Master MM830 packs a lot of unusual hardware into what at first resembles a straightforward gaming mouse. Instead of a two-set of conventional side buttons, it has a gamepad-style, vertically oriented D-pad, and next to this is an integrated OLED display. This is a similar concept, if lower in spec, to the built-in screen of the Asus ROG Ryuo 240 CPU watercooler (Shopper 375). Straight out of the box, it just shows the manufacturer logo and slogan, but you can write your own messages and even have it show small images; a…

£14 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Made from bamboo, the SG-MU1055-N is both eco-friendly and extremely affordable, although that cheapness brings cutbacks GOING GREEN, WHERE computers are concerned, usually comes down to limiting usage and installing more energy-efficient components. Environmental concerns rarely affect the more general construction of PCs and PC parts, which is why the SG-MU1055-N is such an interesting little mouse. The entire outer shell – from the main bodywork to the left- and right-click buttons and the segmented base – is made of bamboo. Anyone wanting to cut down on their plastic usage, and subsequent waste, should take note: this mouse is almost unique in that most of it will compost and biodegrade, not to mention the fact that less plastic needs to be produced in the first…

£140 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT The SK650’s alluring design and vast customisation qualities are let down by a low-profile key setup that doesn’t quite work THE SK650 IS something we’ve spent years clamouring for: a sharp and slimline office keyboard, with the fast and satisfying mechanical key operation of a good gaming keyboard. It has square chiclet keys in the broad style of the Microsoft Surface Keyboard or Apple Magic Keyboard, as well as their compact take on the full-size form factor, but underneath the caps are special low-profile versions of linear Cherry MX Red switches. GET DOWN This isn’t just a case of using thinner keycaps, as the Roccat Vulcan 120 Aimo does. Here, the switches themselves are smaller, which allows for a couple of big differences to most…

£115 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT Thinner keycaps and superb mechanical switches propel this RGB keyboard to greatness EVER SINCE WE first tried the Vulcan series at Computex 2018 in Taipei, we knew Roccat was on to something special – and it’s no small feat for a trio of keyboards to stand out among the tech industry’s most powerful and ambitious new hardware of the day. It took months for these peripherals – the Vulcan 80, Vulcan 100 Aimo and Vulcan 120 Aimo – to finally arrive in the UK, but the wait was worth it. From their slimline, half-weight keycaps to Roccat’s custom mechanical Titan switches, the Vulcan series deserves credit for making a concept as familiar as the mechanical gaming keyboard seem exciting and fresh. Having had only limited…

Dealing with the GDPR means getting in touch with a company. Many larger companies already have tools where you can download your data, including Facebook (tinyurl.com/380privacyfeature), Apple (privacy.apple.com), Google (myaccount.google.com/dashboard) and Microsoft (account.microsoft.com/privacy). For other companies, you’ll need to get in touch directly to find out where to address your request. If you think that your data is being misused or processed unlawfully, then your first port of call should be with the company. With the right to access your data, you can find out what the company holds on you, and the proof that the company can process your data. For example, if you’re getting marketing emails from a company that you don’t know, then you can ask for proof that you should be receiving the communications. If there’s no…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Habla usted ebook? I recently suffered a big theft where many things, including my PC systems, were stolen. The thieves have long been caught and charged, but the case has been proceeding very slowly. I’m told this isn’t unusual here in Spain. Meanwhile, I’m ready to publish the fourth edition of my book, Motoring in Spain. I’m trying to prepare it on a new PC, to publish as an ebook rather than in print. I don’t remember if you’ve published an in-depth article on how to do this, but I could do with some help. My main questions concern how I can sell the book, how I encrypt it to prevent it being copied, and the easiest way to get the book into the hands…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Home help @ With impeccable timing, the August issue of Computer Shopper dropped on to my mat the day after I decided to bite the bullet and get myself a digital assistant set up. Sadly for me, I just bought the rival Google Home system. Is there any chance you could repeat your Alexa feature, but this time using Google Home? Mark Painter • We’ll definitely offer a similar usage guide for Google Home in a future issue. We picked Amazon Alexa for our first feature as it’s currently more widely deployed in the UK, but with the rapid growth in voice assistants and smart speakers, we’re sure there are many Shopper readers who would also be interested in using or have already invested in the Google version. Don’t…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk I will rely on a mixture of jetlag and beer to pinpoint my biographer’s most vulnerable moment, exploit it and try to convert the final chapter of his book into a free advert for my latest project I AM A genius. I am a visionary. I am one of the world’s greatest computer entertainment pioneers. And more, much more than this, I did it my way. Am I delusional? Am I making idle boasts? Not at all. It must all be true, because it says so right here in this proposal for a biography of my life and work in computer entertainment. And it’s not any old biography of the vanity publishing ilk. Oh no, this is a real-deal biography all about my…

5G finally begins to roll out across UK cities SAY WHAT? IT’S ABOUT TIME, is probably the first thought that pops into you mind when you hear that 5G has actually arrived after years of speculation, teasing and forecasting. But 5G is finally here. EE was the first UK network off the blocks, with its 5G service launching at the end of May across six cities – Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, London and Manchester – with more set to follow as 2019 rolls on. Vofafone then switched on its 5G network on 3rd July in seven cities, with 12 other urban areas expected to be covered by the end of the year. Three is set to launch its 5G network in August – it might even be here by the…

£699 •From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT If you can cope with mechanical storage, the C 24 is the best-value AIO system around WE’RE STILL IN search of the ultimate budget all-in-one PC; the Acer Aspire S 24 (Shopper 371) and Medion Akoya E23401 (Shopper 376) were both decent attempts, but low display quality and sluggish storage held them back from must-have status. It would therefore be fair to look at the new Aspire C 24 with scepticism, as it’s almost a combination of the two. Obviously, it shares a brand with the Aspire S 24, but it looks almost suspiciously similar to the Akoya E23401, especially with the rectangular USB webcam being magnetically perched on top. This also has the same screen size, resolution and CPU as both AIOs – 24in, 1,920x1,080…

£2,880 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT There are some slip-ups, but the new Blade 15 is a mostly worthy successor to an all-time classic EVER SINCE IT launched in 2018, the slim yet powerful Razer Blade 15 (Shopper 370) has been one of our favourite gaming laptops. Hardware marches on, however, and it’s time for a new version to potentially take the old model’s place. Other than gaining a fraction of a millimetre of depth, it’s the same skinny size: 355x235x17.8mm, weighing in at 2.21kg. For a laptop with such formidable internal specs, which include an Intel Core i7-9750H CPU and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 Max-Q graphics, it’s remarkably compact. This is partly helped by how the 15.6in display is surrounded by the tiniest of bezels. The black aluminium chassis looks…

£90 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT As an SSD alone, it’s slow and far too expensive, but the Neo Storage’s built-in ports make it one of a kind THINK OF ACCESSORIES you’d want for a laptop and, after a case and a mouse, two that would probably pop into your head are a USB hub and an external storage drive. The former is becoming increasingly necessary, as ultraportables continue to ditch full-size USB connectivity in favour of smaller USB Type-C ports that can help keep chassis dimensions slim. External storage also remains a cost-effective tool for ensuring you have adequate space, as upgrading from a 256GB laptop to a 512GB model can add hundreds of pounds to the price. Combining the two is therefore a rather brilliant idea, the kind that…

£150 • From uk.creative.com VERDICT These headphones use innovative tech for a thrilling 3D effect, but it doesn’t work with everything CREATIVES’S LATEST WIRELESS headphones are the first to use its ‘Super X-Fi’ technology. Instead of settling for a regular two-channel stereo signal, Super X-Fi uses acoustic modelling to simulate a multispeaker surround-sound experience by using just two 50mm neodymium drivers. The result, Creative says, is a tangibly three-dimensional listening experience. It’s quite a claim, but with some clever technical wizardry, Creative makes it work astonishingly well. You can even get Super X-Fi working through a thumb-sized amplifier for Android phones and tablets, into which you simply plug in your own headphones, but the SXFI Air have it built-in. The apparent downside is that these headphones are a lot less…

£1,699 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT This TV offers the best balance between price and performance in the entire Samsung QLED range SAMSUNG FRONT-LOADED last year’s QLED range to a frightening extent. The expensive range-toppers were groaning under the weight of their own extensive specifications, but the QLED TVs further down the range got humdrum pretty quickly. That’s changed in 2019. The current Q90R flagships are still packing every nicety imaginable, but their lesser stablemates now enjoy a few more goodies. In fact, the Q80R series might be the sweet-spot of the entire QLED line-up. This looks to be where the balance between features, value and performance is perfectly poised. At this level, however, value is relative: £1,699 for the 4K resolution, 55in QE55Q80R is not an inconsiderable sum, so it’s…

£105 • From shop.vodafone.co.uk VERDICT While not quite perfect, the Smart V10 is too good – and too affordable – to be overlooked VODAFONE’S PHONES HAVE often been reliable choices for budget buyers, and the new Smart V10 continues the same wallet-friendly approach, while adopting a design that looks almost as eye-catching as a premium flagship. It’s made of plastic, and the rear camera housing and side buttons are chunky, but otherwise the Smart V10 is well made for the money. Its glossy plastic chassis and silver-tinted edges look nice, and it feels solid in the hand. It’s charged via Micro USB instead of USB Type-C, which limits the speed at which the battery is replenished, but you don’t often see speedy charging this far down the price scale. The…

£32 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT With its party tricks proving unconvincing, the TUF Gaming M5 is left in the shadow of better mice WHEN THERE’S VERY little price difference between the TUF Gaming M5 and its Asus cousin, the ROG Gladius, it begs the question of how distinct these two mice actually are. As it happens, they’re very different indeed, and not always in ways that favour the slightly more expensive TUF model. Whereas the ROG Gladius is a sturdy mouse that’s big enough to use with any kind of grip, the TUF Gaming M5 takes a more compact approach, at the cost of making itself feel a bit airy, with claw-style and fingertip grips clearly favoured over palm grips. More positively, this is an ambidextrous mouse, giving another option…

£27 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s based on a decades-old design, but the Classic Intellimouse is ready to meet modern demands ANYONE WHO SPENT the turn of the millennium in either an office or their school’s computer room will recognise the Microsoft Intellimouse. It was part of a series of cheap yet well-made peripherals from the Windows firm, and that particular combination of qualities ensured that this black and grey mouse would be the bulk-bought PC rodent of choice for institutions of all kinds, not to mention all the home users. The very first Intellimouse even had the distinction of introducing the scroll wheel to an unfamiliar public, all the way back in 1996, and we can all see how important that little piece of hardware turned out to be.…

£120 • From www.game.co.uk VERDICT Comfortable and well made, the ROG Strix Flare offers an unrivalled range of customisation options ROG, OR REPUBLIC of Gamers, is by far the boldest and brashest of Asus’s consumer sub-brands. The ROG Strix Flare shows why: it’s a full-size keyboard and then some, complete with full RGB lighting that doesn’t just cover the key backlighting but shines out from the sides as well. There’s even a shard of see-through acrylic lodged in the top; more on that later. Beneath all the visual pizzazz, however, is actually a very practical, very usable keyboard. For instance, the underlying key switches are Cherry MX Reds – quite likely the most popular mechanical switches for gaming thanks to their smooth, linear action and less noisy, click-less noise profile.…

£16 • From www.thepihut.com VERDICT It’s not much good as a day-to-day desktop partner, but this dirt-cheap keyboard is agile and well connected THE RASPBERRY PI series of single board micro PCs has always offered respectable compatibility with Windows keyboards, despite them not being Windows computers themselves. In other words, if you’re embarking on a Pi project, you don’t need to spend extra on proprietary peripherals, and should be able to get by with any HID (Human Interface Device) wired or Bluetooth keyboard. Even so, to accompany the release of the new Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (Shopper 379), the Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched its very own set of peripherals. This includes the Raspberry Pi Keyboard, a slim little tenkeyless number that costs only £16. Despite its apparent lack…

£108 • From www.novatech.co.uk VERDICT The optional software needs work, but as a plug-and-play mech board, the X1 RGB succeeds JUST FROM THE last few pages, it’s clear that there’s no shortage of good options if you want a mechanical keyboard and are willing to pay £100 or more. The X1 RGB adds yet another, if from an unlikely source: Thermaltake is much more prolific in the world of cases and coolers than peripherals. Perhaps this lack of pedigree, compared to manufacturers such as Asus, Razer and Roccat, is why the X1 RGB takes a relatively conservative approach to design. Besides the RGB backlighting, it looks plain, and it’s not the sleekest of keyboards, either. Like the ROG Strix Flare, there’s a lot of empty space around the top, left…

✘ Don’t share personal information that can be used against you, such as your full date of birth, address, mother’s maiden name and the like ✘ Don’t add friends that you don’t recognise, as that can give them more access to your personal information ✘ Don’t sign into other websites using your Facebook account ✔ Do check your privacy settings to make sure that they haven’t been changed ✔ Do turn off location tracking on your account unless you want your posts to say where you were ✔ Do turn on two-factor authentication to make it harder for hackers to get into your account…

Our homes are getting smarter, but with that comes an additional security threat. It was reported recently that Ring, an Amazon company, was letting employees view footage from video streams, including from inside people’s homes, under the guise of advancing computer recognition. However, Ring has said that it has never done this, and that it only ever looked at publicly shared videos via its Neighbors app, which is currently only available in the US. Nest has also come under fire recently for a bug in its cameras that allowed previous owners to continue viewing a feed even after deregistering the camera from their account. The bug was linked to the way in which the camera feed was shared with the Wink smart home hub, which maintained the connection even after…

Big data is proving to be a huge threat to privacy. Big data is, quite simply, the processing of data stored in volumes too large for traditional analytics tools. The processing of vast sums of data lets companies find previously unknown correlations. For example, in the US, Walmart learned that when there were hurricane warnings, it sold more strawberry Pop-Tarts. As innocent as that example is, there are other uses of big data to learn more about you. Back in 2012, Target could tell with a high degree of accuracy, based on the products that were being bought, that a customer was pregnant. Most big companies are already using big data heavily to influence their decisions and improve advertising targeting based on what you’ve looked at, your interests, location and more.…

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers clive@computershopper.co.uk CHROME OS WAS originally launched by Google in 2011 as the pinnacle of cloud computing. If all your apps and data were stored on servers in the digital ether, why would you need fast, expensive hardware? You could grab a cheap laptop, install a glorified web client and get to work. Chrome OS has evolved since then, with richer app support and a wealth of software that doesn’t need a constant internet connection, but it’s still a friendly, slick operating system that runs on very modest hardware. It’s no surprise to learn Chrome OS has many clones, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. AS WE’VE SAID, Google doesn’t offer its…

You need friends @ The letter about making passwords available to the people who would manage your affairs if suddenly incapable (or dead) struck a chord (Letters, Shopper 379). But access to all your passwords is a tricky business. So, empower two trusted friends to access your passwords, to be used when both feel it’s appropriate. Put your passwords in a text document, and save it in an encrypted form. The password on that file is what I call the master password in what follows. Give each trustee only half of your master password; carelessness with a shared part becomes less damaging. What if one of the trusted friends isn’t available when the master password is needed? The following minor tweak solves that problem: give three people a way to…

Software guru and Shopper legend letters@computershopper.co.uk A NUMBER OF news items about smart speakers such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, or assistants such as Apple Siri or Microsoft Cortana, have got me thinking this month about just how private our homes are if we have voice-activated technology. It all started with an email that caught my eye. The subject line said, ‘Alexa, monitor my heart’. The body of the email then went on to explain that researchers have developed a contactless cardiac arrest AI system for smart speakers. Almost 500,000 Americans die each year from cardiac arrest, and if they can get CPR quickly, they stand a much better chance of surviving. However, that requires someone to be there to carry out the CPR. I don’t want a smart…

£2,800 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT An uncompromising 240Hz gaming laptop, the ROG Strix Scar III muscles its way to greatness 240Hz REFRESH RATES recently became the pinnacle of desktop monitor speed, and now the ROG Strix Scar is the first laptop to have such a rapidly-refreshing display built right in. At least it does if you buy the 1.5in model we tested; the 17in version has a less groundbreaking but still very fast 144Hz display. Our £2,800 spec also includes an Intel Core i9-9880H CPU, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 graphics. It’s not a super-slim gaming laptop like the ROG Zephyrus S GX701 (Shopper 377), but at 2.57kg the ROG Strix Scar III isn’t too unwieldy, even if lugging around both it and the…

£290 • From www.amd.com VERDICT AMD finally claims the mid-range GPU crown with this brilliantly powerful, and surprisingly cheap, Navi card IN MANY WAYS the RX 5700 is everything you’d expect from the lesser model in a two-strong GPU launch. Where the RX 5700 XT (page 18) is grooved and interesting-looking, this is a plain grey box without so much as a backplate to cover the circuit board. Where the RX 5700 XT is running at its full capacity, the RX 5700 is intentionally hobbled with a lower core count and clock speeds than its GPU can allow for. And yet, of these two graphics cards – the long-awaited Navi line-up that introduces AMD’s revamped RDNA architecture – the RX 5700 ends up as an arguably even better deal than…

£100 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A few issues with motion detection aside, the Kasa Cam KC200 is a well-priced outdoor camera with great image quality THE LAST TP-LINK camera we tested, the Kasa Cam 120 (Shopper 378), was a well-priced indoor camera. Now the company is back with the Kasa Cam KC200, an outdoor security camera that costs just £100. The KC200 shares a lot of specs with its indoor brother, including the same 130° wide-angle lens – enough to capture most of a garden - and a 1080p sensor. The difference is in the camera body, with this model getting an IP65 waterproof rating, which means it’s dust-tight and protected against rain. HELD CAPTIVE To waterproof the housing, TP-Link has opted for a captive USB, moulded into the rear…

£229 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Part soundbar, part smart speaker, and amazingly good value, the Command Bar will be an excellent addition to your living room THE MODERN LOUNGE is inundated with remote controls. Remotes for your TV, remotes for your speakers, for your set-top box, home theatre receiver, Blu-ray player, robot vacuum and streaming sticks. And, no matter what you do, they never seem to be where you need them when you want to sit down, kick back and relax. This is a problem that the Command Bar aims to solve. It’s a soundbar with built-in Amazon Alexa support, so you can ditch the remote, including the one that comes in the box, in favour of voice controls. The big bonus is that you can also use your voice…

£1,240 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Well priced but without sacrificing quality, Sony’s pint-sized mirrorless camera packs a punch SONY’S MARCH ON the mirrorless camera industry continues with the A6400, a much more affordable relative to the professional A7 and A9 models. At £1,240 it’s not entry-level per se, but that money gets you a lightweight wisp of a 24.2-megapixel camera that offers 424 autofocus points and can shoot up to a speedy 11fps, not to mention the 18-135mm kit lens. Body-only, it’s only £949. Even with this lens, the A6400 is wonderfully compact: at just 120mm wide and 67mm tall, the body is barely any bigger than a high-end compact camera. It’s easy to handle; the front grip could stand to be a little deeper, perhaps, but it’s comfortable and…

£849 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s the first major smartphone with a 21:9 screen, and the Xperia 1 has many more quality features beneath the surface IF THERE’S ONE thing to take away from 2019’s long list of smartphone launches, it’s that displays are becoming a major battleground. Foldable screens are on the horizon and HDR support is spreading, as manufacturers search for new ways to make their expensive glass slabs stand out. Sony’s Xperia 1 is a perfect example. It has a huge 6.5in screen, running at 4K resolution and adopting a 21:9 aspect ratio, so when held horizontally, it’s in ultrawide territory. NEW HEIGHTS This has the knock-on effect of making the Xperia 1 incredibly tall, which can make it awkward to use at first. It’s a real…

£90 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its smart hinged design, the Unimouse’s balance of comfort and customisation is worth paying for REPETITIVE STRAIN INJURY, or RSI, is the bane of many a regular PC user. Since there’s no instant fix, and recovery can take weeks, the best way to deal with RSI and other computing-induced ailments is to take a preventative approach. Setting up your desk comfortably and performing regular stretches and wrist exercises are both essential, even if you’ve never suffered RSI before. However, for users who are particularly vulnerable, as well as those who are already afflicted, there are ergonomic peripherals such as the Contour Unimouse. This is a vertical mouse, which means that while the base still has a sensor facing on to the desk – like…

£30 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT The MT550 impresses with proficient design and the ability to control up to four devices at once WIRELESS MICE ARE a mixed blessing. The lack of a cable makes them highly portable, and even if you’re always at the same desk there’s an argument to be made in favour of cutting cables. At the same time, the risk of running out of battery in the middle of an important task is real, and if the mouse runs on AA or AAA batteries instead of being rechargeable, you have to factor in additional running costs. The slight delay in sending and receiving a Bluetooth or radio signal also means wireless mice aren’t as suited for competitive gaming as their wired equivalents. The Rapoo MT550 doesn’t escape…

£97 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT Loud keys and some missing features take the sheen off an otherwise responsive and durable keyboard WHEN A KEYBOARD manufacturer comes up with its own mechanical switches, the results might be an improvement but conceptually won’t be too different to what came before. By contrast, the TUF Gaming K7’s switches mix things up by replacing the usual mechanism of registering inputs – two metal pieces coming into contact – with a tiny beam of light. When you press down hard enough to meet the actuation point, the beam of light is broken, recording the input up to 25 times faster than a conventional mechanical switch, according to Asus. Even if that’s accurate, most mechanical keyboards are already so fast and responsive that the difference is…

£100 • From www.razer.com VERDICT Razer gets serious – and successful – with a compact mechanical keyboard for work, not just play RAZER HAS MADE many great gaming keyboards – we’re particularly fond of the BlackWidow Chroma v2 (Shopper 359) – but the BlackWidow Lite is very different. It’s Razer’s first crack at applying its mechanical gaming expertise to a workminded office keyboard. This shift towards a more professional product is made manifest in several ways. The most obvious is the design. Most Razer keyboards are big, bold planks of plastic and metal, dripping with multicoloured RGB backlighting. The BlackWidow Lite, by contrast, is a slim and light tenkeyless board, with a barely visible Razer logo just above the arrow keys. The only backlighting, meanwhile, is a tasteful, strait-laced white,…

If you want to search the internet and don’t want to be tracked, then you can try DuckDuckGo. This search engine promises not to track you, will block tracking adverts and stores no information on what you’re looking for. DuckDuckGo still has adverts, although these are only based on what you’ve searched for, and the data is not passed on to advertisers; you’ll never see an advert based on what you looked at on another website. The downside is that DuckDuckGo isn’t quite as good a search engine as Google. Search for ‘Computer Shopper magazine’ and the second search result is for the US brand, PC Mag; on Google, the search results are all about this very magazine, as it should be. Still, if you’ve had enough of Google and…

One of the most annoying things about using the internet is the way that adverts will follow you around. You know the type: you look at a drill to buy on a website, then for weeks after, you’re shown the advert for that drill, regardless of whether you bought it or not. This kind of targeted advertising is largely performed by tracking you using cookies. When you look at a product on a shop website, that information is saved by an ad network. Next time you open another site, the same ad network can show you an advert for the product that you were just looking at. It’s this type of tracking ad that follows you around the internet. Stopping this kind of tracking requires a multi-level approach, which we’ll…

Data breaches are becoming increasingly bigger and more severe, with a host of companies leaking your private data due to lax security. In 2018 alone, it was estimated that five billion personal records were leaked. It’s a frustrating statistic, as you can’t keep everything private and, at some point, you have to interact with companies that will store your information digitally. Fortunately, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force last year. This was designed to dish out tougher penalties to companies that don’t store data securely, while giving us more control over our data. As an example of how well the GDPR is working, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) says that it will fine BA a record £183m (1.5% of the company’s worldwide turnover in 2017)…

A virtual private network (VPN) is a great privacy tool. It creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your computer and an endpoint on the internet. This tunnel means that anyone between you and the endpoint can’t see what’s going on, so your ISP or hotspot provider can’t monitor which websites you’re looking at. When you use a VPN and connect to a website or other service, it appears as though you’re in the same location as the endpoint, so you can even pretend to be in a different country to bypass some restrictions, such as watching UK TV when you’re abroad. As such, VPNs are a handy way to keep your anonymity online and stop some spying, but they’re not the full picture. As we mention in this feature, cookies…

There’s no denying that the fact that at the time there were no electronics – which only came into being with the invention of the triode valve, or the Audion as he called it, by Lee de Forest in 1906 – would have been a major hindrance to the further development of Babbage’s Analytical Engine, had it ever been built. Indeed, this conclusion was drawn by both the experts we’ve quoted on the possibility of Victorian computing. And without electronics, the fastest we’d have ever got would have been about 200 instructions per minute, the pinnacle of performance achieved mechanically. Or would it? In this feature we’ve considered the mechanical computer and the electronic computer, but we’ve ignored the possibility of an intermediate electromechanical machine. And it’s here that we…

ATARI GEARS UP FOR LAUNCH OF ITS NEW VCS The long-awaited Atari VCS retro console should find its way into gamers’ hands in December, although if you didn’t back this retro-inspired machine during its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, you’ll have to wait a while longer. That’s because Atari is pencilling in the official retail launch for March but, with an all-in price of $389 (£300) for the 8GB machine including a joystick and controller, the extra thinking time may come in handy. On the face of it, the console looks rather attractive, since it not only comes with 100 classic games, it also apes the style of the original Atari VCS from 1977. But while you can boot it into Windows 10 or Linux via a USB stick and take advantage…

There are other quirks that you might appreciate. We found that CloudReady wouldn’t let us use the side of our test laptop’s trackpad to scroll. Instead, it resorted to the Chrome OS standard of requiring a two-finger slide to scroll. Once we’d got used to this, we found it more useful as the two-finger scroll can scroll left and right as well as up and down. A two-finger tap brings up the right-click menu too, so we quickly found ourselves not needing to use the laptop’s two physical buttons.…