I have a soft spot for gadgets that do one thing well, and the Pieni III has already caught my eye. It's a tiny digital camera from Japanese brand Kenko Tokina that looks like a miniature old-school film camera, weighs just 18g and is small enough to wear around your neck.

Available in four colours – Soda, Strawberry, Milk and Black – it looks more like a cute accessory than a serious bit of camera kit. But it does take photos and record video with sound, so it's more than just a pretty little trinket.

The clever bit is that there's no screen or viewfinder. You point it roughly at whatever catches your eye, press the shutter and trust your instincts. You'll only discover how the picture turned out when you transfer it to your phone or computer. That means wonky framing and unexpected details are part of the fun.

Lo-fi photos and a few clever extras

The Pieni III isn't going to replace your smartphone camera. Its tiny 0.32-megapixel sensor produces low-detail images, saved at 1440 x 960 pixels through digital interpolation. The results have a soft, grainy, early-digital look that's a big part of the appeal.

It can also shoot video with audio at 720 x 480 resolution and 30 frames per second. There's a magnet built into the back, too, letting you attach it to compatible metal surfaces for hands-free recording. A neck strap comes in the box, while USB-C handles charging and lets you transfer files directly to a compatible smartphone using the supplied cable.

You'll need to buy a microSDHC card separately, and the camera supports cards from 4GB to 32GB. The Pieni III launched in Japan on 9 October for ¥6,600 (around £33), although UK availability and pricing aren't confirmed.

For a camera that's more about capturing the feeling of a moment than producing a technically perfect image, I can see the appeal. And at just 18g, I'd happily keep this on me for those little moments that usually pass by without a picture.

I'm all for finding ways to spend less time staring at a screen, but I'm not entirely convinced that building an entirely new phone is the answer. That's the idea behind ADHD ONE, a gloriously chunky handset from Cologne-based designer Kevin Noki that looks like it's escaped from the 1980s.

The name stands for Anti Distraction Handset Device, and its purpose is pretty straightforward. Rather than replacing your smartphone, it connects to an iPhone over Bluetooth, allowing you to make and receive calls while leaving your actual phone tucked away in a drawer or another room.

It has a physical 19-key keypad, a small OLED display, a microphone and a speaker, but none of the apps, social media feeds or notifications that make modern phones so difficult to put down. You can also use your iPhone's Do Not Disturb settings to decide which contacts are allowed to get through.

There is, of course, a catch. ADHD ONE has no independent mobile connection, so your iPhone still needs to be nearby and within Bluetooth range. It's less a replacement for your phone than a way to make calls without having the usual distractions within reach.

3D-print your own retro handset

The ADHD ONE s that is not just a retro-looking shell around a modern phone. Noki has designed the handset from scratch, using Autodesk Fusion to create the enclosure before 3D-printing its components.

Inside, a Raspberry Pi Pico handles the device's functions, while a Bluetooth module takes care of call audio. There's also a rechargeable battery, charging controller and custom circuit board, all packed into that wonderfully oversized housing.

The design comes with a few customisation options, too. You can choose between three speaker grille styles and three antenna designs, including the sort of oversized aerial that makes the whole thing look like a prop from an old action film. There's even an alternative housing without an antenna, although that feels like missing half the fun.

If you fancy making one yourself, Noki sells the digital build files for €29.99 (around £26). The package includes the 3D-printable STL files, firmware, circuit board manufacturing files, a parts list and a quick-start guide. You'll need to source the electronic components and do the assembly yourself, though, and the files are licensed for personal use.

So, is this a clever way to cut down on smartphone distractions or an elaborate solution to a problem that could be solved by putting your phone in another room? Honestly, probably a bit of both.

The fact that it's been over six years since the launch of the five-star WH-1000XM4 from Sony is a little mind-bending, not least because they remain, anecdotally, the headphones I see on actual heads in public more than any other model in that time.

Their popularity has been huge, clearly, and Sony has been open about how successful they've proven – which explains why it's brought them back in a new guise.

The headphones' design never really went out of style, and while the 1000XM lineup has moved on to a new look, Sony is rolling the clock back with the new WH-1000XM4C, a revised version of the XM4.

The C doesn't change as much as you might think, though. It has some familiar, excellent features – but now at a mid-range asking price. Here's how it's held up to sustained use in my testing.

Price and Availability

The WH-1000XM4C arrived on the market in September 2026, fresh from Sony revealing them, and came in at a price of £219.99 in the UK, $299.99 in the US, and €249.99 in Europe.

That sees them land in the upper reaches of the mid-range market, at a time when headphone makers are pushing into more and more expensive territory for their flagship models (Sony included with its Collexion top-tier model).

For some added context, though, you can currently grab the next generation on from the original XM4, the Sony WH-1000XM5, for £199 on Amazon UK – so Sony's pricing lineup is likely to be a little confusing for the foreseeable future, with various generations of headphones getting different discounts during sales.

Design and Features

This isn't the first time I've tested headphones that really don't look at all different from the generation they're replacing, but it might just be the single most invisible set of changes I've ever encountered.

The WH-1000XM4C looks like the WH-1000XM4 in literally every way, from its dimensions, to how it folds, and where its various ports and buttons are located.

It's made from the sort of soft-touch recycled plastic that Sony has been using for years, and you can grab it in a few colours – black, beige and purplish-pink. Whichever you choose, you'll get a lightweight set of headphones (at 253g) made almost entirely from that plastic.

This gives them the feeling of robustness that can come from sticking to simpler materials, and they really don't feel in danger of breaking as you fold them, stick them in a bag, or treat them however you like.

That said, I shouldn't bury the lede here – they're actually not as durable as I'd hope for, still lacking any form of IP resistance rating, meaning there's no official weatherproofing.

The headband is old-school style, meaning it only has cushioning in the centre, but the earcups themselves are pretty plush and feature a few controls – in addition to the brand's beloved touch controls, which I'll talk about further down.

On the right earcup, all you'll find is a USB-C charging port, but the left has a 3.5mm jack, a power button and a toggle for turning active noise-cancelling (ANC) on and off.

There's a lot to like about this design, though, and it bears repeating that it's already stood the test of time – and over 10 million sales – for a reason. It's super comfortable, and has enough flex to feel durable, even before you consider the hardshell case.

This case comes in the box and it's impressively small thanks to the folding mechanism. It makes it all the more mad in retrospect that the XM5 didn't fold down in the same way, honestly.

In terms of features, though, what's new? Well, possibly the biggest change comes in the battery department, and it might partly explain why this headphone is being launched at all.

To comply with EU regulations, this new model has a user-replaceable battery that's a little less capacious than the old one, so that sees battery life shrink a little to 27-ish hours with ANC turned on, down from 30 hours before. That makes the battery life "solid" rather than terrific, although you can boost it to 34 hours with ANC off.

Sony isn't pointing at much else in terms of changes, though, which means crucially that you're getting basically the exact same headphones as you would have a few years ago.

That means the ANC is on the same level, and the hardware behind the sound is the same, although the tuning has been tweaked a little.

In terms of codec support, you do get LDAC, but not aptX, while Sony's in-house DSEE upscaler is also here if you want it. The Sound Connect app gives you access to an expanded 10-band EQ system, too.

All of this makes the WH-1000XM4C genuinely quite fascinating – are they a new set of headphones, or are they not? Either way, the feature set is simultaneously retro and entirely appropriate for their new price tag, so there aren't any objections on this front.

Sound and Performance

Slipping on the XM4Cs was a bit like stepping back a few years, which is no surprise, but it's worth remembering that back in 2020 these were rightly considered flagship-level headphones. This means that while their sound has been surpassed more recently, they're still extremely impressive and musical headphones.

As always, I listened to a variety of material in my testing, and found the XM4Cs handled all of it really capably. Justice's new track for GTA VI, Flower in a Hurricane, had all the 80s verve and depth I was looking for, for instance.

Django Django's recent single Cameos was, by contrast, delicate and acoustic, with the right amount of tonality and character.

Michael Kiwanuka's Small Changes underlined that latter point, with a lovely sense of presence and detail – although it's fair to point out that swapping back to the XM6s that I reviewed last year did provide a small boost on both fronts.

I also find the XM6s more comfortable, which perhaps isn't a surprise given their extra development time comparatively. The XM4Cs are still great to wear, but their design does centre some of their weight in the middle of the headband, where the cushioning is, making for more of a pressure point in that spot.

They're still phenomenally usable, though, especially with how well they fold up – a feature that makes the hardshell case feel optional for plenty of outings, rather than an essential to keep them safe in a bag.

Much like the overall sound quality, I have no complaints about the noise cancellation in the XM4Cs, but I can also acknowledge that it's been improved on since their first release.

These headphones do a very solid job of blocking out background noise, especially the drones of engines or public transport, but swapping to the XM6 – which have three times the microphones – again makes the upgrade pretty clear.

The story here is really that a flagship does indeed start to feel like a fair mid-range option after a few years, and that's normally just a matter of discounts and price cuts, rather than a re-release like this one from Sony.

This is basically just a rubber-stamping of what we already knew about how the XM4 had aged, and in that light it's a pretty honest approach.

Verdict

So, what does the WH-1000XM4 look like in 2026? Well, like the WH-1000XM4C – a set of headphones that underline how changing very little can sometimes be the right play. I think that despite their superb success over the years, though, this new reissue does indicate that some things have changed since they came out.

Their design remains great, but refinements have made it more comfortable since, and it's a very similar situation where sound quality is concerned. For this price, they're a great buy, and I'm arguably most excited to see what sort of price they're listed for in six months' time and more – these could be a Black Friday classic for a few years.

Still, in the here and now I think the WH-1000XM4C are a great option for those looking to stick with Sony's most tried-and-tested choices, even if some of its more recent launches have actually raised the bar past what these headphones can now muster.

Also Consider

Well, there's one very obvious comparison to make here, and it's one that I've made a few times in my review – the current reigning Sony flagship is the WH-1000XM6, and in a straight shootout it wins on most points. Its sound is beefier, its ANC is more comprehensive, and it's more comfortable, while also being a whole heap more expensive. That makes it the best choice if your budget is actually a bit higher than the WH-1000XM4Cs' level.

If you're sticking in the mid-range, though, I'd point you towards Nothing's Headphone (1), which I think does things very differently – in a good way. Its noise-cancelling is pretty comparable to Sony's (despite being years newer), but its design and controls are polar opposites. It's a palate cleanser of a headphone, and won't be for everyone, but when the sales hit, it's a genuine bargain.

I spend enough time staring at screens as it is, so a wearable that reminds me to take a break without adding another screen to my life sounds very appealing. That's the idea behind Arc, a silver bracelet from Belgian design studio Futurewave that gives your wrist a gentle vibration when you've spent too long on your phone.

Arc has you use a portal on your phone to select the apps you want to monitor and set a time limit, like 30 minutes of uninterrupted use. Once you hit that threshold, the bracelet delivers a discreet pulse. Keep scrolling and it'll give you one more nudge before falling silent and starting a new interval.

There's no display, no audible alarm and no running tally of your screen time to make you feel guilty. Futurewave says the system doesn't store usage history or require an account or subscription, either. It's a simple reminder to break the spell of the endless scroll, rather than another app demanding your attention.

Smart tech hidden inside a sculptural silver bracelet

What makes Arc great is that it doesn't look like a fitness tracker or another bit of tech strapped to your wrist. Its open, rounded form takes inspiration from the ancient torc, a type of metal ornament worn around the neck or wrist, with an organic shape that draws on everything from rib cages to seed pods.

The bracelet is designed to be cast in Argentium silver, an alloy chosen for its premium finish. Inside, a piezoelectric element produces the vibrations, while a low-power microcontroller handles the Bluetooth connection to your phone. A curved 25mAh battery and flexible circuit board are tucked away within the sculptural design, keeping the technology out of sight.

Futurewave wants Arc to remain a piece of jewellery in its own right, even if the electronics eventually stop working. So, unlike a smartwatch that becomes obsolete when its software or battery gives up, the bracelet could still have a life as a piece of silver jewellery.

There's just one catch, Arc is currently a concept, developed through 3D-printed studies and prototypes, with no confirmed price or release date. That means you can't buy one just yet. But if Futurewave brings it to market, I'd for one be very interested.

It hasn’t taken WiiM all that long to establish itself as a digital audio force to be reckoned with, and it doesn’t take much deductive power to work out why: compact, well-made, affordable products that perform to a standard in excess of the asking price, and a properly sorted ecosystem.

No wonder the company is feeling bold enough to expand into the spatial audio soundbar market. The Bar (and who wouldn’t have wanted to be at the marketing meeting when that model name was decided on?) is a first effort – but it wouldn’t be the only time WiiM has hit the bullseye at its first attempt...

Price & Availability

The WiiM Bar spatial audio soundbar is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it’s priced at £449, while in the United States it sells for $479, and Australia gets it for AU$769.

Sonos may have moved its Beam soundbar upmarket with the launch of the Ultra, but that still leaves the WiiM to face down some very credible alternatives...

Features & What's New?

The WiiM Bar is configured to deliver an impression of 3.0.2-channel spatial audio. Obviously it uses an element of digital signal processing to achieve this, but it also deploys physical drivers pointing in a number of directions to create this sonic character.

So there are three 110 x 52mm ‘racetrack’ mid/bass drivers and three 52mm tweeters deployed across the front surface of the Bar – these take care of the left, right and centre channel information within the soundtrack.

On the top of the soundbar, out near the ends and positioned behind a little perforated section, are a couple of 52mm full-range drivers that are angled up and out in an effort to bring the required ‘height’ to the soundstage.

In an effort to give the sound a little more heft there are four 110 x 50mm passive radiators serving up some low-frequency presence – two face forwards, two face backwards.

These eight powered drivers get an all-in total of 135 watts of Class D amplification to deal with.

Physical inputs are all arranged in a little recess at the back of the chassis. There’s an Ethernet socket and an HDMI eARC input, naturally, and WiiM also provides a USB slot, a 3.5mm analogue input and a digital optical socket.

Wireless connectivity is handled by Bluetooth 5.4 (with SBC, AAC and LC3 codec compatibility) and by triple-band Wi-Fi 6 – which means the ‘Connect’ version of every popular streaming service, Google Cast, internet radio and most other online goodies are easily accessible. Odd, however, is the lack of AirPlay compatibility.

Performance

There’s really only one place to start with a spatial audio soundbar, and that’s with some spatial audio content. And with some Dolby Atmos-soundtracked stuff streaming from one of the world’s more popular services, the WiiM Bar wastes very little time in letting you know what it’s all about.

Fundamentally, that turns out to be punchily robust, impressively dynamic and remarkably positive sound. It’s far from unsubtle, and it's more than happy to ramp up the tension when the going gets especially quiet and creepy – but you somehow know it’s itching to get to the jump-scare, so that it can showcase its remarkable dynamic headroom and low-frequency control.

At the bottom of the frequency range the WiiM is solid, square-edged and weighty. Bass sounds don’t enjoy the same level of detail and variation as information higher up the frequency range, but if it’s a sturdy foundation you want – as well as the outright wallop some many movie soundtracks rely on – you’ve come to the right place.

The midrange projects well, is a sight more detailed than the bottom end, and exists in a nice little pocket of space that the Bar’s soundstaging abilities always earmark for dialogue.

At the top of the frequency range the WiiM attacks with crisp determination – but its treble presence is substantial rather than flimsy, so even during the biggest dynamic upheavals the top end never edges towards ‘hard’ or ‘glassy’.

Oh, and given that 135 watts of power in total is not, on paper, the most encouraging number, WiiM is to be congratulated for making the Bar so vaultingly and effortlessly dynamic. It never sounds stressed when dealing with big chances in volume or intensity and never alters its fundamental sonic character.

The tonal balance is pretty neutral, despite the fact that the lack of variation at the bottom end can make things sound a little warmer than they otherwise would. The control factor of the low-end is good, though, so rhythms in soundtracks (or when streaming music in straight stereo) are realistically expressed.

In fact, the Bar is one of the best pound-for-pound soundbars out there when it comes to music playback. Some of this is to do with the fact that you can enjoy true stereo, produced by just two of the tweeters and two of the mid/bass drivers, if that’s your preference when listening to stereo recordings.

Most soundbars insist on using all their drivers no matter if they’re playing two-channel content, and it’s seldom a good policy. Mostly, though, the quality of music playback is to do with the fact that the WiiM’s balance and direct nature makes for a spirited and engaging account of your music.

When listening to music mixed in Dolby Atmos, though, or to a movie with a spatial audio soundtrack, the WiiM Bar can’t quite hit the literal and metaphorical heights. For all of the space and careful organisation of its soundstaging, it never really manages to position sound up much beyond the top of your TV – even if you really got to town in the ‘height audio’ section of the control app, where a boost of up to 12dB is available for the height channels.

It’s the one rather tentative aspect of the bar’s performance, and it’s unfortunate that it should concern the aspect of performance that many listeners are going to be most preoccupied with.

Design & Usability

WiiM has always kept things neat and tidy where the design of its products is concerned, and at a usefully compact 74 x 1060 x 105mm (HxWxD) the Bar doesn’t look overgrown even when accompanying a TV as titchy as my 48in Philips OLED.

The standard of build and finish is well up to par, the gentle curves at either end of the chassis keep the look nice and friendly, and the main choice of finishes (matte white or the matte black of my review sample) make a bit more sense than the super-refelective gloss black that’s available as a limited edition in some territories.

When it comes to using the Bar, WiiM has supplied more options than are probably necessary. There are four little touch-surfaces on the top of the chassis, for example, which take care of ‘play/pause’, ‘volume up/down’ and input selection.

However, as is key to the design, there's also a 53mm circular display, bursting gently through the top of the soundbar. Here you can also action the same controls as above, and plenty more besides, by using the touch-screen – it puts you in charge of everything from EQ settings to accessing favourites, as well as offering visual confirmation of your actions.

There’s also a little aluminium remote control handset that is a cut above the norm in both look and feel. It covers all the fundamentals of operation, and has a 'mic’ button that can put you in touch with your Amazon Alexa voice assistant if you so desire.

Best of all, though, is the ‘WiiM Home’ control app that’s free for iOS and Android. The stable, logical and extensive nature of its app has been one of the (many) reasons WiiM has achieved this level of credibility in double-quick time – and here it’s just as useful and just as thorough as it is in every other implementation.

The app lets you integrate your favourite music streaming service(s), internet radio providers and what-have-you. It lets you build, quickly and easily, multi-channel and/or multi-room systems using other WiiM products – if you want your Bar to be accompanied by rear speakers and a subwoofer, it’s the work of a moment once you’ve powered them up.

The app's got a whole lot of sonic adjustability options in the form of both EQ and PEQ interfaces, height channel adjustment and so on, too. There’s even a very effective room correction EQ that uses your smartphone’s mic to help the soundbar calibrate itself to your specific environment.

So if it’s wide-ranging and granular control of the performance of your soundbar/speaker you’re after, and you want it from an interface that’s intuitive and rock-solid, don’t look any further.

Big, bold sound from a usefully compact and relatively affordable spatial audio soundbar? Numerous options when it comes to incorporating the soundbar in question into a multi-room or multi-channel system? A real facility with music and one of the very best control interfaces in the business?

All the above applies to the WiiM Bar, and it serves to carry it most of the way – if it could be as assertive where the ‘spatial’ aspect of 'spatial audio' was concerned, it could become a default choice. As it stands, though, it needs to be judged as a fine first effort and the sort of thing that committed WiiM owners will love in a multi-room setup.

Also Consider

The is the opposite of the WiiM Bar, at least when it comes to the control app experience. But get beyond that and the Heston 60 has plenty to recommend it, quite apart from its chunky and expansive sound - it has that Marshall aesthetic, for instance, and it can be used in two different orientations. It’s no slouch when it comes to music, either. But it can’t lay a glove on the WiiM experience when it comes to multi-channel or multi-room usage…

Sometimes it takes a chunk of time for the right decision to be made – and credit to Konami, it made the right one for Castlevania. After years out in the cold, this beloved franchise finally got a new game this month, in the form of Belmont's Curse, and rather than bashing its head against the wall trying to reinvent the series, Konami took a smarter path.

It looked at the phenomenal success of Dead Cells, from a French team (Evil Empire) that openly professed its adoration of Castlevania, and asked why that same team couldn't just make the next mainline game. Fast-forward a few years, and we have Belmont's Curse, from that same developer, showing that you really can manifest your own destiny sometimes.

I spent pivotal parts of my childhood and teenage years playing Castlevania games on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, so I've basically been waiting for a new 2D game in the series for years and years. Now it's finally here, and that heritage of portable play meant that I was only ever interested in playing it on one console – my Switch 2.

As it happens, there's one small wrinkle there. While Belmont's Curse launched with a Nintendo Switch version on day one, it doesn't yet have a native Switch 2 port. While the game does run better on Switch 2, with a frame rate cap raised from 30fps to 60fps, it's still not the sharpest, and it's a bit disappointing that we'll have to wait for an upgraded version at some point down the line.

That foible aside, though, I've been having a brilliant time sinking into the game's vision of a ruined Paris, complete with a haunted castle to explore and a carefully laid-out map to discover. It's classic Metroidvania stuff, right down to its surprisingly brutal difficulty curve.

Belmont's Curse sees you take up the mantle of Rose Belmont, at the time of the game, the youngest of her famous family's line, as she and her father, Trevor, journey to Paris to investigate an uprising of demons and monsters. On arrival, they discover the city in disarray and split up.

Taking control of Rose, you'll find her a capable warrior, but a newly acquired Tarot deck is her secret weapon. It's basically a roster of weapons and skills that she can expand over time (much of that expansion happening through mastery challenges). These skills don't just change how you fight, but also double in many cases as traversal methods, giving you the classic step-by-step upgrades to how much of the map you can explore at a given time.

While Evil Empire is best known for its roguelike work, this is a traditional game in the genre, so while there are moments that let you choose where to explore next, much of the progression is slightly more linear than it might appear. Still, the map's proving really fun to explore, and it's more challenging than I expected, with even the most common enemies demanding some care when you fight them.

Bosses, meanwhile, are entirely another question, and I haven't blitzed any of them in one attempt so far. For me, the ideal boss in this genre takes me about five or six tries – enough to make me pay attention and learn its attacks, but not so many that I get really frustrated. That metric has roughly applied to Belmont's Curse so far, which has been really fun.

In a period of absolutely non-stop releases (with more games coming every week and a behemoth called GTA VI just around the corner), I've been sneaking an hour here and there on my Switch 2 with Belmont's Curse, and it might just have its hooks in deep enough to make me finish it before I move on.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll know that Apple's anticipated folding phone – the iPhone Duo – is now seeing its first reviews, with the official launch date having finally arrived.

That's seen a series of comparisons to the other folding phone of the moment, the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Both have a similar passport-style design, but there are number of differences.

Looking to close the gap, there's now an app for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 that mimics one of the features that the Apple devices offers – tent mode.

This comes courtesy of an app called Foldy (via 9to5Google) that aims to give you the same sort of standby functions that Apple is known for. For whatever reason, Samsung doesn't really go in for this sort of standby functionality, but Apple seems to think you'll be using your phone as a bedside clock.

That's what Foldy offers: customisable screens, so you can have your phone standing next to you showing various details at a glance.

Is that copying? Not really: Samsung has carried the folding phone segment since 2019, with only really Huawei offering any competition. During that time the Korean firm has refined the hardware, expanded screens, reduced creases and optimised Android use on these phones.

Apple has had the benefit of learning from its rivals, before coming in with a fresh take. It was to be expected that Samsung would develop its own folding devices in response, even if it's the developer community that got there first.

There are a couple of takeaways in early comparisons of these devices: Apple's keyboard is a lot more compact, giving more screen space for typing than Samsung typically does. However, Apple's persistent controls down the right-hand edge mean apps can't be as wide as Samsung offers.

Samsung's device remains thinner and lighter, but Apple's hinge allows more precise positioning.

Then you have the display, which is dividing opinion. The matte finish works wonders for cutting out reflections and ensuring daylight visibility, but it's less contrasty and can look a little softer compared to Samsung's display when out of direct light.

In short, there's enough of a difference here for everyone to get the experience that they want. What I am hoping for, however, is that some of the optimisation that app developers do for iPhone Duo will also benefit the Galaxy Z Fold 8 – especially with that fancy Netflix app.

I've called the release of Google's new laptops, Googlebooks, a bit of a revolution – and I stand by that, since this clearly signals a big change in how Google approaches the laptop market.

Still, after having worked with Acer's launch Googlebook for a week to review the first past the post, it's fair to say that moving into a different machine, this time from Asus, sort of takes some of the shine off.

After all, once you're over the shock and awe of the new, the fact that Google has set minimum standards for the internals for all these machines means that they're pretty similar in terms of components and power.

So, the difference between the various models comes down to design and the extra features that each maker might squeeze in. How, therefore, does the Asus Googlebook 14 stack up? It took me another week of use to answer just that.

Price and Availability

The Asus Googlebook 14 is available now, with Google having launched the whole ecosystem in recent weeks, and you can order it from local retailers or directly from Asus if it's going to come to your region at all.

Here in the UK, it starts from £1,199.99 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 chip; in the US, you can grab it from $1299 for the same spec. Since I've done so with previous Googlebook reviews, I'll just politely point out that the US price actually translates to £973 by conversion at the time of writing – so the UK is getting its usual raw deal.

Design and Specs

If you put Asus' Googlebook 14 next to one of its Zenbook 14 models from earlier this year, I think you might struggle to notice the difference at first glance – unless your eye is drawn straight to the Glow Bar on this new Google-flavoured machine.

The Googlebook laptop very much hews to the same design principles that Asus has been working with for a few years now, and the biggest tip on that front is its main material – ceraluminium, the ceramic-aluminium compound that Asus so loves. It remains a really impressive material, too, since it's nice and durable, with a soft-touch finish, but crucially is extremely lightweight compared to simpler metal options.

It seems like each manufacturer got some freedom when it came to the placement of the Glow Bar, but Asus played it pretty straight – it's right at the top of the lid, near where you open the laptop. Like in every other model, it does very little beyond some waking and sleeping animations, but showing your charging progress is its neatest trick.

Opening the laptop up, you're greeted by a 14-inch 3K OLED panel that's really quite gorgeous to look at, and possibly the single best display in any of the launch Googlebook models, thanks partly to its excellent anti-reflective coating. This is a properly matte screen, but it's still a proper touchscreen, too, just with less fingerprinting than some rivals.

Above it, there's a webcam with a privacy shutter, while the other half of the laptop houses a generously sized keyboard, complete with the fingerprint reader that Google insists on (to make Googlebook grade). Below that is the large touchpad, and in this case it is indeed haptic, whereas Acer's feels mechanical.

That keyboard is flanked by speakers, while each edge of the laptop houses some ports. On the left, you get a USB-C port with power delivery, a full HDMI port, a USB-A port, and a 3.5mm jack. The right edge holds another USB-A port and a USB-C port, making this one of the more fulsome I/O offerings in the lineup – although the lack of an SD card reader limits its creative utility.

Under the hood, the Asus Googlebook 14 runs on an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 chip, but you can upgrade to a Core Ultra 7 355 if you want a boost in power. With 16GB of RAM as standard, though, I don't think most people need that, or would find it cost-effective. The base spec is rounded out by a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD (I'd hoped for 1TB at this price, but accept that those days might be gone).

Of course, the whole laptop is interesting from the point of view of its features, because Googlebooks are still a very new thing. It's going to be your first Googlebook, should you buy one, and the experience is meaningfully different from that offered up by a Chromebook, for instance, as I'll get into in the next section of this review.

Performance

From the off, that Intel chip and 16GB of RAM mean that the Asus Googlebook 14 runs very snappily, but the real utility of its OS will be something that Android phone users will have to probe and test over time. Some of its features, like having access to your phone's storage without any screen mirroring, are really slick, and it's great being able to pick up tasks from one device to the other seamlessly.

Apps open really promptly and run fluently, and in my normal workflow – which involves a whole heap of Chrome tabs open at once, something that can cripple a weak Windows laptop – I never really encountered any hitching or issues multitasking. One tiny hitch there is that Asus' laptop did get a little warm when running some tasks, but not to the point of any discomfort.

That said, how useful you find Googlebook OS will be a pretty personal question, one that's hard to assess until you've tried your own productivity on one properly. In my case, it's a good showcase of the good and the bad. Much of my work is browser-based, and all of this is extremely responsive, with built-in AI features that can be genuinely useful if you want them. I don't, really, but trying some Gemini queries never really let me down in terms of responses.

However, I process my own images for reviews like this one, and doing so was a bit of a pain on the Asus Googlebook 14, just like it was on Acer's. The Android version of Photoshop is a lightweight one, and even though Google seems to be trumpeting a partnership with Adobe, it just can't really compete with the proper laptop experience on Windows or Mac – right now, anyway.

That's a limitation that can be fairly hard to get past, but I do think that Googlebook OS can be really slick when you're in the zone and not demanding such levels from it. The touchscreen interface is quite dreamy (especially on Asus' matte display), and while the screen can wobble when tapping on it, it still works quickly and as desired pretty much the whole time.

The keyboard is very solid, the trackpad's actually pretty great, and the whole laptop has a lightweight design that makes it feel really quite futuristic when paired with this all-new OS (the first of its kind in a long while).

It leaves me with basically no complaints about how Asus has approached the Googlebook challenge, but the same reservations about how ready Google's laptop rewrite is for the big time.

If you're sticking to simple productivity, then it might just be a slick and quick option for you, but those with more involved workflows are unlikely to find it all that adaptable right now.

Verdict

Asus' Googlebook is a tidy little laptop – and while it can't match the 2-in-1 situation offered by the Acer Googlebook 14, it feels a little more premium in some other ways. Better ports, a gorgeous matte display, and a really lightweight build make it potentially the more straightforward laptop to integrate into your workflow.

That said, it's also really pricey, and with thinner software support than Windows and Mac right now, there's no doubt that it currently feels like early adopters will be making some compromises. This could be a superb laptop once more apps are properly adapted to the OS, but for now it's probably quite hard to justify over a more established alternative.

Also Consider

Speaking of alternatives, if you're really into the Googlebook concept, then the other one we've reviewed so far is the Acer Googlebook 14, which is just as impressive in different ways. It's more affordable to start with, and has a more adaptable hinge (a true 2-in-1). Still, it has all the same software drawbacks.

For those who decide a more established OS is probably the safer move (as I would echo), I still think the latest MacBook Air is the way to go for most. It's not as affordable as it was before the memory crisis, but it'll last for absolutely years and is a gorgeous slice of machine for a very similar price to what Asus wants for its Googlebook.

If you are an aficionado when it comes to listening to your favourite music cuts, you might want to consider upgrading your headphones. And if you really care about getting the best performance you might also want to consider Audio-Technica's new flagship closed-back pair.

The Audio-Technica ATH-AWX7000 headphones are a high-end option with a supreme level of design detail. Crafted using premium Japanese materials, including Kiso cypress wood and Echizen lacquer, they are also the first in the brand's range to use its new, proprietary True Closed-back Acoustic (TCbA) design.

This has been developed to take advantage of the air pressure generated in the enclosed earcups to deliver greater transparency across the mid and high frequencies, while also providing a wider dynamic range.

There are also two Audio-Technica technologies applied in each ear to maximise sound performance – a Hybrid Matrix Diaphragm (HMD) and High-Concentricity X Dynamic Transducer (HXDT) technology.

The HMD uses thin films of different materials bonded into one diaphragm that moves as a single unit. While HXDT is a manufacturing process that ensures the baffle, magnet, voice coil and diaphragm are perfectly aligned.

The company claims that this enables "exceptionally precise diaphragm movement, revealing subtle details even within complex and familiar recordings".

The earpads are made from soft leather, while the frame is a lightweight magnesium construction. This is matched with aluminium sliders and, of course, the rare Japanese wood finish on the exterior of each cup.

You get a 2.5-metre balance cable with Neutrik XLR connectors in the box, along with a 3-metre unbalanced cable ending with a 6.3 mm stereo plug.

There is also a professional studio-standard, hardcore carry case included for transportation. This is a premium, luxury product so is treated as such.

The Audio-Technica ATH-AWX7000 headphones are available from today, 23 October, priced at £3,299 / €3,799. It debuted during the Paris Audio Video Show which is currently taking place.

We awaiting US availability and pricing.

Yesterday's announcement about BioWare's closure has been followed with a leaked trailer for the Mass Effect game it was working on at the time.

Now confirmed as genuine, the trailer shows pre-production footage of Mass Effect Universe – the fifth entry in the hugely popular sci-fi RPG franchise. And considering its spy thriller themes, it also underlines exactly what we'll be missing.

After it was originally posted on Reddit, renowned industry expert Jason Schreier confirmed its validity: "Can confirm that this is a real trailer of the Mass Effect game that BioWare was developing up until its closure yesterday," he wrote on Bluesky.

The trailer shows a new lead character with a bit of backstory. There seem to be some returning favourites too. It starts by detailing that the footage is all taken from in-game, using pre-production assets.

Bar any further leaks that appear over the coming days and weeks, this could be the last we see of Mass Effect in the games-sphere. It was announced yesterday that EA had closed the much-loved role-playing specialist BioWare, leaving its staff facing unemployment and its IPs – including Dragon Age, as well as Mass Effect – in limbo.

It has naturally caused an outcry in the gaming community. Canadian studio BioWare has been responsible for some of the best RPGs in gaming history, including Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Neverwinter Nights, and of course, the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series.

It is cited as having influenced The Witcher games and many more besides. It will be sorely missed.

One tiny bit of solace is that Amazon is reportedly ploughing ahead with its Mass Effect TV series. And hopefully, something will emerge from the developer's obviously talented team elsewhere.

Either way, let's just hope all those impacted manage to find further employment soon.

Amazon has rebranded Kindle Unlimited, its subscription service that gives access to "millions" of eBooks for one monthly fee. And it's added an additional perk for the same price – but not in every country, as yet.

Now called Kindle+ (because every service is adopting the "plus" suffix these days), the platform continues to offer books, comic books, and magazines for just $11.99 in the US, but it now also includes "thousands of audiobooks".

Sadly, that's not the case for British readers. The name has changed to Kindle+ in the UK, too, but the audiobooks are currently excluded.

So for £9.49 per month, you still get access to a vast library of eBooks and magazines, but only to read yourself. You'll still need a separate Audible subscription to listen to audiobooks from Amazon.

Another restriction that remains after the transition is that you are still limited to lending just 20 titles at a time, but I've personally never found that an issue. Even with family sharing, that's a decent amount of books and magazines to read. You can then easily replace any that have been finished or forgotten about.

There's a deal on Kindle+ for new subscribers too, with 30-days free before the payments start. Alternatively, you can pay just £3.99 in the UK for two-month access at the beginning of your subscription.

You'll notice that Amazon has purged the "Kindle Unlimited" name from its entire website in your region, replacing it with the Kindle+ branding. And you can filter titles to those available with the service by just hitting the Kindle+ tag on the Kindle eBook store page.

Hopefully, select audiobooks will start to be available in other territories as well soon, as Amazon told The Verge that it plans to expand availability to other markets "over time".

The iPhone Duo is the phone many Apple users have waited years for. You only need to look at the Duo Pre-orders to know that this handset is seriously in demand, with shipping times now slipping into 2027.

Unlike the iPhone 18 Pro, the iPhone Duo only comes in two colours: Star White (white) and Night Sky (dark blue), so if you want to make it feel individual, a case is the way to go.

Here, though, there's not as much choice as you might expect. Apple offers two case designs, both available in just two colours. There's the standard polycarbonate case in either Sand (cream) or Navy Blue, and there's the TechWoven Folio case in either Taupe or Navy Blue.

That gives you just eight combinations between phone and case. Third-party cases have been slower to come through too, but some of the biggest names do have offerings to give your folding phone some more character. All of which you'll find below.

While it seems a shame to hide such a beautiful new design under a case, the last thing you want to do is scratch or smash your new Duo, especially considering the potential cost of repair. So putting a case on it gives you some extra protection.

All of these cases are designed specifically for the latest iPhone Duo model. You can find cases for the iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max models here.

Best cases for the iPhone Duo

Apple cases

Best of the rest

There’s lots of excitement around the launch of the iPhone Duo, as it’s the very first folding device that Apple has produced. That means a significant change from the single-screen design of iOS to an adaptive display that can switch between the smaller portrait front display and the large landscape format central display, and also factoring in the folding nature and the ability to offer multi-screen.

This has created an opportunity for app developers not seen since the launch of the iPad. While developers of legacy apps rush to offer fixes to make use of the new features and real estate, new apps are springing up even faster.

While some of these offer genuinely useful features brought about by the iPhone Duo’s design, others are just about having fun. It reminds me of the classic iBeer app for the iPhone, which uses the phone’s sensors to make it look like you were drinking a glass of beer as you tipped your phone up, or the augmented reality Star Walk app for the iPad, allowing you to identify stars and planets.

Below are seven new apps that make the most of the new Duo screen that are worth trying. Plus some that haven’t made it to the App Store yet.

In the app store

1. Battlefleet Duo

The classic game of Battleships is brought to life in this app for a fun take that makes use of the folding display in almost a laptop-like position. The top half of the screen becomes your enemy's waters, showing where you've aimed, while the lower half shows your own fleet. You can also play it fully open, or on the outer screen, but that's not quite as fun.

Download Battlefleet Duo from the Apple App Store for free.

2. PianoFold

This tap-the-tiles-in-order game has hints of Guitar Hero and Beat Sabre, but it's designed especially for the iPhone Duo. With your Duo folded into a laptop-like position on a desk or surface, the top half augments the notes coming towards you in a highway arrangement. The bottom half becomes your piano keys, with four large coloured keys that must be pressed in time to match the oncoming notes.

Download PianoFold from the Apple App Store for free.

3. Foldhide

This app takes the virtual wallet to a new level by recreating a real leather bi-fold wallet. It's interactive in the fact that you can select each card to remove from the wallet and flip them around to see the back. You can also pull out the receipt and the banknote. By clicking on the pen, you can edit the cards to match your real accounts and store your details (just the last four numbers). It's a shame you can't then use the cards in here instead of the Apple Wallet, but that would require a lot more security. This is, after all, just a bit of fun.

Download Foldhide from the Apple App Store for free.

4. Deck-Man

Possibly the best new app we've seen so far, Deck-Man (originally Duo-Man) turns your iPhone Duo into an 80s-style portable cassette player, like the Sony Walkman. The great part of this app is that you can select music from your Apple Music library to play or from local files. You can use the pause, fast-forward and rewind buttons to skip through your tracks, all with mechanical clicks. On the central screen, you can see the cassette playing, while the outer screen shows the closed player, with a choice of designs. Occasionally, tapes will get tangled and need winding back in, just like the real thing. This is a must for your Duo.

Download Deck-Man from the Apple App Store for $4.99/£4.99.

5. Fold Accordion

This clever little app turns your iPhone Duo into a playable accordion. As with an accordion, your right hand plays the melody on the keyboard and the left hand plays the bass notes using the buttons. To make the sound, instead of squeezing, you fold and unfold the device to push the air through the bellows. Pick a song from the list, and it will guide you through the notes too.

Download Fold Accordion from the Apple App Store for $2.99/£2.99.

6. Tiny Computers

This is certainly one of those novelty apps that show off the features of the new iPhone Duo. Tiny Computers turns the Duo into one of 10 computers, including the original Macintosh, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, Window 95 machine, iBook G3 and more. you can do a few basic things on each screen – the Windows model even crashes to a Blue Screen of Death – but there's no practical use here. Just fun.

Download Tiny Computers from the Apple App Store for $3.99/£3.99/

7. Tesla

Though not specifically for the iPhone Duo, Tesla's updated app has native support for the larger screen, giving you almost like a split screen effect with the features down the left side and a large image on the right. It looks much more like the display you see in-car and will look excellent on either iPad or iPhone Duo.

Download the updated Tesla app from the Apple App Store from 23 October.

Coming soon (maybe)

8. CalibReader

One of the nice things about the NanoTexture display used for the centre screen on the iPhone Duo is that it's nicer for reading, and this app makes full use of that. The CalibReader app is coming soon to both Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store. It works for iPhone and iPad, but it's on the iPhone Duo where it really excels. It gives your phone a real book feel, with a clean full-screen layout, dark and light backgrounds and animated page curls as you turn a page. The outer screen gives you the book cover when closed, and when you open it again, it takes you straight to your page. You can import your own book library or link to your cloud storage, with pricing at $9.99 for lifetime use, or the first three books for free.

See more about CalibReader on its website.

9. Crate

Another musical app hoping to make it through to the App Store, Crate is an AI-powered music sampler. It uses a split-screen layout to divide the sample pads from the sequencer window, and uses the hinge to add special effects to the sounds. You can also use a text input to find the right samples and sounds to use.

10. TranslateCat

Another clever use of the dual display, TranslateCat is a two-sided interpreter, giving you the ability to type in one language at the bottom and see your translation at the top. Then, on the outer screen, your translation text is shown to whomever you're conversing with. Designed to work with eight languages, including English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese, it's a neat idea. No hint of when or if it will go live right now, though.

11. Monster Ink

While this appears to be an 8-bit city builder game, it's actually a clever tool to stop you using your phone too much. The idea with Monster, Ink is that while your phone is closed the helper cats build the city for you, but open your phone up and the Kaiju cats start to tear it down. You get a warning when you peek at the inner screen, but look too long and things go downhill for the city. A really clever idea that I'd love to see make it to the App Store.

Smart glasses seem to be everywhere at the moment, they're the hottest of trends both for the right reasons and the wrong reasons. But this innovative pair has a unique solution to the camera problem.

The INMO GO3 glasses include a camera, which can be used to feed AI in the usual way so it can identify what's around you, as well as capturing images. But it also comes with a physical shutter, so you can completely block it off.

Given the accusations being pointed at those wearing "pervert glasses", covering the camera completely might go some way to reassuring people that they aren't being filmed covertly.

Of course - just like notification lights - they'll have to be quite close and able to see that the camera is covered, which they might not be able to do.

Aside from this privacy feature, the INMO GO3 comes with a lightweight design, just 58g says 9to5Google, which is great for a set of glasses that include a display.

That's right, not only can these glasses provide those audible responses from Gemini or ChatGPT, but you can have information beamed into your eyes. There's no need to reach for your phone or glance at your smart watch, because you've got it right before your eyes.

Those displays are MicroLED with a peak brightness of 1,500 nits, so they should be good for use in daylight.

There are some unsurprising features here: translations are included (is it even AI if there's no translate function?), along with the display supporting turn-by-turn navigation.

But on the list of accessories there's a speaker, which can apparently use an AI clone of your voice to reply to people in different languages. That sounds great, but in a world where privacy is a huge concern, I'm not sure how many people are going to want their voice cloned by AI.

Equally, on the listing page for the INMO GO3 smart glasses, it says "The GO3 records every conversation, call, and meeting automatically, then transcribes and summarizes it the moment you are done," which again, sounds like it could raise some privacy concerns.

There's an interesting battery feature, however. The battery plugs into the end of the arm and thanks to a charging case, can be hot swapped for a new one when it runs down. That's should make sure that your smart glasses keep going as long as you do.

The INMO GO3 smart glasses are available now, currently priced at $509.

Écoute Audio is back with a new pair of valve-toting over-ears that are more akin to strapping a hi-fi system to your head than conventional headphones.

The Écoute TH2 are a wireless pair that uses genuine valve pre-amplification, along with a DAC and separate left and right-channel amps for a fully discrete, dual-mono signal path from end to end.

This results in headphones with more character and old-school musicality than most. You can even see the Nutube 6P1 valve through a display window in the left ear cup, to leave onlookers in no doubt that you're wearing something quite different.

Also on-board are dual 40mm titanium-coated Mylar drivers – one for each ear. These ensure clarity and precision is maintained, even with the unique tonal presentation of a valve-based system.

Écoute has also tweaked the design a little since the TH1 headphones, with a new resonance chamber format that delivers punchier bass than before. There is also enhanced shielding to ensure the valve is better isolated from radio frequency interference.

In terms of connectivity, the Écoute TH2 pair carry Bluetooth 5.3 with LDAC and AAC wireless support, you also get a USB-C port to connect to a compatible source. This is compatible with Hi-Res Audio transmission up to 32-bit / 384 kHz.

An analogue 3.5mm port is available for good measure.

In terms of other specifications, the headphones feature hybrid ANC tech to block out ambient noise, have a built-in microphone for voice calling and phone assistant compatibility, plus a 1,600mAh battery that provides up to 20 hours of playback time.

They come in three colourways – charcoal, gunmetal and nickel, with fabric and leather trim options. Pricing starts at £999 in the UK, which is for the fabric trim. The leather version will set you back £1,099.

If you've long been dreaming of a phone with a huge battery, then things have slowly been moving in your favour. The launch of the Honor Win2 gaming phone, with a 10,100mAh battery could be of interest.

It's a huge battery that joins huge spec, including a 10,000 nit peak brightness display with 185Hz refresh rate, a 200-megapixel main camera and IP ratings up to 69K, with the details shared by 9to5Google.

To make sure that huge battery doesn't take an age to charge, there's 100W wired and 80W wireless charging. The bad news is that the Win models often don't launch outside China – and this phone might face regulatory problems too.

For those paying attention, phones in China often launch with a higher battery capacity than global partners and that often comes down to regulation. The European Union has plenty of rules on battery size, as well as transport restrictions.

As T3's Tech Editor Mike Lowe found out when checking out the global version of the Vivo X500 Pro Max, such restrictions mean that the battery capacities of devices in Europe are lowered to meet regulations.

In this case, the 8,000mAh battery of the Chinese Vivo is reduced to 6,750mAh, reportedly a reflection of transport restrictions in Austria where the device will be sold.

The EU rules set a transport limit on single cells in smartphones. That limit is 20Wh, which is about 5,200-5,400mAh in a single cell. Manufacturers often get around this by using multiple cells in a device. This not only meets the restrictions, but also allows for better thermal control while charging.

So there are considerations for devices that come to the EU – and by extension the UK which uses the same regulation framework. It's not just a case of changing the software and keeping the hardware that China uses.

While you might damn EU rules, there is a consumer-leaning benefit coming into force too, which has seen a change in many devices. From 18 February 2027, devices like smartphones must have a user-replaceable battery, able to be accessed without specialist tools – while spare cells need to be sold for five years after the launch of a phone.

There's an exemption though, which comes in the form of a performance guarantee as part of the EU's ecodesign rules. If a device retains 83% of its rated capacity after 500 charge cycles – and at least 80% after 1,000 charge cycles – then the replacement requirement doesn't have to be met. For these devices, they must also be at least IP67 rated, meaning that many major smartphone brands are already compliant.

This is all about making sure that batteries in devices are safe in transit – limiting "thermal runaway" where a combusting cell fuels itself and basically burns out of control – while also ensuring that the battery in your phone lasts for a long time to reduce the rate of redundancy in electronic devices.

So, if you don't get phones with huge batteries and you're envious of those devices in China, then at least you know there are reasons why.

Wireless microphones aren't exactly the most exciting gadgets to look at, but Insta360 has been doing its best to change that.

The company's latest wireless microphone, simply called the Insta360 Mic, looks more like a tiny smartwatch than a traditional recording accessory, thanks to its circular, customisable E-Ink display.

It's not the first Insta360 microphone to feature the colourful screen, but the new model brings much of the flagship Mic Pro's functionality to a more accessible price point, with a few surprises of its own.

Positioned between the premium Mic Pro and entry-level Mic Air, the new Mic completes Insta360's three-tier wireless microphone lineup.

And while it might look almost identical to its more expensive sibling, its most interesting feature is tucked away inside.

Small screen, big personality

Like the Mic Pro, the new Insta360 Mic features a 1.22-inch, six-colour E-Ink display that can be customised with images, logos, emojis and even pictures of your pets.

The new transmitter is nearly the same size as the Mic Pro and weighs just 19.4g, compared to the flagship's 19.7g.

Unlike the Mic Pro, which has 32GB of fixed onboard storage, the new Mic lets you use your own memory cards for internal recording, including 32-bit float audio.

You also get AI-powered noise cancellation, automatic gain control and three voice presets: Regular, Rich and Bright.

There are some compromises, though. The Mic Pro features a three-microphone array with four selectable pickup patterns, whereas the new model uses a single omnidirectional microphone.

The cheaper model has more stamina

Interestingly, the new Mic actually outperforms its flagship sibling when it comes to battery life (maybe thanks to its simpler pickup pattern).

Insta360 claims up to 13 hours of recording per transmitter, compared to 10 hours for the Mic Pro. With the charging case, that figure rises to 34 hours, four hours more than the flagship.

Wireless transmission range remains unchanged at up to 400 metres, and the system supports up to four transmitters connected to a single receiver.

The Mic also supports Insta360 Direct Connect, which lets compatible cameras, including the Insta360 X5, Insta360 X6, Insta360 GO Ultra and Insta360 Ace Pro 2, receive audio directly over Bluetooth without a separate receiver.

(Sadly, the more affordable Insta360 X4 Air isn't listed among the cameras supporting Direct Connect.)

The new transmitters are compatible with the Mic Pro system, allowing creators to mix and match microphones without replacing their existing equipment.

The Insta360 Mic launches globally today, 22 October 2026, with prices starting at £75 / $79.99 / €85 / AU$129 for a standalone transmitter.

The single-transmitter and receiver bundle costs £129 / $139.99 / €149 / AU$229, while the two-transmitter kit with receiver is priced at £229 / $249.99 / €269 / AU$399.

The new microphone is available through Insta360, Amazon and authorised retailers.

Grado Labs is renowned for its audiophilic attention to detail when producing headphones and turntable cartridges, and its Signature line sits at the top of the tree.

The Signature wired headphones are usually priced from around the £1,000 / $1,000 mark though, so haven't been truly accessible... until now.

The Grado Signature S150 are its most affordable pair in this range yet. Priced at just £295 / $295, they maintain the brand's quality standards, yet in a more presentable form.

You get Grado's proprietary 44mm S driver in each ear, which utilises the same paper-composite diaphragm design used for the 52mm drivers in the S950 and HP100 SE flagships – and those run into the thousands.

This ensures the S150 open-back headphones exhibit similar clarity and precision, with natural presentation of the original source material. There is also a clean handling of bass, with more balanced delivery than, say, many closed-back equivalants.

The Grado Signature S150 pair also feature the company's detachable cable system and a new Signature Bronze cable in the box. This connects to each ear through a 3.5mm jack for true stereo spacing, with another at the end for device use. A 6.3mm adapter can also be found in the box for connection to a music system at the other end.

The headphones weigh just 220g and a padded leather strap is provided for comfort over long listening sessions. Grado's F cushions are provided for each ear.

Audio specifications include a frequency response of 16Hz to 34kHz, nominal impedance of 38ohms, THD of 0.3% @100dB, and SPL (1mW) of 104 dB.

The Grado Signature S150 headphones are available to pre-order for £295 / $295 from select independent retailers and Grado's own website. There you can also find out more about the Signature range, including the high-end models further up the food chain.

When Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo in its September presentation, it also mentioned that Apple Pencil support would be coming "later this year". Well, now it looks like we'll have it before many customers even have their new foldable devices.

The full rollout of iOS 27.2 is reportedly due "next week" and it'll include the ability to use an Apple Pencil on the Duo's internal display.

There is one catch, however – the iPhone Duo will only support one specific model of the Pencil, and it might not be the one you own already.

It was revealed that the iPhone Duo will only work with the Apple Pencil (USB-C). There will be no support for the Pencil Pro, which might bonkers considering the target market for the Duo and its price point. However, the Pencil Pro requires magnetic charging, which can only be done on the side of a supported iPad.

At least the Apple Pencil (USB-C) is reasonably priced. It's currently £79 on Amazon UK and actually has $10 off right now on Amazon US, making it just $69. You might find other deals come Black Friday at the end of November.

As for the iOS 27.2 rollout, that's likely to happen before many have even got their hands on an iPhone Duo. I ordered mine from Apple one or two minutes after the pre-orders started last week and was still bumped by a couple of weeks – so it's coming early November.

Others will have to wait anywhere up to January next year for theirs. You might be able to get one from a physical Apple Store this Friday (23 October), but there's no guarantee.

And so, by the time you actually have one in your hands, it's highly possible that Pencil support will already be applied. You might find that many third-party app updates have arrived too, to address the numerous optimisation complaints early reviews have highlighted.

I’ve reviewed plenty of TVs – and seldom do I get to the end of one without at some point having said something along the lines of “remember to budget for a soundbar – even an affordable model will improve the sound".

Sharp obviously wants to be the company I think of when I start banging on about “affordable soundbars’, as its new HT-SWB320 2.1-channel system is perhaps the least expensive soundbar/subwoofer combo I’ve ever heard.

So am I right? Is a soundbar that’s about as affordable as it gets an improvement on the sound of that TV you spent proper money on?

Price & Availability

The Sharp HT-SWB320 2.1-channel soundbar system launched at the end 2025, and in the United Kingdom the asking price has already fallen from £179 to £149.

It’s a model that’s intended specifically for sale in continental Europe, so a like-for-like equivalent in territories like the United States or Australia is not especially easy to come by.

What seems nailed on, though, is that any Sharp two-channel soundbar with wireless subwoofer that’s offered for sale outside Europe is going to be extremely competitively priced.

Features & What's New?

The HT-SWB320 is a 2.1-channel system that’s compatible with both Dolby Atmos and DTS Digital Surround.

Obviously any hint of spatial audio comes from signal processing rather than physical speaker drivers, though, as the soundbar features a pair of 32mm neodymium tweeters and a couple of 30 x 104mm racetrack drivers, all of which face forwards, while the subwoofer has a 133mm bass driver.

This line-up is driven by a total of 120 watts of Class D power. Incoming signals can be adapted by a suite of EQ presets – voice, movie, sport, music, game, night, and one user-defined custom setting – and spatial audio information is given the once-over either by Dolby Speaker Virtualiser or DTS Virtual:X processing depending on what type of signal it is.

As well as a selection of physical inputs – the USB-A slot can also be used to charge external equipment, as well as being available for audio playback, which is nice – the Sharp features Bluetooth 5.3 with SBC and AAC codec compatibility.

So there’s nothing new or remotely innovative about the HT-SWB320. But then no one’s really expecting that sort of thing at this part of the market, are they? And besides, the Sharp has one minor flourish where its features xare concerned: it’s Roku TV Ready, which means set-up should be super-simple when the system is paired with one of Sharp’s Roku TV models.

Performance

The Sharp HT-SWB320 is a punchier, more expansive, more dynamic listen than the vast majority of televisions I’ve heard in the last 18 months or so. The soundbar is a rather coarse-sounding system, though, and its ‘surround’ feature is of negligible use.

On the plus side, the HT-SWB320 creates respectably deep, nicely varied low frequencies that punch with fair determination – and don’t hang around or bog down everything that’s going on above them in the frequency range.

Low-end presence like this is basically unheard-of in the sound your average television makes, and it means the Sharp creates a far fuller, more robust sound than your TV has a hope of managing by itself. This alone could be reason enough to buy, for a bass upgrade.

The frequency range is quite nicely balanced from the bottom end upwards, and while the system sensibly projects the midrange just a little (the better to make voices and dialogue easy to follow) it doesn’t unduly impact on the low or high end.

The handover between subwoofer and soundbar is achieved smoothly, and the overall presentation sounds of a whole, rather than being too obviously the results of two different speakers working in tandem.

There’s a fair amount of dynamic headroom available, so when the on-screen action shifts from ‘whisper’ to ‘enormous explosion’ the Sharp breathes deeply enough to put meaningful distance between these two positions. And, again, it doesn’t hang around as it does so – there’s no slurring here.

Tonally, though, the system is on shakier ground. There’s a hint of edginess to the way the midrange is reproduced, and by the time you reach the top of the frequency range the Sharp has become undeniably coarse.

There’s a grittiness and graininess to the treble reproduction here that is noticeable at low volumes, obvious as an average level, and actively unpleasant if you decide to listen at high volume. ‘Abrasive’ is not too strong a word.

And while I’m dealing with shortcomings, the ‘surround’ setting that can be activated via the remote control handset is barely worth the effort of pushing the button. The sound gains a hint of extra width when it's engaged, but the trade-off is a reduction of focus and the introduction of a rather vague, hazy character that’s far from welcome.

Design & Usability

A product of this type, selling for this sort of money, can very seldom be said to have been ‘designed’. ‘Constructed’ tends to be what happens – and sure enough, the Sharp HT-SWB320 has managed to dodge the ‘design’ stage of product development almost entirely.

That’s not to say it’s in any way deficient when the standard of build or finish is concerned, you understand – in fact, in the context of the asking price the Sharp is put together very acceptably indeed.

The soundbar, which is a usefully compact 36 x 651 x 73mm (HxWxD) and an equally unburdensome 900g, is a fabric-covered little slice of robust plastic that can happily be positioned beneath all TVs but those that sit super-low on their feet.

The subwoofer, meanwhile, is a 258 x 105 x 370mm (HxWxD) MDF box that weighs 3.35kg. Like the soundbar, it must be plugged into the mains – but it connects wirelessly to the soundbar, which makes positioning it as simple as can be.

It does so automatically, too. The moment both elements of the system are powered up, they start looking for each other. In my experience the search doesn’t take long at all, and once a wireless connection is made it’s robust.

In a little recess on the rear of the soundbar there’s a socket for the mains adapter, an HDMI eARC socket, a digital optical input, a 3.5mm analogue input and a USB-A slot for software updates and audio playback.

The USB-A is compatible with WAV, FLAC and MP3 files, and is compatible with drives up to 64GB. Obviously anyone with a reasonably modern TV will make one connection via HDMI and that will take care of business.

Operating the system can be done using the physical controls on top of the soundbar – they cover power on/off, volume up/down, input selection and Bluetooth pairing. There’s also a little remote control handset – like the product it controls, it’s really nothing special in terms of ergonomics or build quality but is entirely fit for purpose.

As well as duplicating the functions available on the soundbar, it also offers play/pause, mute, a button to turn the ‘surround’ feature (such as it is) on or off, and independent ‘bass’ and ‘treble’ controls.

Confirmation of what the system is up to comes via a white LED alphanumeric segment display on the front of the ‘bar – it’s quite short, though, so virtually all information will scroll.

Sharp HT-SWB320 review: Verdict

As an affordable way of bringing a bit of scale, dynamism and low-frequency presence to your TV’s sound, the Sharp HT-SWB320 has plenty going for it. And if you can find it at a super-low price then the bass upgrade may make it a worthy addition.

But while it’s hardly fair to expect a product of this type costing this sort of money to be flawless in every way, its edgy treble tonality, and the vague presentation that results from selecting ‘surround’ mode, means that it’s not the complete budget-conscious solution to your TV’s terrible sound.

Also Consider

The Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus travels without an accompanying subwoofer, and it costs a little more than the Sharp – but it remains an affordable option and fairly compelling too.

Or if you don’t mind upping the box-count, have a listen to the Hisense AX5125H – soundbar, subwoofer, and rear surround speakers all at a price that’s typically Hisense in its aggressive nature.

Earlier this week, I attended an exclusive MediaTek event in Spain to discuss the latest Dimensity 9600 Pro chipset – which is confirmed in both the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and Vivo X500 Pro Max handsets, due out imminently.

The former of those, the Oppo, which I've been using for weeks, I've since published the review in full. The latter, the Vivo, however, was the first time that I'd seen the international handset, as destined for Europe – and it confirmed interesting details.

My colleague attended the China launch of the Vivo X500 Pro Max, raving about its camera – which blew his iPhone out of the water – but we knew that particular handset, with its huge 8000mAh battery capacity, would not be released outside of Asian markets.

Vivo has confirmed that it will be launching in Europe, with an event taking place on 27 October, just not in all countries on the continent – the UK being one key territory that's excluded. Those in Spain, Portugal, Germany and other key countries, however, will be able to get their hands on a unit.

And so to the battery capacity. When exploring the handset at the MediaTek event, a colleague pointed out that it was the international model – and a further jump into the spec, confirming Dimensity 9600 Pro, also highlighted the 6750mAh battery capacity.

That's quite a big jump down from the 8000mAh of its Chinese cousin, but there's a specific reason for that. CE Certification – hence the big stamp on the side of the device in-hand, per my gallery of pictures here – mandates certain restrictions.

In previous released that's permitted 7500mAh (in the Oppo Find X9 Pro) and 7150mAh (in the Find X10 Pro Max) to enter the market, because they met specific conditions. However, certain countries in Europe set their own thresholds – with Austria, in particular, fixing that ceiling at 6750mAh. It's a transport safety regulation.

Vivo sells in Austria and, therefore, the international X500 Pro Max has said battery capacity. In some past product releases, a software-locked workaround was utilised – i.e. a larger battery capacity was 'locked' from use, but savvy users worked out how to bypass this – and that's no longer a viable nor accepted option.

Oppo notably does not sell in Austria, hence the Find X10 Pro Max model going beyond the 7000mAh threshold. That this specific model elected for a lower battery capacity than its X9 Pro Max predecessor, however, suggests the brand could have eyes on other countries in which to sell.

Vivo hasn't officially revealed its X500 Pro Max's international specification as yet, due to the launch event next week, so this MediaTek access point gave a little early insight into what to expect. For pre-orders, pricing and more, you'll need to head to Vivo's official page – with the big reveal taking place on 27 October.

Leica and Formula One have just announced a partnership, and to celebrate the coming together Leica has launched the Leica Q3 43 Formula 1 Edition. It's a bit of a mouthful, and a whole lot of camera.

The pairing makes a lot of sense, as both brands draw on long history, pursue the highest levels of performance, and both are the play things of the rich and famous.

Based on the Leica Q3 43, there are special touches to draw this camera closer to its racing partner, including carbon fibre elements, the F1 logo on the lens cap and top plate, as well as Microvelour covering, the sort you might find on the steering wheel of a racing car.

Leica is no stranger to subdued colours and subtle logos, but the red and black theme continues in the Leica Q3 45 Formula 1 Edition, with the big addition being the carbon fibre handgrip and thumb rest, for increased one-handed control. It looks like these elements are removable, however.

Carbon fibre isn't a common material for cameras, but Leica's application on this special edition of the Q3 43 adds something unique. It looks sensational, while the additional F1 logos aren't too garish.

One thing that F1 and this Leica camera don't have in common is weight saving: the usual Leica Q3 43 weighs 772g (with battery) and we're not told what the new weight is, but it's still a hefty camera.

The 43 in the name refers to the 43mm lens, it has nothing to do with Franco Colapinto who has driver number 43 in F1. There's a full-frame sensor, offering 60, 36 or 18-megapixel shots, with the lens carrying an f/2.0 maximum aperture.

There's also a Leica Formula 1 look, accessed through the Leica FOTOS app and only available on this model. It offers richer saturation and higher contrast, exactly the sort of rendering you'd expect around motorsports. Once that look is set, it will be visible through the viewfinder so you can see what the result will be once you press the shutter button.

Otherwise, this is much the same as the existing Leica Q3, but brings with it a jump from £5,900 for the original to £7,300 for the F1 Edition.

That's quite a price bump to celebrate the partnership, but this was never going to be a cheap camera.

Oppo has just revealed its brand new flagship: the Find X10 Pro Max. It's all about cameras, with three 200-megapixel large-sensor snappers on board.

We've already reviewed the handset, which has wild battery life and a camera suite that little can compete with – Samsung and Apple included – wrapped into a stylish package.

However, it's also set to cost a chunk of cash, at £1,499 in the UK, but if you pre-order a device now then you can cut £100 from that asking price – thanks to a promotional offer direct from Oppo. But you'll need to be quick.

There's more, too, as if you trade in a relevant Oppo or even OnePlus phone then you can cut extra from your asking price, with a £250 bonus removed from the asking price. That could, for example, bring the price down by another £538 if trading in a OnePlus 15 (512GB) model.

That could, therefore, bring the asking price down to a more palatable £861 – undercutting many of the best flagship phones today. But not everyone is going to have a trade-in option that'll pay to such a level.

Further bolstering this deal is a free gift included in your purchase. You can pick from either a Hasselblad Teleconverter lens for free, saving £499, for example. Other gift options include the Oppo Pad 5 (£399) or Watch X3 (£329), so the choice is yours.

All of that certainly adds value to what's an otherwise a high list price, but this is 2026 – and with RAMageddon causing significant price rises across the industry, all incoming handsets are simply going to cost more.

Fortunately, Oppo's pre-order is for the 512GB storage model, so you get plenty of space. RAM is fixed at 12GB this year, though, but you can advance this with virtual RAM, activated through Oppo's ColorOS 17 software.

So if you're looking for the best camera phone on the market, Oppo's Find X10 Pro Max makes a very strong case for itself. But you'll need to be quick to secure the lower-priced promotion – as it'll end on 28 October ahead of the on-sale date.

Around this time last year, I found myself falling for an Android flagship that took me by surprise. After a hiatus in UK and European launch cycles, Oppo came back with a bang – followed by its Find X9 Pro being a masterstroke in the camera department.

This year, while there's no standalone Pro model, I've been using the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max for many weeks to find that photographic spark of excitement once again. It certainly delivers – as there are notable sensor upgrades for this model.

However, there's also a notable 'upgrade' in the X10 Pro Max's price – in line with its 'Max' name, you'll need to find a small fortune to buy this handset. And with the general specifications largely familiar, is it worth it for the camera credibility alone?

Price & Availability

While the Chinese version of the Find X10 Pro was revealed in September, its ¥6799 CNY base price (circa £765/€910 by current conversion rates – or about $1000, not that it will launch in the USA) doesn't directly translate to other regions.

In the UK the launch price will be £1,499 for the 12GB RAM and 512GB storage model. However, there's a £100 off promotion until 28 October, plus bonus of a free gift – either the Oppo Watch X3, Hasselblad Teleconverter, or Oppo Pad 5.

At the time of writing this review, however, the official Euro price is still unknown – but previous leaks suggest that you may need to part with €1699-1799 – which would be a massive jump over the Find X9 Pro's €1299 launch price just one year ago.

Also note that, due to European regulation, the earlier Chinese launch model isn't one and the same as the international version. The latter has a smaller battery capacity, for example, as it cannot bypass EU regulations.

What's New?

• All three rear cameras now 200-megapixels and housed in a new, larger enclosure
• Processor upgrade from Mediatek Dimensity 9500 to latest 9600 Pro
• Battery capacity reduced from 7500mAh to 7150mAh
• Android 17 and ColorOS 17 at launch
• Same 6.78-inch display

Straight out of the box, the Find X10 Pro Max's rear looks notably different from the Find X9 Pro's – and that's mostly on account of the new, larger camera enclosure. This further qualifies the 'Max' name, marking out the cameras as the biggest upgrade.

So just what are we talking about here? While the Find X9 Pro had a great camera suite, one of its rear trio was a 200-megapixel resolution, with the other two 50MP units. The Find X10 Pro Max, however, has a trio of 200MP sensors.

They're not just any old sensors, though, with the main using Samsung's ISOCELL HPC sensor for the first time. Only the Vivo X500, which won't launch in most markets outside of China, can currently claim the same. It brings so-called DeepPix technology and offers a massive dynamic range, of up to 17 stops.

In terms of physical size, however, the Find X9 Pro and X10 Pro Max are more or less the same – save for that camera unit. The same can be said of the display, which is a 6.78-inch panel with flagship specs in terms of colour volume, refresh rate and resolution.

Internally, the latest model gets a processor upgrade, utilising MediaTek's newest Dimensity 9600 Pro – something not even Samsung's Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra opted to use – paired with 12GB RAM (there's no 16GB variant for the international model, it seems, only the Asian markets).

The battery capacity, at 7150mAh, is huge in this phone. That said, it's lower capacity than the Chinese model's 8000mAh and, oddly, lower than the earlier Find X9 Pro's 7500mAh. Why? Hitting CE certification, as required in the European region.

Design & Display

• 6.78-inch OLED display with 1.15mm bezel on all sides
  • 1272 x 2772 resolution (450ppi density)
  • 1-120Hz LTPO variable refresh rate
  • 1-to-3600 nits brightness range
  • Dolby Vision and HDR10+
  • 3840Hz PWM dimming
• Measures: 8.4mm thin; Weight: 233g
• Titanium Grey / Luna White

For the international release, I was originally told that the Find X10 Pro Max only comes in Titanium Grey (but the Oppo site also lists Luna White, so that's an option).

The Titanium finish sometimes looks silvery-grey, sometimes emanates a warmer, almost pinkish hue when catching light. It's much nicer than the so-called Silk White finish of the previous X9 Pro, in my view.

While 2025 seemed to ramp up the demand for super-slim phones – the Samsung Galaxy S24 Edge and Apple iPhone Air were the prime two releases to prove that point – that messaging and, indeed, consumer demand have both dwindled. Not that Oppo seems to care: its 8.4mm thickness is a whisker more than its predecessor.

While 2026 has seen the advent of super-wide folding phones – again championed by Samsung and Apple, with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and iPhone Duo – the Find X10 Pro Max sticks with classic flagship format, the display a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. I've found it spot-on for one-handed use, with slender and symmetrical bezel surrounds looking neat and tidy.

There's one thing that I don't love about this display, however, and that's its reflective nature. It's just glossier than most, which I've sometimes found a distraction. It's more than bright enough to cut through this, thankfully, and I've often not needed to push that brightness anywhere near to maximum. Good to know it's there when needed, though.

The design is otherwise familiar to anyone who's handled the earlier X9 Pro: there's the Snap Key, positioned to the upper left when facing the device front-on, which is used by default for Oppo's Mind Space capture – an AI feature that captures what's on the display to store and contextualise that info.

You can adjust what the Snap Key does, if preferred, with quick control for Sound & Vibration, Do Not Disturb, Camera, OSee (Oppo's real-time camera-based translator, document and QR scanner), Torch, Recorder, Translate, and Screenshot. Or you can deactivate it entirely.

On the opposite side of the phone is the volume rocker, which sits above the power key – similar to most Android phones' controls. Absent for this model, however, is the Quick Button – which, in the previous design, was that camera quick-launch and control button that you'd usually find yourself hitting by accident rather than when actually wanted. Oppo has clearly taken on feedback here, so all the better for it.

Performance & Battery

• MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro processor (2nm process)
  • 2x 4.55GHz; 3x 4.35GHz; 3x 3.1GHz; Arm G1-Ultra-NX GPU
• 12GB RAM only, 512GB storage as standard
• 7150mAh silicon-carbon battery
  • 80W wired charging
  • 50W wireless

While some will knock the Find X10 Pro Max for having a lower battery capacity than the Chinese model and, indeed, its X9 Pro spiritual predecessor, I take quite the opposite view. Because this 7150mAh battery will no doubt last for an absolute age – but I'm basing that on calculated assumption, as I've been provided the Asian model with 8000mAh battery for this review.

We're in an age where other phone-makers are hitting high-capacity silicon-carbon batteries – yes, Samsung, here's looking at you (finally!) – but Oppo is high up the ranks of the largest capacities going. Here it's in a multi-cell arrangement to facilitate fast-charging safely and distribute the capacity successfully within the limitations of the EU CE certification.

Note that you'll need to purchase a viable plug to achieve the maximum 80W 'SuperVOOC' charging speeds. There's also 50W wireless charging, for which you'll need a relevant Qi2 pad. As Oppo elected to forego magnets in the design, you'll want the separate magnetic case for use with charging accessories – such as the (also sold separately) magnetic power bank.

So how does all that add up in the real world? After the device bedded in and got used to my usage patterns, I was getting through a day, not plugging it in overnight, and still waking up 24 hours later with 45% battery in the tank. Used carefully, you'd be able to get through two working days. Calculating for the 8000mAh to 7150mAh difference, that's a 10% reduction, so around 38% would remain by equivalent.

Performance in the Find X10 Pro Max is typically as 'max' as the name suggests. I've not found it to overheat, and gaming titles like Earn to Die Rogue will run solidly for extended periods thanks to MediaTek's latest Dimensity 9600 Pro processor.

I have seen one or two frame-rate hiccups, or strange upscaling visible in Facebook videos, though, so it's not always perfect. The decision to stick with 12GB RAM, especially when the earlier X9 Pro featured 16GB as standard, only goes to show the heightened impact of the RAM crisis here, too.

I've gotten more used to Oppo's ColorOS over the years, now finding its additional features beyond raw Android to be of use. Multitasking with floating windows, for example, is most welcome – although it needs to better integrate keyboard visibility, as all too often what you're typing won't be visible in real-time, for example.

By and large, however, ColorOS 17 is a smooth operating system with some inevitable double-ups in some areas, such as two app store fronts (Google Play and App Market). Some aspects take a little tweaking to maximise, too, such as ensuring apps aren't set to limit battery use so they can be fully functional in the background.

Cameras

• Triple rear cameras (with fourth as True Colour Camera):
  • Main (23mm): 200-megapixel, f/1.5 aperture, 1/1.3in size (Samsung ISOCELL HPC), DeepPix HDR, autofocus (PDAF), optical stabilisation (OIS)
  • Tele (70mm; periscope zoom): 200MP, f/2.1, 1/1.56in (Samsung ISOCELL HP5), PDAF, OIS
  • Wide (13mm): 200MP, f/2.2, 1/1.56in (Samsung ISOCELL HP5), PDAF
  • 2nd Gen True Color Camera: 3.2MP, 24-channel colour
• Single front selfie camera:
  • 18mm: 50MP, f/2.0, 1/2.76in, PDAF

But the real reason to want the Find X10 Pro Max beyond, well, anything else on the market? It's the cameras, but of course. I've been road-testing them for some weeks now, even able to take the phone away on a holiday to Malta to test out its abilities.

As a quick overview again: the Find X10 Pro Max's 'Lumo Camera System' features a Hasselblad-backed trio of lenses, ranging from wide-angle (13mm) to main (24mm) and a 3x periscope zoom that will deliver top portraits (thanks to a 70mm focal range). You can zoom beyond this, with the 6x default in the app offering a great 140mm option.

All these sensors are top drawer, with both the wide-angle and zoom utilising the proven Samsung HP5 – as featured in the previous Find X9 Pro's zoom, too. Its appearance in the wide-angle is new, further upping the quality of that offering. But it's the main sensor, the Samsung HPC, that really ups the Find X10 Pro Max's game.

As you can see in the gallery of shots above, that zoom lens is mighty impressive. While the first frame may look abstract – it's some truffles atop a burrata (itself atop a pizza – the Maltese know how to do it) – the level of detail by default at that 140mm setting is incredible. The 70mm and main 24mm are sharp, and each looks colour accurate to the next.

That colour accuracy is part of the second-generation Hasselblad 'True Colour Camera', which now uses more channels to ensure colour capture that's reflective of reality – and balanced to the scene's other colours – to provide an accurate representation, whichever optic or focal length or digital zoom increment you're utilising.

Daylight shots, as you can see in the gallery of shots below, depict really rich yet natural colours as a result. It's particularly pleasing that the wide-angle doesn't suffer as much blurring or visible processing compared to many other flagship phones, where this is a typical weak point.

That DeepPix technology certainly functions well in permitting low-light capture, too, although this is the one area where I feel a little more could be done. The Google Pixel 11 Pro, for example, is great at identifying faces and taking multiple shots to try and negate subject blur – something the Find X10 Pro Max isn't quite so accomplished at achieving.

There's no doubting the sheer clarity when shooting in low-light conditions, mind you, again regardless of which lens I selected to use. Having such a suite of options at your fingertips is a massive appeal that gives this device the upper hand compared to the majority of its rivals.

There are a bunch of options and settings to tinker with, too, from Portrait to Hasselblad Hi-Res or fully manual Master mode, and video capture that can hit 4K resolution at 60fps on all three cameras. Heck, you can even shoot 8K at 30fps on all three, too, should you feel the need!

I'm yet to try the separate teleconverter unit that you can also purchase for this device (using the separate case to connect), adding a physically large, elongated lens to the setup. It's quirky, that's for sure, but it's yet another string to this phone's bow that edges it closer to being 'a proper camera'.

Verdict

There's no doubt that the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max is a real showcase of what's possible in a phone camera in 2026 – blowing the likes of Samsung's and Apple's equivalent flagships out of the water with a more comprehensive and accomplished setup.

That suite of Hasselblad-endorsed shooters is the core reason to want to buy this phone over the established competition. But you'll have to really want to, as it's a pricey option when purchased outside of its launch promotional period – far more so than last year's Find X9 Pro top-tier product.

There's plenty more to upsell it, of course, from the stunning battery life to top-drawer power and a generally finessed design (if you can cope with such a giant camera enclosure – but, given what it offers, that's the visual compromise to be made).

If you're seeking a new Android flagship that's best-of-the-best when it comes to cameras, the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max is an astonishing option. It just happens to be astonishingly expensive – but you'll certainly get tonnes of worth from it.

Also consider

So that would ultimately be my suggestion: look to the Oppo Find X9 Pro, as you can pick it up for approaching half the amount of money. It still has a great suite of cameras in a design that's largely similar.

Otherwise, Google's Pixel 11 Pro can show the upper hand in some low-light or subject-recognition scenarios, wrapped in a great-looking design with the best Android software that's available.

But if all this talk of Android is making you scoff, then, well, Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is a formidable option, no doubt. Its variable aperture camera is a rarity and a point of attraction for this generation, in a proven design and highly regarded ecosystem.

Football Manager 27 will be officially available across multiple platforms from 10 November 2026, but you can actually play it for free from next week.

Sega and Sports Interactive are releasing a Launch Preview version of the game to play on PC or Mac from Thursday 29 October until 3 November. It'll cost absolutely nothing to download and enjoy, with all game modes available.

Should you then want to continue your management journey, you can buy the full game with 10% off. Considering the retail price is £49.99 / $59.99 / €59.99, that's a great deal.

What's more, if you do purchase the game the trial period will be extended until the full release day. And your saved games will transfer over, so you can continue your career.

If you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass, you can even continue your FM27 campaign at no extra cost, as it will be available on the platform as a day one release.

Alternatively, you can download the Launch Preview from Steam, Epic Games Store, or the Microsoft Store, where you can also purchase the full game after.

Football Manager 27 features a tweaked interface this year, with fewer clicks needed to get to important information. There are new tactical features and training options, including a better integration of how your tactics affect player behaviour during matches.

They can even misunderstand your instructions depending on their skill levels and the complexity of your tactics.

The match engine has been enhanced too, with improved visuals of the crowd and other stadium elements.

The game will also release for Xbox consoles and PS5, as well as mobile via Netflix (FM27 Mobile) and Apple Arcade (FM27 Touch). As with the console version on Xbox Game Pass, you'll need a related subscription to play them at no extra cost.

Xbox Game Pass members are getting a selection of great games added next week, as we build up to Halloween. And while one of those is the superb Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, I'm actually more excited by the inclusion of another remastered classic.

I played Plants vs. Zombies for many hours – days even – when it first released many moons ago. It was my Candy Crush on iPhone. So I've been looking to get my hands on Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted on Xbox for a while. Now, thanks to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, I won't even have to pay extra for it.

The tower defence game, which sees you plant different categories of lethal plants to fight off waves of the undead, was remastered with HD graphics and extra content last year. Now it's coming to the service in time for the spooky season.

As part of EA Play, it'll be available on 29 October for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers only. However, there will also be several games arriving on the platform soon for Premium members too.

That includes Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, the truly stunning, from-the-ground-up remake of one of the best JRPGs ever made (well the first part of it anyway). The start of the trilogy reintroduces us to the characters we all fell in love with almost 30 years ago.

It'll be available for Ultimate, Premium and PC Game Pass subscribers from 29 October, too. However, you will need an Xbox Series X/S, PC or access to Xbox Cloud Gaming to play it.

Other games coming soon include Sandustry, which arrived on Game Pass today (21 October), Dodo Duckie (coming 22 October), Scramble Knights Online (26 October), and The Séance of Blake Manor (27 October).

Also coming next week – on 29 October – are Mouthwashing, and Terrible Lizards. And the first confirmed game for next month is Pit of Goblin, which will arrive on 3 November.

Only recently we suggested that like the PlayStation 6, the next-gen Xbox console – currently codenamed Project Helix – will be delayed until 2028 at the earliest. Now another source has repeated that claim.

In a profile of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Fortune revealed that "plans" include releasing "the next console by the holidays in 2028".

However, we could see another device before then. It is also claimed that there will be a "next-generation handheld device" by the end of next year.

Unfortunately though, Fortune also wrote that Helix could cost as much as $1,800 (£1,344) with today's component market taken into consideration. The business outlet revealed that internal projections priced the console between $1,200 and $1,800.

That's if the components crisis continues, of course. And as I said about the PS6 in my latest report, delayed release dates could allow Sony and Microsoft to reduce their costs.

I spoke with an LG executive at IFA in September who told me RAMageddon could be over by the end of 2027, early 2028 at the latest. That could enable memory and NAND storage prices to become more sensible before console production begins.

Hopefully, the savings will then be passed onto the consumer in the form of lower price points.

After all, who would want to spend the equivalent of a decent gaming PC on a new console? The PS5 Pro currently retails for $899 / £789 and that's considered far too expensive by most.

It also depends on Helix's capabilities. Original plans were to release a premium PC/Xbox hybrid, which can play both types of games at a high level. However, reports have since said that the plans have been adjusted, to keep the console more affordable.

That could also have contributed to the delay. Either way though, existing Xbox Series X/S (and PS5) owners can rest safe in the knowledge that their consoles will continue to be fully supported for the next few years.

For a short while, Bluesound was the only name in the ‘wireless hi-res audio streaming game’, but it’s safe to say those days are gone.

Like all the best innovators do, though, the company has remained at the forefront and generally is extremely competitive when compared to the raft of imitators it has inspired.

The Pulse Flex wants to be Bluesound’s latest demonstration that it’s nowhere near losing its mojo… so how does it fare?

Price & Availability

The Bluesound Pulse Flex went on sale at the very end of last year, and in the United Kingdom it’s priced at £279. It will cost you $349 in the United States, while it goes for AU$549 in Australia.

The world, I hardly need to tell you, is far from short of wireless speakers that sell for this sort of money – but then Bluesound has been a front-runner for quite some time now.

Features & What's New?

For a brief moment back there, Bluesound had a unique selling point: wireless streaming of genuinely high-resolution digital files. Others have caught up, of course, but the fact remains that a (relatively) affordable wireless speaker with 24bit/192kHz PCM and DSD256 streaming possibilities from multiple sources really should be a product to be reckoned with.

And getting that big hi-res content on board can be done in quite a few different ways. The BluOS control app will let you integrate literally dozens of different music streaming services – and its compatibility with (for instance) the ‘Connect’ versions of Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal makes accessing content as simple as can be.

In addition, the fact the Pulse Flex is Roon Ready, works with AirPlay 2, and offers plenty of options where internet radio is concerned too, only adds to its flexibility.

Using the app utilises the integrated dual-band Wi-Fi, of course – but there’s additional wireless functionality available in the shape of Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX HD codec compatibility. And on the rear of the speaker there’s an Ethernet socket, just in case ultimate network stability is a priority.

You’ll also find USB-A and USB-C slots here, as well as a hybrid 3.5mm socket that can either be an analogue or a digital audio input. If you favour the second option, Bluesound supplies a Toslink/3.5mm adapter in the packaging.

All incoming digital information is dealt with by a DAC that is, sure enough, good up to DSD256 and 24bit/192kHz PCM resolutions, before having a rocket put up it by 50 watts of Class D amplification.

Bluesound has finessed this power using its ‘Smart DSP’, and it serves 10 watts to a 21mm tweeter and 40 watts to a 102mm mid/bass driver. Bluesound is not exactly making with the details here – nothing about frequency response or even the material used in the construction of these drivers is forthcoming. At least it’s prepared to confirm that both drivers face forwards, though.

Performance

Thanks to the BluOS control app, it’s a doddle to set up the Pulse Flex and get at the content you want, whether it’s internet radio, your favourite music streaming service(s) or stuff stored on a common network. And once you got it, there’s a whole lot to enjoy about the way the Bluesound serves it up

What’s probably most immediately striking is just, well, how immediate this speaker sounds. Its presentation is remarkably open when you consider what a small cabinet this is, and there’s a kind of direct and unequivocal character about the Pulse Flex’s delivery that’s very engaging.

Detail levels are high, which helps with the impression of positivity (which is especially noticeable when you’re listening to nice big 24bit/192kHz or DSD64 audio files), and the evenness of the frequency response from the bottom end to the top also allows the Bluesound to present music in a fairly naturalistic manner.

The tonal balance is nicely judged, and much more than many price-comparable rivals the Pulse Flex seems perfectly happy to get out of the way of a recording and express it without sticking its oar in too much. This kind of egoless attitude is not all that common in this area of the market – many alternative designs want to meddle with the sound of a recording, and it’s seldom a helpful attitude.

The neutrality of the Bluesound, combined with its relatively open and revealing nature, goes a long way to convincing you that you’re getting an uncorrupted account of the music.

It controls low-frequency information well, which allows for good momentum and a confident way with rhythmic expression. This speaker doesn’t over-egg bass sounds, which might initially seem less than exciting – but it doesn’t take all that long in the company of the Bluesound to realise it strikes a more convincing overall balance than is usual in a product of this type.

There’s a reasonable amount of dynamic headroom available, so big shifts in attack or intensity are more than alluded to – but where the Pulse Flex really scores in this regard is with the attention it pays to low-level dynamic variations. The ability to identify and confidently contextualise the harmonic fluctuations and transient occurrences in a recording adds no end to the impression of ‘the complete picture’.

Really, about the only meaningful way in which the Bluesound could up its game is when it comes to the sort of energy and excitement it rather seems to think is a bit beneath it. The speaker’s attitude of careful attention to detail and tonal neutrality is all well and good almost all the time – but when it comes up against the ‘wrong’ sort of music (music that values drive and posture over all else) the Pulse Flex can sound just a little undemonstrative and dispassionate.

Still, for most listeners a hint of the ‘matter of fact’ is going to be preferable to ‘eyes out on stalks’ – if that’s a choice that needs making then I know which side I’m on.

Design & Usability

Display screens or other design fripperies are not for Bluesound. The Pulse Flex is a discreet and quite unassuming speaker in visual terms, with only the softly cornered triangular prism of its shape offering the merest hint of ‘design’.

It’s an understated looker no matter which of the three finishes you choose – black-and-charcoal or white-and-grey are available as alternatives to the white-and-tan of my review sample – and its compact 196 x 131 x 111mm (HxWxD) dimensions mean it’s not difficult to position.

Bluesound offers a range of stands and wall-mounting accessories, but the integrated soft rubber foot on which the speaker rests means it’s equally secure on a shelf or desktop. The standard of build and finish is not up for question – though it’s probably fair to say that this is not the most tactile speaker around.

Operating the Pulse Flex as a standalone mono speaker can be done in a few different ways. Integrating it into Amazon Alexa Skills in order for a truly smart speaker to offer some voice control is not especially elegant, but it’s an option.

There are some control buttons on the plastic top plate: volume up/down, play/pause and skip forwards/backwards are all available here, along with three buttons offering shortcuts to favourite playlists, radio stations or what-have-you.

You can specify your shortcuts in the BluOS control app, and it’s a feature that goes some distance towards explaining Bluesound’s position in the market. For an app that offers such a granular level of control, it’s remarkably easy to navigate, and logical and stable in operation.

In the decade or so that BluOS has been a thing, increasing numbers of third-party manufacturers have come aboard – which means that if you want to use your Pulse Flex as part of a home cinema surround-sound system or a multiroom set-up, say, you’re by no means limited to other Bluesound products as partners.

The app makes setting up even quite complex and/or wide-ranging wireless set-ups simple, too – which is not something that can't be said for quite a number of competing systems. I really think this app is at the cutting edge.

Bluesound Pulse Flex review: Verdict

Bluesound’s status as a front-runner of hi-res streaming is only going to be enhanced by the Pulse Flex – it’s a great-sounding speaker with a brilliant control app, and the sort of wider-system flexibility that means it could be at the heart of your wireless set-up for the long haul.

Also Consider

The Audio Pro C10 mkII is bigger than the Pulse Flex, both physically and in terms of its power output – and it’s a little more expensive too. But its sound is clean and open, punchy and assertive – and it’s got a bit going on where ‘Scandi Design’ is concerned, too, as long as you like monochrome. The control app makes setting up a multiroom system to include the C10 mkII straightforward enough, but like every competitor it’s playing second fiddle to the BluOS alternative the Bluesound is running.

Apple's gaming strategy has changed in the last few years, not least thanks to its devices becoming more capable.

Not only are Apple silicon-toting MacBooks more capable of playing AAA games, but iPhone and iPad models are no longer restricted to simple mobile titles.

We've had the likes of Death Stranding and Resident Evil Village release on iOS in the last few years, and later this month No Man's Sky will join the list. What's more, the sci-fi hit will include 10 years-worth of downloadable content when it does arrive.

It's a strategy that seems to be gaining momentum. More developers and publishers want to exploit Apple's platforms and its growing base of gamers, now that the games themselves are capable of running almost as well as they do on console.

But where does that leave Apple Arcade? Most premium games will not be released on the service – at least not on day one. With a greater focus on iPhone and iPad as bone fide gaming devices, will Apple Arcade continue?

The answer is a resounding "yes". Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Apple's head of App Store Worldwide, Carson Oliver, was keen to stress that Apple Arcade is going nowhere: "We want to give developers a trusted place to reach users around the world, support them at each stage, and help them build successful businesses," he said.

"To achieve that goal, we provide developers with flexible business model options. That means a breakthrough phenomenon like Balatro can thrive as a premium download, and it can also find a home as part of the Apple Arcade service.

"The important thing is that we give developers the flexibility to make the best choice for every game and players the freedom to play how they want."

An Apple Arcade subscription costs £6.99 / $6.99 per month for access to hundreds of mobile games. They work across iPhone, iPad, Mac and, in many cases, Apple TV 4K. And they have no hidden fees or advertising.

Some of them are big name releases you'd find on console and PC too – including Sid Meier's Civilization 7, Dredge, Stardew Valley, and Cult of the Lamb.

And with the likes of Vampire Crawlers, Absolum, and Sifu arriving on the App Store soon as premium titles, it shows that Apple's only getting started in gaming. There is plenty yet to come.

Antigravity, the drone brand incubated by Insta360, has announced a new accessory bundle for its A1 drone that could make one of the most exciting flying cameras on the market considerably more appealing to everyday users.

Launched in late 2025, the Antigravity A1 made headlines as the world's first 8K 360-degree drone, which lets you capture everything around you and decide on the framing afterwards.

However, its unusual control system, which relies on FPV goggles and a dedicated Grip controller, arguably made it less appealing to casual users who simply wanted to capture themselves running, cycling or exploring the outdoors.

The new Antigravity A1 Follow Me Bundle addresses that problem by replacing the traditional flying setup with a Watch Remote and a Ring Remote.

The two wearable accessories promise a more intuitive way to capture aerial footage without needing to learn how to pilot a drone.

A drone you can control with your wrist

The Watch Remote acts as the main control centre, allowing you to launch and land the A1, switch between tracking modes and adjust its flight path using a 1.72-inch touchscreen.

The Ring Remote takes things a step further with a feature called Drag-to-Fly, which lets you reposition the drone using simple hand gestures.

Pressing and holding the ring's button allows you to effectively 'grab' the drone in mid-air, moving your hand to change its position or twisting your wrist to bring it closer or send it farther away.

The system also introduces upgraded Deep Track technology, which combines visual subject tracking with GNSS positioning from the watch.

According to Antigravity, this should help the A1 maintain a more consistent lock on its subject during fast movements or when trees and other obstacles briefly interrupt its view.

The drone can track subjects travelling at up to 22mph (10m/s), making it suitable for activities such as cycling and trail running.

There's also a new Wave to Track feature, which lets users lock onto themselves as the tracking subject simply by raising a hand above their head.

For those who want more cinematic footage, Antigravity's Sky Genie feature offers automated camera movements, including Orbit, Fly Away and Spiral Ascent, all accessible from the Watch Remote.

Because the A1 captures 360-degree footage at up to 8K resolution, you can also reframe your videos afterwards, creating multiple perspectives from a single flight.

A more accessible way to fly

The bundle includes new Full-Coverage Propeller Guards, which enclose the drone's propellers and work alongside its omnidirectional obstacle-avoidance system for added safety when flying the drone close to subjects.

With the guards and high-capacity battery installed, the A1 weighs 351g and offers up to 23 minutes of flight time.

The Watch Remote and Ring Remote both carry IP67 water-resistance ratings and promise more than five hours of battery life.

Perhaps most importantly, Antigravity is offering the new accessories in two configurations.

The complete Follow Me Bundle includes the A1 drone, both wearable controllers, propeller guards, a high-capacity battery and additional accessories.

Existing A1 owners can also purchase a separate Follow Me Bundle Accessory Kit, allowing them to upgrade their current drone without buying another one.

The Antigravity A1 Follow Me Bundle launches on 20 October 2026, priced at £639 / $799 / €719 / AU$1,159.

The standalone Follow Me Accessory Kit costs £309 / $339.99 / €359 / AU$539, although existing A1 owners qualify for a 20% discount, bringing the UK price down to just £249.

It's available now at Antigravity and Best Buy in the US.

It feels like almost yesterday that I was playing Sports Resort on the Nintendo Wii. It wasn't, of course, as the second game in Nintendo's series was released some 17 years ago – in the summer of '09.

The original that started it all, Wii Sports, which came bundled with that console, was released three years prior. It's fitting, therefore, that on the 20th anniversary, Nintendo has revisited its sporting classic for a Switch 2 release, which I've been playing over the last week – hitting peak Nintendo nostalgia.

However, Switch Sports Resort isn't a mere graphical repolish of the old Wii games, it's a fully new experience that just happens to leverage some of the greatest sports in the original. It also taps into the Switch 2's Joy-Con 2 controllers, taking advantage of all their control mechanisms for the better for its new additions.

How much does Sports Resort cost?

Switch Sports Resort releases Thursday 22 October 2026 around the world. It's not bundled with the Switch 2 console, of course, as you'll have to fork out your cash to buy the game.

Nintendo is positioning the title as a premier release, meaning it's close to a AAA game's price, at £41.99 / $/€49.99for the digital download versions.

You can buy a boxed copy, too, which is meant to cost more – but Amazon is holding the same price as the download for the pre-order, plus you can split the payment over 5 months to spread the cost.

How many sports are included?

• Archery
• Basketball, Boxing, Bowling
• Golf
• Power Cruising, Prop Plane
• Skateboarding
• Table Tennis, Tennis, Thumb Wrestling
• Volleyball

If, like me, you were all about Bowling, then you'll be pleased to see it's returned for the Switch 2 edition of Sports Resort. There are plenty of other familiar games, too, which I've listed above in alphabetical order.

Some are totally new, though, with Skateboarding (which uses the Joy-Con's mouse-like controls), Thumb Wrestling, and the honorary thirteenth sport, Jump Rope – which is a warm-up, rather than fully blown sport.

Some of the lesser regarded sports of the original Wii Sports Resort have been left in the history books, as there's no Canoeing, Cycling, Frisbee, Swordplay or Wakeboarding. No big losses there, though, with many of the core mechanics of those reflected in the current line-up.

Can I play Switch Sports Resort online?

I've been playing Switch Sports Resort in local versus mode, which can cater for up to four players using individual Joy-Cons, or passing one (or sometimes a pair, depending on the game) around turn by turn.

Computer opponents, with three difficulty levels, can also be included. You can also play online, with up to 16 real players for certain sports – so long as you have the relevant Nintendo Switch Online subscription for access.

I can see the online play being a massive part of this game, as I'm sure there'll be plenty of pro players who take to one sport. It's also a great way to showcase your abilities, as the solo game – where you battle through every sport – isn't nearly as fun as the versus thrill.

This late October launch seems somewhat peculiar to me, however, with Nintendo's Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake due a couple of weeks later, not to mention the massive launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 incoming in November too.

Switch Sports Resort makes huge sense as a holiday period or slice of Christmas entertainment for the whole family – but, with only 12 sports to entertain, its shelf life is likely to be limited. A big discount would massively add appeal in my view, because there's so much joy to be had here.

Samsung could make a significant expansion of its folding phone family, known as Galaxy Z. According to a new leak, there could be up to six models in 2027.

Some of these are predictable: replacements for the existing line-up will see the Galaxy Z Fold 9 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 9 and Galaxy Z Flip 9 launch as expected. However, that's not all.

According to TheGalox on X, a reputable leaker, we could also be looking at a new Z TriFold 2, the Galaxy Z Fold 9 Pro and the Galaxy Z Slide. This suggests two new formats, and a return of Samsung's largest foldable so far.

The leak doesn't tell us much more, but says that Samsung will start with the Galaxy Z TriFold 2. This has previously been rumoured and I suspect that Samsung will repeat the timing of the previous model's launch.

The date we've previously heard is early 2027, so there's a chance that Samsung could have this on the cards for a CES 2027 announcement in January, even if the availability isn't until a little later in the year.

What is the Samsung Galaxy Z Slide?

The Galaxy Z Slide has been shown as a prototype and there have been various patents for the expanding device, but it could see a launch in 2027, according to this leak.

There's no telling when Samsung might showcase this, but it feels like it would be perfect to show off at MWC 2027 at the beginning of next March, even if it's not a full product.

The launch of the regular updates will likely fall into July or August 2027, essentially as they have done before, but this might also be where the Galaxy Z Fold 9 Pro comes in.

At the moment we don't know what this model would be. Is this a step down from the Ultra, or a step up over the Z Fold 9? I'm thinking it will be the latter, with boosted specs on the wide fold to make it more directly challenge the iPhone Duo.

We haven't seen any leaks for the Galaxy Z Fold 9 Pro, but an easy target would be to increase the camera count to restore a zoom on the rear. That would also fit with Samsung's plans to expand the Galaxy S family with a Pro model too.

It could be a busy year for Samsung – let's just hope that everyone is still paying attention once the iPhone Duo goes on sale.

Motorola is planning to launch its own wider folding phone to rival the likes of the iPhone Duo and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8. The new device has just appeared online, although the specs might not worry the incumbents.

According to a Geekbench listing dug up by Gizmochina, the Razr Flex, as the Moto phone is expected to be called, appears to be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, with 12GB RAM. While this is flagship-grade hardware, it's a year old and it's not the top tier Snapdragon 8 chip either.

While that might come as a surprise to those watching the folding phone market, it would fit neatly into Motorola's current strategy, while also keeping costs down.

Motorola updated its flip phones in 2026 but didn't change the core hardware. That left the Razr 70 Ultra with last year's chip, for example, but arguably that isn't a problem.

While techy customers will always want the latest hardware, Motorola has a stronger lifestyle positioning for its devices. It's selling with a fashion-first message, which is why it has Paris Hilton as a brand ambassador.

Sure, the older hardware benchmarks differently, but in the day-to-day use of phones, it doesn't make a huge difference. Or to put another way, it's not enough of a difference to justify the increased price, especially when we're going through a component cost crisis.

Gamers will disagree – and I think gaming is the exception rather than the rule – but folding phones aren't great for gaming anyway. They're difficult to hold, the cooling is poor and the display surfaces can't stand up to the pressure that on-screen controls exert.

So, that Motorola is using the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 for the Razr Flex isn't a huge negative. If it ends up cheaper than Samsung's £1,699 for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Apple's minimum of £1,999, then I'd say it was a savvy bit of product planning.

What else is expected from the Razr Flex?

This latest leak lists Razr Flex 27 and Razr Flex 2027. Motorola typically adds the year to the US model, while in other regions it has been using numbered releases, although that could be set to change. When the new Signature was announced, it was called Motorola Signature 27 globally, so we could be looking at a new naming policy here.

Elsewhere, the phone is said to feature a 6.92-inch internal folding display with 2364 x 1728 pixels and 165Hz refresh rate. The cover display is said to be 4.97-inch, with 1736 x 1140 pixels.

The cameras are comprised of two 50-megapixel snappers on the rear with a pair of 32-megapixel cameras in the two screens.

A 5,000mAh battery has been rumoured, but it's not clear what the wired charging rate would be. Elsewhere, the phone is said to weigh 215g and measure 5.8mm thick when unfolded.

While it won't rival Samsung or Apple for sheer power, we're keeping our fingers crossed that Motorola will make this a more affordable addition to the wide folding trend.

Jamo's latest multi-room connected speaker contains a full sound system in a compact form factor, and sports the sort of Scandinavian design synonymous with the company's homeland of Denmark.

The HYG 5 is the latest in the HYG family – which also includes bedside and outdoor speakers. It features dual 2.5-inch full-range drivers inside, along with a down-firing 4-inch subwoofer, and all without taking up too much space on your sideboard.

You get 30W of total power output – two times 5W for the drivers, 20W for the woofer. And there's plenty of different ways to feed it music.

The speaker system includes dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 on board, along with a stereo RCA line input.

It's compatible with Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, Qobuz Connect, TuneIn (radio) and QPlay II. And it supports AirPlay 2 and Google Cast for both sending audio to the device, as well as linking it with other enabled speakers in a multi-room setup.

Audio playback is capable up to 24-bit / 96kHz.

The speaker is covered in fabric while a touch interface can be found on the top for local control. This dims in standby, so won't be distracting when you're not listening to music.

There's an ambient light ring underneath the HYG 5 too, which includes a sensor so it can respond and adjust to suit your room's lighting.

"We wanted music to be easier to enjoy at home. HYG 5 isn’t a system you have to tinker with – it wakes and plays whenever you want, capable and warm, without asking much of the room or of you," said Jamo's chief product officer, Guillaume Sirami.

The Jamo HYG 5 will be available from 20 October, priced at £349 / $399 / €399.

It's safe to say that the LG Sound Suite – the Korean brand's premier surround sound system and the first to support Dolby Atmos FlexConnect – split the crowd when it was first launched.

I enjoyed its offering – which comprises H7 soundbar, W7 subwoofer, and up to four W7 surround speakers – but my review sample didn't arrive quite as early as some, providing time behind the scenes to iron out various hiccups.

Now, however, LG has delivered a massive free upgrade to the Sound Suite, promising upgraded home cinema features and new audio compatibility too. Premier to which is the addition of DTS:X compatibility.

Sure, Dolby Atmos rules for the majority of releases these days, but some heritage discs (or, in rare cases, streaming sources) may have a DTS format instead – and now the Sound Suite, or standalone H7 soundbar, is compatible.

Some serious home cinema fans will be pleased to see that dual W7 subwoofer pairing has also been added, for larger room setups where there's the demand, while updated Wi-Fi 6GHz networks are also supported, favouring those with the latest Wi-Fi type.

It's not all just about home cinema, though, with Google Cast support finally added too. That'll be ideal for Android users, particularly with music playback, to easily cast content from phone or tablet or laptop to the soundbar or surround system.

This is great additional support to obtain free of charge, but it does beg the question as to why it wasn't part of the package on day one. The announcement was made on 14 October, with over-the-air updates due to roll out to customers thereafter.

Who knew we needed another ROG Xbox Ally X? Well, when Asus spun up a whole heap of limited editions to celebrate ROG's 20th anniversary this year, it clearly decided that the Xbox Ally X was a great candidate for an update.

After all, I was one of many reviewers who felt the debut handheld missed one key thing – an OLED display – and now we've got a revision with that addition. However, it's also packing a new design (featuring retro transparency) and a massive new price tag.

So how does it fare as a value proposition? I've been gaming on it for a couple of weeks to see how it holds up, and it's safe to say that, just like the Xbox Ally X before it, this could end up being down to your personal finances as much as your personal tastes.

Price and Availability

There's no two ways around it – the Xbox Ally X20 is a chunky ask when it comes to the price. In the US, it comes in at $1,299, which is a $300 hike over the original Xbox Ally X. In the UK, meanwhile, we're subjected to a price of £1,299 (where $1,299 is actually £980 when exchanged at the time of writing), which is even more heinous.

These figures are steep, and no mistake, but they're likely to be complicated by the issue of stock, too. The Xbox Ally X went in and out of stock fairly regularly at launch, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true of the new model now that it can be ordered. So the demand is certainly there, price irrelevant.

Design and Specs

The X20 looks much like the Xbox Ally X at first glance, and indeed feels the exact same in the hand, because its dimensions haven't changed. This isn't a new design in any real way, but rather just a new case for the existing one – but that case is really cool.

It sees the handheld put into a dark grey transparent plastic shell, which lets you see hints of components inside it, especially on its back, where fans are pretty clearly visible. It's a really nice retro touch that does indeed speak to the aesthetics of 20 years ago in tech.

This and some gold buttons, to really sell the anniversary theme, are the main differences in design terms compared to the last version of ROG's Xbox handheld, and that does start the conversation about whether enough has really changed here; that debate is at its spiciest when we turn to the machine's specs, though.

When it comes to internals, there's no change here, either. The same processor powers everything, meaning you get the AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme chip – and it remains a very impressive piece of mobile work.

That said, since this chip debuted, Intel's entire Panther Lake generation of chipsets has arrived, and the top-end versions have staggering GPU performance that has made the Z2 Extreme look less bleeding-edge than it used to.

The most eye-grabbing change in component terms, though, is the new screen. For a start, it's 0.4 inches bigger than the previous version, but the crucial difference is that it's an OLED panel – just like we wanted from the start.

It's got HDR, too, making for a substantial upgrade in most ways, while still running at Full HD (1920x1080) and with a refresh rate of 120Hz. This means that all the smoothness you'd like can be achieved with the right graphical setup in your chosen games, but also ensures that you should get better image quality while getting it.

Still, the fact is that this is the sum total of the changes – you still get 1TB of internal storage on an M.2 solid-state drive, 24GB of RAM, and all the same controls and extra buttons as last time. You also get the exact same software suite, with Windows as its base and a layer of Xbox's software on top for convenience.

In fact, it's really worth reiterating this – to all intents and purposes, this machine will feel identical to the ROG Xbox Ally X, apart from its screen. Thus, despite its name giving a slightly muddled impression, it really is the same as going from a Steam Deck to a Steam Deck OLED.

Performance and Display

So, if the ROG Xbox Ally X20 is just a new shell and a new screen, how does that translate in terms of performance? Well, the answer is pretty simple – it performs near-identically to the Xbox Ally X, as you'd expect given that same chipset powering everything.

There might be tiny differences in battery life because of the newer, bigger display, and while there are miniature changes in benchmarking across technical tools, in actual gameplay we're talking the exact same frame rates as you'd have gotten a year ago on the Ally X.

That's not a huge issue, of course, because the Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme remains a really impressive portable chip. You'll be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 on its Steam Deck preset at around 50fps, for example, and running more recent games like Pragmata, you can get a pretty reliable 40fps, too, if you tune it right.

Capcom's newer games are great for their scalability, but the obvious caveat is that some newer titles will stretch the handheld past its limits, and it's a simple reality that you shouldn't necessarily buy this device in the expectation of playing newer titles for years to come – that's just not what it's best at.

Where it does excel is with a back catalogue, whether it's through Xbox Game Pass or Steam, and less graphically demanding titles like Hollow Knight: Silksong or Disco Elysium are pretty stellar to play through.

That also brings me to the software question, which is significant. Once you've set up the Xbox Ally X20, you'll be greeted by a sort of software shell, Xbox Mode. This launched a while back with the original Xbox Ally, but it's been upgraded in a few ways over time, and is now smoother than ever.

There's seemingly a big new version coming out imminently, but I didn't get the chance to try that for this review. Instead, I used the public version out now, and found it reliable enough, even if I did end up using it to just boot Steam quite often.

The fact is that Xbox Mode runs games with better performance than just doing so straight through Windows, so it's a welcome addition that also makes navigating through menus with your controls a good deal easier.

Putting performance aside, though, the display upgrade that really feels like the only reason the Xbox Ally X20 exists is a huge success in gaming terms. The change to OLED is indeed felt immediately, with inkier blacks and beautiful, vivid colours – and with no trade-off in refresh rate, there's really no downside here.

It's the upgrade I wanted the moment I tested the original Xbox Ally X, albeit at a price that I can't pretend to love.

In terms of battery life, meanwhile, I got about three hours from Cyberpunk 2077, but closer to five when running Silksong, which makes it a solid enough performer.

Asus ROG Xbox Ally X20 review: Verdict

This was always going to be the way – the never-ending crunch of the memory price crisis means that the ROG Xbox Ally X20 feels a little compromised by its wild price. That's a shame, because adding an OLED panel basically fixes the one flaw with the Xbox Ally X, and it is therefore really quite lovely to game on.

However, in a world where Intel's Panther Lake chips are now in real handhelds that outperform this one, meaning it's no longer an apex predator, it does look increasingly like a niche option. If you're a big fan of Xbox Mode and want its best implementation yet, this is your best bet, but I think most people might end up bouncing off that price.

Also Consider

If you're shopping at the top end of the gaming handheld market, why not get the newest and shiniest option available? In this case, that's the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ – a genuine beast that features the latest in Intel chipsets and is therefore just about the best performer you'll find. That said, it's ferociously expensive.

The more sensible option is to accept that portable gaming might not be for uber-fidelity, and instead save loads of cash by going for something older like the Lenovo Legion Go S (SteamOS), which remains my favourite PC gaming handheld. It runs SteamOS natively and is a little beauty to play on, but doesn't come close to the ROG Xbox Ally X20 in terms of performance.

Apple keeps punching through the gears in 2026. Since the appointment of its new CEO, we've had the iPhone Duo foldable revealed, followed by the latest HomePod innovations just last week.

Now, it's the turn of MacBook – and before the month is even over – with the official 'Show and tell.' invites having just dropped. There's a clear Mac logo, which almost appears to have a multi-layered surface – just as a touch panel would.

That's the big rumour of this impending reveal: that Apple will finally bite the bullet and put out a MacBook with a touch display. Something that the Cupertino company has been staunchly against for many years – so why the change now?

Well, it's a new era of Apple. While Ternus' appointment as the boss coincides with all these launches, the Apple product teams will have been working tirelessly over the years to get these new launches ready. It's not been an overnight process.

This Apple event is due to take place in Los Angeles on 28 October. Apple has deviated from its Cupertino base once again, with New York being the site for the HomePod reveal and LA being the base for this supposed MacBook reveal. Again: it's a new era for the tech giant.

The event's 10am PDT kick-off will mean 5pm here in the UK (as daylight saving time will have occurred, but not in the USA), 6pm in Europe, with some media invited to attend in person to see the latest products. Don't expect a livestream launch, though, it's likely to be a video drop of all the latest hardware.

It's not expected that only one product will be part of the launch either. The touchscreen MacBook is purported to have an OLED panel – also a MacBook first – and may even be called the 'MacBook Ultra', to really turn things up a notch. And in the home of Hollywood, where digital effects are prime, that's a good fit.

Turning from MacBook, however, there's also expected to be a new iPad with OLED display and a new, more powerful iMac – with M6 at its core. Given the volume of releases in recent weeks, it makes sense that these have been kept together in one 'Mac' group.

So mark your calendars for Wednesday 28 October. Apple's invites are officially out. And the MacBook could be about to change forever – whether you like the idea of a touchscreen or not!

It's been just past a year since Battlefield 6 came out – something that you might have noticed thanks to a big promotional push around its new "Game of the Year" edition. That's a label you're allowed to use even if your own mum's the only one who gave it to you, but in this case there's a pretty decent shout about its success.

After all, the franchise had languished far behind Call of Duty for years, through some real low points (the monetisation in Battlefield V being possibly the nadir), only to leapfrog it brutally in 2025. It was the best-selling shooter of that year, and might have a chance at keeping that label this year even with Modern Warfare 4 arriving in a matter of days.

Sales don't make a game good, of course, and if anything, sometimes mean it has to come from behind in terms of my expectations. Yet, without any artifice, I can say that I play Battlefield 6 almost every day on my PS5 Pro, with a group of friends for whom it's completely supplanted COD at present.

We all fell back into that latter franchise in a huge way when Warzone released, but in the last few years the crazy in-game movement it required alienated us, so when Battlefield returned to a more grounded system it was music to our ears. Now, a year on, its fifth season is proving just as much of a hit, and its new maps (set in Las Vegas and Area 51) have already hosted a good half-dozen hours of team play.

I've particularly enjoyed the new Area 51 map, which is expansive and full of varied terrain – and unlike some of the arrivals in previous seasons (like Blackwell Fields), it doesn't feel like one big plane of similar situations to fight in. It has verticality, sprawl, and a whole heap of routes between points.

Crucially, though, the game is also finally at a point where it sounds as good as I remember it being during the pre-launch beta, when footsteps were incredibly clear and could help you win fights multiple times per round. After quite a few months of muddy audio, Dice has tweaked things to the point where wearing a headset once again feels completely essential.

While my friends all play on launch PS5 consoles, I'm also enjoying the game on my PS5 Pro, and it's one of those titles that makes me feel good about the admittedly sizeable investment it represents. It's sharper and a little more fluid than it would otherwise be, not least thanks to its use of PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to sharpen its base image.

With PSSR actually getting upgrades over time from Sony, this means that BF6 is, if anything, also feeling better than it used to, and it's nice to be able to rely on a game for this long. I have reservations about some of the cosmetics in the game, to be fair, and the "Secuty" typo on a skin this season is particularly embarrassing.

I'm more fussed about the basic fun factor than I am about skins, though, and BF6 continues to nail that side of things. For a game to be drawing me in on basically any free evening an entire year on from release is really impressive enough on its own, frankly.

Samsung fans are reeling after cases for the Samsung Galaxy S27 series leak, suggesting an unwelcome change in design for some.

Cases for four phones – the Galaxy S27, Galaxy S27+, Galaxy S27 Pro and Galaxy S27 Ultra – have all leaked. And while the cases shown are basic in nature, the camera cutouts reveal changes to the forthcoming devices.

While the Galaxy S27 and Galaxy S27+ are expected to look much as they do at the moment with a triple vertical camera on the back, the Galaxy S27 Pro and S27 Ultra are expected to adopt a larger island like the iPhone Pro.

The leak comes from a reliable source, UniverseIce on X, and it corroborates with earlier pictures showing the change in the camera layout for Samsung's Ultra phone.

That sees one of the lenses dropped, but the whole camera sitting on an island that stretches the entire width of the phone.

It's a design that's been widely copied from the iPhone Pro, with a number of devices offering a similar layout of cameras. Samsung had previously offered individual lenses on the back of its phones and established something of its own design identity.

That's the accusation from commenters, with one saying: "S27 Ultra looks like Chinese design. It's not Samsung identity."

Another states: "Samsung has lost all its original identity trying to copy Apple."

Caught in the flack is the Galaxy S27 Pro, Samsung's new entry to the line-up that's designed to offer that Ultra experience, but without the S Pen. It's thought that it will have the same camera, but in a slightly more compact form.

The return of a more compact powerhouse should be cause for excitement, but the design change appears to causing some consternation.

What changes should we expect?

The change in camera design is thought to be paired with dropping the 3x zoom camera that Samsung has offered for many years. While that intermediate zoom step might feel like a loss, it's a camera that hasn't really kept up with change elsewhere.

That's likely to see a single 4x optical telephoto using a 1/1.9in sensor, which should be an upgrade to the quality of both the lenses it replaces.

At the same time, a recent report has suggested that Samsung has raised doubts about the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chip that it's thought the S27 Ultra and S27 Pro will use. The report suggests Samsung has experienced overheating problems with the new Qualcomm chip, and that Exynos could be used instead.

We've seen this to and fro before, but it's likely that come launch day, Samsung will use a mixture of hardware in different regions.

The launch of the Samsung Galaxy S27 series is not expected until February 2027.

If you're spending £2,000 / $2,000 on a new folding iPhone, then you'll likely be considering how you'll protect it. With iPhone Duo pre-orders now open, the cases are also available to buy, but have thrown up a quandary.

Apple is offering two official cases – the iPhone Duo Folio with Kickstand and the iPhone Duo Case, priced at £129 / $129 and £79 / $79 respectively. But it's the latter of these cases which is getting the attention right now.

The description of the case on the Apple Store says: "With built-in magnets that align perfectly with iPhone Duo, this case offers a magical attach experience…" However, early buyers have found that you'll need to use adhesive to stick it to the phone.

That comes in the form of a couple of strips that are peeled off making the edges stick better. The fact that it uses adhesive has surprised some buyers, resulting in wide discussion on Reddit, as well as photo sharing on X (via 9to5Mac).

The use of adhesive is common in folding phone cases, especially for the thin surround that you need for the cover display. But the fact it's not mentioned on the Apple site – with Apple talking about the "magical attach experience" instead – has drawn some comment.

It also raises questions about the best way to protect your folding phone. We recently shared the cost for iPhone Duo repairs should you damage the device, so many will be looking for the best cases to buy.

Protecting the back of the phone is easy because you can have space to work with, but protecting the cover screen is a different matter, because there's very little space, just a slim frame.

Adhesives are common to help these cases stay in place, because you can't clip on a case the same way you can with a regular phone.

Adhesives come with concerns: removing the case downgrades the adhesive (with the risk of residue remaining on the device), while it can also trap dust that might then damage the frame after a long period of time.

Unlike a regular magnetic or clip on cases, adhesive cases are harder to remove and clean, and then replace.

That's not the only consideration: a folding phone in a case gets thicker and the iPhone Duo is already 11.3mm thick. Some people will just decide to carry their device "naked", ie., with no case at all.

There's a full range of iPhone Duo cases available on Amazon (including the official Apple cases), but the big decision is going to be whether to use one or not.

While some originally suggested that the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix could release in 2027, it's looking like both could be delayed further. And their prices could be astronomical when they do arrive.

The ongoing components crisis (AKA RAMageddon) has put a kybosh on the next-generation of console gaming, with one industry insider claiming that Sony is struggling to get its PS6 costs down to an affordable level.

That's because the price of memory and storage has skyrocketed over the last two years with the demand from AI data centres making both rare. And according to KeplerL2 (via VGC) that will leave Sony facing a $680 (£510) bill just for the RAM and NAND storage for each PS6.

Responding to a post on NeoGaf that suggested the PS6 will cost $680, he pointed out that the memory and storage would be more than that on their own. You then have to factor in the AMD chipset, GPU, heatsink, fan, power unit, and everything else besides. Not even including a packaged controller, that would put the manufacturing cost alone at just shy of $1,000 (£750).

Even if Sony is willing to sell its next-gen machine at a loss, it can't take too much of a hit per unit.

KeplerL2 is a much-respected AMD expert, so he knows a thing or two about component prices and the potential hardware being considered.

A PS5 costs £569 / $599 today – much more than its launch price – while the PS5 Pro has a retail price of £789 / $899. It would not be a massive leap to suggest the PS6 will be considerably more expensive if the component crisis continues.

What's perhaps more likely is that Sony will wait until the wholesale prices of RAM and NAND reduce. LG recently told T3 that could happen by the end of 2027 or early 2028, which would allow production on a new console to start at a lower cost in spring 2028.

So the holiday season 2028 would be a better bet for the arrival of both the PS6 and Project Helix. And a lot kinder on your pocket, we hope.

If you love vinyl but don't have the space for a full hi-fi setup, this could be just the upgrade your turntable needs. Andover Audio has arrived in the UK, bringing its SpinBase 2 and SpinBase MAX 2 speaker systems with it, both designed to sit directly beneath your record player.

Instead of finding room for separate speakers, an amplifier and all the associated cabling, you get everything in one compact unit. Just add your turntable and you're ready to listen, making it a top option for bedrooms, home offices and smaller living spaces.

A smarter way to listen to vinyl

Both SpinBase systems use Andover's patented IsoGroove technology, designed to control vibration and prevent acoustic feedback when a turntable sits directly on top of the speakers. That's important when you're putting a record player and its sound system practically on top of one another.

There's a built-in phono stage, too, so you can connect a compatible turntable directly without needing a separate preamp. Bluetooth and additional wired inputs also mean you can play music from other sources, giving the system a bit more flexibility than a dedicated record player speaker.

It's a decent idea for anyone who wants to upgrade their vinyl setup without turning the living room into a hi-fi showroom. And if you're starting from scratch, it removes much of the guesswork involved in choosing separate components that work well together.

SpinBase 2 vs SpinBase MAX 2

The standard SpinBase 2 is the smaller of the two, with 70W of amplification and a four-speaker array that delivers sound across a 270-degree spread. At just 83mm high, it's designed to tuck neatly beneath a turntable without dominating a desk or cabinet.

The SpinBase MAX 2 takes the same idea and gives it more muscle. It delivers 100W of amplification through a six-speaker, 270-degree array, with a larger cabinet and deeper bass response for listeners who want a fuller sound.

Both models are designed to work with a wide range of turntables, while their wireless and wired connections make them useful beyond vinyl, too. The MAX 2 is the more substantial option, but the standard model looks like the good choice if keeping things compact is the priority.

How much do they cost?

The Andover Audio SpinBase 2 costs £349, while the SpinBase MAX 2 comes in at £549. Both are available now in limited quantities through Henley Audio's authorised UK retailers, with further stock expected ahead of Christmas.

Neither is the cheapest way to get sound from a record player, but the appeal is in having amplification, speakers and a phono stage together in a single, space-saving system.

If you want better sound from your vinyl collection without filling your home with separate hi-fi components, the SpinBase range is a clever alternative worth considering.

Finding a phone for your kids is a bit of a dilemma. You want them to be able to call you when they're out with friends or making their own way home, but handing them a smartphone also gives them access to social media, the internet and an endless supply of distractions.

That's where the Freckle Phone comes in, with a design that encourages children to get outside and explore rather than spend hours staring at a screen.

Created for children aged seven to 13, Freckle has no web browser, app store or social media. Instead, it focuses on calling and texting approved contacts, finding your way around and a collection of features designed to make the world outside more interesting.

A phone that wants kids to go exploring

The most interesting feature is Quests, which gives children missions to complete in the real world. They might be asked to find five different bugs in the park, for example, or photograph particular objects while out exploring. Parents can also create their own challenges.

There's a Discovery Camera, too, which uses AI to identify plants, animals and other things children photograph, adding their discoveries to a digital collection. Think of it as a real-world version of Pokémon, with children encouraged to find things outdoors rather than collect characters on a screen.

Other features include maps, a simple music player, contactless payments using preloaded credit and a walkie-talkie mode that lets children communicate with nearby Freckle phones. The idea is to give kids useful technology for becoming more independent, without making a conventional smartphone the default option.

Less tracking, more trust?

Freckle is also trying to strike a different balance between parental reassurance and children's independence. Parents can approve contacts and set up safe zones, receiving an alert if their child leaves a designated area rather than having to monitor their every movement.

AI plays a part in several of the phone's features, including answering questions and creating interactive stories, but the company says it isn't designed around an open-ended chatbot or an AI companion that children spend hours talking to. Parents can also remove the AI-powered features if they'd prefer.

The phone has been designed with a rugged case and a lanyard, so children can wear it around their necks while they're out. Its software, called ClayOS, uses playful characters and can be customized with accessories, giving it a more child-friendly feel than a scaled-down adult smartphone.

When can you get one?

Freckle is taking preorders in the US, with the phone priced at $199 (around £149). A wireless plan costs $25 per month (around £19), and the first units are expected to ship in December 2026. There's no confirmed UK launch yet.

If you're looking for a first phone for your child, Freckle could be an interesting middle ground between giving them a full-blown smartphone and leaving them without a way to contact you. And if it gets them outside looking for bugs instead of watching videos, that's not a bad start.

Last weekend I was enjoying a little time off work, exploring the island nation of Malta, a holiday trip for which I didn't actually pack my dedicated 'proper' camera.

That's because I've been using Oppo's latest flagship, the Find X10 Pro Max, which I put in my pocket, safe in the knowledge that it would be a photographic beast.

Pre-order discount promotion

While my full X10 Pro Max review is forthcoming, Oppo is already teasing a pre-order promotion to net a £200 discount on the final product release – which commences on 21 October, so it's just around the corner.

The same promotion also includes a free gift, which can either be an Oppo Watch X3 or the Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit. It's the latter I'd be most interested in, given the strength of this product's camera – and the reason for me writing this very article.

It's no secret that the Find X10 Pro Max has a trio of 200-megapixel cameras on its rear – indeed, none of the specification is a secret (per GSMArena), as the handset has already launched in China – replete with Hasselblad backing.

That's what that 'H' symbol in my pictures of the phone represents, if you're unfamiliar with Hasselblad's work – it's a renowned lens- and camera-maker, based in Sweden, which has worked with Oppo for some years now.

And it makes very good lenses. In the X10 Pro Max, however, its services are also deployed in collaboration for the processing, picture styles and colour balancing – making use of the True Color Camera (the fourth lens on the rear) for great accuracy.

Dreamy zoom options

But it's the zoom that's really blown me away in my use. Check out the gallery below. Sure, it's just a pizza on a table, right? Click through to the 3x zoom option and then full 6x zoom, however, and you'll see just what this device is capable of delivering.

Those glistening truffles sat atop a burrata are packed full of detail – and that's a shot straight out of the camera, I needn't do anything more to the image. It's nicely colour-matched to the other images, too, showing Oppo's and Hasselblad's finesse when it comes to consistency across its camera suite.

200MP clarity

It was really great being able to roam the streets of Maltese towns – from Valetta to Saint Paul's, even to the island of Comino – knowing that I could just quick-launch the Find X10 Pro Max's camera and confidently shoot, whether close-up, portrait distance, or zooming in further.

A stray cat, sat atop a car, I caught licking its whiskers in a burst shot at 6x zoom, during a walking tour around the city. It was candid, easy to shoot, and I hadn't noticed the tongue until afterwards – but it's a great shot.

The camera setup isn't just capable in distance shooting, of course, as its wide-angle is very capable too, as you can see in the coastal shot second in the gallery. The third shot, of a late sushi lunch, gives an impression of how those 200-megapixels squeeze lots of detail into an image (which, by default, are oversampled and output at 25MP).

Day or night

Malta is splendid in the day, but when the sun sets – often in dramatic style – the night takes over, and there's a lot of nightlife. Low-light scenes are little problem for this camera's triplet of large sensors, able to maintain detail and low noise throughout.

The only weakness I've really found in this camera is the occasional slip-up in focus and limitations for subject movement in low-light conditions.

Obviously it's tricky to avoid subjects blurring due to their movement in dim scenes, because there's only so much light available and, even with a wide aperture, there are limitations.

Nonetheless, what I've managed to shoot with the Find X10 Pro Max does, in many instances, put the other big names to shame. You won't get this kind of zoom clarity from Samsung or Apple right now, that's for sure.

Should I buy the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max?

If you're in the market for a camera phone first and foremost, then I've no doubt that this Oppo flagship is among the best of its kind. It made my holiday without a separate camera totally carefree.

It's likely to be rather pricey, however, so that pre-order promotion is well worth considering. You've got until this Wednesday, 21 October, to put £49 down for £200 off the list price.

I have a confession to make – despite counting myself as a big Resident Evil fan, I'm quite far from having played every game in the series. In fact, although I played a few of the Xbox 360-era games back in the day, the big renaissance for me was Village, which arrived back in 2021. I hopped aboard the Resi train and absolutely loved the mixture of action and horror that it offered up in modern times.

That means that I'd already missed the series' first big modern remake – Resident Evil 2 from 2019. I never played the original, and despite having the newer version on a couple of platforms, I never quite found the moment to dip into it and start Leon Kennedy's story off from the beginning.

Now, though, Switch 2 versions of the Resident Evil 2, 3 and 4 remakes have arrived, with Capcom dropping all three at once to give fans of the series a veritable smorgasbord of choice if they want to revisit some of its finest moments. As it turns out, that's just the prompt I needed – I've finally made time to play the oldest of those three games on my Switch 2, with portability being the key factor.

It's been a pretty brilliant time, too, getting to see how the series really evolved into its modern-day run-and-gun genre. Leon and Claire's time in Raccoon City is tense from the get-go, not least because they're getting stalked by Mr X from a relatively early stage, and that dynamic really is just as electric on your Switch 2 as it's been on various other platforms over the years.

Crucially, Capcom has once again done a very solid job with its porting work, scaling down these RE Engine games to still look crisp and modern on the handheld platform, but noticeably blurrier than most other platforms you could care to name. That means there's an argument to be made that this is one of the less impressive ways you could play them, but I'd counter that by pointing out that plenty of people will only have a single console, and that makes these ports extremely welcome.

It's worth pointing out that the games all aim for 60fps, which is really quite remarkable when you consider some of the ambitious scenes they display. That said, while they often hit that mark, all three of these remakes can dip into the mid-50s when things get more hectic.

It's also well worth underlining that this means you can play Resident Evil 2 all the way through to Resident Evil 8 on this one platform. Given it's only been a little over a year since the Switch 2 first went on sale, that's remarkably impressive work from Capcom, which really hasn't hung around at all on this front.

So, if you, too, have been thinking about playing Resident Evil 2 (or 3 or 4) in its remade form, then now looks like the perfect time if you have a Switch 2. If you're anything like me, you'll find they're brilliant little portable scare-factories.

I honestly didn't see it coming: wired earbuds being a returning trend in 2026. Bose hasn't made such a product for over a decade because, well, why would it?

This year, however, growing demand has seen the audio boffins rekindle interest and launch the Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds – which do exactly as their name describes.

I received my wired Bose 'buds a couple of weeks ago after meeting the brand in central London and have been low-key obsessed with them since for one main reason: despite offering active noise-cancelling (ANC) they never run out of battery life.

How's that possible? It's simple, really. The Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds connect via USB-C – and it's that connector type only, there's no interchangeability – and draw power from the product to which they're connected.

Of course your source device can run out of battery and then there's nothing for these earbuds to draw power from, at which point they'll cease to function. But, at least in theory, they'll run forever – so long as your source is good for it.

What's really impressive is that, despite being wired and with no battery on board, there's active noise-cancelling as part of the feature set. It can't be controlled through the app, of course, as there's no wireless connectivity, but a simple tri-button dongle handles the job.

The controls are simple: volume up and a separate volume down flank the play/pause button to the centre, which also doubles up as ANC control, switching between Off, Quiet and Aware – which it declares, via a voice into your ears, when pressing-and-holding it down. It's very effective and simple.

You don't get the nuance of some of Bose's app-connected products, as there's no sliders to adjust, nor equalisation (EQ) controls on offer here. But, Bose being Bose, the sound quality is still really decent – I've found the bass hits firm and will please what many seek.

The comfort is really solid, too, with the medium tips fitted by default, but additional small and large options included in the box if you need to change them to suit your ears. There's even a little rubberised earhook that helps stability, with a spare of those also included.

When I walked away from my Bose meeting, however, I looked up the headphones – and they were sold out on the brand's own website. I was sure they'd come back into stock, but such is demand that, even a fortnight later, there's none available.

That shows demand is seriously high for this product – and I'm not surprised. They half make me feel nostalgic, as if I'm a teen doing my paper round, cables tangled below clothing; but they also feel futuristic thanks to that no-battery ANC feature.

They're also very good value for the quality you get. At £99 / $99 I can see why all three colourways – Black, White, Dewdrop Mint – have flown off the shelves. Each option includes a soft zip-up carry pouch, too, which is a nice touch.

So can you buy these wired ANC earbuds anywhere at the moment? In the UK I've seen online stock at John Lewis. In the USA, Best Buy also has stock. Amazon is also listing them, but has inflated the price by 100% – so that's a skip (and I shan't link to it either).

Charging stands are more complicated things than they look – and I've used half a dozen in the last few years, each one with strengths and some weaknesses. Recently, Twelve South sent me one of its very best, and I've been surprised by how comprehensively it's won me over on a few different fronts, despite an objectively steep price tag.

The HiRise Deluxe is a 3-in-1 stand that's aimed squarely at Apple users, since one of those functions is an Apple Watch charging puck that's unlikely to be much use for Android fans. The other two charging points are an elevated 15W MagSafe charger, and a standard, non-magnetised wireless charging point at the back of the charger as a whole.

This means that in its ideal setup, I can use the charger to power up my iPhone, AirPods Pro 3 and Apple Watch all at the same time, and it's convenient to know that's an option. That said, since I use it by my bedside overnight, it's really mostly my phone and watch that it takes care of (and an overnight charge means that its modest charging speeds aren't an issue).

What I really like about the charger, though, is how simple and small it keeps its design. The base is just a slab of metal, rounded so that there are no sharp edges, and heavy enough to feel steady on a surface. Its Apple Watch puck can pop up vertically in case your strap needs to wrap around the back, but otherwise there are few moving parts.

The elevated MagSafe charger, meanwhile, also has the ability to tilt and swivel, so that you can have your phone at whatever angle suits you, and this feels sturdy and well-built. It has that sense of good design and proper materials that can be hard to find in cheaper alternatives.

Directly before swapping to the HiRise 3 Deluxe, I'd been using Anker's Prime Wireless Charging Station, a significantly pricier charging dock that has far more features built in. While the built-in active cooling fans and display could sometimes make for impressive results, the reality was that I found them too much for the bedside, sometimes lighting up when I was trying to fall asleep, or spinning up fans when I didn't want them.

By contrast, Twelve South's charger has no such ornamentation, and I've discovered that I clearly prefer it this way. Its price (£99.99 here in the UK) is still pretty punchy, but compared to the £300 Anker wanted at launch for its more space-age charging set, it suddenly looks pretty reasonable.

Whether it's right for you might be a personal thing, but if you're looking for a charging dock that keeps things classy and simple, I'd give it a recommendation – it's working a treat for me.

For a long, long time, Logitech's G Pro X headsets have been extremely safe options if you're in the market for one of the best gaming headsets.

The first-generation version stuck around for years on end, well-constructed and with a design that stood the test of time – but now it's been supplanted twice over.

After the G Pro X2 didn't change a huge amount, what can the G Pro X3 Lightspeed do to upgrade things?

I've been using it as my go-to headset for a couple of weeks to find out – and it's been no surprise at all to confirm that it's another great launch from Logitech.

Price and Availability

Logitech launched the G Pro X3 Lightspeed in late September 2026, and it's been available to buy without any queues since 8 October, so it remains a very fresh launch.

Its pricing sits at a very similar level to the previous generation model, coming in at £229 in the UK, €259.99 in the EU, and $249.99 in the USA.

That means it's obviously a premium headset in most ways, and by most people's metrics, but also that it clearly swerves the option of going for the ultra-premium bracket, one that's fought over by the likes of SteelSeries and Audeze.

Design and Features

If you took a G Pro X3 and stood it right next to a G Pro X from way back in 2020, there's a good chance that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference at a glance.

In those intervening years, however, Logitech has played around a bunch with the design language of its other headsets, but it rightly knows better than to toy with this hugely popular model.

That's arguably a polite way of saying that almost nothing has changed in design terms, and some might see that as a negative, particularly if they didn't love the fit or feel of the previous generations. In my book, though, you're allowed to take an "ain't broke, don't fix it" approach when you've done previous design work well.

That said, it would have been nice to see some innovation here, even if my complaints are thin on the ground. Could the microphone, for instance, be retractable instead of removable after all these years? I'd love it if so, but I know that other people's thoughts may differ.

Still, that's a long way of getting to the point – the G Pro X3 Lightspeed looks about as "headset" as you can get. It has a really nice blend of metal, matte plastic and faux leather out of the box – with a headband that's impressively plush, and arms that feel really durable.

The earcups have shiny Logitech G logos on the outside, whether you pick the headset up in black or white, and plenty of controls.

The right earcup has a sole 3.5mm jack for wired audio. It's the left that's more packed, featuring an on/off switch, a master volume dial, a mute button, a USB-C port for charging, and a Bluetooth pairing button. Finally, it has that removable microphone, which is easy to move around and position correctly.

The headset comes with a carrying bag, but also with a pair of ear cushion replacements, to let you swap out the leatherette default for a velour alternative. I prefer the standard option, and it's better for noise isolation, but this is a nice inclusion.

Comfort levels are really strong, based on my testing. While this isn't the lightest headset out there, at 356g, its cushioning is great, and I was able to happily wear it for three hours at a time without complaint. The box also includes the 2.4Ghz wireless adapter, which is USB-A, and it worked well during my use, holding connectivity well.

There's no noise-cancelling (ANC) on this headset, though, which is worth mentioning given its price.

However, there is a lot of customisation if you connect to a PC and use Logitech's software. Detailed EQ settings are available for both the audio output and microphone input – the latter is really cool and lets you tweak your voice settings in a granular way.

Finally, the stated battery life on offer is fairly whopping, standing at up to 70 hours on a single charge. That's very impressive, although it also means there's no battery-swapping feature here – Logitech has kept things simple and classic.

Sound and Performance

Of course, the G Pro X headsets of yore didn't really become popular because of their designs – it was the superb sound quality and good value that made them so successful. That value proposition is different for a brand-new successor, but how's the sound?

Well, it's predictably excellent. The big thing to note here is that I couldn't really pick out a generational gap between the X2 Lightspeed and the X3, though, where in-game audio was concerned. I played a whole heap of games while using the headset, including hours of Battlefield 6, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and Ace Combat 8, all of which sounded excellent.

Battlefield's concussive warfare makes for some of the most overwhelming sound design in modern multiplayer gaming, and if you can pick out footsteps and audio cues within its soundscape, you're at an advantage. I found the X3 Lightspeed was ideal on that front, which is a great boon.

Where there has been a huge leap, though, is on the microphone, which has been comprehensively upgraded and now stands as best-in-class.

The clarity and depth you get even right out of the box are startling, and with a little tweaking it can be genuinely broadcast-quality. Plenty of headsets claim that label, but few actually deserve it.

If you're on an older headset that has your friends constantly complaining about the feedback or quality of your voice, then this could be a really great choice, since I really don't think I've heard a microphone perform to this level on a headset below £350.

Speaking of tweaking the sound, Logitech's software on PC is pretty intuitive and makes it easy enough to make the changes you want, with good presets also cutting out the middleman if you don't want to tinker in too much detail.

Verdict

The G Pro X3 Lightspeed underlines the fact that Logitech knows what it's doing with this storied headset line – refining excellent previous work. The sound quality might be near-identical to the X2, and the design might be the same, but that doesn't mean it's anything other than excellent overall.

The key variable this time around is one of the best microphones in any headset, and based on my expansive testing, the single best one in its price bracket. If you care about being heard clearly, then you're going to want to think about this headset the next time you're due for an upgrade – it's that good.

Also Consider

The headset market is a deeply competitive one right now, and prices vary wildly from brand to brand and model to model.

If you're happy to spend a little more than what Logitech's asking, my favourite headset is the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni, which has some features (like ANC and omni-compatibility) that the G Pro X3 can't match.

For a similar offering at a lower price, and without that ANC, you could look to the Glorious GHS Wireless InfinitePlay, which gives you desktop convenience at an impressive price. That said, it's less premium-feeling than Logitech's headset, and its microphone is a big step down.

YouTube is looking at adding audiobooks to its offering to widen the appeal for Premium subscribers. Audiobooks are a feature of Spotify's subscription plans, alongside music and podcasts.

The details of YouTube's plans come from the Wall Street Journal (via 9to5Google), although there doesn't appear to be any acknowledgement from YouTube itself.

The Google-owned service has been expanding its offering beyond user-generated video for a number of years. Shorts was launched to offer short-form social video, while YouTube Music was launched in 2015, eventually replacing Google Play Music.

Google already offers audiobook sales through Google Play Books, but adding access through YouTube would help solidify one Google-owned entertainment platform, with subscription access offering a rival experience to Amazon's Audible.

YouTube Premium currently offers ad-free videos on YouTube, ad-free YouTube Music, background play and downloads, for £12.99 / $15.99 a month. The biggest appeal is ad-free YouTube videos for those who watch a lot of YouTube content, but the addition of audiobooks might appeal to a different type of subscriber.

Spotify offers audiobooks and ad-free music for £12.99 / $12.99, with access to 15 hours of audiobooks and ad-free music.

The addition might also reflect changing listening habits. Music services have seen wide adoption of podcasts, which have become something of a trend; with the rise in spoken word listening, audiobooks aren't a huge leap, providing access to books without the need to read them.

According to Spotify in October 2026, audiobook listeners grew by "nearly 40% over the past year", while listening hours is claimed to have "climbed more than 30%". That's probably where Google's interest has come from, capturing those people before they hop over to another platform.

Spotify offers audiobooks outside of its music subscriptions at £8.99 / $9.99 a month, while Audible offers £5.99 / $8.99 a month, or £8.99 / $14.95 a month, plans.

Audiobooks aren't just an AI version of the written book, they're often voiced by well known actors. For example, Audible has Bram Stoker's Dracula voiced by Ella Purnell, Maggie Gyllenhaal and others, while Spotify offers the Harry Potter series narrated by Stephen Fry.

It makes sense for YouTube to make this move, but currently there's no confirmation that it's going to happen.

So, the age of the Googlebook begins. It's been a hugely busy period in the tech world, and Google isn't making things any easier by debuting what it seems to think is the future of the laptop – a new OS hybridising the desktop experience with Android.

There are five launch Googlebook models – I tried them all out ahead of launch schedules to identify the best – and while I'll fully test and rate each of them individually (all in good time), Acer was quickest with a loan unit for this very review.

That means I've spent a little over a week using the Acer Googlebook 14, trying to get a grip on what this slick machine is like if you make it your main laptop.

To be clear, though: while I will obviously discuss the nature of Googlebook OS as it pertains to the laptop's performance, this isn't a review of the operating system – I'm seeing how Acer's laptop holds up to scrutiny, rather than Google's big new idea.

Price and Availability

The Googlebook rollout has been pretty sudden, so you should find that the Acer Googlebook 14 is available now, depending on your region. Here in the UK, the laptop starts at £999, while the US market gets it for $899, and Europe sees it from €1,199.

This does mean that, once again in 2026, the US is by far the best place to be shopping for the laptop – if you actually convert $899 to GBP right now, it comes out to about £680 at the time of writing.

Design and Features

The Acer Googlebook 14 is a lovely exemplification of what Google wants its Googlebook lineup to feel like in the hand. It made a point of this when I was briefed for T3 about these laptops: to talk about them in premium terms, not just in pricing, but in build quality and features, too – and that's how this model feels.

Acer is the only one of the launch makers to offer a two-in-one design, despite the fact that every single Googlebook has to have a touchscreen to pass Google's requirements and earn the label. This means that, in some ways, it makes the most sense out of the launch options, and being the more affordable of the lot further helps on that front.

First in the list of factors that make the laptop feel premium is the fact it has a metallic body, cool to the touch and with a matte finish – that somehow still manages to pick up skin oils like nobody's business. It's impressively lightweight despite this, though, and features a nice robust hinge that's easy to open to whatever extent you like.

The outside case features the all-important (but not very key) Glow Bar – in this case off in one corner, rather than front and centre. It's Google's way of denoting a Googlebook at a glance, but is fairly free of functional use, beyond when you're charging, where it shows your progress in bar form. It doesn't detract from anything, but isn't much more than a little design note.

Once open, the laptop reveals a nice, large keyboard with an equally generous touchpad (another Google non-negotiable is apparently haptics here, but this one seems mechanical), and its large, very bright OLED display – which is a highlight of the build.

The I/O situation is where we hit our first stumble, in my view – one side of the laptop has a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port and a 3.5mm jack, while the other has two further 3.2 USB-C ports. I think there should be more.

These choices do ensure that you don't need another proprietary charger clogging up your life, but it's disappointing that Google wants these laptops to be productivity monsters, yet leaves them all but guaranteed to require a dongle for most professional uses, be it for HDMI connections, SD cards or more.

Still, in terms of specs, it's back to rosier territory. The Acer Chromebook 14 can be picked up with either an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 or a Core Ultra 7 355, and while I tested the more powerful of the two, both are extremely capable. This is shored up by being paired with 16GB or 32GBof RAM, the minimum again being one that Google has mandated to make the Googlebook cut.

You also get a 512GB SSD, which makes this laptop look pretty well-equipped to handle the sort of Chrome and Chromium-heavy tasks you're likely to be doing on it. That brings us to the operating system, which is all-new and much shinier than ChromeOS. It's pretty easy to see how it'll end up being miles better, although right now it's a little rough in places.

While the AI integration is slick – and easy to access in a few different ways, as the laptop's setup guide explains – ensuring that Gemini is indeed at your fingertips at all times, there are still huge limitations here. Principally, while you can install almost literally any Android app under the sun and use it natively, that still leaves big gaps.

While the Android versions of some 'big' apps are clearly going to get more love to cater to this new OS, it still means that sometimes you'll only have access to a mobile-flavoured version of an app. In a world where Mac and Windows users both have access to a far wider range of programmes, it'll take time (and a lot of investment) for Google to catch up in this area.

That's acceptable in the world of affordable Chromebooks, but it's harder to swallow in a Googlebook that costs a grand or more depending on spec. Adobe always seems front and centre in these discussions, and Photoshop is a great example (because I use it multiple times a day); put bluntly, its Android app is a pale shadow of the full desktop experience, and that makes the Googlebook feel hamstrung right now.

Still, at least battery life is impressive, eh? Google's quoted figures didn't blow me away (up to 14 hours of streaming video playback at 50% brightness) – but in practice the laptop never let me down in getting through a whole day.

Performance and Display

If the drawbacks of Googlebook OS mean that there are plenty of hiccups to get past while trying to work on the machine, there's more good news in the form of how its actual performance bears out.

Intel's new chips are workhorses, in my experience, and that's been proven again by the Acer Googlebook 14, which basically never chugged when I threw jobs at it. Given the scope of Chrome's RAM guzzling, a multitude of tabs is the starting point there, but multitasking was always really sprightly and zippy.

Some of the hardware varied a little, though. The webcam in place here is decent but not to the level I hoped for, and the fingerprint reader (another Google requisite) was quite slow, and took an age to set up in the first instance.

The best of the Googlebook experience comes when you have an Android phone connected to it, though. This lets you sort of pair the machines, then access your phone (and its storage) as if it were just an extension of your laptop.

It's a seriously slick feature that feels great when you need it, and is an example of Google doing something better than Apple (which may doubtless now move to one-up it on macOS). This only works with Android 17, though, which may be quite a limitation for some users.

The display that I mentioned when discussing the laptop's design is also really quite terrific. With a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR accounted for, and running at a resolution of 2880×1800, this OLED is a real looker (and a toucher, too). It's great for media viewing of all descriptions (even if gaming is limited by the OS, another sore point), and also works nicely as a touch interface.

The speakers included here are nothing more than decent, but that's a fair enough result in any type of laptop at this point, and I had no complaints about them.

Still, this all means that performance basically lives up to exactly what I expected from a new-gen Intel chip with 16GB of RAM to call on, plus a great screen to stare at. The more lasting question is really whether the software this machine is running will make sense for you.

Verdict

The first Googlebook I've been given the chance to actually live with has left me thinking just what I suspected I would after seeing the whole initial lineup earlier this year: Acer has built a really slick 2-in-1 that feels great to use, provided you're happy to stick to Chrome and some Android tabs.

If you need to go a little deeper, or your workflow relies on some particularly customised or powerful desktop apps, then it's almost certainly not going to be smart to try to move into this laptop anytime soon. It needs robust software support from not just Google but third-party app developers to adapt apps to its screen size and power, and there's no real telling how and when that might come in a given app's case.

Acer has little to do with that, of course, and I'll finish with the same clarification that I used to open this review – this isn't a review of Googlebook OS. Taken on its own merits, the Acer Googlebook 14 seems like a great introduction to Google's laptop future, but it's not quite value-driven enough to win me straight over to the new wave.

Also consider

Until I've tested more of the forthcoming Googlebooks, I can't really point you at others in the launch lineup confidently, although I'll be putting Asus' laptop through its paces very soon.

Instead, I'd say the smart money is on similar-cost laptops from the world of Windows and Mac. So, for the latter, the M5 MacBook Air is an obviously superb choice that basically demonstrates everything good about Apple's laptop decisions in recent years.

For Windows, if you have the budget, the XPS 13 might suit. It's pricey, sure, but cheaper than this Acer and is impressively tiny. While it's a tad underpowered, at least you're dealing with Windows and all the freedom that comes with it.