A monitor does not need to be cutting edge to be brilliant – and the MSI Modern MD342CQPW is a perfect example. This is an entirely unremarkable ultrawide monitor in almost every way, but it's sensibly designed, well connected, and delivers solid image quality in all the ways that matter for around £250. For many buyers, that's reason enough to hit the buy button.

The focal point of the MD342CQPW is its curved 3,440 x 1,440 VA panel – a good fit for an everyday productivity monitor. MSI has combined a 1500R curve with a matte anti-glare finish so it's well suited to office work, and it doesn't skimp on the essentials such as USB-C connectivity, 98 watts of power delivery for modern laptops, and an adjustable stand. In short, there's a lot to like.

MSI Modern MD342CQPW monitor: Design & Features

The MSI's all-white matte body is all plastic and unsurprisingly rather hollow-feeling, but build quality is good for the price. The wide oval base screws to the stand with a captive thumbscrew, and it does a great job of keeping the monitor firmly planted to the desk. There is a little wobble at the stand's maximum 110mm extension, but it's not a problem for anything other than the most heavy-handed typists. There's plenty of swivel adjustment, a limited amount of tilt, and understandably there's no pivot mode at all.

The connectivity here isn't generous, but it strikes a useful balance. You get a single DisplayPort input alongside a pair of HDMI inputs, and the USB-C input ferries data, video, and audio as well as 98 watts of power delivery. There's a 3.5mm headphone output, too. It's a shame that MSI had to resort to an external power supply, though – you'll have to find somewhere to hide the chunky 180-watt brick.

The presence of a basic KVM switch is welcome. Connect one laptop to the USB-C port, and you can connect a second computer to the USB Type-B input and share the pair of 5Gbps USB-A ports at the rear. Switching between machines can be done via the monitor's NaviKey shortcut button, or you can install the MSI Productivity Intelligence software and swap machines with a keyboard shortcut.

The on-screen display is fine. The menu layout is easy to understand, the text is big enough to be nice and legible, and the features are easy to find. In fact, the only negative here is the controls: the old-school strip of buttons side by side does make it fiddlier than the clickable joystick on newer designs. Adjust the brightness, for instance, and if you accidentally hit the left-hand button rather than the right, it cancels the adjustment and forces you to repeat the process – this is mildly irksome.

MSI Modern MD342CQPW monitor: Display quality

We weren't hugely impressed by the MD342CQPW at first. The Windows taskbar and icons looked washed out compared to other recent LCD and OLED-based monitors that we've reviewed. Switching from the standard Eco mode to the sRGB or User modes didn't seem to improve matters, either. Then we raised the monitor a few centimetres: suddenly the taskbar icons regained their usual vibrancy.

This issue is something that's common to monitors which use VA panel technology. The curvature of the panel here does a fantastic job of hiding it, but if the screen is too high or too low – or you're viewing it away from head-on – you'll notice that contrast falls rapidly and colors start to look very washed out.

Get the height just so, however, and the MSI delivers a really pleasant image. Text is dramatically more crisp than on OLED displays with a similar pixel density, and it produces a pleasingly wide range of color. You can leave it in the factory-supplied Eco mode, or switch it to the User or sRGB picture modes depending on whether you prefer more saturated colours, or a more muted sRGB presentation.

The User mode allows the monitor to produce the widest palette of colors. Measured against a Display P3 target, it achieved a very respectable average Delta E of 1.98 and covered 86% of the DCI-P3 color space. That's a fair amount less than the claimed 95%, but it's fine for a panel of this calibre. That missing 14% means that there are some inaccuracies across certain shades of color, some of which it simply can't reproduce, but it's not going to be noticeable in daily use.

And especially not given that the rest of the results are really very good. Whites look natural thanks to the 6,441k white point, and the 1,758:1 contrast ratio – while not class-leading – means that blacks don't look as washed out as they can on cheaper panels. The overall image here really is very nice indeed.

The sRGB mode is slightly more accurate again. The average Delta E of 1.61 is respectable, and the panel only exceeds a Delta E of 3 in the most saturated red tones. Again, contrast is good at 1,716:1.

Both of these picture modes are preset to a brightness of around 170cd/m2. Raise the brightness control from the default 70 to the maximum 100, and the peak brightness reaches a modest 314cd/m2. It goes a little higher in HDR mode, with a peak brightness of 364cd/m2, but that's still not enough to make the HDR mode worth using as it simply can't get bright enough to reveal all the detail in the highlights.

One thing worth knowing is that several of the other user modes automatically enable the monitor's Image Enhancement feature at varying levels of intensity. This just adds a coarse, ugly sharpening effect to the image, so it is best avoided. If you like the image quality in these modes, you'd be advised to delve into the menu and enhance the image by disabling the 'enhancement' features.

Motion clarity is really very respectable for a non-gaming monitor. The 120Hz refresh rate adds some very welcome smoothness to the Windows desktop, and is easier on the eye than 60Hz alternatives. Switch tempo with a fast-paced action game and the MSI's combination of balanced color reproduction, ample brightness and respectable response time makes for a really enjoyable experience.

Motion isn't as crisp as faster gaming panels, but it's more than adequate in most scenarios. We say most because darker scenes remain a bugbear for VA panel technology: you can see the clarity degrade as you move into the shadows. Our advice is to bump up the response time to its Fastest setting and put up with a very clear halo of visible overshoot, or leave it on Faster where the overshoot is less noticeable.

There is also an MPRT backlight strobing mode in addition to AMD Freesync Premium support. The former requires a rock-steady framerate to prevent ghosting, and brightness drops right down to 130cd/m2, so you'll need to drop the lighting to make it usable – whether the clarity increase benefit is worthwhile is something to experiment with on a game-by-game basis. Similarly, there is some VRR flicker evident if your framerates are unstable, so it's well worth tweaking the game settings to achieve the most consistent performance possible.

MSI Modern MD342CQPW monitor: Is it worth it?

The MSI Modern MD342CQPW monitor is a dependable jack-of-all-trades. The negatives are mostly minor inconveniences rather than ever-present irks – the external power supply and rubbish speakers – and even the mediocre viewing angles aren't a problem for most users. As someone who spends most days with an OLED somewhere on the desk, we were more than happy to keep the MSI centre-stage for daily use – the image quality and motion clarity here treads an almost perfect line of good enough.

And that's before you even consider the benefits of an ultrawide format display. The extra desktop space is invaluable during working hours, and it does really add an extra level of immersion to games, too. Suffice to say, if you're seeking an affordable ultrawide monitor that's a great all-rounder, then the MSI Modern MD342CQPW deserves your attention.

MSI Modern MD342CQPW monitor specification

The Prestige 16 AI+ we reviewed recently was one of the most convincing and appealing laptops to come from MSI in quite some time. A solid, affordable, and well-specified general-purpose machine; the only reason to not buy one would be if you wanted something smaller and lighter.

MSI has now addressed that issue by releasing a 13.3in version, called the Prestige 13 AI+. Built around the same Intel Panther Lake processor as the Prestige 16 AI +, it offers similarly good value for money and can be picked up for between £1,249 and £1,299 depending on where and when you look.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Design

In the world of superlight laptops, weight is everything. Or rather, the absence of it is. Here, MSI has hit a solid six with the Prestige 13 AI+, tipping the scales at just 830g, some 69g less than the advertised weight.

That's an impressive achievement when you consider that a 13.6in MacBook Air weighs over 1.2Kg. The new MSI is even a few grams lighter than Asus' feather-light Zenbook A14.

At 299 x 210 x 15.9mm this new Prestige is also usefully small. For comparison, both the 13.3in Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 and 14in Lenovo ThinkPad T14s are both heavier and larger.

Making a laptop as light as a feather is easy if you don't mind sacrificing solidity, but the body of the Prestige 13 AI+ is made from an aluminium-magnesium alloy and is impressively robust and stiff.

The Prestige is also rated MIL-STD-810H/G-resistant to the slings and arrows of outrageous misuse such as extreme vibration and changes in pressure and temperature.

It's a handsome little machine too in its fingerprint-resistant Platinum Grey colorway with MSI's new script logo etched on the lid. The slightly too-thick 11mm plastic bezel above the screen does detract from the looks, but at least the space is used to house a webcam privacy shutter and the IR gubbins for Windows Hello. On the subject of the lid, we like the way it rotates downward at the back when opened, thus adding around 8mm to the height of the deck at the back. That makes for a more agreeable typing angle.

With the likes of Apple and Dell embracing an all-Type-C philosophy when it comes to ports, we're happy to see MSI buck the trend. With two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two 5Gbps USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 video output, a 3.5mm audio jack and a MicroSD card reader, the little MSI is actually better equipped than its big brother, which lacks a card reader. Over-the-air connectivity is provided by an Intel Killer BE1775 WLAN card, which supports Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth v6.0.

Getting inside is no problem, but once in, all you can do is swap out the 2280 SDD, replace the battery, and blow dust out of the single fan. Everything else is fixed firmly in place, and there's no room for a second SSD,

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

Squeezing a full-size keyboard into the footprint of a 13.3in laptop is never the recipe for a spacious layout, but MSI has done a decent enough job of putting a pint into a half-pint bottle.

The only part of the keyboard that looks and feels rather cramped is the bottom-right corner, where the half-height arrow keys, half-height page-up and page-down keys, and the half-width Copilot and forward-slash/pipe keys all jostle for space.

On a positive note, by moving the forward-slash key to the right of the space bar, room has been made for a double-width left shift key, which, on balance, we think is a good compromise.

The keyboard deck itself is solid with little flex evident even under hard pressure, and the typing action is nigh on perfect: light, precise and with a well-damped end-stop.

The three-level white backlight shines through the translucent side walls of the keycaps as well as the white graphics on the top, which is a design that always finds favour in the ITPro office.

We're not massive fans of the position of the power/fingerprint scanner button, which sits inboard of the Delete key. Granted, it's recessed, but it's still a little too easy to press it accidentally while aiming for the Delete button.

The 120 x 75mm Mylar touchpad isn't the largest around, but it works reliably, interpreting all the swipes, taps and gestures we threw at it correctly, and the click-action is light, crisp and quiet.

The 1080p webcam is pretty standard fare, but it's bright and colorful and not thrown off its stride by sudden changes in ambient lighting. The physical privacy shutter next to the lens is a welcome feature, as is support for Windows Hello facial recognition as a biometric partner to the fingerprint reader.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Display

With a 2,880 x 1,800 matrix squeezed into a 13.3in panel, the Prestige 13 AI+'s OLED screen is as sharp as they come, with a pixel density of 255ppi, better even than the 224ppi of the 13.6-inch MacBook Air.

The Samsung-made panel registered a peak brightness level of 390cd/m2 in SDR mode and 630cd/m2 in HDR and certainly qualifies as wide-gamut with color space volumes of 160% sRGB, 113.8% DCI-P3 and 110.7% Adobe RGB.

The screen has what we'd describe as an anti-reflective but still semi-gloss finish. It does a decent but not perfect job of keeping reflections at bay, but it's not quite good enough, nor is the display quite bright enough, for easy use outdoors in sunlight.

The display is, however, accurate enough for those professionally concerned with such matters, returning sound Delta E color variances of 1.03 against the Display P3 profile and 1.18 vs the sRGB profile. The refresh rate is capped at 60Hz but for a compact productivity laptop that's a minor annoyance rather than a deal breaker.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Specs and performance

The Prestige 13 AI+ is built around the same Intel Core Ultra 7 355 CPU as the Prestige 16 AI+. This is a 4.7GHz Panther Lake CPU with 8 cores, 4 of which are deemed Performance and 4 Low Power Efficient. The chipset also features the Intel Graphics iGPU with 4 Xe cores, a 49 TOPS NPU, and 32GB of fixed quad-channel LPDDR5x RAM.

In the Geekbench 6 tests, the baby MSI scored 2,680 in the single-core test, 10,939 in the multi-core test, and 23,498 in the OpenCL GPU test. Those CPU numbers are not too shabby, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 has them beaten (3,215 single-core, 11,705 multi-core), as does the M5 MacBook Air (4,199 and 17,213).

The difference isn't something you'll notice in everyday use running basic productivity applications or while jumping between multiple SaaS apps in browser tabs; in those circumstances the Prestige 13 AI+ never feels less than slick and responsive.

Where the Core Ultra 7 355 (and Core Ultra 5 325) chipsets stumble is with graphics performance. That's because they make do with a 4 Xe core iGPU rather than the 10-core Arc B370 or 12-core B390 iGPUs that partner the more powerful Series 3 Core Ultra CPUs.

The difference in graphics performance is shown in stark relief by the Geekbench OpenCL test scores. The M5 MacBook Air scored 47,627, double the MSI machine, while laptops using the Arc B390 iGPU can easily top 55,000.

The little Prestige ran the SPECviewperf 3ds Max modelling benchmark at 18.7fps which is around half the speed you'll get from a B390 GPU.

Even if it's no stump-puller, the chipset at least goes about its business without drama. Even in Performance mode, both the CPU and GPU ran at near full utilisation for extended periods, and the single fan never generated more than a gentle whisper.

You could easily flog this little MSI like the family mule in a quiet library and rest easy knowing that you won't get admonishing stares from the person sitting at the next desk.

In our standard battery test, which involves looping a video in VLC with the display set to 170cd/m2, the 53.8Wh battery inside the MSI kept the lights on for 15hrs and 6mins.

That's within a margin of error the same as the 13.6-inch M5 MacBook Air but a country mile off the very best, such as the 27-odd hours we got from the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11, which runs on a Snapdragon X2 platform.

As little as a year ago a 15-hour runtime from a Windows laptop would have been regarded as top-notch. How times have changed. That said, the Prestige 13 AI+ will still easily get you through a long day at work, or an even longer flight, without the need to recharge.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Is it worth it?

MSI's new baby business laptop makes a very strong case for itself. The price is certainly right given that you are getting a high-quality 2.8K OLED screen, 32GB of RAM, and a very good selection of ports into the bargain.

It's also one of the smallest and lightest compact laptops on the market, and it's been made thus without sacrificing an ounce of usability or practicality.

What issues we have with the MSI Prestige 13 AI+ are down to its Intel chipset. At the highest end, we've been impressed by the performance of Panther Lake silicon, but at the lower end it's being shown a clean pair of heels by the latest ARM chipsets from Apple and Qualcomm, with the latter also delivering far superior battery run times.

For general-purpose computing, then this baby MSI can be thoroughly recommended, but if you need rather more in the way of graphics power it might be worth looking at the ARM-powered alternatives from Apple and Lenovo listed above.

MSI Prestige 13 AI+: Specs

AMD has expanded its Rocm software stack with a new AI-native component, Rocm.ai.

Rocm.ai, announced at AMD Advancing AI 2026, combines AI-assisted development, intelligent deployment, and AI-powered software optimization.

AMD claimed that AI software development is becoming increasingly agent-driven, with developers using AI coding agents and natural language processing to build and deploy software. AMD believes that Rocm.ai – and in particular the inclusion of AMD Skills in it – will reduce the barriers to adopting AMD Rocm and also reduce the amount of document crawling needed for set-up.

Speaking at AMD’s annual Advancing AI conference, Vamsi Boppana, SVP of AI at AMD said: “Rocm.ai … brings the capabilities of AI-assisted GPU programming to developers. It starts with a simple idea of giving developers access to the power of an AI ecosystem through the AI coding agents they already use. Whether you are using Cursor, Cloud, [or] Codex, Rocm.ai helps those agents understand AMD platforms, understand Rocm, and helps [developers] build and optimize [their] workloads.”

“In other words, we’re making those popular coding agents into Rocm superusers – you should be able to describe the workload you want to run, the performance target you want to hit, and then let the agents help you get there,” he said.

Breaking down Rocm.ai

Drilling down into what actually constitutes AMD Rocm.ai, there are three main components: Rocm CLI, AMD Skills, and Hyperloom.

Hyperloom is an AI-assisted optimization system that can, according to Boppana, analyze workloads, choose configurations, select and choose kernels, adjust parallelism strategies, and initiate towards performance goals.”

Boppana gave the example of a lead developer he recently spoke to who “pushed through a suite of 14,000 models through Hyperloom, optimizing them and creating valuable insights”.

“This would have been impossible to imagine, even with a large team of developers, before,” he said.

Rocm CLI, meanwhile, provides a unified command-line for installation, validation, servicing, updating, and troubleshooting of AI workloads on AMD platforms. AMD Skills integrates AMD-authored expertise into coding assistants like Claud, Cursor, and Codex.

“Let me make this concrete for you,” Boppana said on stage. “Imagine you’re a developer who wants to optimize Vmax… with PLLM on MI355s. Today, there are many things you need to get right. You need the right PLLM optimizations, the right model recipes, the right environment variables. You may need to write new kernels or optimize kernels – and then you need to tune all of this.

“With Rocm.ai, this interaction becomes much simpler. You can say ‘optimize Vmax entry with Hyperloom’ [hit] enter and behind the scenes, the agent does what an expert would do: pulls a known good recipe, runs and profiles the workload, creates and tests a bunch of kernel and runtime configurations, and it keeps iterating towards target.”

“Developers shouldn’t have to manually reason through every layer of model architecture, kernel selection, prompt strategy, and rack-level deployment,” said Boppana. “AI is transforming this experience and that’s a very, very big shift for AMD hardware and software.”

Rocm.ai be available from August 2026.

Samsung has revealed three new foldable models, including the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and an all-new shape for the standard Z Fold 8.

The Galaxy Unpacked launch, which also included a new Flip 8, included many new features, such as a new durable titanium structure and more on-device AI tools and capabilities.

Of the three new models, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is the biggest and highest-spec'd. Folded, it looks like a standard phone thanks to an ever-decreasing thickness (5.9mm folded, 4.1 mm unfolded).

It has a 6.5in cover display and opens up to an 8in main display, which is essentially two 6.5in screens side by side.

On first impression, the Z Fold 8 Ultra is better in every way than before. It's slightly thinner and somehow stronger.

This is thanks to a new titanium structure beneath the display that includes a panel and plate that reinforce the folding mechanisms and make it stronger and more durable than before, while maintaining its thin, streamlined look.

Beneath those titanium additions is a 5000mAh battery that promises 27 hours of video playback and 45w fast charge with 67% in just 30 minutes.

You get five camera lenses on the 8 Ultra, with a 10MP selfie lens on the cover display, a 10MP lens on the main display, and then three cameras on the rear of the device: A 200MP wide lens, a 50MP ultrawide one, and a 10MP telephoto lens.

From our brief experience ahead of its launch, we found the camera setup on the Fold 8 Ultra to be very crisp and dynamic.

Powering all of this is the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite 8 chip (CPU, NPU, GPU), and that is the case for all three new models. It's also been customised for Samsung's OS to provide more on-device AI tools, like the new 'Now Nudge' feature, which is like an information overlay that was launched in beta on the S26.

It takes contextual information from apps and offers suggestions via the keyboard – similar to predictive text. It can appear across multiple parts of the screen or in a more subtle way called 'Ambient Nudge ' or simply 'Notification Nudge'.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Galaxy Z Flip 8

Now Nudge is also on the new Z Fold 8, which comes in a distinctive new shape. It's a slightly wider, more square design compared to the Ultra. Similar to Huawei's Pura X smartphone, but much bigger.

When unfolded, it has a 4:3 aspect ratio (3:4 in portrait), which is more suited to the types of content we consume, according to Samsung. So reels and scrolling video content can be viewed in their entirety.

Folded, the 8 has a 10.16in cover display and looks very square. And it unfolds to a 7.6in main display – almost an inch smaller than the Ultra, but arguably a more content-friendly size.

The other differences from the Ultra are a slightly smaller battery at 4,800mAh, and no telephoto lens. Instead, you have a pair of 50MP lenses, one wide and the other ultrawide. It still promises 26 hours of video playback.

As with the most recent Galaxy S26, video stabilization is a big feature on the Z Fold 8. This is best used in the My Fan Cam feature, which allows for instant cropping of video.

You can select a subject from a 16x9 video and have it cut to a vertical shot – you can even select an object or person, regardless of where they are in the frame, and have them as the main focus within a crop.

There is also a new Flip 8, though this is of the least business interest. It's lighter than before and thinner too (180g, 6.1mm thick, when folded).

You have a 50MP main camera and an intuitive Flex Window on the cover display that offers suggestions and automations for you to operate the phone quickly without opening it up every time.

The latest version of Acer's Swift Go 16 AI (model number SFG16-A71-R6PQ) joins the fray of big-screen laptops aiming to mix performance and all-day usability with easy portability. Like the MSI Prestige 16 AI+, the Asus Zenbook A16 and Acer's own Swift 16 AI, it packs a 16in display into a laptop under 1.6Kg in weight and 16mm thick.

In terms of style, it's very similar to the existing Swift 16 AI, down to having a larger-than-average trackpad. But if the hardware is familiar, the same can't be said for the internal spec. Where the MSI and the Swift 16 AI are built around Intel's Panther Lake CPUs, with the Zenbook using Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processors, the new Swift Go 16 AI is a showcase for AMD's newest Ryzen AI 400 series processors.

It's been an interesting year for mobile processor tech. With stronger multi-core and GPU performance than last year's Lunar Lake tech, Panther Lake has been Intel's best mobile chip in years. Meanwhile, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 CPUs have demonstrated the potential of ARM technology on Windows, again with big improvements over the previous generation. AMD has some fantastic mobile processors, but its biggest advantages – multi-core speeds and GPU muscle – are now being matched by the competition. The Ryzen AI 445 in our test Swift Go 16 AI is a mainstream chip rather than a flagship CPU, but it could still do with showing that AMD is maintaining pace.

Acer Swift Go 16 AI (2026): Design

Acer is sticking to a consistent design language for this year's Swifts, and the Swift Go 16 AI doesn't shift from it in any noticeable way. Its 356 x 251mm footprint is slightly larger than the Swift 16 AI's. It's one millimetre thicker and a few grams heavier, but the wedge-shaped profile, and angular bevelled edges are much the same. It has the same laser-etched lid as recent Swift models, with the same geometric patterns, and the same all-aluminium construction. There's some flex in the lid, but the rest feels bulletproof, down to the sturdy hinge which allows the screen to fold right back flat against the desktop.

The MSI is slimmer, but broadly similar in terms of size and weight, while the Asus Zenbook A14's 1.2kg weight almost puts it in a different class. Yet the Swift Go 16 achieves much the same mission, giving you the ergonomic advantages of a 16in laptop without the usual weight and bulk.

Such advantages include a full-sized keyboard, complete with slim numeric pad. The feel is soft and quiet, but not in any way floppy or spongy, and it doesn't take long to adjust and reach a decent typing speed. It's a shame that the Shift, Ctrl, and Fn keys on the left are normal-sized and not wider, but there's not much to complain about the layout otherwise. While the sheer size of the touchpad means there's a much smaller palm rest on the left-hand side than on the right, this doesn't make your typing position feel off-balance, as was the case with the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro.

The touchpad on the Swift Go 16 was one of its high points; large and sensitive enough to make light work of accurate tracking and selection on the 16:10, 16in screen. The same is mostly true here, with a whopping 150 x 100mm surface, though it isn't completely faultless when it comes to gestures. Every now and then, it missed a tap or a two-fingered scroll.

Connectivity is roughly the same as on the Swift 16 AI, though, being an AMD device, you have two USB 4.0 Type-C ports rather than two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left-hand side. There you'll also find a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port and an HDMI 2.1 output, while there's a second Type-A port, a 3.5mm audio socket and a microSD card slot on the right. This means there's no socket for the USB-C power supply on the right, but otherwise you've got enough for a basic desktop setup, plus Wi-Fi 7 for networking and Bluetooth 5.4 for your peripherals.

Acer Swift Go 16 AI (2026): Display

This is a mid-range rather than a premium laptop, and there's no bigger indication of this than the screen. It's a 16in OLED panel, which is great, but it has a baseline 1920 x 1200 resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate. Even more noticeably, it's not particularly bright.

The resolution doesn't look bad on a 16in screen, but the 2880 x 1800 panels on the Zenbook A16 and Prestige 16 AI+ look substantially sharper. What's more, the 304cd/m2 maximum brightness is fine indoors in most lighting, but pretty much unusable outside on a vaguely sunny day. HDR video content doesn't look as punchy or as vibrant as on brighter screens. It's not all bad news, though. The Swift Go 16 AI's panel still covers 100% of the DCI-P3 colour spectrum as well as 100% of sRGB, and even stretches to 94% of Adobe RGB. Color accuracy isn't quite good enough for color-critical design work, but it's not going to be a problem for presentations, photo-heavy reports or the kind of thing you'd put together in mainstream office productivity apps.

The nicest way to describe the audio is that it's very clear, with a wide stereo output which works well for online meetings. However, it's also very thin, with no real bass and precious little warmth or body, making some headphones a must for background music or video streaming. The 5MP camera captures detailed video with a likable portrait blue if you're using Windows AI-powered Studio effects. However, the exposure seems to creep up and down quite a lot as you move or light levels change, which can be distracting.

Businesses buying the Swift Go 16 AI might want to do a little tidying before their laptops are rolled out. Acer's own utilities are reasonably useful, but the laptop came with links to online games, a Dropbox promotion, and Booking.com on the taskbar, which you could easily do without.

Acer Swift Go 16 AI (2026): Performance

This is a mid-range device with a mid-range Ryzen 7 AI 455 processor, featuring two Zen 5 cores and four Zen 5c cores running 12 threads at a maximum 3.4Ghz to 4.6Ghz. In some respects, this CPU is inferior not just to the previous-generation Ryzen 7 AI 350, with its four Zen 5 and four Zen 5c cores, but even the Ryzen 5 AI 340, with its three Zen 5 and three Zen 5c cores running at higher speeds. The Ryzen 5 AI 340 even has more onboard L2 and L3 cache.

This is a little bewildering, as AMD appears to have rebranded an entry-level to mid-range CPU as a higher-level part. Worse, this is reflected in the performance. Geekbench 6 scores of 2611 (single-core) and 10651 (multi-core) are closer to what we saw from the last-generation Lunar Lake and Snapdragon X tech than this year's Panther Lake and Snapdragon X2 technology. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x (Gen 11) with its entry-level Snapdragon X2 Plus delivered better results. The MSI Prestige 16 AI+, with a lower-end Core Ultra 7 355, also scored higher for both single-core and multi-core performance, and we didn't exactly rate that model as a powerhouse.

It's a similar story with the Cinebench 2024 3D rendering benchmark, where the Swift Go 16 AI still falls behind the Lenovo and most recent mainstream laptops, with a single-core score of 106 and a multi-core score of 646. The IdeaPad Slim 5x scored 128 and 649. The Swift 16 AI, with its mid-range Core Ultra X7 358H, scored 123 and 943. The Asus ExpertBook P3, with the previous-generation Ryzen AI 7 350, scored 115 and 784.

It's only in 3D graphics benchmarks that the Swift Go 16 AI puts in a competitive performance. With four RDNA 3.5 cores to play with, its integrated Radeon 840M GPU scores 2013 in the 3DMark TimeSpy test and 1635 in Steel Nomad Lite. That's better than the ExpertBook P3 (1894 and 1478) and the Lenovo (1846 and 1596), though still a way behind the Panther Lake and Snapdragon X2 Elite devices we've seen recently. Even the MSI Prestige 16 AI+, with its cut-back four-core Intel Graphics GPU, beats it on 3D performance.

This isn't really Acer's fault. You can buy the Swift Go 16 AI with faster Ryzen AI processors, up to the 10-core Ryzen AI 9 465, and you will get significantly more speed. What's more, we didn't find the Swift Go 16 AI slow or grindy during everyday use running mainstream productivity apps. All the same, there's a sense that AMD is promising next-generation Ryzen 7 levels of performance from what's effectively last year's Ryzen 5 chip. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't work out.

Still, there's a silver lining when it comes to energy efficiency. Running our standard HD video rundown test with the brightness set to 170cd/m2, the Swift Go 16 AI lasted 18 hours and 21 minutes, beating the Zenbook A16, the Prestige 16AI+, and a wide range of other 16in laptops, though not the Swift 16 AI. Qualcomm seems to be pulling ahead on battery life, but this AMD-powered system can still get you through a working day and more without a recharge.

Acer Swift Go 16 AI (2026): Is it worth it?

The Swift Go 16 AI could be described as slightly disappointing. Its processor doesn't live up to AMD's billing, while the screen lacks the brightness and resolution we've seen on Acer's best OLED displays. However, at £1249 inc VAT it's still decent value. The MSI Prestige 16 AI+ is better, with more performance, more RAM, and a higher-resolution screen for the same money, but if you can get a good deal on the Acer, it could make a solid and versatile workhorse laptop with the advantages of a big display.

Acer Swift Go 16 AI Specifications

As rugged tablets go, the Lenovo Think Tab X11 is as tough as they come. The first Android-based rugged device from Lenovo, this is a chunky yet capable business buddy that can keep you connected when you're out in the field.

It's a rugged tablet for frontline workers – in the box, you get a thick tablet, an even thicker case with a port for the Tab Pen XE, and a battery that's separated from the device. The back of the tablet pops off with a bit of effort (we used a tool to pry it off as it was quite tough), and the battery simply slots in.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Design

The Think Tab X11 is not your everyday tablet. It's a rugged model (with its own sturdy case) built to withstand life out in the real world. So frontline workers, wherever their front line is, be that a construction site, a remote wilderness location, or a busy retail environment. This is the first Android-powered rugged tablet for the Think brand, and it's got MIL-STD-810H certification, with a Snapdragon 7s chip.

You get a 10.95in display, a rather thick chassis (9.93mm), and dual USB ports. It's also quite heavy at 650g, but that's what rugged devices tend to be. As such, it is a hefty slab to hold – you definitely need two hands to take steady photos with the 13MP camera. And you might get an aching hand if you hold it for too long. What this already really means, though, is that you will not once be concerned about it breaking when you're on site.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Display

The 10.95in display is a 2,5k IPS LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate. The screen is reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass and, much like the rest of the device, feels very sturdy. The display also supports glove and wet-touch input, which is a great addition as there's nothing worse than having to take a glove off in the freezing cold. And also, some workspaces will make glove-wearing mandatory.

As always, an OLED panel might have been a good option, as you just get better quality – brighter colors and truly inky blacks – but the IPS panel here is fairly good. You get a nice, rounded balance of colors, and the panel itself is very bright, peaking at 538.13 cd/m2 in our test. An OLED panel might have also driven the price up.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Specs and performance

The Think Tab X11 houses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 (4nm), which is paired with 8GB of RAM. The 7s is a mid-range chip that is meant to bridge the gap between affordability and premium features, so it aims to bring generative AI and the like to a cheaper smartphone or tablet. And it largely does that on the Think Tab X11.

In Geekbench 6, for example, the Tab scored 1,163 for single-core and 3,356 for multi-threaded performance. Admittedly, there isn't a great deal between the two, but this is a capable tablet, and we didn't notice any lag in its performance or any sluggishness with apps and features.

In our looped video test, the Think Tab's 10,200mAh battery lasted 14hrs and 29mins. However, that test is intentionally intensive, and our own experience of using the Tab X11 was more impressive. Without charge, the device lasted two full working days, with just 5% left when clocking off.

So this isn't going to set the world alight or break any benchmarks. But for a rugged workplace device, it more than holds its own. You will not be caught short in the middle of nowhere – the X11 won't let you down.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Features

The Tab X11 has a full set of very standard features – fingerprint sensor, Wi-Fi6E, Bluetooth 5.4 – but also a few more unusual features that make it so great for use out in the real world. Features such as dual USB ports, which are very unusual for a tablet. These are both USB Type-C 3.2, with one just simple for power and the other having data transfer. You also have a headphone jack and a microSD card reader on the Think Tab X11, which makes it one of the best-connected tablets ITPro has seen in a long while.

There are also management features that set this apart from your average tablet. With the Lenovo Vantage Pro, you can enrol the device remotely, add all your necessary apps and settings, and monitor it in real time – which is great for rugged tablets as they can be a risk if lost on site. IT teams can enforce security policies and wipe them, if needed, from a single dashboard.

Another unusual addition, largely due to how it looks, is the Tab Pen XE. ITPro is rather more used to an artistic stylus, and the Pen XE is very much a rugged pen. But it's easy to use, comfortable in the hand, and highly capable. You're not going to be making detailed works of art here, but you can quite easily make technical sketches, detailed notes, and simple annotations out in the field. It's also unmistakably Lenovo with a red circle at the top. You need to connect the rugged case to house the stylus with the pen.

Lenovo Think Tab X11: Is it worth it?

If you're out on site or you have teams in remote locations that need touchscreens, then the answer here is resoundingly yes. The Think Tab X11 is small but mighty, with its brick-like build and reinforced structure. The touchscreen is decent, and the Pen XE is also highly capable.

There are some good additions as well, like the 13MP camera, the optional case, and the enterprise-grade remote controls and protocols. It's as good a rugged tablet as ITPro has ever reviewed. And, although the battery is a little bit of a chore to get into the machine, the fact that you can is great for longevity and sustainability.

Lenovo Think Tab X11 specifications

Channel partners are increasingly adapting infrastructure strategies to help customers navigate hardware pricing volatility and component shortages, according to new research from Westcon-Comstor.

The distributor found that 87% of channel partners have already taken action to reduce the impact of supply constraints on customer projects, with project delays identified as the single biggest risk created by ongoing pricing pressure and hardware availability issues.

The findings are based on a survey of more than 100 members of Westcon-Comstor’s global Tech Xpert community, comprising technical specialists and decision-makers from resellers, systems integrators, and managed service providers across EMEA and APAC.

According to the research, partners are responding to these challenges by improving infrastructure planning and adopting managed services, while some are even switching technology vendors.

“Hardware pricing volatility and supply constraints are reshaping customer buying decisions and having a profound impact on the IT channel,” commented Callum McGregor, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Westcon-Comstor.

“In response, partners are helping customers plan earlier, adapt architectures and stay flexible so they can keep projects moving despite uncertainty.”

Adapting mitigation strategies

In terms of mitigation strategies, improved infrastructure capacity planning was found to be the most common, cited by 60% of respondents.

Meanwhile, almost a third (29%) said they had already switched vendors or platforms in response to hardware availability constraints.

Meanwhile, 27% of partners said they were using storage tiering or caching to reduce reliance on memory-intensive workloads, while a quarter (25%) reported moving workloads or infrastructure components to managed services.

Evolving buyer behavior

The research also highlighted a shift in buying behavior, with 75% of respondents reporting some form of change.

More than half (52%) said either they or their customers had accelerated hardware purchases to reduce the risk of future shortages or price increases – although almost a quarter (23%) reported delays or cancellations as organizations weighed up growing uncertainty.

The distributor revealed that hardware availability is also influencing infrastructure decision-making, with 45% of partners stating that supply chain constraints had accelerated cloud adoption among customers and 7% reporting a shift back to on-premises infrastructure.

A balancing act for partners

According to McGregor, the ability to balance immediate performance with long-term requirements is becoming “increasingly critical” in order for partners to maintain success in the current climate.

“It also demonstrates the strategic role that channel partners, supported by distribution, can play in building resilience and helping customers navigate the pressures that have quickly become a systemic feature of the market,” he added.

Elsewhere, Westcon-Comstor’s research found that 39% of partners identified technical challenges – including performance instability, operational complexity, and reduced resilience – as key risks linked to hardware shortages.

Around one-quarter (24%) also said supply constraints were limiting their ability to scale infrastructure capacity.

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Geekom's new M16 shares one key feature with the impressive X14 Pro we reviewed earlier this year. Namely, even if you want one, you won't be able to buy one unless you live in or are visiting the USA or Germany, because those are the only two markets where Geekom currently sells its laptop range. That means it's not just a matter of laying hands on one, but having to live with a keyboard tailored to the USA or German market.

We here at ITPro think that's a bit of a shame, because like the X14 Pro, the new M16 offers rather more for the money than you might expect. At the time of writing, the M16 is on sale for $799 or €799, including a $/€100 launch discount.

As usual, Geekom has advised us of a discount code for 8%, which should work on Geekom's US selling page and the US Amazon page. The code (IPGBM168) should be valid until the last day of 2026.

Geekom M16: Design

A smart and solid aluminium alloy affair, the M16 looks and feels like it should cost considerably more than it does. Available only in silver, the M16 is perhaps a rather anonymous design, but the anodised finish is very good at resisting fingerprints, which is more important than aesthetics.

The hinge assembly that joins the lid to the body feels well-engineered, and you can easily open the lid with one finger. That lid is surprisingly stiff despite not having a laminated glass screen glued to it to add rigidity.

At 1.73Kg and 355 x 250 x 13.9mm, the M16 is par for the full-sized 16-inch laptop course. Slipping it into a backpack and carrying it around all day is no hardship. The bundled one-piece 100W USB-C charger is impressively petite.

It's impossible to complain about the M16's I/O port selection. On the left side, you'll find two USB-C ports, one USB-C 4.0 spec and one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 spec (so that's 40Gbps and 10Gbps data speeds respectively).

Both USB-C ports support charging from the bundled 100W charger and DPAltMode video output. Between the two Type-C ports sits an HDMI 2.1 video port. We're fans of Geekom's decision to put a decent gap between the two Type-C ports; it makes accessing the second one when the other is occupied much easier.

On the right side, there are two USB-C ports, both 3.2 Gen 1 or 5Gbps spec, and a 3.5mm audio jack. That's a pretty comprehensive selection, and the USB-C 4.0 port was unlooked for at the price point.

Usefully, Geekom bundles a USB-C dock which adds an RJ-45 Ethernet connector, two USB-A ports and a second HDMI output to the party. Wireless communications are handled by a MediaTek MT7922 card, which supports 6GHz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4.

Getting inside the M16 is straightforward, and the base panel comes away easily once you've removed the nine Torx screws that secure it in place. The M16 has two SSD slots, one occupied by a 2280 format drive and one empty and ready for a 2230 drive. The RAM and WLAN are fixed in place.

Geekom M16: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

No part of the M16's user interface is going to win an award for innovation, but that's not to say that everything doesn't work well. It does.

The keyboard is well laid out, the keycap graphics are clear, and the four-stage white backlight has you covered no matter what ambient light you find yourself working in.

Deserving of particular plaudits is Geekom's decision to make the keypad and arrow keys the same size as the rest of the keys. Too many laptop makers reduce the size of those keys even when there's clearly room for full-sized alternatives.

We also like the way the power button-cum-fingerprint scanner sits above and separate from the keyboard proper, removed from the likelihood of accidental presses.

The typing action is light but crisp, and the end-stop is well damped. The central part of the keyboard is a little more bouncy than we'd like, though, with a fair amount of flex apparent if you press down hard around the T-H-M diagonal.

At 135 x 90mm, the Mylar touchpad is more than large enough to accommodate multi-fingered gestures, and it reacts reliably and consistently to taps and swipes. The mechanical click-action is precise and not overly loud.

The 1080p webcam is another solid performer. It's not the most colourful when it comes to image capture, but it does well in low-light environments. Thanks to the flacid NPU, you have to do without Microsoft's Studio webcam enhancements. There's no support for Windows Hello facial recognition, but there is a manual privacy shutter above the lens.

Geekom M16: Specs and performance

Inside the M16, you'll find the same Intel Core Ultra 9 185H Meteor Lake CPU that Geekom puts in the X14 Pro. The last word in modernity it is not, having now been superseded both by Intel's second-generation Arrow Lake and third-generation Panther Lake processors.

That's not to say it lacks vim, though. With 16 cores, 6 of which are deemed Performance, and with a boost from Geekom's Dynamic Tuning Technology, which means it can run at a sustained 55W TDP, it's a more than decent performer.

In the GeekBench 6 CPU benchmark test, the CPU scored 2,426 single-core and 12,262 multi-core, while in our 4K multimedia benchmark, which is built around Handbrake, it scored 370 points.

Those numbers indicate a base level of performance way beyond what you'd usually expect from a laptop in this price bracket. The MSI Prestige 16 AI we tested recently scored 238 in the 4K multimedia test, while Lenovo's ThinkPad T14s scored 255.

The integrated Intel Arc GPU is of the older Alchemist type, so despite having 8 Xe cores, it can't match the performance of the 140T Arc iGPU that comes paired with Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs.

The GeekBench 6 OpenGL benchtest score of 30,285 and 25,449 in the 3DMark Nightraid benchmark proves the point: both are quite unremarkable.

That said, it doesn't do badly in the real world, grinding through the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling benchmark at 19fps and easily running the 2018 Doom reboot at an average of 50fps at FullHD.

It is worth mentioning that initially, the M16 refused to run several graphics tests and crashed Windows. Downloading Microsoft's 'OpenCL, OpenGL, and Vulkan Compatibility Pack' fixed this problem in a trice.

While the chipset does have a dedicated NPU, it's only rated at 11 TOPS, which limits its ability to run local Windows AI jobs that demand a more potent NPU. This includes Windows Studio webcam filters and effects.

Despite Geekom's fettling, the chipset didn't misbehave under stress, nor did it tax the cooling of the system. After an hour of stress testing, the CPU and GPU settled down to 82% and 100% utilisation, respectively, and while the fans could certainly be heard, the noise wasn't what we could describe as intrusive.

The 512GB Kingston SSD proved usefully sprightly, returning sequential read and write speeds of 4,865MB/s and 3,555MB/s, respectively.

The M16 arrives pre-loaded with Windows 11 Pro, but Geekom boasts of full Linux support. Booting into Ubuntu 26.04 proved that it's no idle brag, with everything working from the get-go.

Geekom M16: Display and speakers

Laptops in this sort of price range often come with screens which only offer 45% NTSC gamut coverage (around 65% sRGB), but the M16's 16in 1,920 x 1,200 IPS panel covers 70% NTSC, or 100% sRGB.

That makes for nicely colorful images that don't look as dreary or washed-out as they do on many budget laptop displays with an even narrower gamut.

Maximum brightness measured at 298cd/m2, which is fine for indoor use but can leave you wanting more when you're outdoors in sunlight.

The contrast ratio of 1,113:1 is more of a product of the rather lowly maximum brightness than the black luminance level, which was a perfectly respectable 0.27cd/m2. Obviously, there's no support for HDR content.

The matte finish on the display does a good job of keeping reflections in check, but it can only do so much. Viewing angles are robust with no sign of chromatic shift at extremes.

Moving away from colourimeter results, we watched a selection of upcoming movie trailers on the M16, and they looked nicely vivid and colorful. Some budget laptops make poor multimedia machines, but watching YouTube and Netflix on the M16 is a pleasant experience.

Color accuracy was reasonable with an average Delta E of 2.9 vs the sRGB profile. Over-saturated blues seemed to be at fault, but that shouldn't be an issue for anyone who's not professionally concerned with color accuracy, and the M16 is not really targeted at such people.

The speaker system, however, is another matter. The sound from the two-speaker setup is most impressive. Not only is there plenty of volume, 78.6 dBA as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance, but the soundscape is wide, detailed, distortion-free, and sonorous.

Impressive though the speakers are, battery life is the strongest card in the M16's hand. Given that the 185H is hardly a byword for efficiency by modern standards, we were not expecting much, but thanks to a capacious 99.9Wh battery the M16 ran for 24 hours and 13 minutes in our video loop test.

That means the M16 has the latest MacBook Pro beaten by nearly five hours and the new Snapdragon X2-powered Asus Zenbook A16 by nearly 7 hours. That is no small achievement given how much more expensive both of those machines are.

Geekom M16: Is it worth it?

For the money, the Geekom M16 has a lot going for it. Pride of place goes to the long battery life and tuneful speaker system, though special mention must also be made of the 40Gbps USB-C port and free space for a second SSD.

The CPU may not be the latest thing, but it's more potent than what you generally find in cheaper laptops, and the display is also a step above the bargain-basement components typical at this price level.

Geekom is really missing a trick by not making the M16 more widely available. If it were available in the UK for £800 or less, we'd describe it as the best value 16in laptop in Blighty, and by some margin.

Geekom M16 specifications

The Microsoft Surface Laptop is back with an 8th edition for 2026. It comes with some great features and, due to the ongoing issues with RAM supply, a bigger price tag.

We have the 'For Business' model of the Laptop 8, which can be purchased in 13in, 13.8in, and also 15in. While the 13in is the most compact Surface Laptop yet, our review is focused on the 13.8in model with the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H chip.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Design

Much like last year's Surface Laptop 7, the 8th edition is a handsome beast. It keeps the same design as the 15in model ITPro tested last year, with a minimalist look. It has a compact chassis with a sleek black finish and a nice, light aluminium body, which is around 1.35kg. The business model that we have is made with a minimum of 61.9% recycled materials, including 100% recycled aluminium alloy and 100% recycled rare earth metals.

The standard Laptop 8 comes in Platinum, Jade, Dune (a sort of sandy orange), and Black. But this is the for-business version, so we have it in black. You also get a serious but reflective Windows logo on the lid and a notchless design with specific balancing on the lid that allows you to open it with one finger.

On the left-hand side, the Laptop 8 features a headphone jack, a USB-A (3.1), and two Thunderbolt 4 ports for charging and data transfer. On the right, there is just a magnetic Surface Connect port. HDMI and some form of memory card would have been nice, though you do get a MicroSDXC Express card reader on the 15in model.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Display

As mentioned, our review unit has the 13.8in display: much like last year, it has a PixelSense HDR LCD panel, with 2304 x 1536 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. It also boasts a ten-point touchscreen, though our 13.8in model has a matte finish – so there is next to no glare.

Visibility won't be an issue for the Surface Laptop 8. Much like Samsung's Galaxy S26, the Laptop 8 comes with a privacy display, which is activated via a button on the function row. Once this is on, no one will be able to see your display from the side – though it is still oddly visible from above.

In our tests, it hit a peak brightness of 444.08 cd/m2, which is actually lower than the Surface Laptop 7 we tested. But it's still very bright and punchy. Similarly, its colors are glorious. It showcased 99.7% for sRGB gamut color coverage (144.5% for volume). It also scored high in Adobe sRGB with 86.6% for coverage and 99.6% for volume -- Those are great scores, and I did find it good for photo editing.

I also did some video editing on the Surface Laptop 8, and while it might not have the biggest display, it is highly capable. The touchscreen element is very useful here, though it can be fiddly when tweaking volume levels with fingers – a job best left to the trackpad.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard on the Surface Laptop 8 is smart and professional-looking, color-matched to the rest of the build, and has nice-sized keys. The volume keys are on the left-hand side of the function row, and F1 is for the all-new privacy display.

I found typing really smooth on the keyboard as it has plenty of travel. Unless you type with the brute force of Erling Haaland, you won't hear much noise from the Surface Laptop's keyboard. Just a faint muffled clack. I could hardly hear it over my desk fan, for instance. It's both really good and slightly unsettling.

There are little tweaks on the touchpad that make a big difference to the user. The haptic feedback, for example, has been subtly improved or increased. You just get a little bit more feel for clicking and closing applications – it's very nice.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Specs and Performance

There are Snapdragon models of the Surface Laptop 8, though the business variants are Panther Lake affairs. Specifically, the 13.8in model we have is sporting the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H chip and 32GB LPDDR5x RAM.

I can't complain about the performance or really compare it to the Snapdragon models, though it is worth noting that the Laptop 7 did seem to be stronger and smoother with Snapdragon.

In Geekbench 6, our Panther Lake mode hit 2,764 single-core workloads and 14,485 for multi-threaded. Both scores are high, maybe not M5 MacBook Pro high, but high nonetheless. Though it is worth pointing out that the multithreaded score for the 8 was slightly lower than the 15in Laptop 7. But only slightly.

In our looped video test, where we play 20 minutes of Spider-Man 2 with the display set to 170cd/m2, the Surface Laptop 8 lasted 18hrs 43mins. That's over ten minutes more than our Surface Laptop 7 review. In real terms, it never let me down. I took it out into the world for a day and didn't need a charge. It has staying power.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Features

The 8 comes with a 1080p Surface Studio camera (Full HD) with support for Windows Studio Effects. So you get automatic eye framing, blurred backgrounds, and facial recognition with Windows Hello. From my own personal use, the webcam is very crisp, and there's a lot of artificial touching up – I've never looked better in work meetings.

Much of this is down to the on-device AI, powered by the Intel AI Boost NPU (48 TOPS). So you have AI shortcuts with the Copilot button, image enhancements, and the now-usual generative AI shortcuts for summarization and text generation. It's all very flashy, but not incredibly useful.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8: Is it worth it?

There's lots to love on the Microsoft Surface Laptop 8; its battery life is great, the keyboard and touchpad are excellent, the display is bright and beautiful, and you get some privacy, provided no one simply looks over the top of the screen. All in all, it's a solid business machine.

Pricing might be its biggest issue (£1,599.99), but given the global state of RAM, that can be said for most premium laptops. So, taking that into account, there is generally some value for money here.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 8 specifications

PC shipments have fallen for the first time in more than two years, hit by the memory supply crunch caused in part by the rise of AI.

Recent analysis from IDC found global PC shipments slid 4.9% on year in the second quarter of this year to 68.2 million units, down from 71.7m in the same quarter last year.

The figures mark the first decline in the market after nine quarters of growth, and that’s largely down to continued memory shortages.

IDC noted, however, that the situation has been exacerbated by supply issues with storage and other components, as well as what the company referred to as "geopolitical issues".

The massive AI infrastructure build-out has led to a shortage in memory, spurred on by manufacturers pivoting to produce more lucrative data center components rather than those for consumer products.

That RAM shortage has led to a sharp decline in lower cost devices, with Gartner predicting earlier this year that PC sales will drop by 10%.

Consumers picking up the bill

IDC said that while units shipped slid, PC makers reported growth in revenue, showing how the cost of such challenges are being passed on to consumers and businesses.

"The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing because vendors are pushing through price increases faster than demand is dropping," said Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC.

That's not likely to change anytime soon, Ubrani warned.

"Given worsening macro conditions and a memory shortage that isn’t expected to ease until early 2028, we don’t expect another round of inventory pull-forward, which points to a sharp slowdown in growth rates in the second half of 2026," he added.

"Vendors are bracing for further price hikes into 2027, and channels are already flagging concern about elevated inventory at these higher price points."

A host of device manufacturers have raised prices in response to the spiralling memory crisis. Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook said last month that the company would raise prices due to the issue.

"There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," he said at the time.

Apple wins with MacBook Neo

The increased pressure on brands could lead to vendor consolidation of market share, IDC warned. The consultancy noted that larger brands such as Apple, Dell, or Lenovo can use their scale across different product lines – be it smartphones or servers – to access memory supply.

The result here is that smaller rivals could be left in the dust and scrambling for what supplies are left.

"As market conditions continue to worsen… supply chain management and capabilities are increasingly important," said Jean Philippe Bouchard, vice president for consumer devices at IDC.

"The largest vendors, with their buying power and long-standing supplier ties, are best positioned to take share from smaller rivals."

Compared to the second quarter in 2025, the big three PC makers – Lenovo, HP, and Dell – were largely flat in terms of market share, though all three saw single-digit decreases in shipments, with HP in particular down 9%.

Apple, however, grew market share from 8.5% to 9.9%, with shipments up 10% from 6.1m to 6.7m in the second quarter of this year versus 2025.

"Apple’s share gain coincided with its latest product launch, the MacBook Neo, and while the company did raise prices in line with the broader market, it still remains well positioned against rivals facing the same cost pressures," added Bouchard.

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As an early entrant into the business Wi-Fi 7 market, EnGenius now boasts an extensive portfolio of access points (APs) suited to a wide range of environments and budgets. The only space it hasn't focused on a great deal is wall plate APs as up until now, its only offering has been the ECW215 Wi-Fi 6 model.

The ECW515 improves the situation as it delivers Wi-Fi 7 services to target markets such as the hospitality, classroom, meeting room and multi-tenant sectors. It may only be a dual-band AP, but has the hardware to handle a high demand as it sports the same powerful Qualcomm Networking Pro 1220 platform and quad-core ARM Cortex-A73 CPU as Engenius' flagship APs.

This BE3600-rated AP offers two spatial streams each for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and claims maximum speeds of 700Mbits/sec and 2,900Mbits/sec respectively. It offers plenty of connection options as along with a main 2.5GbE multi-Gig port, it has a built-in quad-port Gigabit switch with the fourth port (LAN5) providing an 802.3af PoE feed for powering in-room devices such as IP phones.

EnGenius ECW515 review: Hardware features

The ECW515 is one of the smallest wall plate APs we've yet seen as it measures a mere 110 x 42 x 130mm (WDH) and weighs only 328gms. It has a metal chassis and polycarbonate cover and presents the main 2.5GbE port at the rear with the four Gigabit ports in the base.

The box includes a solid metal mounting plate which the AP is clipped on to and secured with one screw. A single orange status LED is located on the side which shows cloud connection status and flashes when the AP is booting or receiving a firmware upgrade.

If the AP is powered over 802.3at PoE+, the LAN5 port will supply 7W to a powered device (PD). Using an optional external 54V DC supply will boost this to 15W.

EnGenius ECW515 review: Cloud management

EnGenius offers two types of wireless AP and all ECW models can only be cloud managed. The Wi-Fi 6 EWS Fit6 models are aimed at small businesses with limited on-site IT expertise and can be standalone or cloud-managed from the free FitXpress web portal.

For testing, we connected the ECW515 to the lab's Engenius ECS2512FP 2.5GbE PoE+ switch. The AP presents a local web interface but this only displays an overview of LAN, internet and cloud connection status.

Assigning the AP to our cloud account was easy as we used the Cloud To-Go iOS app on an iPad to scan its QR code. Once we had added the AP to our chosen site, it received a firmware upgrade and started broadcasting our predefined site SSIDs.

The cloud portal dashboard provides details on all APs, switches and wireless clients with graphs below for wireless throughput plus the top APs, clients and SSIDs. Enable the application control service on your SSIDs and the dashboard populates a table below with the top ten apps and their bandwidth usage.

Up to eight SSIDs per radio are supported and for each one, you can choose the active radios, apply an encryption scheme, enable L2 isolation and turn on MLO (multi-link operations) with the console warning you that legacy clients that don't support WPA3 will be excluded. The drop-down menu at the top offers plenty of other useful features including assigning download and upload rate limits for the entire SSID or per client and adding captive portals, hotspot services and basic firewall rules.

The four Gigabit ports are remotely controlled from the portal so you can enable or disable any of them as required. A smart feature is 'SSID on LAN' as this allows you to bind a selected SSID to them and apply wireless VLAN, security settings and captive portals to wired devices.

Adding a Pro licence to your portal account enables enhanced features such as a 30-day log retention period, network topology views and 7-day timeline charts of the APs a client connected to, the authentication methods in use and details of association errors such as incorrect passwords. Prices are quite reasonable with 1-year and 3-year subscriptions costing £57 and £136 per device respectively.

Captive portal features are good as you can present wireless guests with custom splash pages created using the portal's integrated HTML editor toolbox. Standard authentication methods include local user accounts, Radius servers and vouchers with a Pro licence enabling LDAP, Active Directory, Google LDAP and Azure AD.

EnGenius ECW515 review: Wi-Fi 7 performance

For our performance tests, we used a Lenovo Windows 11 Pro desktop client equipped with a TP-Link Archer TBE550E Wi-Fi 7 PCIe adapter and a Dell PowerEdge Windows server connected to one of the switch's 10GbE fibre ports. We enabled MLO on our WPA3-protected SSID and saw the Windows 11 client create an aggregated link using both radios and report a link speed of 3,570Mbits/sec.

To test maximum speed, we used the OpenSpeedTest HTML5-based tool and ran the server component of our Windows Server host. On the Windows 11 client, we pointed a browser at the OpenSpeedTest server address and port and watched it report back with close-range upload and download rates of 169MB/sec and 200MB/sec.

Moving the AP 10 metres away and into an adjoining room with a wall in the way saw it deliver upload and download speeds of 137MB/sec and 174MB/sec. Use the application analysis service with caution as this will hit performance with further tests showing it can drop wireless speeds by up to 10%.

EnGenius ECW515 review: Is it worth it

EnGenius has a very limited number of UK resellers and the only vendor that could provide us with a price for the ECW515 was Solwise with it quoting £187 including VAT. This is a little pricey as the TP-Link EAP775-Wall we recently reviewed only costs around £13 more and delivers tri-band Wi-Fi 7 in-room services.

The ECW515 is very easy to deploy though, and its dual radios deliver a performance that should satisfy the target market of hotel guests and meeting room participants. The cloud portal offers a good range of remote management services and the smart SSID on LAN feature allows you to secure access to the four Gigabit ports.

EnGenius ECW515 specifications

Ergonomics is a word that gets thrown around a lot when we talk about peripherals like a keyboard or mouse – but what does this actually mean? The layout and shape, for starters, should adjust to the body's natural position, and these devices should be engineered to reduce any strains or pains that might arise from prolonged use.

Logitech is no stranger to incorporating ergonomic design into its long history of products, but the Signature Comfort Plus Combo – a Bluetooth-powered keyboard and mouse set – takes this a step further by putting your comfort front and center. Designed for prolonged use, these chic and sophisticated peripherals introduce additional padding and softer buttons. Functionally, Logitech is also aiming to increase productivity with customizable buttons. But how do these peripherals cope with the daily workplace or home office grind?

Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo: Unboxing and setup

Open up the rather large rectangular packaging, and you'll find the keyboard and mouse both tightly and securely fitted side by side, wrapped in a soft white protective fabric. You'll find some documentation – but that's it. Both devices are pre-installed with batteries (AAA and AA for the K880 keyboard and M850 L mouse, respectively), and both are designed to be used wirelessly via Bluetooth only – so there is no additional cabling. This is quite surprising, given the additional flexibility USB-C ports might offer if, say, you prefer a wired connection, or there's something amiss with your Bluetooth.

Nevertheless, we're happy that setup is thankfully painless. First, switch both devices on using the physical switch, located on the rear right of the keyboard and the base of the mouse. Getting the mouse connected is straightforward – press the button to choose your input, and you're good to go. Above the navigation keys (Insert, Home, Page Up) on the keyboard, you'll find physical buttons to switch between inputs. All three have separate LEDs that indicate the status of your connection. Hold one of these buttons down and follow the instructions in the Bluetooth settings menu.

Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo: Design

Logitech has adopted a standard charcoal-esque Graphite colour for both the keyboard and mouse, although a brighter off-white finish is also available. Both are strong in isolation (with Off White winning out marginally for looking a little more interesting), but it's important to have the optionality to aesthetically complement the devices you already own. Each has complementary design features; for example, the grooves on the padded palm rest mirror the ridges on the thumb rest on the side of the mouse, and there's a similar darker tone for the padded regions on both devices.

The keyboard itself is really large – with plenty of room for a full array of keys you'd expect from a conventional full-sized device, including a Function row and a number pad. Each key is slightly indented to cup your finger, with the 3D quadrilateral shape meaning the base of each key is gapless while there's plenty of room between each surface.

The shape also flows like a wave, rising then falling from left to right, which is great for angling either hand slightly outwardly as you're typing with it. Beneath the keys, this flowing motion is reflected in the curved palm rest with rows of circular contours running in the opposite direction. It's a triumphant design scheme overall. There's also room for the pairing buttons, a customizable function key, and little extras like video conferencing shortcuts. Beneath, there are two kickstands (four degrees and eight degrees) that let you alter the angle depending on what works best for you.

Where we felt the K880 lacked was in the cheapness of the sticker effect of the key labeling, as opposed to a seamless translucent effect that would disguise this. Secondly, there's no backlighting or underlighting, sadly, so using the peripherals in a darkly lit room may not be such a great idea unless you can touch-type with near-perfect precision.

The M850 L mouse is a small, compact, and simple device with one unusual feature that sets it apart from the crowd: a palm rest. Although the keyboard palm rest makes sense, we weren't sure there was much of a point in the inclusion of one here, given the plastic feels fairly soft to begin with – and there's a certain firmness to the palm rest, and you'll only feel its efficacy if you push down in an unnatural way. In addition to the two main left-click and right-click buttons are a mouse wheel, a function key beneath it, and Forward and Back buttons above the thumb rest.

Incidentally, Logitech says both devices are made from 49% recycled plastics as it strives to incorporate sustainability into its engineering. Despite that, the build quality of both is excellent, and there's no sense of frailty while you're using either.

Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo: K880 keyboard

Typing with the K880 keyboard is superb, and we could feel just the right amount of feedback in each keystroke – with enough mid-pitched noise to satisfy those who need audible feedback as well as that sensory punch. Keystrokes are deep, too, for a membrane keyboard, and while it won't give you the depth of a true mechanical machine, it's a brilliantly simple setup that means you can touch type for extended periods of time without discomfort or disquiet. The only oddity is that the padded palm rest can warm up, retaining your body heat during usage – but this isn't excessive and doesn't spoil the overall typing experience.

There's one minor grumble, however, which is that the feedback in each key is not consistent; most keys behave the same way when pushed, but a small handful, including the column featuring the Backspace and Enter keys in particular, have muted and understated reactions. This is, perhaps, one casualty of the elevated contour design, but it affects only a small handful of keys in that column arrangement, with the Enter key being the least satisfying to tap.

Using the keyboard itself on a day-to-day basis is made simple and effective thanks to the specific function keys that Logitech has baked into it. The brightness functions, for example, are a nod to the fact you'll likely be using a laptop for the most part, while the videoconferencing keys – including the mic and camera activation toggles – are useful shortcuts for remote and hybrid workers. We also love the inclusion of functions to control audio volume and playback – important for those who want ultimate control as well as those who love listening to music while they work.

The most useful features, however, are the ways you can customize certain keys. The AI key, for example, can be assigned to your preferred agent, application, or chatbot. The circular action key above the number pad, meanwhile, is a great tool that you can configure to your whim with the Logi Options Plus app. Smart Actions let you perform actions with a single key press, letting you chain different apps, perform specific actions (like AI replying to emails or changing your interface into a focused work mode), or even create new functions yourself. This freedom and flexibility – especially the power to chain together several functions and applications – was a great one-tap way to save ourselves time and get into a groove with a simple automation.

Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo: M850 L mouse

There's an elegance in the simplicity of the M850L mouse, but there are still enough interesting details in the design and functionality of this peripheral to feel far from boring and plain. The sharp ergonomic curve on the left, where you place your thumb, for instance, adds to the sense of comfort you get from using this combo, and the device itself is suitable for larger hands despite being relatively compact. The strong grip also makes the mouse feel as if it's an extension of you as you're working on a day-to-day basis – giving you precision in every movement.

There's a little strangeness in that each type of physical key has a completely different physical sensation when you're using it. The left-click and right-click buttons are muted so heavily, with a quiet click the only indication you've used either, beyond the effect on-screen. There's little force feedback either, which makes for an understated and fuss-free experience – but you may want a little more bite. The Forward and Back keys offer a bit more of a punch, but again, this is on the softer side. You get the same sensation clicking the button below the mouse wheel (which controls cursor speed), and the mouse wheel itself is more akin to a conventional one – with hefty bite and satisfying rubberized grip as you scroll up or down. You can scroll horizontally by tapping either the Forward or Back buttons, then scrolling with the mouse wheel as normal.

Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo: Is it worth it?

Logitech has set out to design a keyboard and mouse set steps beyond simple ergonomics to give you maximum comfort, letting you work for hours on end without pain or strain thanks to a softer and rounder design language and plenty of padding. For the most part, the Logitech Signature Comfort Plus Combo is a triumph – and you'll find yourself not only giving your home office setup, or workplace desk space, a visual boost but a functional one too.

Both devices are expertly crafted and complement each other well from a looks perspective, but the thought that's gone into functionality and day-to-day usage also pays off tremendously. We are, however, concerned about one or two bugbears that prevent this from being an outstanding proposition – one being inconsistent keystroke sensations down one portion specifically, the lack of backlighting, and the absence of a biting feedback in left- and right-clicking. These minor grumbles aren't enough to discount what's otherwise an excellent pair of peripherals.

Available in the UK for £99, it's on the pricer side when you consider Logitech's other basic combo sets – the MK250 Compact Bluetooth Wireless Combo is available for £19.99, for example – but given it's a full-sized keyboard with plenty of productivity-centric customization, as well as the additional comfort and ergonomic elements, we reckon it's worth every penny

The Balance Phone has arrived during a significant moment, particularly in the UK and Europe, where there is a swelling of anti-social media sentiment. People are claiming back their attention spans, parents are worried about screen time, and even politicians are making moves towards legislation.

Driving much of this is a big community on social media (ironically). Marketing for Balance has been phenomenally successful at using the power of that space in its attempt to take you off it.

It promises to get you down to just 1 hour and 30 minutes a day of phone use – we will be adjusting that somewhat as I use my phone for work, and this is, above all, a review of a phone for work purposes. However, this is not simply a review of a device but a review of my relationship to phones in general. The way the Balance Phone is presented, and even designed, is to be an antidote to digital procrastination. That's the biggest reason you will buy it. So there is going to be a significant amount of navel-gazing here.

In the five days I used my iPhone before switching to the Balance phone, I had a daily average of seven hours of use. I picked up my phone on average 65 times per day – total pickups for the week were 259 times. Most concerning, I racked up over seven hours on Instagram – I'm an addict. That's over 28 hours of screen time in less than a week, and that doesn't take into account TV, tablet, laptop, and any other devices I encounter.

Balance Phone: Design

When ordering a Balance Phone, you have three options. There's a standard model, which is the Samsung A16 (£269). This is a budget model you would likely give your children as a first device. Or you can buy a 'Pro' version that's a Samsung Galaxy S25 (£679/$813). Or you can simply subscribe to their service and have it installed on your Samsung device of choice (£69/$99 per year). A word of warning here: if you opt for the subscription, you won't be able to change your phone back once the OS is installed.

I was sent the A16 model and, admittedly, most of the negatives in this review are due to the fact that it's a low-spec device, rather than any issue with Balance itself. I like premium features and top camera specs, and I felt a little limited with the A16. This also became a slight issue for work, which I will explain further down.

How does Samsung fit in? Well, the premium quality of its hardware is a big factor, but also its strong security controls through the Knox platform. The Balance team did initially seek to make their own hardware, but found it difficult to come up with something that competes with what is already available. So rather than spend more time and money on a development that might not work, they partnered with one of the world's biggest smartphone makers.

With the A16, you get a 6.7in Super AMOLED display, 1080 x 2340 resolution, and a 90Hz refresh rate, which isn't so important without social media and infinite scrolling. It's powered by a 6nm MediaTek Helio G99 processor. There is only 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. It runs Android 16 out of the box and then a Balance OS overlay.

You also get facial recognition and fingerprint sensors. The latter is on the home button and doesn't always work – particularly in a sweaty heatwave. But this is more of an issue for the Samsung model rather than Balance.

For the camera, you have a 50MP wide lens, a 5MP ultrawide one, and a 2MP macro sensor on the rear. The front-facing camera is 13MP, also wide. Both sides shot 1080p video at 30fps – which is significantly less than the standard S25 offers. Worth bearing that in mind if you need the camera system for your job.

Balance Phone: Operating system

As mentioned, Balance is merely an operating system, or more accurately, an overlay. When you set up your phone, you'll notice it has a basic Android background and user interface. Before long, you'll have a pop-up that leads you through the setup process for Balance. This will ask you to allow notifications and permissions for Balance so that it can help you if your usage spikes.

One of the first things you'll need to do is select eight apps or features to appear on your home screen. This will be a minimalist black screen with the names of each app in white, listed down the center. It's quite clever in that it looks less cluttered than your usual phone screen, which is just all your apps spread over many pages. It's both instantly calming and very memorable. It unintentionally stands out from every other phone available, just by being stripped down and basic.

If you want to access something other than the eight apps selected, you use the search bar at the bottom. Which can get annoying if you need something you only use infrequently – say, the app for your weekly shop. But overall, you only really use a selection of apps daily, and that should be fewer than you think without social media.

The OS was initially an app, available via the Google Play Store. It was also briefly a hardware concept, with models designed in China, but their idea is more about software, anyway.

The name is key; it strikes a balance through app categories - mainly anything that offers an infinite scroll. The company defines this via five categories: social media, streaming, gaming, gambling, and porn. Admittedly, email and instant messaging can be classed as infinite, so to speak, but there is more caution here. Telegram, for instance, is straight-up banned because it isn't as safe and has a known problem with illicit content. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is allowed because, to quote the company, it's simply too big not to include.

When it comes to news apps, there is more leeway, but they're working on features that can help you curb your news usage. Though this will be more of a guide, you'll likely have notifications that warn you how much time you've spent doomscrolling.

My first impression of the Balance Phone is one of calm. It's very easy to get distracted once you pick up your phone. Whatever your initial reason for unlocking your device can be lost as you see notifications, other apps, and horrible news stories. When I opened the device to check email and Slack for work, that is generally where I went. So there was a feeling it was doing its job from the start.

Balance Phone: Apps and features

What about the delicate balance between useful apps and procrastination? Well, work apps and necessary utilities are all available – as far as my own needs go. Banking, messaging, Uber, and even Alexa are all present. Google Search is installed, but it isn't available; it's merely kept in place to support other services on the device. You can only use Chrome or Ecosia.

Apps like Netflix and YouTube are blocked from being downloaded, which is generally the case for all streaming apps. Even BBC iPlayer and ITVX, which were a struggle not to have during a World Cup. Strangely, YouTube Music is available, as is Spotify. The latter has a scroll feature, but music has a therapeutic quality and can also aid productivity, so it makes sense for it to be a part of the Balance-approved apps.

Some apps, however, regardless of the infinite scroll/social aspect, are just not available. The Blackmagic camera app, for example, which has become the creator's best friend, could not be added to my Balance Phone. This is largely down to the model of phone and not the Balance Phone criteria. Either way, it would be something that informs my choice when buying a Balance Phone.

Balance Phone: Is it worth it?

There is definitely something to be said about the lower quality of the Samsung A16. The OS doesn't feel particularly fast or responsive, particularly in apps. I noticed lots of sluggishness in Slack when iterating in channels or leaving them. The fingerprint sensor hardly worked. And there is a slightly glitchy action in Spotify and Gmail. One would assume this is not a problem for the S25 model and its higher-powered chipset.

As for Balance itself, it does indeed do what it promises. You will not use social media – largely as it doesn't let you. But beyond that, the way in which the interface looks and operates does appear to be a better way to use phones for work. You're not lost among pages and pages of apps; instead, you're forced to be more organized, and you can do the task at hand quicker, with less distraction. This is the true meaning of work-life balance.

Balance Phone (Samsung A16 model) specifications

Zyxel offers an impressive range of business Wi-Fi 7 access points (APs), and the tri-band WBE665S signals a concerted move into enterprise territory. Designed to deliver stable and reliable wireless connections in demanding environments such as warehouses, large-scale retail, cold storage, manufacturing, and stadiums, the WBE665S looks capable of handling everything the great outdoors can throw at it. Largely because this massive, ruggedly built AP has a high IP67 rating.

It's also built for performance as it presents 12 spatial streams spread equally across the three radios and has a huge BE22000 rating. This allows it to claim maximum speeds of up to 1,376Mbits/sec for 2.4GHz, 8,646Mbits/sec for 5GHz and a whopping 11,530Mbits/sec for 6GHz.

The AP can be managed in standalone or cloud mode using Zyxel's Nebula Cloud Control (NCC) portal. The WBE model designation means it can also be locally managed from Zyxel's USG Flex WLAN controllers, and the price includes a 1-year NCC Pro Pack license, which enables Zyxel's SecureWiFi, CDR (collaborative detection and response), and the AI-powered WiFi Aid and Wireless Health troubleshooting tools.

Zyxel WBE665S review: Build quality and design

Measuring 410 x 410 x 110mm and weighing nearly 5kg, the WBE665S is easily the largest Wi-Fi 7 AP we've yet seen. The sturdy metal chassis and thick polycarbonate shell are built for outdoor action as the AP has 6kV lightning protection and can operate between -40 and +70 degrees C, while its IP67 rating means it's fully dust-tight and can handle temporary immersion in water.

The WBE665S puts its extreme size to good use as it incorporates a 120-degree ultra-wide smart antennae array which dynamically optimises its patterns and signal directions to the RF environment in real time. All of its performance potential is unleashed by a fast copper 10GbE multi-Gig uplink port, which requires an 802.3bt PoE++ source for all features to function.

For those that want a connection distance of more than 100 metres, there's a 10GbE SFP+ fibre port and a 24-48V DC input. All ports are arranged neatly under the chassis at the rear, and the box includes waterproof cable glands and an industrial-strength aluminium pole mount kit.

Zyxel WBE665S review: 6GHz restrictions

Due to potential interference with weather radars, the radio astronomy service (RAS) and satellite links, Ofcom currently restricts standard Wi-Fi 7 6GHz usage in the UK to indoors only. It does permit VLP (very low power) usage, but this is strictly limited to the lower 5925-6425MHz band and 25mW levels.

Furthermore, outdoor VLP usage will only be permitted when the device is under the control of a third-party AFC (automated frequency control) system. AFC may also, at first, be used to control access to the upper 6GHz band, but this is currently under consultation with a decision not expected until later this year.

Zyxel has come up with a nifty workaround, as you can set the WBE665S to indoor mode, which enables the 6GHz radio. Or use the outdoor mode, which disables it. It's available as a single toggle switch in both the standalone web console and NCC portal. However, you'll need to ensure you don't accidentally set the AP to indoor mode when deploying it outside.

Zyxel WBE665S review: Cloud management

Standalone mode is easy to use as the AP's web console offers a quick start wizard, but we'll focus on cloud management as this is likely to be the preference for most businesses. Adding the WBE665S to our NCC account was easy, as we used the Nebula iOS app on an iPad to scan the QR code on the box and choose the site it should take its settings from.

The NCC portal is well designed and offers menu options at the top to choose an organisation and the sites it manages. Down below is an informative dashboard offering an at-a-glance site status overview along with customisable widgets for all Zyxel cloud-managed devices, APs by usage, connected clients and their detected OS, total wireless traffic, and PoE consumption for Zyxel switches.

As with standalone mode, up to eight SSIDs per site are supported, and you can create custom captive portals for guest wireless networks. Each can have its own logo and message, a choice of authentication methods including 2FA with Google Authenticator, and L2 isolation to stop guests from seeing each other.

A key feature of all the latest Zyxel APs is their auto-MLO feature. Set the radios to 11be operations, apply Enhanced Open, WPA3 Personal, or WPA3 Enterprise encryption, and any MLO-capable client device will automatically create an aggregated link.

The indoor and outdoor settings are accessed in the NCC portal by selecting the AP and choosing the installation environment mode from its status screen. In standalone mode, the local web console has a dedicated section for this in its configuration menu.

Zyxel WBE665S review: 5/6GHz performance

For performance testing, we hooked the WBE665S up to the lab's Zyxel XMG1930-30HP multi-Gig PoE++ switch, which confirmed a 10GbE connection and a PoE++ power draw. Our test hosts were a Lenovo Windows 11 Pro desktop client equipped with a TP-Link Archer TBE550E Wi-Fi 7 PCIe adapter and a Dell PowerEdge Windows Server 2022 host connected to the switch over 10GbE.

Starting with 6GHz testing, we set the AP to indoor mode after which our Windows 11 client created a 2.4/6GHz MLO connection with an aggregated link speed of 6,108Mbits/sec. We used the OpenSpeedTest HTML5-based tool to measure raw performance and watched it report back with stunning close-range upload and download rates between the client and server of 538MB/sec and 445MB/sec.

After swapping the AP to outdoor mode from the NCC portal, our Windows 11 client automatically reconnected with a 2.4/5GHz MLO link and a link speed of 3,570Mbits/sec. Close-range performance looked good with OpenSpeedTest recording close-range upload and download rates of 353MB/sec and 317MB/sec.

Moving the AP 10 metres away and into an adjoining room with a wall in the way saw it deliver very respectable 2.4/6GHz upload and download speeds of 378MB/sec and 300MB/sec. Swapping back to outdoor mode returned 2.4/5GHz distance speeds of 275MB/sec and 211MB/sec.

Zyxel WBE665S review: Is it worth it

With prices in the £1,000-£1,200 range, the WBE665S compares well on value with the competition in this market sector. This huge Wi-Fi 7 AP delivers a lot for your money as its ruggedized build quality is exemplary and the mighty BE22000 rating delivered a superb 5/6GHz performance in our lab tests.

It's easy to deploy and management options are very versatile as it supports standalone, appliance or NCC cloud modes. The smart Indoor/Outdoor operational modes ensure compliance with local regulations and it's ready for 6GHz outdoor operations whenever Ofcom permits it.

Zyxel WBE665S specifications

They say that time is money. So, if you're keen to make the most of your limited budget for both, I'll say it up front: the MSI MP242PMG is a great value office monitor. It's nothing fancy, but it ticks all the boxes – and a few besides – for a budget model.

In fact, it's a box ticker's dream come true. The 24-inch Full HD panel sits atop a sturdy fully adjustable stand, and the 120Hz refresh rate both minimises eyestrain and boosts motion clarity for gaming. There's even a basic Full HD webcam and a two-port USB 2.0 hub.

With that specification list, the RRP of £130 sounds very reasonable indeed. With current street pricing putting it below the £90 mark, this is a budget office monitor that demands to make your shortlist.

MSI MP242PMG monitor: Design & Features

If you're expecting a cheap, nondescript display, then the MP242PMG may give you a pleasant surprise. This is a sturdy-feeling monitor with a solid stand and a thoughtful, understated design. It's all black plastic, granted, but I've handled monitors at five times the price that have felt more hollow and plasticky than this.

The essentials are all present, too. The adjustable stand has a nice, wide base that keeps the monitor steady even with one-handed adjustments, provides 130mm of height adjustment, and ample tilt and swivel. It also rotates into portrait mode in either direction.

There are other thoughtful little touches, too. A little cutout along the front of the monitor's base gives room to stow something useful – a thumb drive, pen, or office pass; maybe some snacks – and another oval cutout in the monitor's stand does an excellent job of keeping cables neat and tidy.

The webcam is on top of the panel, and this has a privacy shutter ready to go. It doesn't support Windows Hello, and in honesty, it's pretty terrible in low light, but with decent lighting, the Full HD sensor produces the kind of image quality that is perfectly serviceable for video calls.

Connectivity is great for the money. The major absentee is USB-C, but everything else is covered. Video inputs include HDMI, DisplayPort, and – in a rather quaint twist – VGA. The single USB-B input at the rear powers up the pair of USB-A ports at the rear and provides a connection for the integrated webcam. A 3.5mm audio output is present, too.

You do also get a pair of integrated speakers but these are typically mediocre – fine in a pinch for an unexpected video call, but not great. Naturally, there's a microphone too, and this is again good enough for video calls. It's not the last word in clarity, but it's useful and perfectly usable.

MSI's on-screen display deserves a mention. A clickable four-way joystick at the rear makes it simple to navigate, and the menus are clearly legible and well laid out. Click the joystick inwards and the full menu appears, but moving it in any of the four directions quickly accesses a selection of preset functions. Delve into the menus, and you can set these quick access functions in the Navi Key section.

The range of preset picture modes are actually quite useful. The User mode is arguably the most color-accurate of the bunch, but the softer, warmer presentation of the Black and White and Anti-Blue modes are great options to have for avoiding eyestrain during the working day. The Black and White mode is self explanatory, but the Anti Blue mode adds a warm orangey tinge to the display, which is quite pleasant in darker environments. One interesting addition is a trio of eye care tests found in MSI's Eye-Q section, which assists you in setting the optimal screen height and provides a couple of visual tests to check for eyestrain or fatigue – it's a really sensible idea.

MSI MP242PMG monitor: Display quality

The most glaring issue with the MP242PMG is the same for any 24-inch Full HD monitor – it's dramatically less crisp than most modern laptop displays or affordable 27-inch QHD displays. Text looks slightly pixellated, and images lack fine detail. That's just the price you pay with a Full HD monitor.

If that's not enough to make you want to upgrade to a QHD monitor, then the overall image quality here is good. Color accuracy in the default sRGB mode is perfectly acceptable – the average Delta E of 1.32 is very respectable for a budget display. The only obvious issue is that the white point is much too warm at 5,887k. This results in a clear orangey tint to whites. The gamma is a bit wayward, too, and this means that some tones look a tad more washed out than they should. In truth, neither will bother users working on non colour-critical desks, but it's worth knowing.

Personally, I preferred the User mode for daily use as this produced an almost perfect 6,445k white point. Color accuracy is a little worse with an average Delta E of 2.07, but this is less noticeable than the sRGB mode's overly warm tint. With User mode enabled, you do still get some over-brightening of tones, but again, for day-to-day work you're not going to notice.

The basics are all fine, though. Brightness tops out around 440cd/m2, which is way brighter than is comfortable for most offices, and contrast is a little bit better than average at 1,617:1. Backlight uniformity is good, too, with no more than a 9% variance in brightness around the panel's edges. For everyday use, the MP242PMG gets a clean bill of health.

Motion handling isn't going to challenge any gaming panels, but it's pretty good for the money. MSI claims a 4ms GTG response time and 1ms MPRT – pretty nippy for a budget display. Bumping up to the maximum Fastest response time caused some ugly overshoot in our testing, so we settled on the Faster setting. This delivers a welcome improvement over the standard Fast setting without the ugly artefacts.

The only thing to reiterate here is that this is an office monitor. Fast-moving action in darker scenes does start to look rather blurry and smeared. And while engaging the MPRT backlight strobing does help to sharpen up detail in brighter scenes, there's a downside: the strobing dramatically reduces overall brightness, so the panel's poor response time in darker scenes becomes even more prominent. My advice would be to leave MPRT off, stick to the Faster response time setting, and engage Adaptive Sync mode for the best clarity.

MSI MP242PMG monitor: Is it worth it?

Prices do tend to fluctuate quite a bit for budget monitors, so there's always an element of selecting a shortlist of competent models and shopping around. Two obvious alternatives are BenQ's GW2490 or GW2490C. Both lack the adjustable stand – and indeed some of the design niceties of the MSI – but if you need USB-C then the GW2490C is a good alternative for around £90. And if you just want a good budget display, the GW2490 often retails for around £75.

At the time of writing, however, the MSI MP242PMG was retailing for £90. At that kind of money, the combination of an adjustable stand, good design, and respectable image quality is hard to beat for the money. If you're looking to fit out a small office with good-quality monitors on a small budget, the MSI MP242PMG is just the ticket.

MSI MP242PMG monitor specifications

Plenty of appealing mini PCs have hit the market in recent years, with a broad range of miniature machines available for those who want to tap into powerful and energy-efficient computing, whether that's at home or in the workplace.

Mobile working is changing, and many office spaces are already kitted out with monitors, meaning employees may not need laptops as they did during the peak of hybrid working. Desktop PCs, meanwhile, certainly have their place – but the prospect of a smaller, leaner and more affordable substitute carries a certain appeal. Some machines can match the power of a conventional desktop computer, while massively saving on energy costs, given they tend to be far more power-efficient.

But choosing the best mini PC depends on a huge number of factors, including budget, expectations, and how it'll be used. You can pick up a basic device for under $300 or push the boat out and bag a powerful machine for multimedia work or graphic design, or even consider a supercharged Nvidia DGX Spark system (or similar mini PCs) if you plan on running local AI models. Below, we've rounded up some of the most compelling mini PCs you can deploy either in your home office or as a fleet among the workforce.

What to look for in a mini PC

The best mini PCs massively save on desk space, and the smallest ones can even fit into your pocket. While they're all similar in terms of their dimensions, give or take, there may be massive variations in weight. Which is something you should keep in mind if you're not planning on keeping these devices in one place.

They're also relatively cost-effective, despite there being a handful of pricier devices out there, too. However, the very cheapest options tend to include hardware that's at least two generations behind – so you need to be careful that affordability doesn't contradict the idea of value for money, and you end up picking up machines that aren't suited to the sorts of workloads you plan on running – despite the purported cost savings. Most entry-level processors can hold their own on simple, day-to-day tasks like web browsing or spreadsheets – but you should look out for multi-core performance, which we've highlighted in our testing methodology.

If you're banking on a faster machine that can handle multiple workloads and more complex software, like multimedia applications, then you also need to pair this with plenty of RAM, with a minimum of 8GB (but ideally 16GB or above), as well as hard drive space (and speeds) if you're going to be housing massive quantities of data like images or videos, or even the essential data to run AI models on more advanced systems.

In that vein, it's hard to find mini PCs with dedicated graphics cards without blowing the budget, and you should be wary of limiting factors like throttling or airflow if you're looking on the higher performance end of the spectrum.

Most mini PCs carry a similar aesthetic, but the build quality and design elements can vary wildly. Thankfully, they're quite small and innocuous, but there's every chance you'll pick up a device that stands out like a sore thumb rather than blending into a desk setup as it should. More importantly, functionality is king – and you should decide which peripherals and connectivity options you'll need to use on a daily basis. Most business-focused mini PCs take care of the basics, but the more options you have at your disposal (including less common ports like SD Card reader), the better. The same goes for wireless standards – and you should make sure the mini PC is future-proofed against future standard upgrades.

Apple's own take on the mini PC excels in almost every quarter, with this tiny cube of a computer providing ample power for almost all users. The base M4 model is plenty powerful to run sophisticated multimedia workloads for most users, and the cost is wholly reasonable, but you can also upgrade to a supercharged M4 Pro unit for more intensive daily tasks, especially if you're a software engineer or want to experiment with small-scale AI.

Its performance and overall minimalist design – a classic trait in Apple devices – may suit most users, but so to does its connectivity options, with five USB-C ports including two at the front. Some users may bemoan the lack of USB-A ports or an SD card reader, with users needing to pick up a dongle or use the ports in their monitor. With prices starting at a very reasonable $599 (£599 in the UK), it's a highly competitive machine that also outpaces most of the Windows mini PC market. In summary, it's how all technology should be – useful, elegant, and fantastic value.

Read our full Apple Mac Mini (M4) review here

The Geekom A9 Max packs a massive punch despite its small frame. There are plenty of rivals to contend with, especially the Intel-powered MSI NUC AI+ 2MG, but this alternative, built with an AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series chip, as well as a powerful graphics card and a 50 TOPS NPU, comfortably meets that challenge. The hardware configuration is premium, especially given you can tap into 32GB RAM and a stonking 2TB SSD, but so too is its £999 price tag – making it one of the most expensive devices on the market.

However, it performed excellently in our testing, and its graphics power, in particular, is comfortably ahead of its key Windows rivals. With so many ports, you can also use it as a brilliant little AV or data hub. The machine isn't perfect, however, with niggles including a 2230 SSD slot instead of another 2280 one, and the lack of a second DisplayPort slot. That said, if you don't plan on upgrading what's already an excellent piece of machinery, then you're likely not going to encounter these issues. Overall, it's one of the best mini PCs that money can buy and the best miniature Windows computer out there right now.

Read our full Geekom A9 Max review here

Acemagic has made waves with a series of solid and reliable entry-level and mid-range mini PCs that are shedding market share from some of the bigger players. Much like the Acemagic Vista Mini V1, the Matrix Mini M1 is a highly compact and well-designed device that features a solid, albeit aging, set of components as well as a hefty amount of RAM and SSD storage space for under £400. This makes the device ideal for those who need something a bit more than entry-level without breaking the bank.

It's definitely a little underpowered if you compare it with some of the newest and most advanced mini PCs, but you know what you're getting into, and it still manages to come out with respectable performance scores in our benchmarking. We also really appreciate the connectivity options, as well as the standards used (including USB 4.0 support), despite the lack of an SD Card reader – although it's hardly a deal breaker. Overall, it's a compact, nice-looking, and capable machine that does a bit more than the bare minimum for a near entry-level price.

Read our full AceMagic Matrix Mini M1 review here

The pace of miniaturization is compelling, with AMD, Nvidia, and others engineering AI-focused mini PCs that far outpace most conventional desktops and laptops. The Acer Veriton GN100 is a classic Nvidia DGX Spark mini supercomputer that is engineered for advanced users and AI practitioners who want to experiment with and deploy projects within their organizations. Frankly, there's very little separating the different DGX Spark machines, given they are all made to a similar spec. But Acer's take on this mini PC has an interesting design and very attractive pricing.

Although you can't use Windows 11, the custom Linux distro is highly intuitive and designed to coax even those dabbling in AI for the first time into trying out different programs and projects. With the Grace Blackwell Superchip, there's enough power to handle mid-sized local large language models (LLMs) to great effect, while you can also connect it with another system to double up on power. For businesses striving to take the first steps in their AI journeys, machines like the Acer Veriton GN100 are a brilliant way to get started.

Read our full Acer Veriton GN100 review here

How we test mini PCs

Our rigorous testing methods at ITPro are designed to put each device through its paces and glean how it performs against the expectations we have from the outset, keeping the end user and their expected usage in mind at all times. Whether you're picking up a device to augment your home office workspace or making a huge purchasing decision over a fleet of devices, we know that it's important to get as much information about the device itself, but also what it's like to use it and whether it'll fit the bill for how you plan on using it. We also weigh up whether the device offers value for money – comparing it with counterparts in the field to measure how it stacks up.

For mini PCs, we begin by studying the general design and build quality – highlighting any specific quirks or areas of strength in our appraisal. For instance, we'll remark on the connectivity options, the standards of those options, and the placement of any ports, alongside any features we feel could be missing. Our review will also consider the size and shape of the machine, as well as its weight, comparing this with similarly categorized mini PCs you may also be considering.

Next, we'll use a set of benchmarks to determine the machine's performance levels and general capabilities. These industry-standard tools help us determine how well it can cope under day-to-day load and intensive strain, as well as what kind of user it may be suited to. Our assessments also measure the speed of the storage system (whether that's an SSD or otherwise). We'll use the machine actively as our primary work unit and push it with software like Photoshop or Lightroom too to get a feel for how it copes under load. For specialist machines like workstations or AI-centric hardware, we'll run local AI workloads and see how the machine copes under sustained duress.

The Huawei MatePad Pro Max is coming to the UK. To most of Europe, in fact. And this is great news for those of us who want alternatives to Apple and Samsung. Now, some cynics might see this as just another tech brand adding the same combination of words (Pro, Max) on their device to make it sound bigger and better. But having used the Pro Max for a week, I can honestly say this is a tablet worthy of those titles.

To begin with, it's impossibly thin at just 4.7mm – the thinnest 13in tablet in the world, according to Huawei – certainly slimmer than any recent tablet tested by ITPro. But it's also just simply great to work with. The bright display has Huawei's PaperMatte technology, and with the Huawei M-Pencil, it gives you that true-to-life pencil-on-paper feel.

Huawei aims its MatePads at both consumers and business people, and there is a solid argument that this can be a laptop replacement – particularly as Huawei's actual laptop business has stalled in the Western world. For me, however, this is a bona fide creative powerhouse. That Huawei M-Pen and the GoPaint app make it arguably one of the best around for creators.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max: Design

The MatePad Pro Max is a 13.2in tablet, encased in a very sleek-looking metal body. Our review unit is a soft satin blue with the thinnest of frames (4.7mm) and some of the smoothest corners I've seen on a tablet. It weighs just 509g, feels very comfortable in just one hand, and goes in and out of a rucksack or bag with zero effort.

The back cover has a sort of two-tone finish thanks to nano-level coating on top of its metal body. It creates a pleasing light and shadow effect that allows the features (shiny Huawei logo, camera bump) to stand out. In the top corner is a black camera ring with an 'AI Camera' logo. And at the bottom (in portrait) is a USB Type-C port flanked by two sets of speaker holes. In the same corner as the camera, there is a volume rocker and a power button.

Pogo pins connect the Huawei's NearLink Keyboard, which is connected right out of the box, and there is also a trench to house your M-Pencil. You can also connect the pen to the top of the laptop (in landscape), where there is a small, thin oblong to indicate its docking position. Whether on top or on the keyboard, the pen will charge.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max: Display

By now, we should all know about Huawei's PaperMatte technology, which again features on its premium tablet. For the uninitiated, it's a micro-layer that provides both anti-glare cover and gives that feel of pen on paper – ReMarkable, and its Paper Pro (and Pure) tablets are, in my opinion, the most paper-like, but the Huawei MatePad Pro Max is as close as you can get on a more traditional tablet. Combine that with the Huawei M-Pencil Pro, and you can really create quite striking illustrations (more on this further down).

The 13.2in display is a Flexible OLED panel, with a 3000 x 2000 resolution, and 273 ppi. It's gloriously large and vibrant, and, as I mentioned above, there is hardly any glare on this matte finish. You also get lots of brightness with the tablet peaking at 603.32cd/m2 during my tests. Huawei says it can achieve 16oo nits, which actually suggests it's capable of a lot more.

Colour reproduction is also good. In our tests, the Pro Max produced 98.2% for sRGB gamut color coverage and 100.5% for volume. That's slightly above the M5 iPad Pro for color coverage (97.3%). It just missed out on a good Adobe score, ever so slightly under 70%, which is the threshold for us to recommend it for photography professionals. Though this is perfectly suitable for illustrators and graphic designers.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max: Specs and performance

Much of this quality comes from the powerful processor in the MatePad Pro Max. It features a Kirin T93 Pro, but unfortunately, we can't get a specific benchmark for that as Geekbench isn't available on the Huawei App Gallery. You can, of course, use certain pathways to get Google Apps on Huawei devices. For more, check out our explainer video.

As for the T93 Pro, it appears to be a very smooth CPU, powering a wealth of functions and features with ease. And although we don't have a specific benchmark, the Pro Max is highly responsive, fast through tasks, and works faultlessly through its many pre-installed apps.

On that topic, there are way too many apps installed out of the box, some you will never open, not even for curiosity's sake. But it's getting better and better when it comes to adding your favorites. With each interaction of MatePad, I have found finding and installing Netflix, Spotify, and even Slack a little bit easier.

The battery is fairly decent, too. In our looped video test, the MatePad Pro Max lasted 14hrs and 11min. Which is near enough to the likes of the OnePlus Pad 3 and the Honor MagicPad 4 to be competitive. In real terms, it easily makes it through a working day.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max: Features

In my view, where this tablet has its biggest selling point is the combination of the Huawei M-Pencil Pro, the PaperMatte display, and the GoPaint app – all of which make it a formidable creative hub. With each of those elements, you can really create quite striking illustrations.

The pen feels natural in the hand, it has innovative shortcuts, and pressure-sensitive controls. It both glides across the surface for adding color, but then has slight resistance for sketching.

And the GoPaint app continues to evolve. The sheer number of brush strokes and customizations puts it up there with the likes of Procreate and Sketchbook – but there doesn't appear to be the same monetization behind it. You're not limited to certain tools through different pricing tiers.

If a tablet is going to become your work machine, something that can replicate or replace your laptop, then its keyboard and trackpad need to be pretty good. And the NearLink model on the Pro Max is excellent. The keys are nice and clicky, with decent travel (1.8mm) and fairly large icons. The trackpad is OK, maybe a little on the small side, but nothing you wouldn't expect from a tablet keyboard.

Now I know camera systems on tablets are less interesting than they are on phones, but you get quite a high-spec camera system on the Pro Max. It comes with a 50MP (f/1.8 aperture, AF) rear lens and a 12MP (f/2.4) selfie camera. The rear lens also shoots video at 4K up to 30fps. Admittedly, it was the least used feature during my review, but uploading my sketches on paper was a breeze with the detail the 50MP camera captures.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max: Is it worth it?

The MatePad Pro Max is an excellent tablet, but it isn't going to replace a standard laptop; there are too many limitations here, like the lack of Google. But also, I think you just don't buy tablets for office workers.

You do, however, buy them for creative work. And the MatePad Pro Max is right up there with the best around. The M-Pencil and the GoPaint app are great additions that get better with each new tablet. And the new tablet itself is a phenomenal slab of technology.

Huawei MatePad Pro Max specifications

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor has thoroughly impressed with its selection of smartphones this year – with the Honor Magic8 Pro taking the fight to Samsung and the Honor 600 presenting a brilliant proposition as a mid-range device.

Rather awkwardly sitting somewhere in between these two handsets is the Honor 600 Pro. It's a more affordable alternative to the flagship-class Magic8 Pro (with some admittedly hefty compromises) but still retains plenty of "pro" features to keep businesses interested.

With an £899 price tag, however, many will question whether it offers value for money when you may choose to either go all-out for the most expensive Honor device or save on a few hundred pounds and settle for something a little lighter in nature.

Honor 600 Pro: Design

Parallels in the design of the Honor 600 Series with the iPhone 17 Pro are unavoidable. You can immediately notice the same protruding translucent rear panelling (housing the camera lenses and sensors) as well as the brushed metallic sides with etched grooves.

They even share the same shouty orange primary finish, but we picked up an Honor 600 Pro draped in a sophisticated Golden White coating, which looks clean and sophisticated in its own right. You can also pick up the device in a more generic but safer Black look. The composite fiber material on the phone's rear adds to its premium quality with some much-needed friction while you're holding it, and it's incredibly well constructed overall.

This phone is slightly smaller than the Honor 400 Pro (its predecessor) with a 6.57-inch display versus a 6.7-inch panel; in fact, it uses almost the same shell as the Honor 600 (except a third lens here). With a weight of 195g, it's also one of the lightest devices in this category – and one of the most compact too, thanks to its 7.8mm thickness.

Like the Honor 600, the left-hand side panel features several physical function keys, including volume controls, a power/Gemini button, and the Honor AI button. As with both devices, the display also features rounded corners that taper off far too aggressively, somewhat undermining the large real estate you'd otherwise enjoy.

Like the Honor Magic8 Pro, the device also boasts IP68/IP69/IP69K for dust and water resistance, with the latter certification a new category that means total dust-tightness with protection against pressure and high-temperature water jets. This comes in addition to an SGS 5-Star drop resistance. Hard to think, but this slender device is perhaps one of the most robust you can find right now.

Honor 600 Pro: Display

There's plenty of strength in the Honor 600 Pro's 6.57in AMOLED display – but it's the exact same panel as that used in the Honor 600. Thankfully, it's a good one, with a 2,728 x 1,264-pixel resolution equating to a solid 458 pixels-per-inch (slightly better than the Magic8 Pro) and a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate. There's also basic HDR support, although you're missing advanced standards like HDR10+ or Dolby Vision.

Honor lets you pick from three distinct color profiles that include normal (true-to-life), vivid (enhanced for higher saturation), and professional (suitable for tuning for color-accurate displays). But you can also fine-tune the RGB values – as well as other settings like brightness, contrast, and tint (cool, warm, or a color) – to give you maximum control. The default Vivid setting is best for day-to-day usage, and the colors are fairly balanced to begin with – so very little, if any, tinkering is required. Other settings that you can activate are an eBook mode for a grayscale rendering that's easier on the eyes, as well as AI-powered Super Dynamic Display and Vivid Display, which collectively boost brightness and contrast while helping colors pop a little more.

The screen is dazzling, by the way, with a brilliant maximum brightness of 808nits – although Honor suggests the device can reach a maximum of 8,000nits under certain conditions. There's also Sunlight Mode that can stretch brightness levels – as well as automatic controls that let the phone configure brightness depending on the room you're in. Despite recording fantastic brightness levels with our colorimeter, it was a tad dimmer than the Honor 600's 855nits, although it did outshine the Magic8 Pro's 790 nits (with a peak of 6,000nits).

We must also point out the outstanding color accuracy scores, with 99.9% coverage of the sRGB spectrum (beating the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra), alongside 79.8% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum and 92.9% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum. These are clear of the 70% and 80% required for professional use and slightly higher than the results we registered with the Magic8 Pro.

Honor 600 Pro: Specs and performance

The Honor 600 Pro is fitted with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite. This differs from the 8 Elite Gen 5 fitted into the very newest flagship phones, and is actually the chip that featured in many of 2025's flagships including the S25 Ultra. Honor has paired this with an Adreno 830 GPU (again, slightly weaker versus this year's 840), and you also get a flagship-grade 12GB RAM with 512GB storage.

This is a compelling package that offers almost double the power of the standard Honor 600. We registered 2,933 in single-core testing with Geekbench 6 and 8,738 in multi-core benchmarking, versus the Honor 600's 1,316 and 4,075.

The likes of the S26 Ultra and Magic8 Pro are 50% faster than this yet (we scored 3,671 and 10,722 in the latter, for example), but it suggests you should be comparing its performance with last year's flagships more than this year's mid-budget devices. Interestingly, the iPhone 17 Pro scored 3,778 and 9,816 – so the Honor 600 Pro isn't far away on multi-threaded performance. It's also around the score you'd expect from a mid-range laptop.

The battery life was a little disappointing, by contrast. While 27hrs and 3mins is nothing to be scoffed at, the 6,400mAh battery doesn't last as long as the 7,000mAh battery in the standard 600 – with a stonking lifespan of 36hrs and 12mins. Sitting between these devices is the 31hrs and 42mins the Magic8 Pro lasted. You do, however, get 80W wired and 50W wireless charging – much better than the S26 Ultra's 60W and 25W, but not as good as the Magic8 Pro's 100W and 80W.

Honor 600 Pro: Cameras

The cameras include a front-facing 50MP lens alongside a rear-facing trio of a 50MP periscope telephoto lens, 12MP 112° ultra-wide lens, and 200MP ultra-clear AI main camera lens. This is one more than in the standard 600, and a set of lenses that come close to competing with the Honor Magic8 Pro's incredible setup.

This overall configuration gives you a little more oomph than the standard Honor 600, which excels at point-and-click shooting, with up to 3.5x optical zoom and staggering 120x digital zoom. As with its flagship cousin, you also enjoy CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilization, which is excellent when shooting images or film. The AI-powered Magic Color mode also gives you AI-generated filters if you want to get creative with your photography.

Shooting with video is also excellent, and you can capture 4K footage at up to 60fps and 3.5x zoom, and up to 30fps with 1x zoom using the front camera. There's also a handy Night Video X, which lets you capture footage at 1080p up to 24fps and 2x zoom. Other useful features are an AI button that doubles as a way to zoom if you slide your finger up and down (or click to capture).

Honor 600 Pro: Features and software

With MagicOS 10, powered by Android 16, you ironically get a very iOS-like experience, considering how closely this device resembles Apple's flagship 'pro' smartphone. Unlike this operating system, however, there's so much room to customize it to suit your tastes and preferences, with most of these options overwhelming at first.

On the downside, there are a handful of AI-ready features that feel forced rather than genuinely useful. This is no sin that Honor alone is guilty of, but technology companies the world over are contending with stuffing every new device with as much AI as possible to prove its utility. That said, some are pretty handy.

Downloading a large language model (LLM) allows you to run AI Deepfake & Voice Cloning Detection. This scans video feeds in apps like Google Meet to detect whether you've head-to-head with a deepfake. AI Space also might be useful for those coordinating devices in a smart office. Also, a great tool is the automated transcription feature in the Recorder app.

Less useful is the AI folder on the home screen – which is populated with random apps depending on what you're most likely to use – and Honor AI, which deploys so-called "agents" onto your device to optimize it. We didn't find this feature particularly helpful, with the AI Memories agent, in particular, promising the most and failing to deliver (it's simply another way to manage your screenshots). Although it does come with a handy three-finger-swipe gesture if you can't gel with the conventional physical button combination.

Magic Portal, finally, is another somewhat useful feature that lets you tap into "AI memories" (read: screenshots) to search Google for elements of what's on screen. All you need to do is circle a portion of the screen, and the AI will do its magic. If you're also struggling with drafting documents, AI Writing can help you improve your phrasing and writing style.

The device itself only has room for one physical SIM card and an eSIM. It also ships with a 24-month warranty, including six months of coverage for the charger and removable battery and three months for accessories. This comes alongside seven years of Android maintenance, but there are no specific security-centric plans as you may get with Samsung's Knox Suite Enterprise Plan.

Honor 600 Pro: Is it worth it?

The more time we spent with the Honor 600 Pro, the more value we saw in what it could offer against the broader competition. If you're in the mood for a premium device, but aren't willing to shell out the asking price, a common practice is to look at last year's flagships. Unlike many mid-range or flagship smartphones, the Honor 600 Pro is something in a league of its own – unless you compare it with last year's flagship market.

This smartphone is a device that performs just as well as 2025's best options while also benefiting from a brilliant and color-accurate display, a fantastic iPhone-esque design (with more robust protections), as well as a set of camera lenses on par with the S26 Ultra. For £899, it's also much cheaper than last year's flagship smartphones (somehow) and feels just as fresh as the latest high-end devices launched today.

Sure, there are some bugbears. For instance, its aggressively rounded displays often feel like content is cut off. The battery life is weaker than its counterparts, too. Finally, you don't get some of the most up-to-date display standards (like HDR10+), but there's still plenty here to justify the price tag and a host of new-era AI features that may occasionally offer some use. Overall, for a device that aims to please everyone, it succeeds in many ways.

Honor Magic8 Pro specifications

Everpure could face stiff competition in its ambitious data management pivot, as the company plans a deep push into what is already a crowded market.

At Pure Accelerate 2026, the company announced the launch of a new Data Intelligence platform aimed at streamlining data management, allowing enterprises to simplify data visibility, discovery, and control.

The launch builds on Everpure’s gradual slide toward the data management space over the last three years. At Pure Accelerate 2025, the company unveiled the Enterprise Data Cloud (EDC), designed to unify both storage and data management capabilities for customers.

The pitch by Everpure – which until recently went by Pure Storage – rests on the idea that enterprise data architectures need a comprehensive rethink, largely due to the demands placed on infrastructure by generative and agentic AI.

Many enterprises have been locked in an ‘application-centric’ approach with their IT environments for decades, which saw individual pockets of data fed into centralized applications.

Given software was expected to eat the world until a few short years ago, these practices made sense. However, this data is often locked in disparate, fragmented locations, creating bottlenecks.

According to CEO Charlie Giancarlo, Everpure wants to flip this trend on its head, enabling enterprises to adopt a ‘data centric’ – or ‘data primacy’ – approach whereby these data sets are mapped and unified.

“Instead of the apps themselves connecting to all of your data, we need to construct a context map, we need to understand the data itself, we need to understand the context of each of the data systems, each of the data environments,” he told attendees.

“Think of this as a universal data intelligence universalizing across your enterprise, where you understand not only the context of individual data sets, but how these data sets relate to other data sets as well.”

Everpure argues that this approach will reduce the number of data integrations required by enterprises, breaking down silos, barriers, and creating a single source of truth.

This is vital with the advent of agentic AI, according to Everpure. Agents require deep integration with enterprise data sets to provide context, and the “context layer” that Everpure’s new platform aims to create will, the company says, help streamline access.

That means CRM data, ERP data, you name it; this context layer is unified and far more accessible.

Everpure on a collision course

With the data management pivot, Everpure is redefining itself as more than just a ‘pure’ storage provider. It’s a natural evolution for the company given that others within its immediate sphere of influence have done the same.

Crucially, it’s a reaction to the fact that a myriad of vendors and service providers now want your enterprise data in their own platforms. Salesforce wants your data for its Agentforce service, while SAP wants you doing all your work with it, which just creates further fragmentation.

Everpure’s core value proposition here rests on unifying the various data sets you’re storing on their hardware, and relying on its solutions to consolidate and manage them, regardless of the other services you’re using.

It’s a bold move by Everpure, but one that increases the risk of butting heads with some serious big hitters in the tech industry, according to Henry Baltazar, research director at 451 Research.

“If we look at all these vendors in different silos, the reality is that to grow their revenues they have to go to adjacent. That’s what everybody’s doing,” he said.

“So, if you look at the backup side, data protection side, where did they go? They went to security and they bought the DSPM (data security posture management) vendors, kind of like what [Everpure] just did.

“[Everpure] went from storage … into more data management and governance. So, you've got these vendors on the same collision course, essentially, because that's the path forward to getting more influence, getting more revenues, and being able to talk to different stakeholders.”

Much of the same?

Data centricity is by no means a new concept. Indeed, ETL (extract, transform, load) processes date - and have been talked about at length - for more than a decade, begging the question of what’s different this time around.

This exact question was posed to Giancarlo during a Q&A with assembled media, who argued that most efforts on this front haven’t materialized. He added that as data intelligence also enables enterprises to create a shared context layer for data, that marks a “major change”.

ETL processes involved creating dedicated copies of data, which were then distributed to certain applications. The result, he said, is more fragmentation and “shadow data” that provides no value except to an individual application.

“I would argue that IT architectures, for the most part, didn't go down that direction,” he said.

“They knew data was important, but what they did is they took that important data and they copied it for every new application that they wanted to run, including all the analytics.”

AI, Giancarlo noted, appears to have been the “breaking point” for many enterprises, which have found themselves copying and replicating data sets for the various SaaS vendors they work with. It’s spiralled out of control, and Everpure thinks it has the remedy.

“AI is that breaking point for two reasons. One is the method that enterprises have started going down the AI route replicates the analytics portion, which is I copy the data again for this AI purpose, or I copy the data again for that AI purpose, and then you also have all of the, in particular the SaaS players saying, well, for my AI agent to be more used to you, you've got to give me a copy of your other data,” he explained.

“How many times are you going to replicate your data in all these different places? So I think it's reached a really clear breaking point now.”

New targets

While Everpure might face tough competition in the future, the opportunities are immense, according to Greg Macantee, senior analyst at 451 Research, particularly in terms of engagement with new enterprise audiences and leadership roles.

Simply put, Everpure isn’t just catering to IT and infrastructure operations leaders with data intelligence, it’s also opening up to CIOs and CTOs.

“It helps [Everpure] get into different personas and new accounts,” he told ITPro. “That’s kind of the contemporary issue, who are going to be your champions outside of the storage architect? Is it going to be the CISO, is it going to be the application owners, maybe the data engineer [or] data scientist?”

Making the pitch

One key question with Everpure’s data management shift is whether it has the visibility on this front. While the rebrand earlier this year reflected this, the company’s bread and butter since its inception has been flash storage.

Based on Giancarlo’s comments in the press Q&A, what is clear is that the firm is preparing for a big sales and outreach drive – and it’s a source of huge excitement internally.

“I think it’s a fairly extensive addition to what we are able to provide in the go-to-market area,” Giancarlo told journalists. “We’re very much bulking up in this area.”

“We’re hiring extensively, we will have forward deployed engineers who know a lot about our product and how to deploy it, but more importantly, can help consult with customers to be able to deploy it and start to go down this path towards data primacy.”

Partners will also play a “really important part” in championing the new approach, Giancarlo said, with systems integrators working on the frontline driving change.

“That opens up a huge opportunity for the channel, because all of that requires a lot of expertise, a lot of help, a lot of services, and so we believe that it’s a great opportunity for the channel,” he told journalists.

Execution will be critical for Everpure if it’s to have impact with this data intelligence drive, but it’s leading by example. Giancarlo revealed the company is deep into its own re-architecturing process internally, and it’s a “multi-year journey”.

Convincing customers to embark on a lengthy change process will most certainly be a challenge given the stakes at play for those dabbling in agentic AI.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 is hoping to buck a trend. So far, the launch of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processors has focused on the high-end laptop market. That's not surprising; the flagship Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme is a beast of a chip, combining multi-core performance to match Intel, AMD's, and Apple's best mainstream mobile processors. It's only natural that manufacturers would want to focus on powerful mid-range and high-end laptops built around it.

Yet Qualcomm and its partners had another story to tell with the original Snapdragon X range. There, processors in the Snapdragon X and X Plus lines powered a new wave of affordable thin-and-light devices from the likes of Acer, Asus, HP, Microsoft, and Lenovo, branded under Microsoft's Copilot+ PC initiative. If these laptops didn't always make as big an impact as they deserved to, it had nothing to do with the often great hardware or the underlying tech. Well, now Qualcomm is back for a second try with the Snapdragon X2 Plus, and you couldn't ask for a much better debut for it than the new Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Design

Lenovo has developed an appealing habit of making laptops that feel premium even though they have a budget or mid-range price tag, and the IdeaPad Slim 5x (Gen 11) is another great example. It comes in 13in and 15in formats, both with elegant and durable all-aluminium bodies. The 13in model we've had in for testing isn't quite in the ultralight class of the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI or the Asus Zenbook A14, but at 1.41kg it isn't exactly a backbreaker, either. With a compact 339 x 236mm footprint and a thickness of just under 16mm, it's an easy fit in most briefcases, bags, and backpacks.

The design feels very similar to the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (Gen 10), only without the distinctive rippled underside. The aluminium doesn't feel wafer-thin, the build is free of sharp corners and rough edges, and it all feels good and solid, as backed up by MIL-STD-810H certification for shock and temperature-resistance. A chunky rubber strip, running almost the whole width of the laptop, raises the keyboard deck slightly and keeps the laptop steady during desktop use.

The connectivity gives you some indication that this isn't a high-end device. There are two USB-C ports on the left-hand side, but they're both 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 spec rather than USB 4, locking you out of faster USB 4 SSDs and docking stations. Still, this isn't a huge concern right now, given the lack of such products on the market. The two USB Type-A ports on the right are even slower, with both stuck at 5Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds.

On the positive side, you get an HDMI 2.1 port for connecting external displays, while both USB-C ports can output a DisplayPort 1.4 signal if you're looking for a multi-screen setup. You also have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 onboard, along with a proper, old-school headphone jack and a handy micro-SD card reader.

The trackpad is positively luxurious for an affordable device, with a reasonably large 120 x 75mm glass surface that feels smooth to the touch and is perfectly responsive in its tracking. And if the keyboard doesn't hit ThinkPad levels of greatness, the large, flat keys with their curved front edges are generously-sized and well spaced out, with a light, if shallow action that won't slow you down while you work. As with most aspects of the IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11, it doesn't feel compromised to cut costs.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Display

Most aspects, but maybe not all. The screen is perfectly good in most respects. It's bright enough for comfortable use in most conditions, with a maximum brightness of 440cd/m2, while it covers the full range of the sRGB colour space, which, if you're not involved in professional creative work, is probably all you need. There's nothing special about a 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution on a 13.3in display, but it looks sharp in everyday use, and there's not too much visible pixelation at a normal viewing distance.

All the same, it's an IPS display, so it can't match the contrast or vibrant colour we've seen from similarly-priced laptops bearing OLED screens. It covers 74.6% of the DCI-P3 colour space, which isn't bad, but colours aren't quite as rich and vivid as they are on the Swift Edge 14 AI, Zenbook A14, or the Chromebook Plus 14 (Gen 10). None of these laptops is hugely expensive, either.

To balance this, the audio is pretty good for a 13in laptop. The sound is clear enough for voice and video calls or meetings, there's a likeable stereo spread, and even music is played with a bit more warmth and detail than we'd expect from an affordable device. Some harshness comes in at higher volumes, but not at the kind of levels you'd use in the office or while working at home. Video captured by the 1080p webcam could be a little cleaner, especially in low-light conditions, but it's fine for everyday meetings, and the IR module and Windows Hello support give you a quick, reliable way to sign in.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Specs and performance

The Snapdragon X2 Plus X2P-42-100 sits near the bottom of the Snapdragon X2 line, with just six Oryon v3 cores running six threads at up to 4GHz. If you're expecting staggering speeds, you may want to curb your enthusiasm. However, its single-core performance appears to be very good, with its Geekbench 6 single-core score of 3215 beating not just the Snapdragon X Plus in the Zenbook A14, but also a wide range of laptops with Intel Lunar Lake and Panther Lake processors, including the Acer Swift 16 AI and Asus ExpertBook Ultra.

Multi-core performance isn't quite as strong, and the Slim 5x's Geekbench 6 score – 11704 – is a way behind the 8-core AMD Ryzen AI 7 and Panther Lake competition, where you're looking at scores in the 16000s. Its multi-core scores in Cinebench 2024's rendering benchmarks are nothing to write home about, either with a decent 128 for single-core rendering but just 649 for multi-core. Here, the Swift 16 AI scored 943, with the ExpertBook Ultra at 838.

Still, this is a cheaper device, and the difference in multi-core performance isn't something you'll pick up in everyday use with productivity applications or while working across multiple SaaS apps. The IdeaPad Slim 5x feels nippy and responsive even while balancing a dozen browser tabs or a workspace with multiple apps. What's more, its scores with the six-core Snapdragon X2 Plus are better than the Asus Zenbook A14's scores with the eight-core Snapdragon X Plus, showing that Qualcomm has made some significant performance improvements from the previous generation chips.

Just be warned that 3D graphics really isn't the Snapdragon X2 Plus's thing. The Lenovo is faster than the old Zenbook A14 (2025) in 3DMark's Time Spy and Steel, Nomad (light) tests, but a long way behind any Lunar Lake or Panther Lake machine, not to mention the Zenbook A16 with its Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme CPU. The latter has a much more powerful GPU.

Luckily, there's ample compensation in the X2P-42-100's superb energy efficiency. Despite having a rather average 54.7Whr battery, the IdeaPad Slim 5x produced one of the greatest feats of laptop stamina we've ever seen, not just surviving a full 24 hours of HD video playback from a single charge, but an additional three hours on top. A couple of days of light use without a charger shouldn't be out of the question, provided you don't push the brightness all the way up.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11: Is it worth it?

The IdeaPad Slim 5x has much to offer businesses, particularly smaller businesses where budgets may be tight. It's a stylish, solidly-built, and very usable laptop that doesn't look or feel inexpensive. All the same, it's fallen victim to the same creeping price increases we've seen everywhere this year, and at just over £900, it's not quite as fantastic a value as it would have been for around £800. As it is, it's going up against laptops with stronger specs and OLED screens, including models that came out in 2025 but still perform well today. The IdeaPad Slim 5x (Gen 11) is definitely a strong option, but you might want to wait for the right deal before you make your move.

Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 Specifications

Everpure is in a peculiar position when it comes to discussions around data sovereignty.

As a hardware vendor, it isn’t subject to the same scrutiny as cloud hyperscalers, but as a US company, it does face scrutiny from EU customers worried about dependency on foreign tech providers.

Patrick Smith, Everpure’s EMEA CTO, told ITPro the company is keen to engage in proactive and pragmatic discussions on this topic. Indeed, Everpure’s position on the matter is that once their storage solutions are deployed in a customer data center, it’s a hands-off approach.

“We like to be very upfront about that,” Smith told ITPro at Pure Accelerate 2026.

“When customers buy our tech and deploy it in their data centers, it’s under their control. We’re obviously a US provider of technology, but it’s under their control.”

Smith admits that the situation becomes tricky when it comes to telemetry monitoring. Everpure’s Pure One software solution collects telemetry data from arrays sitting in that data center, tracking configuration and performance metrics, and it runs in the cloud.

Everpure’s view on this, according to Smith, is that because this doesn’t contain mission-critical data, it’s not actually a big customer talking point in terms of data sovereignty posture. They at least have a choice here, though, he added.

“Every customer needs to make their own decision on that,” he told ITPro. “Some customers may choose to run what we call ‘dark sites’, where they do their own monitoring and telemetry in their own on-prem systems.”

Shifting priorities

Engagement with Everpure customers certainly shows data sovereignty has become a big concern over the last two years, according to Smith. Rising geopolitical tensions and regulatory considerations have prompted a rethink for many European firms on how they handle their data - and crucially, who they choose to safeguard it.

In response to legislative changes, a host of hyperscalers have launched dedicated ‘sovereign cloud’ services for European customers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, and Microsoft.

Meanwhile, the cloud repatriation trend, which dominated 2022 and 2023, is making somewhat of a comeback as enterprises look to bring data back on-prem to bolster both resilience and data protection capabilities.

The majority (97%) of companies plan to ditch public cloud in favor of in-house infrastructure, particularly for mission-critical workloads and data, according to a survey from Node4 from June last year.

The majority (97%) of companies plan to ditch public cloud in favor of in-house infrastructure, particularly for mission-critical workloads and data, according to a survey from Node4 from June last year.

“Right now, a lot of organizations are revisiting their cloud strategy, so digital sovereignty and data sovereignty are one of the triggers for them saying we’ve almost sleepwalked into this position where we have such heavy dependency on the hyperscalers,” Smith said.

Smith revealed that a prospective customer, a big European bank, was actively reconsidering a long-running cloud strategy while other customers have been making moves on this front.

“It’s a case of what was once a ‘cloud-first’ strategy, or a ‘cloud-only’ strategy, is now more of a ‘cloud considered’, and the criteria that go into that consideration are criticality of applications, the sensitivity of data,” he said.

Everpure’s sovereignty pitch

Everpure’s pitch to customers on this front is that if customers want a pure play hardware provider for their data center infrastructure, they’re the go-to option here, particularly for those repatriating workloads back on-prem.

“People have now got used to that cloud consumption model, and so the ability for us to deliver a cloud consumption model that spans on-prem, colocation, and the public cloud gives them that,” he claimed.

If they’re looking for more of a cloud-esque approach, then the company’s growing array of data management tools, such as its recently launched Data Intelligence platform, also represents a huge opportunity for Everpure.

The new platform aims to simplify data management processes, enabling users to improve data visibility and break down long-standing infrastructure silos.

Fred Lherault, EMEA CTO, Emerging at Everpure, said data visibility improvements delivered by the platform could provide marked benefits in terms of shoring up sovereignty practices.

“For a lot of organizations, they can't even say what data they have where, so even before they start thinking about changing, they can't answer basic questions, so that's one of the things I'm really excited about with data intelligence, is being able to answer those types of questions,” he told ITPro.

“That is actually the same set of questions that the compliance team is asking, that the cyber team is asking, that the AI team is asking,” Lherault added. “So there is really an opportunity to go and help a lot of people in a given organization that are trying to come to grips with that.”

Dependency concerns

For EU customers specifically, dependency isn’t just a case of who your cloud provider is and whether they’re a US-based company, Smith noted. Running parallel to data sovereignty considerations, concerns are growing over energy dependency and the impact of outages.

Two high-profile cloud outages at AWS and Microsoft last year shone a light on the scale of dependency in Europe and the potential domino effect that a major incident could cause for European organisations.

“I think the outages last year at both AWS and Azure were interesting in the fallout of those outages impacting UK-based companies, that perhaps they didn’t realize that they were dependent on,” he said.

“I think it gets even more interesting when you look at the degree of separation, because suddenly you realize that SaaS companies that you’re dependent on, where they are running their technology.

“So you may think that you’re nicely insulated or isolated from those outages, and then you suddenly find that your SaaS provider is impacted. It expands the scope of sovereignty.”

Sovereignty washing

With a big push on data sovereignty across Europe, the debate over what exactly constitutes ‘sovereign’ in terms of services has reached a boiling point, with ‘sovereignty washing’ emerging as a new industry buzzword.

CISPE, for example, has questioned the legitimacy of some services, going so far as to launch a framework designed to verify a provider’s sovereignty credentials.

Smith said the debate over true sovereign services cannot be ignored and weighs heavily on the minds of many executives. During a panel discussion ahead of Pure Accelerate this week, Smith noted that concerns over this topic will likely continue.

“I think that sovereignty washing is really important,” he said. “It’s going to come down to lawyers discussing it, because it’s all about the small print. Technologists aren’t going to make that decision on what good looks like; it’s going to be lawyers.”

“That comes with the hyperscalers bringing out regions that they call ‘sovereign regions’, and it’s a label, but what does it actually mean? It deals with the locality of the data; it may deal with the country and citizenship of the people who operate it, but does it tick all the boxes necessary to eliminate the risk?”

Smith compared sovereign services to insurance policies, noting that enterprises need to be “absolutely certain” that they’re getting what they pay for.

“You don’t want to go down a sovereign path and then suddenly find when things don’t go well that it hasn’t addressed all of the risks.”

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Anyone waiting for September's annual iPhone launch will be unhappy with this news: Apple CEO Tim Cook has said rising memory costs mean handset prices will be going up too.

That comes via an interview with Apple's CEO in the Wall Street Journal, in which Cook said memory chip prices had become "unsustainable."

RAM prices have skyrocketed because of a drive for data centre demand sparked by AI, with prices of some models more than tripling by the end of last year. IDC said at the time that it was "the end of an era of cheap, abundant memory and storage". The data centre demand has led manufacturers to shift to equipment to meet those needs, away from components for consumer-grade hardware, further exacerbating the problem, while constricted supply has meant prices of remaining parts have continued to rise – not helped by a rise in scalper bots targeting what remains.

Amid these challenges, it's perhaps no surprise hardware prices are set to rise – and no surprise that Cook is concerned, as Gartner said earlier this year that PC shipments were at their lowest level in a decade.

"Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable," Cook said, according to the WSJ. "We're doing our best ⁠to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we've been trying ​to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable."

How much will prices rise?

Cook didn't get into details, however, so it's unclear when those price rises will kick in, or which products they will impact.

But he did pin the blame on AI, saying the drive for higher-spec memory was impacting consumers. "There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," he said. "We definitely need memory pricing and supply to return to reasonable levels for ​consumer products. That's the ​bottom line."

Chiew Le Xuan, an analyst at Omdia, told the BBC that the average price of smartphones will increase by 20% this year, predicting that iPhones will cost $150 more this year – though that will also come with upgrade specifications. He added: "This is the new pricing reality, not a temporary spike."

What can be done?

Asked if the US should ease controls around sourcing such parts from China, Cook said: "Everything needs to be on the table."

Cook also suggested Apple was willing to help fund solutions from its own massive cash pile – which currently sits above $68bn, with total liquid reserves above $162bn – though it has no plans to build its own memory manufacturing. "We're willing to use our balance sheet ⁠to ​help be a part of the solution," he said. "Obviously, ​more capacity is needed. "

The BBC reported that Trump claimed on his social media site that Apple would be working with Intel to produce chips in the US, but any such deal has yet to be confirmed by either company. Last year, the US government bought 10% of struggling Intel as part of a bid to bring chip manufacturing to the US.

Cook is set to step down as CEO in September, handing the reins to John Ternus.

The Taliban has had enough of smartphones in the workplace so much so that it is smashing up devices belonging to its own members.

And this isn't just about the typical concerns that the internet is immoral. It's well known that Taliban leadership has repeatedly tried to restrict access to the World Wide Web. But the focus here is specifically on the smartphones themselves.

An unnamed government employee is quoted in The Guardian as saying, "About two months ago, they said not to bring your mobile phones to the office. Me and a few colleagues didn't take it seriously. They confiscated them, and after we made a fuss about it, they smashed our phones".

Why? Well, according to the report, written by Zahra Nader, the editor-in-chief of the Zan Times, the Taliban is worried that its people are online too much, consumed by their phones, and, as a result, not working. Allegedly, the Taliban believes that smartphones don't belong at work. And they are not the only government that is coming to this conclusion.

The reputation of the smartphone has taken a bit of a hammering of late. There's been a large focus on social media, infinite scrolling, and protecting children. But there is a growing community of adults online (ironically) looking at ways to reduce the use of smartphones, either to protect their mental health or, like the Taliban, to be more productive.

Now, many of us have simply deleted apps that cause distractions. I myself have written about the dangers of using Slack at night. And there are also lots of people going for somewhat retro options – dumb phones, actual cameras, iPods – in a bid to claim back their attention spans.

There are also more modern methods on the rise, including Brick, a tiny box that you can tap your phone on to lock you out of those troublesome apps. There are also smartphones with limits, such as the Balance Phone (review coming soon), which is simply a phone with the bare essentials (camera, banking, email). The company has drawn a line on what apps help and which ones don't, using the infinite scroll as the deciding factor (although, technically, business email is an infinite scroll).

How did it get so bad? Do we need to rethink BYOD initiatives for the sake of business productivity? Should we have distraction-free smartphones or Bricks around the office? Or is that asking too much of our already busy IT teams and their stretched budgets? My hand twitches thinking about these – it wants to pull up Google and ask.

The situation is so bad that the mere presence of your phone is distracting. Comedian Josh Widdicombe joked that once he used Brick to block social media, he still used his phone absentmindedly, scrolling through Uber to find out what cities it operated in.

Back in 2017, a consumer research study called Brain Drain: The mere presence of one's own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity suggested that cognitive function was impaired by the phone being in reach. It conducted two experiments that showed even when users avoided the temptation to check their phones, the mere presence of the device negatively affected cognitive performance, specifically available working memory capacity.

What can be done about this? Unfortunately, very little. The phone is a tool for business, and apps keep us connected to colleagues, tasks, clients, and so on. It's also an important part of the verification process – I can't get into my laptop without it. But there is a growing movement, both anti-social media and anti-phone. And it might not be long before we see IT departments and businesses taking a different approach to the phones employees use.

Rising hardware costs have placed significant pressure on Everpure in the last six months, according to CEO Charlie Giancarlo – but the company is keen to “share the pain” and ride out the storm.

Speaking at the company’s annual Pure Accelerate conference in Las Vegas this week, Giancarlo hailed customer resilience in the wake of rising costs, noting the company is frightfully aware of the difficulties many have encountered.

“Thank you for sticking with us,” he told attendees. “I apologize for the industry as a whole. We’ll eventually get through this. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to take a little bit of time.”

Giancarlo noted that Everpure is working closely with customers, but also partners, on orders to alleviate strain and pain moving forward.

Rising hardware costs have rocked the global tech industry in recent months, with enterprises and consumers alike feeling the pinch. According to Giancarlo, NAND prices have risen between 600-800% since October last year.

Naturally, this has resulted in price increases for customers, with the cost to produce the company’s products surging around 300%. While price increases have impacted customers, Giancarlo noted that the company is still operating at the “low end of our gross margin” rate.

“The lowest end of our gross margin rate that we’ve ever operated,” Giancarlo emphasized. “We want to be able to share the pain with you.”

If Everpure is indeed operating at the lower end of gross margin rates, then the company’s recent earnings report highlights a booming period for the data storage and management firm.

Revenue topped $1.1 billion in the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year - its first billion-dollar quarter and a “major milestone” Giancarlo noted during the opening keynote.

“We raised later”

Notably, Giancarlo told attendees that Everpure “raised later” with regard to price increases compared to competitors.

He later doubled down on the company’s stance in response to a question during a press Q&A session, noting that increases haven’t reflected the broader price surges.

“The price that we have to pay for semiconductors, which, as I said, has gone up somewhere in the six to eight range. It’s breath taking. Our prices have gone up by far less than that, and we’re operating at a lower gross margin.”

“We’ve been following competitors’ price raises,” Giancarlo added. “They’ve been sooner than ours, and they’ve been larger than ours.”

Competitors have indeed raised prices in response to the memory crisis. In February this year, Dell Technologies hiked prices and tightened discounts in response to the crisis, per reports from Seeking Alpha.

Speaking during a fourth-quarter earnings call at the time, Dell COO Jeff Clarke revealed the firm was “compressing discounting”.

HPE, meanwhile, also adopted an “agile pricing posture” in response to rising DRAM and NAND costs.

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Hello again from HPE Discover 2026, this is managing editor Jane McCallion. It's the second (and final) day of HPE Discover, with CTO Fidelma Russo presenting the final keynote of the event at 9am PT.

We can expect more on the technical side of the announcements that came from CEO Antonio Neri and president and GM of networking Rami Rahim. Follow along here for everything that happens, as it happens.

I've made it to the auditorium. Despite it being the second day, and the third keynote of three, it still looks pretty well attended.

Everything from the staging to the lighting is very on brand, which is to say very green!

Russo is on stage talking about how fast things are changing in the business worls. "The question now is not whether AI will change an enterprise" she says, it's about how it can be done safely and securely.

She's now talking about how AI systems – and agents in particular – need a structure to work properly. This means having the right data, the right infrastructure, and the right operating model, all underpinned by the right platform.

Announcement: The release of HPE Data Fabric 8.2. This offers agentic workload integration, global data catalog, and turnkey deployment.

Oh! I think we're going to do some tokenomics:

Russo points out that if you're working in the cloud, token costs can rack up quickly as agents make repeated requests back and forward, not just in one direction – this, is the classic tokenomics conversation.

HPE has its own experience of this, she says. It's not quite the $3,400 cost in 24 hours that we heard from Dell Technologies in May, but Russo says: "We saw this firsthand ... our storage systems and our support systems process billions of operational signals coming in from our customers, and as those environments became more autonomous, and as we looked at those systems, our token consumption scaled with the amount of signals"

She continues: "So our engineers, really smart people, built an AI source support platform, we built it on-prem with Greenlake Intelligence and Private Cloud AI, and running AI in our own infrastructure gave us control over the economics and allowed us to govern that really important customer data, and it gave us better performance, and it also helped us significantly minimize the token spend associated with operating AI at scale.

"We stopped being consumers of AI, and we became producers of intelligence. So, let's look at the results. We have more than 30x lower cost. We have nearly $100,000 saved per month, and that gave us the capacity to scale even further, faster. So, that is an example of how we took all of our infrastructure, all of our intellectual property, and put it to work within HPE for the goodness of our teams and also to react to customers faster."

We're moving on from data to infrastructure. There's a myth that AI reduces infrastructure, Russo says, but it's the opposite. "AI doesn't shrink your infrastructure, it expands it," she says.

Naturally, HPE has an answer to this: a single control plane consisting of HPE SimpLivity PC1000, HPE Private Cloud PC3000, HPE Private Cloud PC7000, and HPE Private Cloud AI. These last three are all now available air-gapped.

Announcement: The release of HPE Morpheus 9. "[The] most advanced platform for operating modern and traditional infrastructure, as well as AI," says Russo.

"Morpheus 9 introduces several major innovations and advances our vision of a more complete enterprise platform," Russo says. "Morpheus Central provides a single operational view from the GreenLake platform across sites and regions, integrated software-defined networking based on ... Juniper technology brings policy security and micro segmentation directly into the cloud.

"Stretched clustering extends resilience across sites, helping organizations maintain availability of critical workloads together," she adds.

We're talking HPE VM essentials. apparently there are over 2,000 customers using it with HVM, Kubernetes, VMware and more.

Announcement: This is an interesting one – the company's expanding its relationship with Citrix.

Citrix Desktop as a service and Citrix Virtual Apps are coming to HPE VM Essentials, "enabling customers to deliver modern digital workspaces with cloud-like operations in the environment of their choice", she says.

Right, next up: OpsRamp. This is one of HPE's newer acquisition (though not as new as Juniper).

"There is literally a lot more stuff running in your environment," says Russo. This makes management more difficult. "You need to understand exactly what is happening, which agents are running, which models are consuming resources, where are you spending the token," she says.

From an HPE perspective, that is HPE OpsRamp observability for AI.

We're now talking about HPE Zerto. "OpsRamp helps you understand the impact of AI across your environment. What happens when something goes really wrong?"

Russo alludes to the start up that got wrecked by a rogue agent earlier in the year.

"We're already seeing stories about agents who modify code they weren't supposed to have access to, deleting information and creating unintended consequences, and that's why we are extending HPE Circle to support NemoClaw and OpenClaw agentic AI environments," she says.

"It helps organizations recover from unintended agent consequences and return to a trusted state. Critically, critically important as you move forward into the era of AI," she says.

I thought Russo was about to sum up, but we have (I think) one more thing to talk about: GreenLake Intelligence

Announcement: HPE Copilots and Agents on GreenLake Intelligence.

Announcemnet: HPE is partnering with ServiceNow.

"GreenLake Intelligence helps you understand what's happening across your AI factories, your infrastructure, your agents, and your workloads and ServiceNow helps you operationalize that understanding through autonomous service delivery," says Russo.

"Together they connect infrastructure intelligence with operational execution," she says.

WORLD CUP MENTIONED! What you see on the score board, says Russo, is just the tip of the iceberg.

"Every great result is powered by much larger efforts behind the scenes," she says. "It takes extraordinary technical teams, go to market teams, and partners and customers all working together to bring these innovations to life."

And that's a wrap for this live blog! Keep an eye out for our podcast episode from the event, which will be published on Friday, and bookmark this link for even more from the event.

The ScanSnap sub-brand has been around for a quarter of a century. Once owned by Fujitsu, and most recently part of Ricoh, it's always been focused on document scanners like the one we're testing here. The Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 is a compact A4 scanner, designed for desktop use, and capable of a claimed 45 pages per minute (ppm) performance.

While many scanners in this niche make do with a USB connection to a single PC, the iX2500 has both a wireless interface and a large color touchscreen. So equipped, it's suited not just to a single workstation, but as the archival and digitization hub for a small team. You can link this scanner to multiple devices, the users of which can create multiple shortcuts to scan and send jobs where they need them. With internet access, you can even connect to cloud services for easy sharing across teams and users.

There's nothing unusual about the rest of the Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500. Available in black or white, it follows the desktop scanner convention of a robust unit, roughly pentagonal in cross-section, and protected when not in use by its input tray. Unfold this, and the scanner automatically wakes up ready for its next job. You'll still need to withdraw the paper output, which tucks neatly into the unit's base when not needed.

As you'd hope, this scanner's trays feel almost bulletproof. The input in particular is very strong and almost flex-free, with paper guides that move smoothly from business card to Letter width. In contrast, the tip of the output tray does flex all the way down to desk level if you push it, but there's no suggestion it can't take the punishment.

With most day-to-day functions handled by its touchscreen, the iX2500 has just two buttons. One is dedicated to starting a scan, while the other releases the top section, which tilts forward by about 45 degrees. That's comfortably enough to get at any jammed paper, or occasionally blow away dust. After 200,000 images or so, it'll also give you access to replace the roller kit, which costs around £40 (ex. VAT).

Like other desktop document scanners, the Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 uses dual CIS sensors to capture both sides of each sheet in a single pass. In theory, this means it can capture up to 90 images per minute – quite a bit faster than we'd expect at this price.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 review: Setting up

It should be fairly easy to find space for this small, light scanner on a regular desktop, or on any other bit of free space around the office. It's a compact device even with its trays fully extended – we measured a maximum depth of only 48cm. While you can connect it via USB-C, you'll need to join it to Wi-Fi to get the best out of it: if you're not planning to, consider the otherwise similar ScanSnap iX2400, or the Canon imageFORMULA DR-C350 instead.

Ricoh provides ScanSnap Home software for PCs and Macs, but there are also versions for Windows on Arm, Android, and iOS. Windows and Mac users can also download Tungsten (formerly Kofax) Power PDF editing software.

You'll need to install ScanSnap Home on at least one device to configure and save scanning shortcuts. These appear on the iX2500's touchscreen, from where you can activate them – for cloud destinations you needn't have a host device running when triggering the job. In a multi-user environment you can register the iX2500 to multiple devices: there's an option to enable Privacy mode, using which the shortcuts associated with a device only appear when that device is available.

We elected to join the iX2500 manually to a wireless router connected to our wired network. Ricoh's installer subsequently seemed to suggest we'd need to join our test PC to the wireless network in order to add this scanner, but after clicking Next it found and added it with no issues. After a firmware update – slickly handled as part of the installation – we were ready to go.

ScanSnap Home is – for the most part – a strong software package. You can use it to build straightforward scan workflows, choosing scan preferences and a job destination. These span the usual local suspects, such as a folder on the host device, but you can also save to a wide range of cloud services, including Google Drive and Photos, Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox.

At first it feels as though the software has been oversimplified. For example, you choose between normal, better, best, and excellent quality rather than the 150, 300, 600, and 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) that they represent – and we had to look online to even find that out. At the same time, it takes committed digging to find detailed page feed options covering de-skewing and double-feed detection. We couldn't find blank page skip settings at all.

As you'd expect, you get some control over the output quality through adjustable image compression. There's a choice of single or multi-page PDFs, with optional optical character recognition (OCR) for searchable results. Alternatively, you can save your scans as JPEGs, but not in PNG or TIFF formats.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 review: Scanning

Any misgivings about ScanSnap Home were quickly dispelled once we actually started using it. It's responsive and fairly quick to process jobs, managing not to lag significantly behind the scanner itself on our modest test PC. Scanned jobs are displayed in a viewer, using which you can rotate or delete any rogue pages. Once accepted, there's a browser screen in which you can view recent jobs, filtering by document type, scan date, or any tag you've applied – for example, Invoice, Registration, or Remittance.

Whether or not you've enabled OCR for the full document contents, and depending on subject matter, ScanSnap Home attempts to grab enough text from the document to suggest a suitable name. The results here seemed inconsistent enough that we'd prefer to rely on manual or incremental naming to avoid confusion.

As you'd hope, this is a fast scanner. It could capture a single A4 page in less than seven seconds at 200 or 300dpi, but it dispatched a stack of 10 pages in just 18 seconds. It needed only 22 seconds to deal with a duplex scan of 12 pages, a rate of 65 images per minute. Selecting simplex or duplex scans made no difference to the engine speed – pages still passed through at the same rate. More unusually, selecting higher resolutions didn't slow things down by too much: at its 600dpi maximum this scanner captured a stack of 22 6x4" (15x10cm) photos in an incredible 15 seconds – the fastest we've ever timed.

Here, it's worth a direct comparison to Canon's ImageFORMULA DR-C350. This has a slightly faster claimed speed of 50 simplex pages per minute, and sure enough its physical scan times were slightly quicker in all but our photo tests. However, while the Canon required a few seconds' post-scan processing time, the ScanSnap didn't, often meaning that it fully completed jobs a couple of seconds earlier. Either way, the difference wasn't especially significant.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 review: Results

While we needed to tweak some of the Canon ImageFORMULA DR-C350's settings, the ScanSnap iX2500 was bang-on using all its defaults. Scans were sharp and well-exposed, with office documents offering crisp text and graphics against a clean white page. Photos – despite the speed with which they'd been captured – were far better than we'd expect from a document-focused device. While not strong enough for professional imaging use, this scanner could work as a rapid way to digitize a large stack of conventional prints where exceptional quality wasn't the priority.

Just as significantly for a device that's likely to capture many thousands of pages over its lifetime, the ScanSnap iX2500 was absolutely faultless at detecting and correcting issues such as blank pages. While it's odd not to have a sensitivity setting, we found we simply didn't need it. One caveat is that, thanks in no small part to the excellent paper feeding, we didn't experience any crooked page feeding during our tests, so we couldn't test the de-skew feature.

The iX2500 was exceptional at dealing with page orientation. We present every document scanner with a torture test comprising a bunch of double and single-sided prints, along with thin and ageing double-sided magazine pages. Deliberately, some of the pages in this are upside down, but the iX2500 became one of very few scanners to consistently correct the orientation for the entire document. While most scanners are caught out by at least one graphics-heavy page, this one had no problems even when we repeated and jumbled the job many times.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 review: Is it worth it?

When testing the Canon ImageFORMULA DR-C350, we complained it was necessary to spend time looking for advanced settings to optimise its performance. At first, it seemed like the Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 had the opposite problem: that advanced settings weren't even available. It turned out that they were mostly just well hidden, but also that we didn't need them. While we'd rather deal with proper resolutions in dots per inch rather than a nebulous scale where "Excellent" sits above "Best", it turns out that ScanSnap Home is good enough to get away with its simplicity – a trick that rarely comes off.

With straightforward and dependable software, together with a convenient touchscreen and Wi-Fi access, the iX2500 is easy for single users to manage, and incredibly so for a small team that all need a straightforward scanner. Throw in its decent speed, excellent image quality, and reasonable asking price, and it really is hard to find much to criticise.

Ricoh ScanSnap iX2500 specifications

It's Day One of HPE Discover 2026 – I'm Jane McCallion and I'm running this live blog on site at the Venetian Conference Center, Las Vegas.

Today, we'll be hearing from CEO Antonio Neri and networking chief Rami Rahim. Expect some AI and (obviously) networking announcements, perhaps some hardware too. You can read my preview here.

There's about 40 minutes to go until Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE, kicks off Discover 2026 with his opening keynote. I've already seen massive crowds heading in the direction of the auditorium, so I'm expecting a pretty packed audience.

Even busier than I thought!

The tannoy is promising that the program will begin "shortly". In the meantime we're being treated to some dramatic music...

And we're off. "What does it mean to be an architect?" asks the VO. Apparently, now that we're in a new AI era anyone can be an architect. I think the dictionary and architects in general might have something to say about this...

Apparently networks are the foundation of all this, which I predicted would be one of the big messages for the event. Expect to hear even more about this over the next 48 hours, not just in this first keynote.

Today, he says, we're in a new, shifting technology landscape, where bu=oth humans and AI are creating inputs.

You don't architect a building round one room, he says. For creating AI and agentic AI systems it's the same, you need a solid foundation. For AI, that's networking but also other HPE elements like Private Cloud.

For years, Neri says, Aruba (which has been part of HPE for over a decade) the company has provided networking in terms of wireless access etc. Witht he acquisition of Juniper, that has now come into the data center.

Neri has just mentioned "self driving" networks. We're being shown a recent ad for HPE featuring F1 drivers for Mercedes Petronas who are confused that this is about their vehicles not the network. And relieved that it's not – HPE, of course, is one of the sponsors of MErcedes F1.

The agentic AI era doesn't just need network, though, it needs compute as well. As AI moves from creating content to agents, there's greater pressure on compute.

HPE is ansering this with the release of Proliant DL394 Gen12, which features Nvidia chips.

The most advanced systems are only as good as the data that they can access, though, he says. Naturally, HPE has an answer for that, too, which is the new Alletra Storage MP X10000.

Next up: rising virtualization costs. HPE has had a virtualization play for about a year now, maybe two (excuse the fuzzy memory). HPE Morpheus VM Essentials was introduced at HPE Discover Barcelona either 2025 or 2024 (I will clarify this later) as a competitor to VMware, even if it hasn't been outright pitched as such.

I have missed a segment that I believe was about security – HPE acquired Zerto in 2021 – but Neri is now talking about how all of this is brought together in GreenLake, the company's private cloud "platform".

GreenLake intelligence, which is already part of Aruba Central acocridng to the new VO, and helps manage and operate agentic AI. Greenlake intelligence combines context and AI, turing "observation into understanding" and recommending or carryign out a remediation.

It's never a surprise to hear about GreenLake at HPE Discover, though it's shifted guises over the years. While it was originally pitched as a private cloud offering, it's now effectively both a management platform. I believe that at least some of the "consumption based IT" idea from the original iteration of GreenLake has been offloaded to HPE Financial Services.

Right: Neri is going to elaborate on two parts of the company's strategy, networking and "managing transformation into an agentic enterprise".

We're now watching a short Video about the company's partnership with Vultr, with a person on screen who I am 99% sure is generative AI. I suppose this is on topic for the theme of this morning.

Right, new announcement. HPE Juniper NEtworking now has the QFX5252 scale-up switch for AMD Helios. It's 100% liquid cooled, has open standards, and SONIC with AI-native operations.

In terms of specs, it has 1024 Tbps total capacity and comes with Juno operating system.

Neri is now talking about how AI data centers are now often not a single data center, they are several sites working together. This is where HPE edge offerings come in, he says.

The Juniper Networking MX301 can help with this. There's also a new switch, the QFX5140 switch for inference clusters. 16 Tbps total capacits un 1RU, optimized for inference and AI-native optimized with HPE Marvis, says Neri and the specs list next to him

New networking announcement: Aruba CX Switch is coming to Mist and Marvis actions is coming to Aruba Central. This is part of the company's "cross-pollination" efforts.

You can read more about that announcement here.

Another annoucnement, this is about agentic AI and updates to HPE AI Factory.

This includes: secure agentic operations, which mean agents only run in their own secure environments with guard rails. There's also Nvidia NemoClaw, which is an open framework. Also, Zerto is being included that includes data recovery if something does go wrong.

For a more coherent write up and more information, read more here.

Also coming to HPE AI Factory is HPE Alletra Storage MP X10000, which allows agents better access to data and metadata.

But wait, there's more: New inference capabilities, with multi-node inference, unified gateway, and enhanced conference, and shared KV cache.

HPE Unleash AI partner ecosystem, which has over 60 partners like CrowdStrike and Fortinix, and Protopia, also continues to grow says Neri, though there's no rate or previous partner figures for comparison.

apparently the Ryder Cup is using HPE kit for digital twins. No real information on that, but everyone loves a digital twin these days.

We're getting encouragement to come along to the Day 2 keynote, with Fidelma Russo tomorrow – it will be the third keynote of the event. Naturally, your intrepid reporter will be there.

Ok, another announcement: Confidential computing now comes as standard across HPE AI Factory with Nvidia

Ok., we're wrapping up. His three big messages to delegates, after thanking sponsors, are: Architect deliberately, start with the network and choose the right partner, which is to say HPE.

And it's over. Thank you for following along. Rami Rahim's keynote is in a couple of hours, so I will be back for that. But until then, goodbye!

We are back! It's 1pm in Las Vegas, the delegates are fed and the auditorium is once again full (though not heaving) with people ready to hear more about HPE's networking business. Rami Rahim, formerly CEO of Juniper Networks, should be taking to the stage any time now.

We are starting off with a video about self-driving networks, which can self optimize, self protect, and self heal.

Rahim is on stage and receives an extremely warm welcome. He's telling us a cautionary tale of the Millennium Tower in San Francisco, which ended up slowly collapsing under its own weight because its foundations weren't strong enough. Readers who were following this morning probably knows where this story is going...

Organizations are building AI applications and workloads, but if they don't have a strong foundation built on networking then their projects will go the way of San Francisco's Millennium Tower.

The network is front and center again, says Rahim. It's not just sitting in a corner somewhere, it's fundamental and as important as any other part of the data center and IT infrastructure.

An "old fashioned" network that's static isn't good enough though. It's not just about building a network for AI, it's about building AI for the network. He hasn't said the phrase yet, but this is the idea of the self-driving network.

This is all lovely, but the network has to be protected as well, he says. And it has to do it without impacting user experience or increasing the burden on IT teams.

" The networks of the future must be able to sense, to learn, to optimize, to protect, and heal themselves in real time," says Rahim.

HPE, he says, has made more progress than anyone in this technology.

Here comes the first guest: CIO of Ohio State University Rob Lowden.

Apparently OSU has 22,000 wireless access points across its campus, both indoors and outdoors.

They're updating their network at 'The Horseshoe', its stadium, where thousands of people can descend on a match day. There's also a nearby cancer hospital run by the university that also has connectivity needs. So it's now working with HPE to overhaul their whole network to support that.

Lowden's off, Rahim is back to talking about how if the self driving network can support a scenario as complex as OSU, it can support pretty much any need. A bold claim.

Sunalini Sankhavaram from HPE Campus and Branch is now on stage to talk about delivering a consistent self-driving experience on both Aruba Central and Juniper Mist. Thanks to microservices, HPE can build once and deploy twice – like developing an app and deploying it on both iOS and Android.

"We have an API first approach," she says, which makes HPE's MCP servers and tools "extremely powerful, delivering objective automation at scale".

Rahim says "most vendors talk about AI systems and agents and AI ops, but still rely on reactive human-driven troubleshooting, but if you can still have to fix the problem, where exactly is the self-driving in that?" He asks her for an example of how real self-driving networks work and why they matter.

"We all know that today's networks need to cater to high density requirements while also meeting the performance expectations of every user and application, but most networks are not designed to meet intermittent surges in the traffic," says Sankhavaram.

Showing an example scenario, she continues: "If we look at Marvis, we see that all the users in this public building automatically have (good connectivity), but was this the case all of last week? No, it wasn't. So, what happened? How did unhappy users become happy? Let's take a look.

"Last week, Marvis detected that over 6% of user minutes were bad, which may not sound like a lot, but it impacted hundreds of people. Marvis has a self-driving action for dynamically fixing the path solution. This action was enabled and was able to autonomously fix the problem by enabling fuel bands like river. This reduced the peak utilization from 90% to 54% enabling a better experience for users that are lacking."

All without a human or any tickets raised.

We're now going over HPE Marvis Actions in HPE Aruba Central. It's not about just more visibility, it's about better experience she says. There's also the opportunity to automate many actions, such as noticing there is a problem with a CCTV camera feed, analysing what the process is and remediating it automatically.

We're retreading some of the same ground as this morning about the CX switches.

According to Rahim, it only took a few moths to get Aruba and Juniper integrated and innovating, which gets a big round of applause from the audience.

Rahim welcomes a new guest, this is the head of engineering and networks at the Royal Bank of Canada.

Okey dokey, we're now onto Zero Trust netowrks. There are 5 elements of security, visibility, policy driven, enforcement, detection and response, explains Madani Adjlali, VP of product management (SASE and Security), at HPE. HPE's security portfolio includes firewall, NAC, SSE and SD-WAN.

It also has a unified SASE and everything's been combined into a single SASE orchestrator.

Oh dear, it's live demo time. Fingers crossed...

Ok, it's going well so far with no hiccups. SASE Orchestrator will be available to all customers later in the year, we've just been told

live demo of the AI Firewall now.

Rami says goodbye to Adjali, concluding the segment by saying: "At HPE, AI, networking, and security are no longer separate domains. They are converging into a single intelligent self-driving system".

Now on stage, Katrina Pickett to talk about the role and importance of routers.

We're being taken through an example demo of how Marvis might help detect and remediate a network problem involving an increase in latency.

Marvis fixed the issue, which was convenient. In future, the network manager – or whoever is in charge of it – can give Marvis permissions to carry out the same fix automatically if the issue occurs again in the network.

We've had a brief customer appearance and now we're onto another product demo – Data Center Operations, which is also part of Mist.

"Today you heard a consistent message from every customer, every demo ... the old way of operating networks has reached its limits" says Rahim, closing out the keynote. "the future belongs to networks that can think, that can adapt, that can optimize, and that can protect themselves in real time.

"Self-driving networks, not a futuristic idea, not a lab experiment, but as a practical necessity for operating modern infrastructure at scale."

Acer is hoping to turn heads in the workplace with a stylish 32in OLED monitor that's being pushed at a fairly reasonable price. Aimed at creative professionals in particular, but usable by all, the CE320QK X (the European version of the PE320QK X) is engineered to deliver high levels of color accuracy for anybody regularly working with visual media.

On the surface, it certainly looks visually impressive, serving as a departure from dark and moody monitors with thick bezels. With a 4K resolution, quantum-dot OLED technology, and a maximum 240Hz refresh rate, it also competes with some of the best in the business – but also comes with a high-end £899 price tag. But does that mean it'll make a good addition to your workspace?

Acer CE320QK X monitor: Design & Features

Acer has adopted a visually striking design scheme for the CE320QK X, opting for a chic white finish for the monitor's rear, base, and buttons. While standout, the design also comes across as reserved, with this minimalist approach meaning it looks like it barely takes up much space on your desk despite being on the upper end of the spectrum for its screen size.

Putting the monitor together and hoisting it in place is as simple as it is to look at – and there are a number of features that make it an impressive device. For example, the base features a square-shaped swivel that's as smooth as butter with rounded corners and a notch so you can tell precisely how to center it. It's also easily adjustable with a maximum height of 150mm, along with as much tilt and swivel as you may need. This encompasses a tilt of -5° to +25° and a swivel of -178° to +178° alongside a pivot of -90° to +90°; in other words, the CE320QK X is highly flexible for its size.

There is, however, a tiny bit of wobble when you adjust the display, and the plastic finish is perhaps a little too much of a plasticky feel to the otherwise nice-looking white rear. That said, it's almost 2kg lighter than the Dell 32 Plus S3225QS – another 32-inch white monitor – and has far more flex and adjustability. There's also a portrait mode that you can flip the screen into, although there's a degree of stiffness in the rotation along the way.

The display's minimalistic qualities thankfully do not extend to the connectivity options on offer, with a degree of useful ports available. There are two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort 1.4 options as well as two USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a single USB-B 3.0 port, and a single USB-C port (with DisplayPort 1.4 compatibility and 90W power delivery and KVM support). That comes alongside an Ethernet port. Ideally, we'd have seen a handful more USB-C ports, but we can't complain when the likes of the Dell 32 Plus only have HDMI and DisplayPort 1.4, for instance. All ports are facing outward, rather than down, and are found in a neat row beneath the center of the monitor's rear. There's no cable management system built into the CE320QK X monitor, so you'll have to find custom solutions.

To adjust the display, you'll navigate with a four-way clickable wheel positioned on the bottom-right of the rear just above the power button. The monitor is rather large, so thankfully it's within reach. The menu, which is rather small and localized to the bottom-right of the display, is straightforward enough to follow, and there's no lag while you're using it. You can switch between different display profiles and flick HDR on/off, as well as adjust color spaces and settings like eco mode. As you'd expect with an OLED panel, there's also plenty of care options to reduce the risk of burn-in.

Acer CE320QK X monitor: Display quality

There's ample sharpness in the 31.5-inch panel thanks to a 4K (3,840 x 2,160-pixel) resolution, equating to a very high pixel-per-inch ratio of 140ppi – meaning you can enjoy images and text at utmost crispness. Thanks to a maximum 240Hz refresh rate, scrolling, working, or navigating through menus is utterly delightful and as smooth as silk.

We'd suggest it's difficult to find specifications that beat this Acer monitor for the money you pay – especially considering the (albeit basic) HDR10 support and compatibility with AMD FreeSync Premium (a feature normally used in gaming to reduce input lag). The response time, as a result of the built-in features, is an incredible 0.03ms. As with all OLED displays, you'll benefit from a 0cd/m2 black level as well as an infinity:1 contrast ratio.

The OLED panel offers a little more brightness than the manufacturer suggests, with a peak brightness of 299cd/m2 when HDR is activated (versus a stated 250cd/m2) when running stably and consistently. We say that because brightness is volatile when switching between display modes and inputs, although it settles at this level after a few seconds. Unfortunately, it isn't as bright as we'd have liked to see, with the likes of the BenQ MA320U hitting 527cd/m2 and the Samsung S8 ViewFinity S80D reaching 408cd/m2.

That's the only downside, however, as the color accuracy is excellent. Although the default settings may require some tweaking (with blues and reds slightly oversaturated and greens slightly undersaturated), we recorded a 100% coverage of the sRGB spectrum. This comes alongside an exceptional 93.9% coverage of the Adobe spectrum and 100% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum – with scores approximately above 80% and 70% making a screen suitable for professional use. As you can see, they surpass that, and some. The average Delta-E color distortion, meanwhile, stands at an outstanding 0.4 with a maximum of 1.37.

Acer CE320QK X monitor: Is it worth it?

This 32in OLED monitor will grant not only creative professionals, but almost all kinds of users, everything they could possibly want from a high-end premium monitor – with a couple of exceptions. Although the color reproduction is brilliant and incredibly accurate, while elements like a really high refresh rate as well as HDR and AMD FreeSync Premium support, make using the monitor incredibly fluid, one more-than-minor grumble is the brightness. With a maximum luminosity of 300cd/m2, the monitor just doesn't reach the same blinding heights as the competition. We can also point out the lack of additional ports that could make life a little easier (say, a couple of USB-C ports), but there's still plenty to work with here. None of these downsides make this device unusable by any means, and at approximately £899, it would still make for a brilliant addition to your workspace, given its elegant frame and large widescreen display that takes up very little space.

Acer CE320QK X monitor: Specifications

Nvidia first announced its DGX Spark mini supercomputer last year – and we've since seen a flurry of machines made by OEM partners hit the market. We've previously reviewed the outstanding Asus Ascent GX10, with a handful of alternatives like Lenovo's ThinkStation PGX and Acer's Veriton GN100. We've currently got our hands on the Dell Pro Max with GB10 – a mini PC designed to seamlessly fit into your existing IT setup.

This machine is designed specifically for what you would ordinarily describe as "power users". These include data scientists, researchers, as well as budding and current AI practitioners who want the freedom and flexibility to experiment with AI deployments within the enterprise, among a handful of other cohorts.

As such, it's powered by a custom Linux distro and hardware specifically – the Grace Blackwell Superchip – configured to let you run meaningful AI workloads on your device, rather than relying on a cloud service or remote communications. That means it's certainly not a device for everyone – and should only be considered for those who plan on making the most of the on-device AI capabilities these machines allow.

While DGX Spark-based systems are all very similar, they look very different and are also priced differently. The Dell Pro Max with GB10 comes in at a hefty price approaching £6,000 in the UK, which is close to £2,000 more than some of devices sold by its competitors. Can it make up for this asking price in other areas?

Dell Pro Max with GB10 review: Build and design

The device itself isn't much bigger than conventional mini PCs and fits snugly on your desk thanks to its standard dimensions of 150 x 150 x 51mm – which is consistent across all DGX Spark systems from partner OEMs. They're all roughly the same weight, too, with the Dell Pro Max with GB10 weighing 1.3kg – versus the Acer's 1.2kg and the Asus' 1.4kg.

Also identical between these machines are the ports you'll find on the rear. These include three USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps) ports with DisplayPort 2.1 compatibility, one USB-C Gen 2x2 with PD in, an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port, and Nvidia's ConnectX-7 SmartNIC port used to run two of these machines in parallel. There is a marked lack of USB-A ports, so you'll need additional dongles or docks to use peripherals, outside of connecting them to a monitor and accessing them through a USB-C DisplayPort setup.

With so little separating the different models, OEMs must make the most of their physical appearance, and Dell has adopted a more understated and neater design outlook than some of the alternatives. The machine's front is covered with a hexagonal honeycomb lattice grill, with Dell's logo centered perfectly. One neat addition is a tiny power LED indicator on the left of the front, alongside an LED built into the USB-C power cable. The rear adopts the same lattice design on the upper half, with the ports laid out in the standard format on the lower half – all of which are flush against the surface.

Overall, it exudes more of an overtly corporate feel – underlined by a relatively uninspiring grey finish. It won't look out of place in any office environment, but it does lack the flair that you might get with the Acer Veriton GN100, for example.

Dell Pro Max with GB10 review: Specs and performance

The GB10 Superchip is the beating heart of the Dell Pro Max, with GB10, and lets users tap into a Grace CPU and Blackwell GPU combined to deliver an efficient setup for AI-centric work. The 20-core Arm processor combines 10 Cortex-X925 performance cores and 10 Cortex-A725 efficiency cores.

Combined with the 5nm GB20B GPU, you'll have the local potency to reach a performance capacity of 1,000 teraFLOPS of AI performance with the learner and more efficient FP4 precision, and a maximum of 170 teraflops with the industry standard FP16 precision. Both are formats for training and inference, with the 4-bit floating point format allowing for lower-precision but accelerated AI performance.

The machine can also support models of up to 200 billion parameters, which is a little more than the size of GPT-3 – but this increases to a maximum of 405 billion parameters if you connect two of these together. Each one is also capped at a maximum power draw of 240W – with a 280W power brick – but you won't encounter it unless pushing the device to its absolute limits.

Comparing DGX Spark systems to conventional machines is hard – because they're a different class of device with specific purposes, which vary from general-purpose PCs designed for almost everyone. However, when testing with Geekbench 6, we registered a massive single-core score of 3,123 and a multi-threaded performance of 19,708. This is in line with similar systems and notably higher than the comparable Framework desktop.

Unscientific testing and experimentation also pointed to easy and quick setup on AI tasks, such as image generation with ComfyUI, with the machine running quietly throughout – while producing very little heat. While not as fast or as powerful as industrial-scale systems or remotely accessible infrastructure, we were impressed with how much you can push a small machine like this.

Dell Pro Max with GB10 review: Features

Setting up the DGX OS platform, which is based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (for ARM), is an absolute breeze. The overall look and feel of the system closely follows Nvidia's design aesthetic and colour palette, and is fairly intuitive to use. Helpfully, there are a few useful tools that you can use out of the box to get started on running AI tasks.

The best place to start would be Nvidia's playbooks, a web-based platform with different recipes that centre on specific AI-related tasks. For first-timers, this library of tutorials is the best place to experiment with the tools the DGX Spark-based system can let you tap into. This won't be accessible, or even necessary, for the average user – but anybody within an organisation with a willingness to engage in AI will find it an incredibly useful way of getting to grips with what this machine is capable of.

Each recipe includes the core purpose, the practical risks of engaging in the project, and a rough time estimate to get it up and running. Setting up DGX Dashboard, for example, takes roughly half an hour and provides a user interface from which you can manage your system, manage resources, and launch JupyterLab instances. ComfyUI, too, is a great place to start – taking about 45 minutes to build and run your own AI image generator.

Generally, these playbooks are easy to follow – but there's an active community, too, that you can check in with if you run into any trouble. Which you inevitably will if you're just getting started. But the triumph in this setup is the way it democratises AI development – breaking down rather complex and unwieldy processes into digestible and easy-to-follow chunks; that's much like the device itself, which gives a far broader cross-section of the workforce access to tools and capabilities once reserved for only the most technically minded.

Also useful for power users hoping to get more from their machine is the capacity to connect two DGX Spark systems together. Nvidia Sync, which is a new feature, lets you connect your local desktop or laptop with the machine, so you can operate it remotely within the same subnet. You'll be able to run workloads or launch applications remotely and even share the display between your machines. It's a perfect way to offload tasks onto this specialised piece of hardware if you prefer working primarily with your laptop.

Dell Pro Max with GB10 review: Is it worth it?

This new class of machine is the perfect way to get started on your AI experimentation and implementation journey within the enterprise. The systems are incredibly compact, benefit from fantastic specs courtesy of the GB10 superchip, and have a deep pool of 128GB unified memory to dip into, alongside plenty of SSD storage.

Whether the Dell Pro Max with GB10 is worth it depends on how it compares with its counterparts. Admittedly, it's expensive, but it adopts a relatively understated yet mature design, which contributes well to airflow. The power draw capacity is also slightly higher at 280W versus the standard 240W. For AI practitioners and those just getting started, it's a brilliant device – it's just worth weighing up whether the subtle tweaks are worth the additional cost. If you're all-in on the Dell ecosystem, it'll complement your existing setup perfectly, but the budget-conscious would understandably be drawn to the most cost-efficient DGX Spark system out there – which isn't this one based on current retail prices.

Dell Pro Max with GB10 specifications

The Brother MFC-L8970CDW sits at the top of the Japanese manufacturer's updated range of color laser devices for workgroups and small businesses. It's one of three multifunction peripherals in the new 8XXX range – there are also two single-function printers, including the HL-L8570CDW, which we've also reviewed.

The MFC-L8970CDW has an enviable specification. On top, you'll find an automatic document feeder (ADF) that can handle no fewer than 80 sheets. It can duplex (double-side) scan each sheet in a single pass. Just in front of this, there's a color touchscreen so huge it looks like someone's left their tablet behind.

The scanner and display unit sit atop a color laser printer rated at 31 pages per minute (ppm), or 20 images per minute (ipm) when printing in duplex – 20 sides printed onto 10 sheets of paper each minute. This printer combines a 50-sheet multipurpose feed and 250-sheet cassette. That's the only slightly off-note in an otherwise comprehensively well-specced device – at this price we'd expect to be able to load in an entire ream.

Alongside its duplex print, scan, copy, and fax party tricks, this MFP supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless networks, and gigabit Ethernet connection. Its vast screen has plenty of room for mundane setup and operational features, along with space for up to 64 configurable shortcuts – useful if, say, people frequently need to make a double-sided copy of a double-sided original, and want to avoid having to dig around in the copy menu.

While it's a shame the MFC-L8970CDW doesn't have a bigger standard cassette, you can upgrade it to a maximum 1,340 pages with a combination of additional 250 and 520-sheet trays. There's no stapler unit or sorting bin, however, which rules it out of true departmental roles – it doesn't really have the speed for it anyway.

Brother says the MFC-L8970CDW is designed for a recommended 7,500 monthly pages or an 80,000-page maximum. It certainly feels well put together, with sturdy trays and impressively robust-feeling paper stops in the printer and ADF outputs. The usability is good, too, from the large display down to details such as the clearly displayed paper orientation icon in the main tray – helpful if you're reloading paper and need to know which will be the print side.

Things start to get more complicated when you look at consumables. The MFC-L8970CDW supports a dizzying range of no fewer than 16 different toners rated from 1,800 to 10,000 pages, on top of which there are drums and waste toner containers each good for 50,000 pages. Heavily used examples might find themselves needing a new fuser or transfer belt unit, too.

That's a lot to manage, particularly if you're used to competing devices that just take four combined toner/drum consumables. Nobody would blame you for signing up to a managed print service – Brother's start at around £7 per month – but if you are buying consumables and you stick with the biggest 10,000-page toners, you can get running costs down to less than a penny per page of black text, or 6.8p (ex VAT) for color. Factor in all the lifetime consumables, and these still only rise by fractions of a penny.

This isn't a cheap MFP, but it does arrive with XXL toners rated for 7,500 black and 6,000 color pages – these alone are worth a few hundred pounds.

Brother MFC-L8970CDW review: Setting up

This isn't the ugliest laser MFP you'll see, but it has the misfortune to combine a comparatively deep and narrow laser printer with a wide and deep scanner unit. The result is some mushroomy overtones, plus the more practical need for more depth and width on a counter than you might expect. This is compounded slightly by vents on the right side and a USB slot on the left – the latter bizarrely under, and inset from the overhanging touchscreen in such a way that the casual user is unlikely to ever find it.

This device is bulky and heavy enough that it's a two-person lift over any significant height or distance. There's the usual amount of tape to extract, along with some orange plastic spacers for the toner/drum tray. While these were easy to remove on the HL-L8570CDW printer we tested, here the left-hand spacers were reluctant to part company with a metal pin at the front.

With such a large display, it's no surprise that this MFP is easy to join to a wireless network. It's easy to use and configure, too: adding a shortcut is as simple as tapping one of the plus icons and navigating through the menu to the feature you want to access. Overall the menu system feels more like a consumer device than a business-class one, and that's a good thing: too many enterprise printers bamboozle non-technical users with complex control panels.

As you'd expect, the MFC-L8970CDW includes various security features and protocols, including IP filtering, SSL/TLS encryption, secure boot, and user authentication. There's also an NFC reader, configurable for authentication and workflow personalization.

Brother MFC-L8970CDW review: Printing, scanning and copying

At this price, we're slightly surprised Brother hasn't given the MFC-L8970CDW faster print speeds. It's always the case that a range-topping device can seem slow when it shares a print engine with more basic models, but we'd expect more than a modest 31ppm for this money. This is especially the case given this MFP didn't get all that close to Brother's figures, managing only 23.8ppm across 25 pages in our standard black text test. It was slower still on our color graphics test, although here its 21.5ppm is fair – our test document is graphics heavy, and few printers sail through it at top speed.

We often get faster results over long documents, as these minimize the relative impact of the time it takes a PC to prepare and send the job. Sure enough, tested over a 50-page text document, the MFC-L8970CDW hit 30.3ppm – laudably close to Brother's claim. Using the first 10 pages of the same document we timed duplex printing at 10.9ipm.

As we found with the HL-L8570CDW printer, this MFP defaults to 2,400x600dpi Fine print quality. Normal (600x600dpi) is no faster, so we completed our tests with Fine. The MFC-L8970CDW printed six 6x4" photos on three A4 sheets in 32 seconds, and needed 35 seconds to complete two 10x8" images on two pages. From standby it could print a first black or color page in 18 seconds, needing only another 3 seconds if we'd left it unused for an hour first.

This MFP is unusual among office-focused devices in that its scanner goes up to a very detailed 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) -- 600dpi is a more common maximum. It's very quick: we were able to preview an A4 page in just five seconds, and needed only six seconds to scan it at 150dpi. At 300dpi this job still completed in 10 seconds. Even when scanning photos at higher resolution, this MFP didn't hang about. It captured a 6x4" print at 600dpi in 13 seconds. At 1,200dpi the same job needed 52 seconds – that's much more competitive than it sounds.

The Brother MFC-L8970CDW isn't that quick off the mark when copying, returning a single black page in 13 seconds and a color one in 15 seconds. It's much more impressive when using the ADF, completing a 10-page simplex copy in 32 seconds whether in black or color.

This ADF's ability to capture both sides at once ought to make for rapid duplex copying, but the reality wasn't quite so impressive. While our original 10-page, 20-sided document rapidly fed through, the printer didn't kick into action until it had almost finished. There's not much wrong with a speed of 15.4ipm on this test, but it seemed like this MFP should be capable of more.

Brother MFC-L8970CDW review: Results

With so many features to get right, it's not unusual for a multifunction to slip up in at least one area. The happy news here is that the MFC-L8970CDW doesn't, and in several ways it's extremely good. This MFP's main weakness across our tests was murky black photocopies in which darker shades bled together, leading to the loss of detail. We're not sure why, given that color copies were perfectly exposed and quite faithful to the originals.

Elsewhere, text quality was as good as you'd expect from a laser printer, with crisp characters that stood up to close scrutiny – only under magnification could we spot a tiny bit of stepping on some curved outlines. Color graphics were generally very impressive, particularly when it came to shade control: while many lasers struggle to differentiate shades and colors without bands of halftoning patterns, here the content shone through without obvious artifacts.

It is worth noting that this printer has something of a cool color bias, leading to less perky photos than you might get from some rivals. Skin tones could fall victim to this, particularly in illustrations where lighter skin tended to be rendered a little pale. Overall, however, all of our print results were strong.

If a color laser MFP is likely to fall short anywhere, it's in the scanner. But while the MFC-L8970CDW was in a hurry to get the job done, you'd be hard pressed to tell from the results. It captured among the best images we've seen from a business-oriented scanner, with well-judged exposure and sharp focus more than up to the task of archiving everyday office documents. More unusually, it was comfortable scanning photos at higher resolutions, displaying a wide dynamic range that allowed it to capture detail from among the lightest and darkest shades. This scanner managed to distinguish all but the darkest couple of shades on our Kodak Q60 test target – far better than the average for a business device.

Brother MFC-L8970CDW review: Is it worth it?

This multifunction offers a huge range of features, and while it might not have the fastest printer, it's generally quick enough to dispatch all the jobs it will encounter in busy workgroup use. The payoff for your patience is that it'll complete almost anything you want to a very high standard – it offers one of the best scan and print quality combinations we've seen.

On the flip side, a heavily used MFC-L8970CDW fleet might need stock of up to eight different consumables. Even if each is reasonably priced and comes with a long service life, that makes management more of a headache, and suggests this device might be best viewed through the lens of a managed print contract.

It's hard to shake the impression that this MFP might be overpriced. While sharing its print specifications with the HL-L8570CDW, it's twice as expensive -- its scanner and display are both good, but we're not sure they're worth that premium. And while it's good to see the MFC-L8970CDW arrive with such generous inbox toners, remember that the HL-L8570CDW gets those too. Overall, this is a strong MFP, but it might be worth waiting to see if its price drops before buying.

Brother MFC-L8970CDW specifications

With the new EliteBoard G1a, HP has manufactured one of the most interesting bits of kit to hit the corporate world in recent years; it's little surprise that it was an honoree at the CES 2026 Innovation Awards. You can define it in different ways, depending on your perspective. Perhaps it's a mini PC with a keyboard above, or a portable keyboard with powerful components fitted beneath, or perhaps it's even a laptop that's missing a touchpad and screen. Either way, it's highly compelling and guaranteed to turn heads in the office.

Devices like the EliteBoard G1a aren't entirely new – although it's fair to say we haven't seen one like this in a good few decades. It's reminiscent of some of the earliest machines to mark the history of the enterprise laptop, including the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Like these historic machines, the EliteBoard G1a is fitted with components and devoid of a display – relying instead on you to provide an external screen, whether at home or in the office. Unlike these devices, however, it's portable, stylish, and provides a new dimension to mobile working. You can easily draw it from its fabric sheath should you wish to pick up a portable display and pitch up on public transport, and it's especially suitable if hot-desking is the name of the game. But how does it stack up against your go-to laptops, 2-in-1s, and mini PCs?

HP EliteBoard G1a: What's in the box?

There's quite a lot to unpack when you first set up the EliteBoard G1a. The machine itself is snugly tucked into a stylish felt case with a diagonal etching effect and a magnetic clip to securely open and close the flap. Despite being soft to the touch, it's firm and protective, and neatly complements the keyboard's overall design.

You'll also find a USB-C charger with a USB-C cable, a second USB-C cable (with premium threading), and a dongle with HDMI output. This gives you a few options when setting up your device and connecting it with an external display.

Plug-and-play via USB-C (with power draw) is straightforward enough, while opting for HDMI via the dongle means recharging with the separate USB-C charger. There are a few ways of doing this; you can either plug the dongle into your monitor and go from there, or plug all cables directly into its input ports, which include Ethernet, HDMI, and two USB-C ports.

The device also comes with a basic pre-paired mouse that you can connect directly using two Bluetooth channels or a USB-C RF peripheral. It's as easy as switching it on and clicking the button on its rear to cycle between these options as you see fit. It's nothing special – but does the job.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Design and build

HP has put a lot of thought into defining the shape of the EliteBoard G1a, not just in terms of its overall look and feel, but the economics of its sizing. The carbon-colored chassis offers minimalist appeal with office-centric credentials thrust front and center. The keyboard sits atop a sloping base that angles upward to maximize ergonomic comfort – with the hardware crammed in underneath.

The sides are flattened, with an exhaust vent subtly carved into the center of the rear, and the base features an expansive grill overlaying in-built speakers. Two USB-C ports are also on the leftmost side of the rear. There's a high degree of plastic in the machine, especially in the slightly indented keycaps that comprise the near-gapless keyboard, but such is the engineering quality that this remains subtle. The unusual font is also a nice touch and adds much-needed character – with HP taking great care to find the right balance between elegance and showmanship. The only hint of color is in the horizontal blue LED baked into the power button in the top right. Helpfully, this doubles as a fingerprint scanner.

There's almost no room to spare on the keyboard itself. The keys, which are well-sized, are packed neatly alongside one another in a gapless formation. You can't get much more change out of it with dimensions of 358.1 x 118.7 x 17.9, making it eminently portable and much smaller than many full-sized keyboard peripherals. Meanwhile, the felt case that accompanies this 670g (1.47lbs) device is a perfect travel companion, with the parallel diagonal grooves on its front a neat design flair.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Keyboard and mouse

With so much riding on the standard of the keyboard, it's essential that HP nailed the brief – and to some extent it's brilliant for its size, with a few caveats. The low-profile keycaps use silicon dome switches for the mechanisms, which lead to a springy and muted touch-typing experience. There's plenty of force feedback in each rather deep 2mm keystroke to make for a satisfying experience, but you won't by any means recreate the noisy clacking when using a mechanical board.

That's where the good news ends, though. While most keys are firm, a modicum of looseness exists in a handful of the smaller keys, meaning that applying some pressure generates minor wobble. The worst culprits are the arrow and function keys. The sound the plastic makes is also very noticeable, and tapping the smaller keys may often feel hollow and (sometimes) shrill.

As with some HP keyboards, the EliteBoard also suffers from placement issues. The inclusion of PG UP and PG DN directly above the Left and Right arrow keys made for a nightmare for accidental taps while navigating for the first few days. The half-sized Enter key, too, is a little irritating. In all these cases, the sizing is a direct consequence of attempting to fit to the extremely tight specifications. The function keys are broadly useful and include shortcuts for sound controls, screenshot taking, as well as system functions like the Settings menu and Windows Search. There's even a programmable key (F9) that you can assign as a custom shortcut. Directly above the numberpad is a shortcut for the Calculator app – which makes logical sense – but you're unlikely to ever really use it.

The pre-packaged mouse is simple but useful. Clicking feels firm, and moving the cursor is smooth, with some grip, thanks to elevated plastic mounds on the base. Rubbery pads also line either side where your fingertips would rest, which offers comfort while you're working. Scrolling with the mouse wheel lacks bite, unfortunately, while the middle button is a Copilot shortcut – for whatever that's worth to you. Sadly, it lacks physical forward and back buttons, but is otherwise everything you'd expect from a basic peripheral. The best part is how it pairs automatically when you turn it on with the switch at its base and press the button to cycle between channels. Hidden under the plastic cover is a USB-C RF receiver that you can plug into a device, or an external monitor. Set-up is simple, and you need not make adjustments beyond tinkering with the cursor speeds to suit your own preferences.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Performance and battery life

The EliteBoard might raise eyebrows in the office, but what ultimately matters is how it stacks up against PCs, laptops, 2-in-1s, and mini PCs given you're using it as your primary work machine. You may find a variety of configurations on the market. Processors including the Ryzen AI 5 Pro 330, Ryzen AI 5 Pro 340, Ryzen AI 5 Pro 350, and Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350. RAM options, meanwhile, including 16GB, 24 GB, and 32GB, while you can also find units with an attached USB-C cable baked in.

Our review configuration included a six-core AMD Ryzen AI 5 Pro 340 processor with an AMD Radeon 840M Graphics card for company, alongside 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD – so fairly high-end if not the most powerful version of this device. There's also a healthy amount of AI processing power to the tune of up to 50 TOPS. Overall, it's a healthy package that should prove capable for most office-based workloads.

In performance testing with Geekbench 6, we registered a single-core result of 2,739 and a multi-core score of 11,095 – both strong results. For reference, Intel Core Ultra 200 Series processors normally hit the same level for single-threaded performance and between 10,000 and 11,000 for multi-core performance. When you compare it with some workstations, it's also just as competent. The AMD Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 processor, fitted into the HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14, scored 2,797 and 10,809, for example. You tend to squeeze more juice from MacBooks and Qualcomm-powered machines, but the EliteBoard can hold its own against the competition in the enterprise laptop market.

Unfortunately, the GPU lacks punch and registered an underwhelming 12,859 in our OpenCL benchmark. Today's best entry-level Intel graphics cards are considerably better, with the Intel Arc Graphics card capable of reaching between 20,000 and 30,000. The Radeon 840M Graphics chip is more comparable with integrated Intel Iris Xe. That said, it beats the Radeon 860M Graphics chip fitted into last year's HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16. With this setup, you can sustain mid-intensity workloads without a hitch. When connecting the EliteBoard to an external monitor, we could easily sustain a 4K connection at 120Hz, scaling up to 240Hz if we slashed the resolution to 2,560 x 1,440. HP claims you can connect the machine with up to four 4K displays running at 60Hz.

While a 512GB SSD (256GB models are also available) is smaller than the 1TB minimum you'd expect from a premium enterprise notebook, it's fast enough – with average reads of 5,797MB/s and considerably above average writes of 5,962MB/s.

The device comes with a small 32 Wh battery that can prove useful if you're in a pinch and can't link up with an external monitor via USB-C with power delivery. We ran a looped video playback test on a 4K monitor running at 30Hz at 400 nits brightness on Airplane Mode, and the device lasted 7hrs and 53mins. It's a useful amount of reserve power, which you'll need if you're primarily connecting via HDMI, but with the right setup, you'll never need to worry about power supply.

Generally, the machine performs smoothly, and the fact it's a computer itself is incredibly well disguised. The only giveaways are the surface of the keycaps warming up very slightly after prolonged use, and fans that may whirr up completely unprompted from time to time. It's also more noticeable than a desktop or mini PC, because you're physically closer to your keyboard than you are to the actual machine. But for the most part, it remains idle.

The built-in speakers are sub-par, but not much different from those fitted into most laptops. Audio is muffled and tinny, with bass seriously lacking in punch. The volume, however, can get surprisingly loud, but listening to the noise at these levels is uncomfortable. Depending on the quality of the external monitor you use, you may be better off switching your audio output.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Features

We have mentioned biometric security in the form of a fingerprint scanner seamlessly integrated into the power button, but the machine also comes with HP's standard suite of enterprise tools. Chief among these are its Wolf Pro Security package, which is included. You'll benefit here from full-stack protection (with software and hardware layer protection) as well as features like endpoint isolation to stop malware from spreading throughout an organization's fleet of devices. Our review unit was also packaged up with Office Home and Business 2024, a one-time purchase that would give us access to classic 2024 desktop versions of apps, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

The machine is also easy to service, thankfully. You may remove the base to get direct access to two DDR5 SODIMM slots, a removable M.2 WLAN module and a single M.2 2280 SSD slot. One disappointment, however, is the lack of physical connectivity beyond one USB-C port that offers 40Gb/s and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. Both offer DisplayPort 1.4 support and 5V/1.5A power delivery. Yes, you can use the dongle if you want to use other connections, but it's fiddly and native HDMI and USB-A ports would have made the user experience much better. Notable omissions also include an SD Card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There is, however, a security lock slot on the left-hand side of the EliteBoard's chassis. Wireless standards include the very latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, so future-proofing is guaranteed.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Is it worth it?

The EliteBoard G1a is certainly the most interesting enterprise device to hit businesses this year, and is fundamentally a space saver as well as being stylish and practical.

HP representatives weren't able to share accurate pricing information ahead of its full launch, but you can seemingly purchase through some channels already. For example, the wired Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350 version (with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD) is available for $2,269 (approximately £1,700). Given you'll be looking at north of $2,000 for high-end enterprise-facing machines, this feels reasonable.

We do understand how tempting it is to compare it with laptops and see it through the prism of what you're losing out on rather than what you're gaining. You'll cut out the screen and touchpad for not much of a pricing differential – but there's a cohort of users out there for whom the laptop screen is far less useful than a single or dual monitor setup alongside keyboard and mouse peripherals. Things get a little rosier when you compare it with a desktop computer or a mini PC – and much of that is thanks to some clever engineering and a keyboard that, thankfully, is very enjoyable to use, barring some minor spacing issues.

For the first device of its kind, the EliteBoard G1a offers an excellent blueprint for a different way to approach mobile working. There are, of course, improvements that HP may wish to make in future generations, including a variety in the hardware you can pick up (such as a choice between Intel, Qualcomm, and more advanced AMD chips), or even more ports so you can take advantage of more options for how you work. That said, in its current guise, the HP EliteBoard G1a looks the part, packs a hefty punch, and would make for a fantastic addition to the workplace.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Specifications

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition is a business-focused update of the Galaxy Book models that debuted at MWC 26. This isn't the premium models, to be clear, the Pro and Ultra are the more powerful devices, but the Enterprise Edition goes in a slightly different direction, with features and capabilities to make laptop deployment easier for IT departments.

It comes in either 16in or 14in, and only one gray color option. And it starts at £2,049 for the lowest configuration (16GM RAM, Intel 5). But, as with all of Samsung's Enterprise Edition devices, the real benefits are in setup and security...

Samsung Galaxy Book6: Design

Although this is an 'Enterprise Edition', the outer design of the Galaxy Book6 is the same as the standard model with two size options (14in and 16in) and just a 0.64 lbs difference between those. The 16in model we have is just 14.6mm when closed, giving it a moderately thin profile.

The laptop comes only in gray – 'Mocha' gray, according to Samsung – which gives it a serious, but unremarkable look. It's squared with little rounded edges and a minimalist Samsung logo on the lid. The result is that the Galaxy Book 6 doesn't really stand out in the crowd – we've seen more striking Windows machines recently, such as the Asus ZenBook 16A, or the HP EliteBook 8, or even the MSI Prestige 16 AI+.

Configurations start at 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD, but can be ramped up, like our machine to 32GB RAM and 1TB of storage. And for the Enterprise Edition, there are three Intel options: either the Core Ultra 5 325, Core Ultra 7 365 vPro or the 355 – like our review unit.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Display

The Enterprise Edition of the Galaxy Book6 has a 16-in IPS panel with a wide-screen WUXGA (1920 x 1200) resolution by default. At face value, it's not the most impressive screen – certainly not compared to the Pro and Ultra models – and it's clear that the focus here is productivity rather than immersive graphics.

So the Enterprise Edition is slightly duller – its peak brightness is only 350nits, according to Samsung. The Pro model can reach 1,000nits, so there is a gulf in quality. In our own tests, with our colormieter, the Enterprise Edition peaked at 354 cd/m2, which is on the low side; certainly not up to Samsung's lofty standards.

But we have to remind ourselves that a laptop aimed at enterprises doesn't necessarily need to have a fancy display, just a practical one. The 16in screen is nice and big, there's next to no glare, and it does a fairly decent job with colors. Nothing mind blowing, but equality is neither over-saturated nor poor.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Keyboard and trackpad

One reason to opt for the 16in Galaxy Book6 is the inclusion of a numberpad. That is, of course, if you like/need one. So that's data entry workers and number nerds. For the rest of us, you just get a bigger typing space and more area to rest your palms.

On the business of typing, however, the keys feel quite shallow. There is only 1.33mm travel, and I did feel I was basing the bottom, a lot, at full typing speed. They do look smart and level, and they make a nice clicky sound. However, the space bar has a slight rattle to it.

There is a medium-sized trackpad (approximately 4x3) with a fairly good range and nice click action. The only issue here is its position, just off-center (presumably due to the number pad). I constantly hit the right-click button by accident when not looking down, which caused no end of frustration.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Specs and performance

Our review unit came with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355 (Panther Lake) chip, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD. As mentioned above, you can opt for a lower Core Ultra 5 325 model or a vPro. Though all three are suitable for most business needs, aside from heavy AI workloads.

In Geekbench 6, the Enterprise Edition came back with a score of 2,671 for single-core workloads and 6,846 for multithreaded, which are both good scores. You're not looking at a MacBook Pro replacement here, but it does hold up well against Windows machines with a similar score to the Asus Zenbook A16.

And, it lasts. Samsung's estimates for battery life say it can run for 24hrs in an office setting. In our looped video test, the Galaxy Book 6 lasted 17hrs, 38mins. Which is short of that expectation, but we have to add that our tests are intentionally intensive. In real use, we found the Galaxy Book6 lasted well into a second day of work.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Features

The Enterprise Edition, as its name suggests, is about making the setup and management of work machines as seamless as possible, while also keeping security tight. So the Galaxy Book6 can be prepared before deployment with a few customizations, like BIOS settings and asset tagging. There's also Windows Autopilot, which IT admins can set up before the device reaches its user.

These pre-customizations also extend to security, with Samsung's Knox platform deeply embedded in the Galaxy Book6. This includes the standardized configurations that we are all familiar with, like biometric authentication (fingerprint sensor, facial recognition). And also some data protection at the firmware level with a discrete Trusted Platform Module with cryptographic capabilities.

There is a wealth of connections on both sides of the machine. Two USB-C ports, two USB-A, an HDMI slot, one for a microSD card, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a security slot, and a headphone jack.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition: Is it worth it?

While it may lack the gloss of rival laptops (or even other Galaxy Book models) the 6 is a solid choice for a business. A quality build with a smart look, a fast processor, and a long battery life. Just what you need for an office of knowledge workers or even entry-level ones.

Price may be a sticking point; there are similar devices for less than £2,000, but the question is, do they also come with Knox-level security, or even the breadth of controls and capabilities for IT departments?

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Enterprise Edition specifications

Are you comfortable? It’s a question we don’t tend to ask our remote workers very often, but Logitech is thinking deeply about it.

The company recently launched a new line of PC accessories, the Signature Comfort Plus M850L for business. A slim keyboard and mouse combo that goes above and beyond to make your workday easier.

The Signature Comfort Plus keyboard is a new model in Logitech’s slim keyboard range. It is, essentially, a Bluetooth keyboard shaped specifically for comfort and designed for efficiency.

It features large, curved, padded areas at the base for palms and wrists to rest as you type. Its buttons are customisable, and it has an ‘AI’ key that you can add your preferred AI agent or chatbot to.

It also uses ‘Smart Actions’, which allow you to comprehensively automate your workflow – provided you know what you want it to do.

“All the main applications that you have, Teams, Zoom, Word, maybe something specific like Photoshop, they can be programmed to open when you click this button,” Nadia Che, Logitech’s global portfolio and marketing manager, told ITPro ahead of the launch.

“For example, I have Chrome, Notebook, and Zoom; so you just click and three programs open.”

Logitech eyes prolonged comfort

As with the keyboard, the mouse is designed for prolonged use and efficiency, though it goes a little bit further with its padding because it’s a mouse with a palm cushion.

There’s no other function here but to provide a bit more comfort – a quote from the presentation of the mouse, from Logitech’s design team: “How soft is soft?” That was their priority.

As such, the mouse has a sculpted shape, which is in keeping with other Logitech accessories. The shape is made to fit the hand more naturally, with rubber side grips and a smart wheel on top for scrolling through web pages, applications, or social media.

Both keyboard and mouse are also made from 49% recycled plastics, according to Logitech.

There are a number of new functions on the mouse, such as the Spotlight Cursor, which, as its name suggests, turns the cursor into a large disk. Again, there are also customisable controls on the device to further improve productivity.

For home users, the Signature Comfort mouse can be bought individually for €54.99 (£47.50) or as part of a keyboard-mouse bundle for €109.99 (£95).

Businesses can purchase the pair for €119.99 (£103), which includes extras, such as the Logi Bolt receiver, which is a small USB device that plugs into the keyboard and allows you to work across multiple devices with the keyboard.

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Brother recently launched a new range of business color laser printers aimed at demanding workgroups and small businesses. The 8XXX range comprises three multifunction peripherals and two single-function printers. Here we're reviewing the HL-L8570CDW printer, which sits above the HL-L8430CDW. Both have a decent specification, centered around a 31 pages per minute (ppm) print engine also capable of 20 images per minute (ipm) duplexing.

Both single-functions in the 8XXX range come with a 6.8cm (2.7") color touchscreen and a USB slot for direct printing. This being 2026, both support both 2.4 and 5GHz wireless networks, or you can just connect them up via the gigabit Ethernet ports at their rear.

With many core specifications in common, the HL-L8570CDW is chiefly distinguished from the HL-L8430CDW by a wider range of consumables and expansion options. Neither printer's standard paper handling is exceptional out of the box, with a main cassette holding 250 sheets supplemented by a 50-sheet multipurpose feed. You can expand the HL-L8430CDW to an 800-page maximum by adding up to two 250-sheet cassettes – less convenient than a single 500-sheet unit. The HL-L8570CDW we're reviewing is more impressive, accepting 520 or 250-sheet cassettes up to a potential 1,340-sheet total.

It's a similar story with consumables. The HL-L8430CDW arrives with a fair 3,000 pages of black toner and 1,800 in color. It accepts replacements up to 7,500 black and 6,500 color pages. That's not bad, but the HL-L8570CDW turns up with these XXL consumables in the box – a generous starting allowance even at this price. It also accepts larger replacements rated for 10,000 pages of black or color.

While competing printers from the likes of Canon or HP tend to stick with a limited consumable set, that of the Brother HL-L8570CDW is truly staggering. It supports no fewer than four different toner sizes: standard, XL, XXL, and the super-jumbo 10,000-page items. In addition, there's a waste toner bottle and drum kit, each rated for 50,000 pages. As if that wasn't enough, you can also buy a replacement fuser unit and transfer belt – both nominally good for 100,000 pages. It's unlikely you'd need to replace any of these on a lightly used printer, and even a busy one might not need the fuser or transfer belt, but managing them all could be a pain. On the flip side, the fact that they're available may help extend a heavily used printer's life.

Many buyers of the HL-L8570CDW will opt for a managed print contract, but if you are buying consumables, stick to the biggest available. Do that, and you can expect toner costs of 0.9p (ex VAT) per black page, or 6.8p in color. Even with all the lifetime consumables priced in, per-page costs rise to 1p in black and 7.1p in color – competitive in this class, and significantly less than you'd pay with a cheaper workgroup printer.

Brother HL-L8570CDW review: Setting up

Brother says it's reduced the size of this range by up to 30% compared to the previous generation, but it's still not exactly svelte. The HL-L8570CDW weighs 21kg, and is significantly bulkier than a consumer-level printer. It feels nicely made, though: its main paper cassette slides on robust rails, and the paper guides within it feel like they're there for the long-term: not always an impression we've had from cheaper Brother printers.

We're not sure why Brother has put this printer's USB slot on its left-hand panel. Quite apart from the fact that it hides it away from those who might want to use it, it also means you can't place the printer snugly against a wall or cubicle divider on that side. You can't on the right, either, as there are two vents towards the back.

As with most printers, you may need access to the back of the Brother HL-L8570CDW to get at any paper jams in the duplexer, but most of the day-to-day features are at its front. The front panel pulls forward to form the 50-sheet multi-purpose input. Pressing a button on the top panel releases a bigger front section, allowing you to access the toner and drum assembly.

Business and enterprise printers are sometimes cursed with complex or unwelcoming interfaces – a mistake given the bulk of their users aren't likely to be technical. Fortunately, Brother's touchscreen menu mirrors its consumer printers with straightforward language and a sensible layout. One oddity is it doesn't support swipe gestures, but it's nice and responsive to taps.

Brother's software package for this printer installs a full-featured PC driver, supporting useful features such as watermarking and password-protected secure prints. Administrators are more likely to be interested in the wide range of wired and wireless network security features, and additional settings, including IP filtering and Active Directory/LDAP authentication.

Brother HL-L8570CDW review: Printing

This printer's 31ppm claimed print speed isn't exceptional for a workgroup laser, and it's towards the low end for a busy enterprise device. Good thing, then, that it didn't fall too far away from it in our tests. The Brother HL-L8570CDW delivered a first page of black text within 12 seconds of us clicking Print, although it needed a further nine seconds to warm up if it had first been idle for an hour. It went on to complete 25 copies of a formal letter in 56 seconds, a rate of 26.8ppm.

Our tests include the time taken to spool and start printing a job, which has less impact over longer jobs. We timed a 50-page text document at 101s – at 29.7ppm this was only fractionally below Brother's stated speed.

The HL-L8570CDW was a little slower when working with complex color graphics. Its 16 seconds time-to-first page reflected the additional processing time taken to prepare our graphics-rich 24-page document, and partially accounted for a slower 21.2ppm performance. That's still OK, but perhaps not on days where speed is everything.

This printer takes an unusual approach to duplexing, seemingly pulling two sheets of a job in to have their reverse printed, rather than one. Accordingly, it's some time before the first duplex page lands in the 150-sheet output tray, and paper stops being picked a couple of pages before the job itself is done. It didn't seem to harm the speed too much, with the HL-L8570CDW managing a fair 11.3ipm when printing a 10-page color document onto five sheets of paper.

We normally print our photo tests using a printer's best quality, which in this case is a claimed 2,400x600dpi. When we came to select Fine mode, we discovered this is in fact the default setting. Hopeful that dropping to 600x600dpi might result in quicker everyday prints we re-tried our text job, but the speed was identical regardless of setting. Using Fine, we timed two 10x8" photos printed onto A4 paper at 28 seconds. Six 6x4" photos on three A4 pages completed in 33 seconds.

Brother HL-L8570CDW review: Results

What this printer lacks in outright speed, it makes up for in quality. Text was about as good as you'll see, with characters across our tests showing neat outlines all the way down to tiny 5pt. Only under magnification was a tiny amount of stepping visible on curved lines, and even then, this only really showed up on bold characters.

This printer tended towards undersaturating photos, reproducing clear skies with a shade too much blue, and removing the zing from one test photo of brightly colored Australian currency. In illustrations this showed up as slightly pale skin tones.

This aside, the Brother HL-L8570CDW was great at printing photos and graphics. Illustrations were detailed and sharp, while color fills were uniform and mostly bold. This printer excelled with the shade progressions on our test presentation slides, smoothly transitioning across blue and red shades without obvious stepping as it moved through the dither patterns used to recreate them. Even color text – often a challenge – was crisp and neat. Here, this printer's extremely fine halftoning helped avoid the impression of jagged outlines, improving legibility in smaller color fonts.

Brother HL-L8570CDW review: Is it worth it?

This isn't exactly a printer to get excited about. While swift, it isn't fast, and while it's durable and maintainable, keeping a heavily used example running could involve the complicated juggling of consumables and accessories. Here, a managed print contract would undoubtedly help – Brother's own offerings start for less than £7 a month.

With the complicated consumables dealt with, the HL-L8570CDW quickly begins to look more appealing. It's reasonably specified out of the box, and can be upgraded to store a handy amount of paper – good for businesses juggling plain and header paper, or simply those trying to minimize the hassle of loading media. Ultimately, however, its strongest suit is its print quality. If you want good results at a fair pace, without punitive running costs, the Brother HL-L8570CDW is a strong option.

Brother HL-L8570CDW specifications

Nvidia unveiled a new chip designed to embed AI into laptops and desktop computers, calling it a "new beginning" for PCs.

Nvidia has led the AI boom as the key supplier of chips to many leading developers, helping the GPU maker become the most valuable company in the world with a record $5 trillion valuation.

The RTX Spark chip brings AI inference to the device, rather than sending it up to the cloud, letting agents run locally – something Nvidia says will help drive AI adoption, which it claims has been stymied by an inability to run agents "securely and privately" on users' own PCs.

According to Nvidia, the RTX Spark can run "120B-parameter LLMs with up to 1 million tokens context using agents locally" – and it's also great for gaming and video editing, too.

"The PC is being reinvented," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, in a statement. "For forty years, you launched apps. Click. Type. With RTX Spark and Microsoft Windows, you ask – and the PC does the work."

"RTX Spark brings everything Nvidia has built – CUDA, RTX, our AI platform – into a single superchip. Local agents,” he added. “Frontier models. Creative workflows. RTX games. All on a laptop. This is the new PC. The personal AI computer."

The RTX Spark features 1 petaflop of performance and up to 128GB of memory, using an Nvidia Blackwell RTX GPU – with 6,144 CUDA cores and fifth-generation Tensor Cores, according to Nvidia – alongside a 20-core Nvidia Grace CPU.

As ever, Nvidia is also promising all day battery life.

Microsoft partnership

To boost security, Nvidia worked alongside Microsoft on new core protections for Windows so agents "run safety and under full user control", the company said.

That includes the ability to disguise personal information in queries sent to cloud models, Nvidia said, adding that such security layers were already adopted by agent developers including Hermes Agent and OpenClaw in their Windows apps.

"Running solutions like OpenShell and the Microsoft security primitives on RTX Spark will enable users to leverage a fully integrated stack for private, personal agents running on device," said Vincent Koc, chief architect at the OpenClaw Foundation, in a statement.

Microsoft will also add RTX Spark powered Windows agent experiences to the taskbar. "Our goal is to deliver unmetered intelligence to every home and every desk with Windows," said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft, in a statement. "RTX Spark marks a real breakthrough towards that vision."

AI PCs

The RTX Spark processor was developed alongside MediaTek and as part of a three-year partnership with Microsoft.

The chip will hit shelves this fall, with models expected from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI, as well as Microsoft's own Surface. Acer and Gigabyte are expected to also add an RTX Spark model to their line-ups.

Those PC markers will all be hoping this next round of AI PCs sell better than the last, which has proven a mixed bag.

Gartner said at the end of last year that AI PCs were "reshaping the market" but adoption was slower than hoped due to tariffs and market uncertainty.

Meanwhile, Dell said customer buying decisions weren't driven by AI — and may even be confusing them.

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Dell has announced the launch of the new XPS 13 laptop range as the company targets “accessible” pricing options for customers – and sets the stage for a showdown with the MacBook Neo.

The move builds on a commitment by the tech giant at CES 2026, namely competing “at every price point” in the hardware market.

Indeed, pricing for the XPS 13 comes in at $699, although a student-focused promotional campaign will bring this down to $599 in July - that puts the device on-par with the Neo.

According to Dell, the XPS 13 is the “lightest and most accessible” XPS to date, and it’s also the lightest and thinnest. The laptop measures 12.7mm and weighs only 1kg (2.2lbs).

The company specifically highlighted the fact the device is smaller and half a pound lighter than the MacBook Neo, and also boasts a larger display.

“The lightweight and durable chassis is built to the same standard as every XPS, because a lower price shouldn’t mean a lesser build,” the company said in an announcement.

So what can customers expect with the XPS 13?

Under the hood of the Dell XPS 13

The base version of Dell’s new budget laptop will come equipped with a six-core Intel Core 5 320 “Wildcat Lake” chip.

Dell noted that future versions will also be available with Intel Ultra Core “Panther Lake” chips, although information on the timeline here is yet to be revealed.

The XPS 13 also boasts 512GB of storage, and just 8GB of RAM for the base version, with the option of scaling up to 32GB.

That might seem low, but the MacBook Neo also comes with what some would describe as paltry RAM capabilities.

Elsewhere, the XPS 13 comes equipped with two USB-C ports, but no 3.5mm audio jack.

XPS 13: Design and features

The base version – and future versions – of the XPS 13 will come with a 13.4 inch touchscreen as standard, boasting 2560 x 1600 resolution and 30Hz to 120Hz variable refresh rate for “smooth visuals”.

Dell noted that the device also has a streaming battery life of up to 17 hours, largely due to the fact it automatically adjusts refresh rates based on what’s on the screen.

Other key features include:

• A 2.5K touch display (covering 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut)
• Backlit keyboard
• Faster USB-C (3.2 Gen 2)
• Intel Wi-Fi 7
• Windows Hello
• Quad speakers

A showdown with Apple

Dell is keen to emphasize the XPS 13’s comparison with the MacBook Neo – and distinct advantages. Indeed, the company’s blog post referenced the device four times.

“Apple’s MacBook Neo is a capable machine, and its arrival confirms that there’s real appetite for premium quality at accessible prices,” the company said. “Where Dell differs is what we think premium means at this price point and what we were willing to build to deliver it.”

The MacBook Neo took the industry by storm earlier this year, generating huge interest and marking the company’s first foray into the budget device market. As ITPro noted at the time, the MacBook Neo launch set the stage for the rest of the industry to react on pricing.

Pound for pound, the two shape up fairly similar in terms of storage and RAM options. The XPS 13 entry-level device offers 512GB storage and 8GB of RAM, while the Neo comes equipped with 256GB storage and 8GB of RAM.

It’s worth noting, however, that due to Apple using in-house developed parts - chips, operating systems, and hard drive - the Neo could eke out more performance from just 8GB compared to a comparable Windows device.

From a visual perspective, the situation is much the same. The MacBook Neo is Apple’s smallest laptop to date, boasting a 13in display and coming in at just 12.7mm thick. The XPS 13, meanwhile, is 12.7mm thick with a slightly larger screen.

Who’s this for?

Dell specifically highlighted students as a key demographic for the XPS 13. However, much like the MacBook Neo, the pricing could be tantalizing for smaller businesses aiming to get more bang for their buck.

The launch of the Neo came at the height of the RAM crisis with prices spiralling globally, and lingering concerns about hardware costs mean Dell has an opportunity to capitalize in the budget market.

Essentially, small businesses now have another viable option alongside the Neo – and that's massive news given low budget devices were expected to be among those worst hit by the memory crisis.

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The Dell UltraSharp U3226Q is not your everyday QD-OLED monitor. It's a self-calibrating 32-inch 4K professional display that's purpose-built for content creation duties. It's highly color accurate out of the box, and the integrated colorimeter means that it can test and calibrate itself automatically to maintain that performance day in, day out.

And yes, it's reassuringly expensive. That said, £2,500 is a mere snip in the realms of professional displays. So, if a true five-figure reference monitor is out of scope, and high-end models from rival manufacturers are stretching your budget, you'll probably want to know more.

Dell U3226Q monitor: Design

The centrepiece of the U3226Q is a 4th-generation Samsung QD-OLED panel. At first, you might not notice what all the fuss is about: 4K monitors are ten a penny, and the 120Hz refresh rate is a fraction of cheaper gaming OLEDs. Delve into the details, however, and there are plenty of interesting features.

Color accuracy is the first string to its bow. Dell claims 99% coverage for DCI-P3 and Display P3, and an impressive 94% of Adobe RGB. Those claims go hand in hand with a wide selection of factory-calibrated modes for DCI-P3, Display P3, sRGB, BT.709, BT.2020, and Adobe RGB with both D50 and D65 white points. HDR support is equally comprehensive with DisplayHDR True Black 500 certification and support for Dolby Vision (Bright and Dark modes), HDR 10, and HLG.

Dell claims impressive levels of color accuracy straight out of the box: an average Delta E of less than 1 for the DCI-P3, Display P3, sRGB, and BT.709 modes. In my testing, it also managed a very respectable 1.6 in the Adobe RGB mode. That's a good showing from the off.

Self-calibration is the next party trick. Select the relevant option in the menu, and the display runs through the validation or calibration process – and you can choose between Express and Comprehensive calibration modes depending on how accurate you want the process to be.

It's also possible to set up your own specific display profiles. Basic settings for these can be tweaked in the monitor's on-screen display, and if you need deeper customization, you can build your ideal display profile in Dell's Color Management software – or import one from a Calman profile – and upload it to one of the three CAL profiles on the monitor.

Both calibration and validation can be scheduled to run automatically. These can be performed together or individually on a schedule ranging from daily to quarterly, or after every 200 hours of operation. These can take place while the monitor is in standby, or you can ask to be prompted before each run.

The monitor's on-screen display relies on the usual four-way joystick hidden behind the lower right bezel, and this works well. Interestingly, though, Dell has also added a trio of touch-sensitive buttons, which it calls Direct Keys. Bring your finger close to the monitor's lower left bezel, and three little LEDs illuminate to help you locate the three buttons. The buttons default to selecting Color Space, HDR modes, and Input sources, but you can customise these to access other functions in the OSD.

The array of connectivity is equally helpful. The primary upstream USB-C port supports Thunderbolt 4 and offers 140 watts of power delivery. Alongside, a downstream Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port allows for daisy chaining a second display. This gives you the latitude to run two 4K 120Hz displays simultaneously, but bear in mind that your GPU will need to support Display Stream Compression (DSC). There is also a single DisplayPort 1.4 input and two HDMI 2.1 inputs.

An upstream 10Gbps USB-C port gives the option to connect a second PC or laptop, and the integrated KVM switch allows you to share devices connected to the U3226Q's other ports. A further two 10Gbps USB-A ports are located on the rear panel in addition to 2.5GbE Ethernet. Around the front, a little panel drops down from just underneath the monitor's front left bezel – this reveals two 10Gbps USB-C ports and a single 10Gbps USB-A port.

As ever, Dell hasn't forgotten the more practical aspects of the design. The stand provides 150mm of height adjustment, rotates into portrait mode in either direction, and has ample tilt and swivel. The cutout at the bottom of the stand does a neat job of cable management, too – it's not high tech, but it works. You also get a monitor hood in the box to minimise any glare from overhead lighting. This clips on magnetically and stays put even when you move the monitor.

If there's a complaint to be made here, it's that the build quality could be better. Reach out and adjust the monitor with a single hand, and the panel moves smoothly enough, but the hollow feel of the monitor's body and light creaks don't exactly match the sleek charcoal grey look. Compared to pricier professional panels we've handled, the U3226Q feels rather lightweight.

Dell U3226Q monitor: Display quality

The U3226Q looks great where it matters, though. This is in no small part due to Dell's decision to use an AGLR (Anti-Glare Low-Reflectance) screen coating to banish glare. With sunlight streaming in through a skylight, there was none of the usual magenta tint exhibited by other QD-OLED monitors I've seen recently. Blacks still aren't as deep and punchy as the best glossy WOLED panels, but the lack of tint and overall glare suppression is really impressive. What's more, there's still plenty of punch despite the matte anti-glare finish – it's more semi-matte than the grainier full matte coatings you may have seen on some LCD displays. For a professional monitor, it's a great fit.

Another routine complaint levelled at OLED monitors is text clarity – or more specifically, the lack thereof. This is caused by OLED panels having unusual subpixel arrangements – something which can cause fringing and fuzziness around text. Technically speaking, the 4th-generation QD-OLED panel in the U3226Q uses a far tighter subpixel arrangement. Practically speaking, the result is that text clarity is vastly improved. Set side by side with a previous generation panel, even image clarity looks very slightly more 'in focus'.

The subjective impression is that of a supremely color-accurate display. Colors look super saturated yet natural, and this was borne out by all of my testing. The average Delta E in the sRGB, Display P3, and DCI-P3 modes was less than 1, as claimed, and it reproduced the far larger Adobe RGB palette with an average Delta E of 1.6. If you need accurate results in SDR, the U3226Q delivers.

HDR looks great, too. Highlights have oodles of punch, and we recorded a maximum brightness of around 1,030cd/m2 on a small 2% window. This drops to around 550cd/m2 once you get to a 10% window, but this is still a very solid performance. Bear in mind that you'll need to use the standard HDR 10 or Dolby Vision profiles to achieve maximum peak brightness, however – as its name suggests, the DisplayHDR TrueBlack 500 mode limits peak brightness to 500cd/m2.

Uniformity is near perfect. Brightness and contrast varied by no more than 1.5% across the whole display. This is an order of magnitude better than LCD-based displays. Given that the colorimeter is measuring only one tiny spot on the bottom of the panel, it's reassuring to know that the panel response is so consistent from corner to corner.

You might think that motion clarity would suffer given the mere 120Hz refresh rate, but the U3226Q puts in an impressive performance nonetheless. There isn't the silky smoothness of displays with 240Hz refresh rates and black frame insertion features, but motion looked markedly cleaner and smoother than other 120Hz QD-OLED panels I've had on the desk. It is a shame there isn't an official AMD FreeSync or Nvidia G-Sync certification, but VRR is still there if you want it. Frankly, though, given the presence of VRR flicker, you may want to leave it off. Even with framerates remaining well above 90fps, I found the flickering distracting enough to prefer it disabled.

Dell U3226Q monitor: Is it worth it?

It's all a question of priorities. For more casual use, there's no two ways around it: something like Dell's £600 S3225QC provides a similarly large 32-inch 4K canvas, and its 3rd generation QD-OLED panel is color accurate enough for most users – amateur content creators included. If it's an affordable taste of QLED and Dolby Vision HDR you're hankering for, that's a great option.

What cheaper displays like the S3225QC don't do, however, is promise to maintain that out-of-the-box color accuracy over time – and this is where displays such as the UltraSharp U3226Q justify the outlay. The self-calibrating design offers a level of set-it-and-forget-it simplicity, which means you can just turn it on, get to work, and trust what you're seeing, day after day, year after year. If that level of accuracy matters to you or your business, then it's safe to say that the UltraSharp U3226Q is worth the investment.

Dell U3226Q monitor specifications

Honor is taking the fight to Samsung and Apple with its latest flagship smartphone, hoping to attract consumers and enterprises alike. Rather than being a transformative upgrade on last year's excellent Honor Magic7 Pro, the Magic8 Pro offers some much-needed refinements.

For instance, the device is marginally trimmer and lighter, with a slightly smaller screen, while its camera lenses see minor improvements. There's also a larger battery capacity and a slightly improved chipset. On the flipside, there's a lot of on-device AI to wade through as we try to determine how useful these applications actually are, and whether the incremental upgrades are worthy of the premium price tag.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Design

The biggest change you'll see between the Magic8 Pro and its predecessor is one you'll barely notice, a slight reduction in the display size – and consequently an ever-so-slightly smaller frame. The thickness, for example, has reduced from 8.8mm to 8.4mm – but you'd otherwise be forgiven for believing they were the same device.

The Magic8 Pro features the same rounded glass display as in the Magic7 Pro, placed atop a smoothened brushed metal chassis with squared sides and rounded edges, and a silky frosted metallic rear. On the left-hand side, lined up are the volume, power/Gemini, and Honor AI button (more on that later). One thing we were a little disappointed with was just how rounded the corners were; it feels like the content you view is ever-so-slightly cut off.

It's a beautiful construction otherwise, with just the right amount of grip to feel sturdy when held. The device is also available in the same Black finish as its predecessor, as well as two new colors; a more muted Cyan replaces Breeze Blue, and Sunrise Gold subs in for the jazzy Lunar Shadow Grey.

An Apple-style floating island hosts two front-facing cameras on the top of the display, while a robust glass wheel houses the three rear lenses on its rear. This is slightly larger than in the Magic7 Pro, and you won't find much joy standing the device vertically due to the weight. On that subject, it's ever-so-slightly lighter at 219g (versus 223g) – but the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is lighter still at 214g. This device is also slimmer, with a depth of 7.9mm. But the Honor Magic8 Pro is a little more compact in terms of its width and height.

As with last year's device, the NanoCrystal Shield glass on the front and rear boasts SGS 5-StarDrop Resistance. The dust and water resistance is also excellent, with ratings of IP68/IP69/IP69K, with the latter a new tier of protection that even the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra lacks (only limited to IP68). IP69K is completely dust-tight and offers protection against high-pressure and high-temperature water jets. If you find yourself using the device in harsh terrains, it's as rugged as you can get for something so slender.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Display

You should expect the absolute best from the display in a flagship smartphone, and Honor delivers with its 6.71in LTPO OLED display (a reduction from the 6.8in display in its predecessor) with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HDR Vivid support. Its 2,808 x 1,256 resolution is sharp but offers a slightly weaker pixels-per-inch ratio than the 6.9in S26 Ultra (456 versus 498), but falls in line with the iPhone 17 Pro (460).

You can pick from three distinct color profiles: normal (true-to-life), vivid (enhanced for higher saturation), and professional (suitable for tuning for color-accurate displays). Beyond that, however, you may tweak the red, green, and blue settings, alongside factors like hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, and sharpness. There's also the option to set a default, cool, or warm color tint – or pick from a color wheel. It's an incredible array of customization. We found Vivid (default) is your best bet for day-to-day usage, given the way that colors pop, but Normal might be best if you want a more organic representation of the world when shooting video or taking photos.

Honor claims that the smartphone can hit 1,800cd/m2 under High Brightness Mode (HBM) – with a peak luminosity of 6,000cd/m2. That's considerably higher than the S26 Ultra's 2,600cd/m2 and the iPhone 17 Pro's 3,000cd/m2 maximum. These levels are normally temporary and require exceptional conditions, like direct sunlight, with Automatic Brightness turned on. When we measured the device under manual settings and all automatic settings turned off, we measured a peak luminosity of 790cd/m2 – which is a fantastic base level, and a little higher than the S26 Ultra.

Color accuracy was also outstanding, with 99.9% coverage of the sRGB color spectrum – a notch higher than the S26 Ultra's 96%. This is outstanding, and was complemented with 79% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum and 92.3% coverage of the DCI P3 spectrum (where above 70% and 80% is viable for professional use).

Beyond standard settings like Light and Dark mode toggles and refresh rate adjustments are options to adjust the screen resolution (including a power-saving Smart Resolution mode that does so automatically when battery life is under strain), as well as eBook mode, which renders the display in black and white to aid with reading. The phone also lets you toggle two AI-powered enhancement options, including Super Dynamic Display (which adjusts brightness and contrast) and Vivid Display (which adjusts video clarity and colors). Admittedly, it does make a small difference, helping video footage pop from the screen. However, depending on your circumstances, the original image quality is already strong, and it may be worth turning off to preserve battery life.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Specs and performance

You'll find the outstanding Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform in the Honor Magic8 Pro, alongside an Adreno 840 GPU, 12GB RAM, and 512GB storage. The differences between this chipset in the Magic8 Pro and the S26 Ultra are minimal, but performance in the latter just about edges it.

The Magic8 Pro hit 3,671 for single-core workloads and 10,772 for multi-core workloads, which is a tad lower than 3,671 and 11,307 in the S26 Ultra. While not quite eclipsing the power of its direct rival, it packs more of a punch overall than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, which scored 3,790 and 9,844 via public testing information, respectively. Still, a score like this outpaces many premium laptops, meaning the Honor Magic8 Pro can certainly make a strong case for a device that can allow high-powered mobile working.

With its huge 6270mAh battery, Honor's flagship phone can certainly last well into two days. In our looped video playback test, the Honor Magic8 Pro lasted 31hrs 42mins – it's a staggering result and certainly more than enough. This is a lifespan that's four hours less than the S26 Ultra, despite its larger capacity and silicon carbon technology (as opposed to Samsung's persistence with Lithium-ion). The Honor Magic8 Pro also supports 100W wired charging and up to 80W wireless charging, as opposed to the S26 Ultra's 60W and 25W.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Cameras

The selection of cameras in the Honor Magic8 Pro is outstanding, both front and back. The front-facing camera comprises two lenses, including a 50MP lens and a 3D depth-sensing lens. On the rear is a 50MP Ultra Night Main Camera, 50MP Ultra Wide Camera and a stonking 200MP Ultra Night Telephoto Camera.

This collection of lenses is as good as you may find in a flagship device – and features a host of software-powered enhancements that add to the sense that you're working with professional-lite hardware. One of the Magic8 Pro's main selling points is its ability to shoot at night, and it really does excel in this department -- flooding your frame with light thanks to the combination of the 200MP lens as well as some AI support courtesy of AiMAGE.

This layer also adds a Stabilization Engine – which Honor suggests is an industry-first CIPA 6.5-stop image stabilizer – and a Portrait Engine that helps you focus on individual subjects and make them stand out. The Magic Color mode is also a fun photo-level feature that lets you add AI-generated filters and color palettes to whatever you're shooting. You can even upload one of your previous photos and use it to generate an original filter.

The Honor Magic8 Pro allows up to 3.7x manual zoom and up to 100x digital zoom – and you can cycle between lenses depending on how you'd like to frame your subject. Shooting while zoomed into something at extreme levels works surprisingly well, with little to no shake, and AI augmentations like colorization and sharpness enhancing the finished product.

Shooting with video is also stellar. While you'll sadly lack the 8K offered by the S26 Ultra and OnePlus 15, you can shoot 4K footage at up to 120fps/3.7x zoom with the rear camera and 60fps/2x zoom with the front-facing lenses. The frame rate is limited to 60fps if you're shooting in HDR and 24fps if you're activating Super Night Mode. There's also fantastic image stabilization, as we've covered. Handily, you can run your finger along the AI button while you're aiming to zoom in and out, and tap it to take your photo or start shooting.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Features and software

The inclusion of a true 3D facial recognition system in the front-facing lenses is fantastic – making authentication a little easier – while a fingerprint scanner fits neatly beneath the surface to cater to those who'd rather avoid scanning their face. Another curious addition is the Infrared Remote Control that lets you activate a range of devices, including displays and air conditioners. You can also benefit from PC Data Sync if you install HonorSuite on your smartphone, although Windows 11 now includes excellent smartphone syncing features.

The MagicOS 10, powered by Android 16, is largely clean and straightforward to navigate – very much resembling Apple's iOS environment – but allows for a massive degree of customization. You'll spend most of your time at first, however, wading through a half-dozen AI-enabled apps and features that you may or may not find useful.

To begin with, there's an AI Suggestions folder on the home screen that offers a collection of four apps that rotate in and out depending on what the device expects you'll need. We found this unhelpful, as long as you've organized your folders and apps to suit your own muscle memory navigation. You can expand this folder to six apps – or remove it.

AI Space can, in theory, be useful for coordinating all the devices in a smart home office, with the IR blaster and Bluetooth letting you add devices to your Space that you can then control with your phone.

Then there's Gemini, which is fairly self-explanatory. Honor AI is another one that offers three "agents" – one for settings, one for photos, and one for memories. The first two seem fairly straightforward, where a certain degree of automation will take over how you control settings and edit photos, but the third is more intriguing.

By swiping three fingers down on your screen, your device will capture the content on your screen, perform some kind of "analysis", then store it for later reference in a dedicated app that appears on your home screen. Frankly, this feature appears indistinguishable from just taking screenshots.

Some more useful features include the AI-powered real-time transcription and translation through the Recorder app. The Magic Portal also threatens to be useful; by holding the AI button, you can tap into AI Memories or Circle to Search, which lets you capture portions of text or images by circling it with your finger before you Google it. If you want to work on your phrasing and writing, you can activate the AI Writing feature, too, to

For the security-conscious among you, AI Deepfake & Voice Cloning Detection can help you perform scans while using compatible apps, including Google Meet and Phone, to detect whether you've come up against a deepfake. Those who need to swap between SIM cards can also load one physical SIM and an eSIM. Finally, the device comes with a one-year replacement service (including a one-time screen replacement service), a two-year warranty, and up to seven years of Android maintenance. There are no device-specific packages, however, like Samsung's Knox Suite Enterprise Plan, available.

Honor Magic8 Pro: Is it worth it?

This Honor Magic8 Pro is a simply outstanding flagship smartphone that offers plenty of value in its price category. Its main competitor is undoubtedly the S26 Ultra – and it goes head-to-head in several key areas – not quite eclipsing it in a few key quarters like performance and battery life, but eclipsing the South Korean manufacturer's own flagship device when it comes to screen brightness and the camera array.

For businesses keen on offering employees high-end on-device AI functionality, alongside plenty of photo and video shooting power, the Honor Magic8 Pro is an excellent proposition. That's even more the case when you consider its up-to £1,090 price tag versus the S26 Ultra's £1,279.99 valuation. You do, however, miss out on the use of a stylus, and you may well prefer the S26 Ultra's design and build, especially given the Honor's comically protruding camera array. Put simply, however, it's a potential S26 Ultra killer that packs plenty of high-end features at a reasonable price.

Honor Magic8 Pro specifications

Samsung is set to pay employees in its memory chip division a bonus averaging £310,000 each, after a highly contentious profit-sharing agreement was reached.

The agreement was mediated by the South Korean government, according to Reuters.

Memory chip workers with a base salary of 80 million won (roughly $53,400 or £40,000) should receive a bonus of about 626 million won ($416,000 or £310,000) this year, largely paid in stock. These figures were from a union source, reported by Reuters last week.

Samsung's profits have been boosted by the AI boom, but the deal itself is aimed at avoiding a strike with two unions for the South Korean giant.

The unions said that 74% of the 62,616 workers who cast their votes had backed the deal. Samsung will set aside 10.5% of its operating profits at its semiconductor division to pay special bonuses to those who work on memory chips.

There is a hope that the deal will end a long-running dispute at the tech giant. That said, there are new concerns that it may actually create tensions between other divisions, such as those that work in its consumer electronics divisions.

Memory chip wars

Samsung has seen record profits thanks to a global shortage of memory chips amid the boom in AI. Along with SK Hynix, the two companies account for the majority of global memory production.

However, last year, SK Hynix abolished its cap on bonus pay for 10 years, according to reports. Without the cap, it was able to pay bonuses that were considerably larger than those at Samsung. This, reportedly, led many to leave Samsung for SK Hynix, which in turn sparked a surge in union membership, according to Samsung.

Negotiations saw many proposals tabled, such as a 50% to 100% bounce offer, as a one-off payment that would keep the cap on bonuses.

Zyxel is rapidly becoming the go-to place for Wi-Fi 7 access points as it offers a remarkable range of solutions with a sharp focus on performance, features, and value. The NWA240BE on review is the latest to join the club and stands out for its meaty BE15000 rating and competitive price.

The NWA240BE presents eight spatial streams, with two each for the 2.4GHz and 6GHz radios and four handed to the 5GHz radio. Its BE15000 rating claims maximum speeds of up to 688Mbits/sec for 2.4GHz, a stonking 8,646Mbits/sec for 5GHz, and 5,764Mbits/sec for 6GHz.

The NWA model designation indicates it's designed to offer SMBs a more affordable solution with a reduced feature set. It can be managed in standalone mode or using Zyxel's Nebula Cloud Control (NCC) portal, but unlike the WBE models, the price doesn't include a 1-year NCC Pro Pack license.

Zyxel NWA240BE review: Build and design

Tipping the scales at 848gms, this hefty lozenge is very well built from high-impact plastic and has an embedded 4G/5G interference filter so it can coexist happily with cellular networks. It can be mounted on the wall or ceiling, and the kit includes a universal mounting plate with an optional 5-pack of T-rail clips costing around £17.

All of its performance potential is unleashed by a fast 10GbE multi-Gig uplink port, and the AP can be powered over 802.3at PoE+ or 802.3bt PoE++ without any restrictions. The AP also offers a USB-C port, which can be used to power it with an appropriate 2A USB PD 15 supply.

The rear panel has plenty of ventilation slots, which work well, as we didn't find the AP getting overly hot during testing. There isn't much to see at the front with the single multi-color LED showing AP, boot, uplink, plus wireless status, and if wireless clients are connected.

Zyxel NWA240BE review: Standalone mode

Installation is helped along by the AP's web console wizard, which starts by offering two choices for standalone or cloud management. After selecting the former, we were guided through changing the default admin password, setting the country of operation, creating our first SSID, choosing the active radios, and accepting the offer of an automatic firmware upgrade.

The AP supports up to eight SSIDs, which are created using a combination of profiles and objects. It takes a little while to get the hang of their relationships, but AP management objects use radio profiles to define their active bands, operating mode, and channel width.

Each object references SSID profiles, which control the active radios and can be used to apply upload and download rate limits, QoS (quality of service) for prioritising voice or video traffic, and a time schedule that controls when the SSID is active. Each SSID profile is also assigned a security profile, which sets the encryption method.

MLO (multi-link operations) is supported in standalone mode, but you won't find a toggle switch in the web console for it. Setting the operating mode for the radios to 11be brings Zyxel's auto-MLO into play, which will enforce the mandatory Enhanced Open, WPA3 Personal, or WPA3 Enterprise encryption.

Zyxel NWA240BE review: Cloud management

Swapping the NWA240BE to our NCC account was a breeze as we used the Nebula iOS app on an iPad to scan the QR code on its base and choose the site it should take its settings from. The portal presents an informative dashboard with customisable widgets showing the status of all Zyxel cloud-managed devices, total wireless traffic, APs by usage, all connected wireless clients, along with their detected OS and PoE consumption for our Zyxel switch.

As with standalone mode, up to eight SSIDs per site are supported, and tags can be applied so they are only broadcast by APs that have a matching tag. For guest wireless networks, you can present custom captive portals with your own logos and messages, use a variety of authentication methods, including 2FA with Google Authenticator, and enforce L2 isolation so guests only get internet access.

Network coverage can be easily expanded as the NWA240BE supports Zyxel's Smart Mesh technology, which uses the 5GHz or 6GHz radios as backhaul connections between a root and repeater APs. Upgrading devices managed by NCC with a Plus Pack enables features such as 7-day logging, topology views, and scheduled firmware updates, while a Pro Pack adds client diagnostics, Wi-Fi health reports, remote SSH, and a 1-year report history with Broadbandbuyer, showing a Pro price of around £27 per licence.

Zyxel NWA240BE review: Wi-Fi 7 performance

For performance testing, we connected the NWA240BE to the lab's Zyxel XMG1930-30HP multi-Gig PoE++ switch, which confirmed a 10GbE connection and a PoE++ power draw. Our test hosts were a Lenovo Windows 11 Pro desktop client equipped with a TP-Link Archer TBE550E Wi-Fi 7 PCIe adapter and a Dell PowerEdge Windows Server 2022 host connected to the switch over 10GbE.

The TP-Link Wi-Fi 7 adapter supports MLMR (multi-link multi-radio) and can combine the 2.4GHz band with either the 5GHz or 6GHz bands. With 11be enabled on all three radios, Windows 11 confirmed an MLO link using the 2.4/6GHz bands and an aggregated connection speed of 6,453Mbits/sec.

To test maximum speed, we used the excellent OpenSpeedTest HTML5-based tool and ran the server component of our Windows Server host. On the Windows 11 client, we pointed a browser at the OpenSpeedTest server address and port and watched it report back with superb close-range upload and download rates of 378MB/sec and 483MB/sec.

Real-world SMB tests using 25GB file copies between the client and server returned average sustained close-range speeds of 280MB/sec. With the AP moved 10 metres away and into an adjoining room, we saw this drop to a respectable 243MB/sec.

The NWA240BE also performed very well over a 2.4/5GHz MLO connection. OpenSpeedTest reported back with top upload and download rates of 353MB/sec and 321MB/sec.

Zyxel NWA240BE review: Is it worth it

Absolutely. Available at Broadbandbuyer for £192 excluding VAT, Zyxel's NWA240BE will appeal to SMBs seeking an affordable upgrade to full Wi-Fi 7 services. This well-built tri-band AP is easy to deploy, delivers outstanding performance and supports standalone and cloud management.

Zyxel NWA240BE specifications

The build-out of data centers driven by the AI boom has caused a memory crunch. Almost all servers depend on memory chips to process data at high speed and power AI applications.

According to Trendforce, AI will consume 20% of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) wafer capacity in 2026. Data centers’ appetite for memory chips means there are fewer to go around, especially for enterprise products, and this is forcing vendors to push up their prices.

“The shortage is a perfect storm brought about by AI-driven DRAM demand, hyperscaler stockpiling, and wafer capacity reallocation to high bandwidth memory. Pricing and quoting are now a moving feast,” Ian Foddering, vice president of Europe at IT infrastructure solutions provider SHI, tells ITPro.

While there has been some optimism, including from Foddering, that the memory crunch could ease at the end of this year into early 2027, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won has warned that the shortage could persist until 2030, even though more wafer production will be brought online before then.

We take a look at how four of the main enterprise storage vendors – Dell, Everpure (formerly Pure Storage), HPE, and NetApp – are managing the shortage and the impact it’s having on their pricing.

Dell

Last November, when reporting its fiscal Q3 2026 results, Dell COO Jeffrey Clarke warned of price increases ahead.

“The fact is, the cost basis is going up across all products. No one more unique than others. Everything [that] uses a CPU has DRAM, has storage in it,” Clarke told analysts on the earnings call.

Nevertheless, the company would be doing everything it could to mitigate the impact of the memory shortage. And, it appears it’s well placed to come out the other side stronger.

“We have a lot of experience with this. This isn’t our first DRAM cycle. There have been seven, I think, in the last 40 years. (CEO) Michael (Dell) and I have been here navigating the organization in various ways through that time,” Clarke added.

Storage revenue grew 2% in the November to January period, while all-flash arrays posted their third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

Everpure

Everpure had held off raising prices for as long it could, but eventually had to in early February due to “the dramatic and rapid rise in component prices”.

CEO Charlie Giancarlo said on the company’s fiscal Q4 2026 earnings call later in the month that he believes “we were the last in our industry to raise prices, and I also believe that our increase was the lowest in the industry, to protect our customers”.

Everpure expects to experience longer lead times and shipment delays as a result of component shortages. However, Giancarlo stressed on the call that the company has built a diversified supply chain to mitigate the impact of any disruption.

Quarterly revenue exceeded the $1bn mark for the first time in the three months to 1 February, “driven by broad-based strength across our business, particularly in enterprise”.

Since the call, Giancarlo has warned customers to brace for price hikes, while pledging to absorb as many costs as possible.

HPE

With memory and storage now making up more than half of the cost of a server, HPE has reworded its terms and conditions to allow it to reprice orders for cost increases that occur between orders being placed and shipped.

CEO Antonio Neri explained on HPE’s fiscal Q1 2026 earnings call in early March that the company is “protecting our margins” by adopting “an agile pricing posture with price adjustments across the entire portfolio with shorter quote commitment cycles.”

Based on conversations with many European customers, HPE doesn’t expect them to defer purchases as a result of higher price, however.

“All of them said, okay, I understand the price increases. What we can do to shape the demand, maybe a different configuration, some may take a lower-end configuration to get the product. But it was all about speed to get the product, not the price,” said Neri.

Revenue from its Alletra MP storage platform increased 42% year-over-year in the November to January period. This marked the fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

NetApp

NetApp raised its prices at the beginning of November and will do so again if needed, CEO George Kurian said on the company’s fiscal Q3 2026 earnings call at the end of February.

Kurian explained that NetApp is taking critical steps to manage what he described as “the unprecedented inflation in memory prices”. ​​The company is working with customers and channel partners “to be more agile in this dynamic environment”, while it’s also “staying super close” to suppliers to ensure component supply and meet demand.

“We are not experiencing any supply shortages at this time and are not aware of any that [are] upcoming,” Kurian told analysts on the call.

All-flash revenue jumped to a quarterly record $1bn in the November to January period, up 11% year-over-year, for an annualized net run rate of $4.2bn. However, these numbers don’t reflect the impact of the price increases introduced at the start of the quarter, because customers have 90 to 120 days to manage purchase agreements. The next earnings report in May could paint a different picture.

You can always rely on Acer's TravelMate family of enterprise notebooks to offer reliable performance at more affordable prices. While they won't look as flashy as an ultraportable or pack as much punch as a workstation, these machines are a prudent choice for employees who won't need to push a machine to its limits while still taking advantage of basic AI functionality.

The Acer TravelMate X 14 AI is a mid-range enterprise machine that offers all the above at a fairly reasonable price of under $1,500. With that, you'll pick up a lightweight and versatile machine powered by an Intel Core Ultra 5 Series 200 processor, with a 120Hz HD display. But does this machine offer good value for money, and how does it compare with similar machines in this bracket?

Acer TravelMate X 14 AI: Design and display

There's very little surprising or unexpected about the way that Acer has designed this enterprise-facing laptop. Its basic chassis combines plastic and metal with ports on either side slightly indented, and the display is depressed within the casing. The rear features two bars that, while allowing the machine to benefit from more airflow while stood on your desk, feel very uncomfortable when resting it on your lap.

Its gray finish, meanwhile, is pretty bland and doesn't catch the eye in the same way that plenty of Dell or HP laptops might. The inclusion of the Acer branding in a box on the lid does offer contrast in an otherwise uninspired design, but it's a little jarring.

You likely won't be in this for the looks, but the machine's build quality isn't of the highest quality either. Heavy plastic inclusion gives way to a lightweight feel (not in a good way); you'd be forgiven for fearing it's a little flimsy at times – although it's certainly not the case, having passed MIL-STD 810H benchmarks. There are some positive aspects, however. Rubber pads on the bezels on either side of the display means the keyboard won't leave impressions or marks on the screen.

More encouragingly, the machine's 1.27kg weight is on the lighter side, and it's in line with machines like the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 (1.24kg), Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition (1.24kg), and Acer Swift Go 14 AI (1.32kg). The thickness is also decent (15.9mm) considering the nature of the ports included in this machine, including HDMI and Ethernet.

The 14-inch display doesn't seem appealing at first glance, but it still has plenty of positive points, like a 120Hz refresh rate. It's not incredibly sharp, with a weak 162 pixels-per-inch ratio for its 1,900 x 1,200-pixel aspect ratio. It also feels much dimmer than average to the naked eye, which we confirmed in testing with a display calibrator, registering a maximum luminosity of 267 cd/m2 (much lower than the roughly 330 cd/m2 that we'd consider a decent level). The color accuracy isn't fantastic either, with the display registering a 96.6% coverage of the sRGB gamut. On the other hand, it scored well in terms of coverage of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 gamuts with 70.9% and 84.1%, respectively. Also decent is a black level of 0.19 cd/m2 and a 1,376:1 contrast ratio. Finally, color distortion scores of an average of 0.52 and a maximum of 1.58 are very strong. So, overall, the display is fairly mediocre, but we've seen aspects that are much worse in more premium machines – and it's about in line with what we would have expected from a mid-range machine.

Acer TravelMate X 14 AI: Performance and battery life

Given the pricing of this machine, and the components fitted into it, the Acer TravelMate X 14 AI punches above its weight; it nears (but doesn't meet) the standard often seen in higher-end laptops.

The eight-core Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor is the beating heart of this machine, and this is partnered with an Intel Arc Graphics chip and an integrated NPU that can hit 40 TOPS. While not as strong as the roughly 50 TOPS you'll see in the higher-end counterparts, it's plenty of AI firepower and enables core AI functionality. Memory options include 16GB LPDDR5x RAM as well as 512GB SSD.

Benchmarking the machine with Geekbench 6 produced a respectable single-core result of 2,453 – what we'd normally expect across Lunar Lake processors -- and a multi-core score of 9,334 – which is actually just shy of what we've sometimes seen in Intel Core Ultra 7 200 Series chips. For instance, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU scored 10,021 in the Acer TravelMate P6 14 AI. That said, the mid-range Snapdragon X Plus-powered Acer Swift Go 14 AI scored 2,364 and 11,044, respectively, with Qualcomm's processors generally offering more juice.

It's a symptom of the Lunar Lake CPUs, in that the difference between different models, and between this generation and the Meteor Lake chips, is slight. While older processors may offer similar performance levels, they come without the AI or graphics firepower. For instance, the excellent entry-level Intel Arc Graphics chip scored 25,514. While higher-end models hit closer to 30,000, previous-generation Intel machines may score well under 20,000.

We were equally impressed with the machine's battery life, with the Acer TravelMate X 14 AI lasting 14hrs and 37mins in our looped video playback test. Anything below by today's standards would be a little disappointing, considering plenty of machines are capable of reaching more than 20 hours. Again, however, for a mid-range machine, it's a strong result and in line with plenty of higher-end machines. In a similar vein, there's no reason to be displeased with the SSD -- with range-topping reads of 6,706MB/s and writes a little more sluggish at below average speeds of 3,644MB/s.

Acer TravelMate X 14 AI: Features

The TravelMate's keyboard is balanced well and enjoyable to use. Keys have a moderately deep travel distance, and they're well spaced. There's enough snap and bite with each keystroke so that it feels punch while you're using it, but with a mutedness that means you can touch type without feeling you're up against much resistance. There aren't many surprises with the function keys, or complaints more generally. Handily, you can use the Acer MyKey to choose from a selection of frequently used apps to open on command.

The touchpad, meanwhile, is well-sized and perfectly sensitive – but its surface feels slightly uncomfortable if you apply too much pressure while navigating. Both the left-click and right-click buttons are positioned well, although there isn't much feedback, and clicking feels hollow.

The machine offers a great amount of connectivity, with the left-hand side of the laptop featuring an HDMI port, USB-A port, and two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4. On the right, you'll have an Ethernet port, USB-A port, and 3.5mm headphone jack, alongside a security lock slot. The only thing missing, you could argue, is an SD Card slot -- but otherwise it's an impressive complement of physical connectivity options. You'll also benefit from up-to-date wireless standards in Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 – ensuring a degree of future-proofing.

Elsewhere, you can take advantage of several AI-powered features baked into Windows 11, including Cocreator, Recall, and Live Captions. The manufacturer has also developed PurifiedView 2.0 to improve framing and image clarity in video calls, as well as PurifiedVoice 2.0, which uses AI-powered noise reduction and a three-mic setup to make sure you can be heard when you speak up.

Acer also claims the stereo speakers benefit from AI magic to generate 200% more sound output with 70% less vibration. Anecdotal, the sound is clear, and there's plenty of treble but about as much bass as you'd expect from a laptop. In fairness, playing music on full blast was louder than we expected – and while we could experience vibrations, they were within reason.

As for security, the laptop incorporates a webcam shutter for privacy as well as facial recognition with Windows Hello – but there's no fingerprint scanner, unfortunately.

Acer TravelMate X 14 AI: Is it worth it?

For a sub-$1,500 price tag, the Acer TravelMate X 14 AI offers plenty of value, and there are very few reasons to avoid it if you're on a tight budget. If you can look past a bland and generic corporate-feeling design – as well as a screen that won't threaten to dazzle you – you'll be able to enjoy solid and reliable performance alongside great quality-of-life features. The keyboard, for example, is excellent and makes typing very enjoyable. We also found the Acer MyKey hotkey a tiny, but really useful, shortcut.

Performance also reaches heights in a similar ballpark to higher-end Intel-powered counterparts, with very few, if any, compromises when it comes to the AI functionality, thanks to 40 TOPS of power and a decent entry-level graphics output too.

The chassis itself, despite feeling a little tacky at face value, does hold up against the stresses and strains of day-to-day mobile working. It's also compact and light – especially given the excellent array of physical ports you can take advantage of – with a decent battery life. Overall, these qualities make the Acer TravelMate X 14 AI a very strong candidate to be your next mid-range travel companion.

Acer TravelMate X 14 AI review: Specifications

Dell makes some bold promises for the Pro 34 Plus P3425WE. It claims that the 34-inch, 3,440 x 1,440 resolution will enable you to "focus like never before" – something that will no doubt appeal strongly to the easily distracted – and that the IPS panel will make your work look better than ever. Unless your work happens to be solely spreadsheets or text documents, in which case they'll probably just look, well, wider.

Bold claims then, but the specifications for this business-focused ultrawide monitor do seem to pack in all the essentials. You get an adjustable stand and USB hub alongside 90 watts of USB-C power delivery and a handy KVM switch, and the display specifications look quietly promising. The whole package retails for a reassuringly expensive £440 at Dell UK, so the big question here is whether it justifies the relatively high price.

Dell P3425WE monitor: Design & Features

Turn the P3425WE on, and it's refreshing to find an on-screen display that immediately attempts to be helpful. It checks whether you want to enable always-on USB charging (and warns about the increase in power consumption), and also offers to guide you through the process of connecting two machines and setting up the KVM switch. Even if you don't want to do it right away, you can hop into the menus by pressing the four-way joystick at the rear and selecting the Show KVM Setup Guide option.

As usual, the menus are all fairly self-explanatory. If you need to adjust settings, then the controls are simple, and menu layout is logical. As usual, a quick click of the joystick in any direction brings up a handy quick menu which gives rapid access to the main features. Click upwards again, and you can delve into the menus proper.

One other option, however, is to install the Dell Display Manager (DDM) software, which is available for both Windows and macOS. This provides a useful added level of control and makes it much easier to both set up and use the KVM and various Picture-in-Picture and Picture-by-Picture features. It also adds a variety of quality-of-life and management features for good measure. It provides more flexibility in how you snap applications across the ultrawide panel, allows you to select specific color modes for specific applications, and you can set keyboard shortcuts to adjust monitor settings. Remote management is another plus point for IT teams, too, as it makes it easier to manage a fleet of compatible Dell monitors across the network.

In terms of looks, the P3425WE is classic Dell. That is to say, if you've seen any Dell Pro or UltraSharp monitor in recent years, you know what to expect here. The silver stand contrasts smartly against a black (or perhaps dark charcoal grey, depending on the lighting) rear panel, and the bezelless design looks clean and crisp, too. The Dell branding is subtle – there's a small logo on the bottom bezel and a slightly more prominent silver one on the rear of the panel. Build feels fine for the money, too. The rear panel feels a little rattlier than I'd like for a £400 monitor, but it's nothing serious.

The adjustable stand works well. There's 150mm of height adjustment, ample amounts of side-to-side swivel and fore and aft tilt, and the only obvious omission is a pivot mode for portrait operation – something which just isn't very likely for a 34in ultrawide panel. The stand moves fairly smoothly throughout its range of motion, and you'll only need one hand to make adjustments as the wide, flared base keeps the monitor safely planted even at full extension.

Connectivity covers all the essentials. All the ports are downward-facing, and you get HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, and an upstream USB-C port that carries DisplayPort Alt video inputs, data, and 90 watts of power to compatible devices. There's also a USB-B upstream port for connecting a second machine, and both upstream ports are able to share the four downstream USB ports. You'll find a pair of 5Gbps USB-A ports at the rear, and a single USB-C and USB-A port are hidden in the little drop-down panel underneath the monitor's lower bezel. Click it, and the panel drops down into view.

Dell's stand includes some basic cable management. All of the P3425WE's connectivity can be routed through the oval cutout in the stand, and as this is angled downwards to the rear, it does a good job of allowing the various cables to slide through without getting pinched when you adjust the stand. The only slight moan here is that you may struggle to fit all the cables through – and if you need to swap the mains cable, you'll need to remove the other cables to slide the IEC plug through.

Dell P3425WE monitor: Display quality

One key difference worth noting here is that the P3425WE's panel opts for a noticeably shallower curve than some rivals. The 3800R curve is very gentle and gives a far less pronounced wraparound effect than monitors with more aggressive 1500R and 1800R curves. This makes the P3425WE a little more flexible when it comes to positioning. Where more aggressive curves work well for sub-1-metre viewing distances and deliver greater immersion in games, you may – like me – prefer a shallower curve for everyday work. With the P3425WE mounted at my usual 1.2 metre viewing distance, the P3425WE does feel a tad more at home.

The P3425WE is aimed purely at a work audience, so it's no surprise to find a fairly modest set of specifications. The IPS panel promises a sensible 99% of sRGB coverage, a contrast ratio of 1,500:1, and a maximum brightness of 350cd/m2. The 100Hz refresh rate is a pleasant upgrade over the standard 60Hz, though – it's not going to excite gamers, but the extra fluidity is noticeable even when scrolling up and down documents. Set side by side with older 60Hz displays, it's also easier on the eye for all-day work, too. And the same goes for the matte anti-glare coating, which, in my very bright office with two skylights (and some unseasonably summery UK weather), did a great job of minimising reflections.

As ever, it's reassuring to find that image quality looks 'right' straight out of the box. Brightness is set to 75% by default, which equates to around 200cd/m2, and this is a little bright for office lighting, but about right for brighter rooms. Crank it to maximum, and it reaches just shy of its claimed 350cd/m2. Contrast is clearly a cut above basic IPS panels – measurements put it at around 1,400:1 in my tests – and colors look natural to the naked eye.

In our tests, the panel covered around 94% of the sRGB color gamut, but the panel is actually capable of reproducing a range of greens, yellows, and reds that are outside of the usual sRGB palette – and that means that the color reproduction isn't strictly accurate. It doesn't put in a bad performance overall, though. Greyscales look clean, and the measured white point of 6,412k is so close to the ideal 6,500k that whites look nice and pure, too. The issue is that a wider color palette means that some tones are a little brighter than they should be, and this makes for a slightly underwhelming average Delta E of 2.3. It looks good in everyday use, but perfect it is not.

This might not be a gaming display, but the P3425WE handles movies and games with aplomb. Crank the overdrive settings up from the default Normal to Fast, and the result is much cleaner detail on fast-moving objects. That does also adds a little inverse ghosting in some conditions, but it's nowhere near as intrusive as we've found on some other models. If it's the odd lunchtime game of Arc Raiders you're after, then the P3425WE will multitask with ease.

Dell P3425WE monitor: Is it worth it?

Value is the only major issue for the P3425WE. With prices varying between £410 and £450 at the time of writing, the P3425WE is substantially pricier than less fully featured 34-inch ultrawide monitors. The USB-C connectivity and KVM switch adds a hefty premium. If you have a tight IT budget to manage, you'd be advised to spend substantially less on a model from any of the big brands.

For users and desks that will benefit from the P3425WE's talents, however, it's a much more attractive prospect. The combination of an ultrawide format with a softer curve is a natural fit for work, and the image quality is more than good enough for all but the most colour critical desks. It even manages to put in a good performance outside of work hours, if that's a consideration. If that sounds like the position you're hiring for, then the Pro 34 Plus P3425WE is a safe pair of hands.

Dell P3425WE monitor specifications

Microsoft has unveiled the next generation of Surface for Business devices, with three models of the Surface Laptop and a new 13in Surface Pro.

Each model will come with Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors, with the option to upgrade to the Intel Core Ultra X7. However, models featuring the Snapdragon X2 will also be available later in the year.

"Whether your teams are in the boardroom, at a customer site, or working from anywhere, these AI PCs are built to perform at the speed of business," Nancie Gaskill, vice president of Microsoft's Surface Business, wrote in a blog post.

The Intel Core Ultra Series 3 architecture promises significant improvements for the new business range. Indeed. Microsoft highlights a "meaningful" leap in graphics performance. Compared to the M5 MacBook Air, Microsoft says it offers up to 35% more graphics performance. It's also more than 90% faster in terms of performance compared to the 2022 Laptop 5. Though that is based on configurations with the Intel Core Ultra X7.

Surface Pro for Business

There is only one model of Surface Pro for Business, a 13in 2-in-1 with all the usual features and accessories. It starts at $1,949.99 and is already available in select markets. There's also a 5G option.

Microsoft's Pro model is for those who want the flexibility of a tablet, while still maintaining laptop-level performance. The downside here is that the various parts of it are sold separately. So the stylus and the adjustable stand and detachable keyboard – which allow users to switch between tablet, laptop, and presentation modes – are an extra cost.

Historically, this has been the most popular model within the Surface range and arguably one of the best business tablets available. Though at face value, there doesn't appear to be a significant change or update beyond more power and further AI capabilities.

"From analyzing complex information to presenting to customers or creating content on the go, the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 GPU enables work to move in real time, delivering the sustained, fluid performance leaders expect from a premium business PC, without compromising mobility, battery life or security," Gaskill wrote in the blog.

Surface Laptop for Business

There does appear to be more upgrades on the Sureface Laptop; Starting with an all-new 13in model, which is the most "portable" it has ever been, according to Microsoft. This is already available in select markets in 16GB and 24GB configurations – starting at $1,499 – though there will be an 8GB model available later in 2026 that's $200 cheaper ($1,2999).

More traditional 13.8in and 15in models are also available, though these are much more expensive, starting at $1,949.99. All models of Surface Laptop for Business will feature haptic touchpads and touchscreens, though there are additional features to opt for, such as an anti-glare display and an integrated privacy screen.

TP-Link has traditionally offered an extensive range of discrete wall-mounted wireless access points (APs), and the EAP775-Wall is its first tri-band Wi-Fi 7 model. Aimed at environments such as meeting rooms and hotels looking to provide in-room network services, it offers plenty of connection options, along with a main 2.5GbE multi-Gig port at the rear. It has another 2.5GbE plus three Gigabit downlink ports in its base.

These add extra versatility as the first two ports offer pass-through services for networking other devices, while the last two Gigabit ports can both provide PoE or one can offer PoE+, allowing the AP to power extra in-room devices such as IP phones. The AP also has Bluetooth 5.3, which is used for quick provisioning of the AP using TP-Link's mobile app.

This BE9300-rated AP offers two spatial streams each for the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands and claims maximum speeds of 688Mbits/sec, 2,882Mbits/sec, and 5,765Mbits/sec, respectively. The US version has a higher BE11000 rating as it supports the 5GHz 240MHz channels, which are not cleared for use in the UK and EU.

Management options are abundant as the EAP775-Wall can be deployed in standalone mode and configured from its own web console. TP-Link's Omada cloud service will appeal to businesses and hotels with multiple APs and sites as they can keep a close eye on them all, along with Omada-enabled switches and routers, from one central web portal.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall review: Design and build quality

Measuring slightly less than 42mm thick, the EAP775-Wall is clothed in a sturdy polycarbonate casing with an aluminium inner shell. The AP ships with a removable and paintable cover that slips over the main unit, and for those that don't have in-wall cabling, there's a small knock-out panel at its base to feed a network cable through.

The kit includes a steel wall mounting plate, and TP-Link takes a leaf from Ubiquiti's book as it provides a cardboard template with a spirit level. The plate has three mounting lugs, and when you slide the AP down over them, an anti-theft latch in its back locks it in place so it can only be removed with the included metal L-shaped key.

Think carefully about your proposed PoE provisioning, as the type of supply will affect a number of features. Giving it the full 802.3bt PoE++ will enable PoE-out on both Gigabit ports and Bluetooth, 802.3at PoE+ will disable PoE-out but leave Bluetooth enabled, while basic 802.3af PoE disables everything - including all three radios.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall review: Standalone mode

The AP is simple to deploy in standalone mode with its web console wizard requesting a new username and password, tightening security by deleting the default admin account and checking for firmware upgrades. Up to eight SSIDs per radio are supported, and the wizard offers the option of configuring one for each radio and providing encryption keys.

The device status page provides plenty of information about the AP, including bar charts of CPU and memory utilisation. Move to the wireless page, and you can see all SSIDs along with details on their associated radios, security, and guest networks, with another view showing all connected clients.

Creating new SSIDs is as swift as selecting a radio, providing a name, and choosing an encryption scheme. Basic captive portals can be assigned to specific SSIDs, although authentication is restricted to a global password or an external Radius server. When guests connect, you can apply a redirect URL and present them with a web page and AUP (acceptable use policy) message they must accept to continue.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall review: Wi-Fi 7 performance

We hooked the EAP775-Wall up to the lab's Zyxel XMG1930-30HP switch, which confirmed a 2.5GbE connection and a PoE++ draw. For Wi-Fi 7 performance testing, we used a Lenovo desktop client running Windows 11 Pro and equipped with a TP-Link Archer TBE550E Wi-Fi 7 PCIe adapter.

To gauge raw TCP performance, we used Microsoft's NTttcp utility, which reported reasonable upstream and downstream speeds of 302MB/sec and 235MB/sec between the client and a server on the 10GbE LAN. Our real-world large file copies between the client and server averaged close-range speeds of 235MB/sec, dropping to 190MB/sec with the AP moved 10 metres away and into an adjoining room.

The AP supports MLO (multi-link operations) for all three radios, and after our client connected using the 2.4/6GHz bands, Windows 11 reported an aggregated connection speed of 6,453Mbits/sec. Subsequent NTttcp tests revealed improvements in upstream speeds to 310MB/sec but no increases in downstream rates.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall review: Cloud management

TP-Link's Omada cloud service will be the preferred choice for most businesses as they can monitor and manage all their APs and other Omada-enabled switches and routers from one central web portal. There are plenty of choices as TP-Link offers four OC-series hardware or free self-hosted software on-site controllers.

Cloud-based controller options see big improvements as TP-Link's Omada Central provides a single platform for network and surveillance management, while Omada Cloud focuses on network devices. Even better, TP-Link offers free Central and Cloud Essentials versions, which provide base sets of management and monitoring features for smaller businesses.

To add the EAP775-Wall to our licensed Omada Cloud Standard account, we scanned its bar code using the Omada iOS app, and once adopted, it took all its settings from the cloud controller and broadcast our predefined SSIDs. Usefully, the AP's downlink ports can be enabled or disabled from the standalone web console or cloud portal, and on the last two, you can remotely control PoE services.

The Omada Network 6 update presents a radically redesigned portal interface with multi-tab dashboards for quick access to topology, WiFi, traffic, and client activity views. It also introduces a network health scoring system in the Overview tab that evaluates all devices and clients to help locate potential performance issues.

Not available in the Omada Essentials edition, the RF scanning service is accessed from the statistics tab in the AP management screen and provides charts of RF scan results for each radio, while interference scans discover all other APs in the vicinity.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall review: Is it worth it?

Available for £146 excluding VAT at Broadbandbuyer, the EAP775-Wall looks comparatively good value. It's very well constructed and delivers a reasonable Wi-Fi 7 performance with a good range that should cover most hotel and meeting rooms.

The extra downlink ports make this AP very versatile although you will need to provide a PoE++ source to get the best from it. It's simple to install and TP-Link offers an impressive range of smart cloud management services with the free editions having particular appeal to smaller businesses.

TP-Link Omada EAP775-Wall specifications

Welcome to our Dell Tehnoloiges World 2026 live blog. Dell Technologies World 2026 is taking place this week at the Venetian Conference Center in Las Vegas, with Michael Dell kicking things off on Monday 18 May with his opening keynote speech.

You can follow along live here with all the updates as they happen, plus catch up with all our coverage of the show so far here.

There's a steady stream of delegates arriving to the Venetian Conference Center already, with just under two hours to go until Michael Dell's Day One opening keynote kicks off. With the title "Unleash the Future", the whole keynote is expected to last for about an hour.

The auditorium is starting to fill up as delegates take their seats ahead of Michael Dell's Day One Keynote. We have about five minutes to go before the Dell Technologies CEO is expected to take to the stage.

Lights, camera, action. We're being treated to a short video reel with absolutely thumping.

And here is the man himself. He's talking up the power of AI – unsurprisingly – claiming that models are "smarter than all of us".

For enterprises, he says, AI is becoming an operating model, not just a tool. He's also spoken about the number of partners Dell Technologies is working with in AI.

Diogo Rau, EVP and chief information and digital officer at pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, has joined Dell on stage. He's talking about the history of Lilly, which is 140 years old now, stretching from the American Civil War through World War I and onwards, including the discovery of penicillin*, synthesising insulin, and using the scientific method in medicine.

(*ITPro is aware of the existence of Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin and father antibiotics)

Fast forwarding, Lilly was one of the earliest investors in supercomputers, having installed a Cray Two system back in the day. It has recently installed one of the most powerful supercomputers in the pharmaceutical industry.

According to Rau, AI and digital twins have become cornerstones of what the company is doing now as a manufacturer of medicines and treatments.

Geekom is among a cohort of increasingly prominent Chinese manufacturers building a diverse collection of snug and supercharged miniature computers that threaten to replace conventional desktop machines. The manufacturer's AMD-based mini PCs have excelled under scrutiny, including the outstanding Geekom A7 Max, while ITPro also described the Geekom A5 2025 Edition as the best mini PC on the market at the time of our review.

Both these machines are aimed at users with higher demands, but the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition is more in line with the Beelink Mini S13 or Acemagic Vista Mini V1. These are relatively stripped-back mini PCs and aren't suitable for the intensive or graphics-based workloads their weightier cousins are; rather, they're largely for day-to-day performance. With a basic Intel Pentium chipset alongside 8GB RAM, and an attractive £299 price tag (if you can find the device on sale), can this compact and affordable mini PC turn heads for those seeking an entry-level option?

Geekom Air12 2026 Edition: Design

Fewer PCs out there are more compact than the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition, with the manufacturer claiming it's the thinnest mini PC ever. That's due to its incredible slenderness, with dimensions measuring 117 x 112 x 34.2mm. Whether or not this is accurate depends on your parameters, however. For instance, the Acemagic Vista Mini V1 boasts a depth of just 32mm – but it isn't currently available.

Its 460g weight is also slightly below average, but it's twice as heavy as the Beelink (275g) and the Acemagic (245g). Nonetheless, this pocket-sized device is delightfully compact and impressively robust, with the chassis able to withstand up to 200kg of pressure. The weight isn't a huge problem at all, given it's light enough to begin with.

The two-toned gray and black chassis gives the device some character, while the four rubber feet handily let it rest on any surface without causing marks or scratches, and subtly rounded corners take the edge off. The look, similar to that of the A5 2025 Edition, is certainly a lot more subtle than a handful of devices out there. The Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q, for instance, is much louder.

There's a decent array of connectivity options with this device, too. The wireless compatibility standards of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 – entirely standard for this power class – won't offer that much future-proofing. Otherwise, you'll benefit from a slew of options front and back. On the face of the device is one USB-C port and one USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and a power button (with a useful LED indicator). On the rear is a DC in, mini DP 1.4, Ethernet port, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports, HDMI 2.0 port, and a USB-C port with DP 1.4 Alt Mode. On the left-hand side is an SD card slot, and on the right a lock slot. It makes for a very strong collection of ports and connectivity options.

Geekom Air12 2026 Edition: Specs and performance

Fitted into the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition is a five-year-old Tiger Lake-U processor created initially for budget notebooks. The Intel Pentium Gold 7505 CPU is as entry-level as you can get, with the 10nm chip featuring two cores with a base frequency of 2GHz and a turbo capacity of 3.5GHz. Geekom has paired this with an Intel UHD Graphics chip, 8GB DDR4 SDRAM, and a 256GB PCIe Gen 3 SSD. By today's standards, you shouldn't ever consider a configuration weaker than this – and even this is hard to justify for anything beyond basic performance, unless you can't stretch your budget beyond £300.

The late-2020 CPU featured in this mini PC has been designed for efficiency and better performance in simple, single-core tasks rather than competence in multi-core processing. This is reflected in our testing with Geekbench 6, with the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition registering a single-core result of 1,460 and a multi-core result of 2,823. Performance is generally in line with Intel Processor N150-fitted mini PCs.

The Beelink Mini S13 Mini PC, for instance, registered 1,242 and 3,029 while the AceMagic Vista Mini V1 scored 1,278 and 3,169. Both these models are a tad cheaper at the time of writing, so evaluating performance depends on how you plan on using these machines. Given they're suited for workloads that utilize just one core, the Geekom Air12 may have the edge with its slightly better single-core performance.

An OpenCL score of 7,807 for GPU performance, meanwhile, is weak – especially when you compare it with the Acemagic Kron Mini K1's result of 9,630 with the same graphics chip. Finally, we should note the pretty poor SSD speeds of 557MB/s for reads and 480MB/s for writes. This is in line with what we saw from the Beelink's 510MB/s and 480MB/s, but considerably less than speeds of at least 3,000MB/s and 2,000MB/s for reads and writes in mid-range and higher-end mini PCs (that, admittedly, cost double the price).

Geekom Air12 2026 Edition: Is it worth it?

Price is king with entry-level mini PCs, and whether the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition is worth it depends on how good a deal you can get. We simply wouldn't consider anything higher than £299 – which is even slightly pricier than the Beelink Mini S13 Mini PC and the Acemagic Vista Mini V1. But its form factor is delightfully miniature and robust, its single-core performance is marginally better thanks to the Intel Pentium Gold CPU, and you can take advantage of a useful selection of ports for all contexts.

The simple fact is that your money will only get you so far in this power class. Increasing your budget by even just £100-£200 suddenly opens the door to modern hardware, better SSD speeds, and higher hardware standards. But if you're operating under a strict and limited budget, the Geekom Air12 2026 Edition is a solid entry-level mini PC, especially if you can bag a good bargain on one.

Geekom Air12 2026 Edition specifications

When we reviewed the 2025 MSI Prestige 16 AI, we declared it to be "one of the best business laptops on the market". Reading back over our review, that's an opinion we stand by.

The new 2026 model differs in some important ways. The IPS screen has been replaced by OLED, the AMD chipset has been replaced by one from Intel, the weight and thickness have both dropped, and the price. The quality of the sound system and the battery life have both gone up.

That's the good news. The bad news, such as it is, is that the numeric keypad has disappeared, and performance levels are lower. Does that make the new machine a better buy? If you can't be bothered to read the entire review, the short answer is yes.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Design

Compared to the 2025 model, the new Prestige is an altogether more curvaceous affair. Out have gone the flat slab-sides to be replaced by a much more rounded profile. At 1.59Kg and 13.9mm, the new model is considerably lighter and thinner than the 2025 model. Despite that, the new Prestige is still an all-metal build and is still impressively solid with very little flex to be felt in either the body or lid.

The new model is again MIL-STD-801H resistant to various degrees of vibration, temperature change, humidity, dust ingress, and shock. There's still only one colorway, a rather dour affair which MSI calls Platinum Grey, though to our eyes it's more silver. The new cursive logo script etched on the lid is a nice design touch. Whatever the aesthetic qualities of the exterior, it does a good job at keeping greasy fingerprints at bay, which, in our opinion, is more important than a snazzy paint job.

For such a slender machine, there's a solid selection of ports. On the left, there are two Thunderbolt 4 ports and an HDMI 2.1 video output, while on the right, there are two 5Gbps USB-A ports and a 3.5 combo audio jack. Some might argue that the USB-A ports should be faster, but it's hardly a deal-breaker. One thing the 2025 model had that the new one doesn't is a memory card slot, which we think is a shame. The Intel Killer BE1775 modem is bang on the money, though, supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth v6.0.

Getting inside the Prestige is a straightforward operation, but once in, all you can do is swap out the M.2 2280 SSD, remove the battery, and blow dust out of the fans. The RAM and wireless card are all fixed in place, and there's no space for a second SSD. Speaking of SSDs, the 1TB Phison drive in our test machine performed decently enough, recording sequential read and write speeds of 4,761MB/s and 2,808MB/s respectively.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

Some users will bemoan that MSI has ditched the numeric keypad, but given that it felt just a little cramped and offset the touchpad, we think MSI has made the right call. Physically, the new keyboard is difficult to criticise. The base is solid, the typing action perfectly weighted, the keycap graphics are models of clarity, and the three-stage white backlight that shines through the translucent walls of the keys is ideal, no matter what level of ambient light you find yourself working in.

Dead centre below the keyboard sits a large 160 x 100mm Mylar touchpad. It's a mechanical affair but none the worse for that. The click-action is light and clean, if just a wee bit on the noisy side.

The touchpad supports what MSI calls Action Functions. So a double-tap in the top right opens the MSI control centre, and one on the top left opens the calculator. Swiping up and down along the left edge adjusts the display brightness, do the same on the right and the volume changes.

Swiping along the top edge fast forwards and rewinds video, doing the same on the bottom flips through pages. You can also set custom actions or app launches when you swipe inwards from centre left, centre right, and centre top. It's a rather handy feature.

There's no want of biometric options with the webcam supporting Windows Hello IR facial recognition and the power button housing a fingerprint scanner. The webcam itself is nothing out of the ordinary, and the best it can do in terms of video is 1080p and 30fps, but it's bright and colorful and reacts well to changes in ambient light. We've seen a lot worse on laptops costing a lot more.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Display and speakers

The 2,880 x 1,800 120Hz Samsung-made OLED display may not be the brightest we've encountered, peaking at 385cd/m2 in SDR mode and 635cdm/2 in HDR, but it is very colorful with gamut volumes of 164.9% sRGB, 116.8 DCI-P3, and 113.6% Adobe RGB.

Using the MSI Centre S control panel, you can lock the display to the Display P3, Adobe RGB, and sRGB profiles, and doing so returns very good average Delta E variances of 0.6, 1.3, and 1, respectively.

That's by some margin the best color accuracy we've seen from a laptop with this sort of price sticker. There's also a Movie profile, which maximises color saturation, and two settings designed to reduce eye strain called Anti-Blue and Office.

Is the OLED display in the 2026 model better than the IPS panel in last year's model? The IPS display is faster at 165Hz and brighter, but we think 120Hz is more than adequate, and we prefer the sumptuous colors of an OLED panel and the superior HDR performance (the screen is VESA DisplayHDR True Black 600 certified), so we'd have no hesitation answering "yes".

The screen has a gloss finish that can be a little too reflective in some circumstances, especially when outside in sunlight, but that's a price worth paying for the immersively pellucid images that a glossy OLED display can deliver.

Traditionally, speaker systems have been something of an Achilles' heel for MSI's business machines, but the new Prestige is much improved. The sound system consists of two 2W woofers and two 2W full-range drivers.

Despite being all buried deep inside the casing and firing downwards, they produce a detailed and punchy soundscape with a useful amount of low-end bass. The clarity and volume pay dividends in Zoom and Teams calls, and the overall sound quality makes listening to music a rather enjoyable experience.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Specs and performance

Inside the Prestiage 16 AI+, you'll find an Intel Core Ultra 7 355. This sits toward the top of the lower half of the Panther Lake hierarchy and has 8 cores, 4 of which are deemed Performance and 4 Low Power Efficient. The chipset also features the Intel Graphics iGPU with 4 Xe cores, a 49 TOPS NPU, and 32GB of soldered LPDDR5x RAM.

That's a combination that quite clearly is not going to deliver the sort fort of performance we saw from the Core Ultra X7 385H and Arc B390 combo in the Acer Swift 16 AI, which boasts 16 CPU cores and 12 Xe GPU cores.

In our Handbrake-based 4K multimedia benchmark, the MSI scored 238 points to the Acer's 486, the difference mainly attributable to the superior graphics performance of the Arc integrated GPU.

For basic productivity, there's nothing at all wrong with the MSI's performance, it's 4K score is on a par with the likes of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s (255) and M4 MacBook Air (247).

However, machines like the new M5 MacBook Air and the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2-powered Asus Zenbook A16 (which scored 325 and 375, respectively) have the legs on the new MSI, though both are considerably more expensive if you match the storage and RAM.

In the Geekbench 6 tests, the MSI scored 2,715 in the single-core test, 11,422 in the multi-core test, and 23,606 in the OpenCL GPU test. Again, for comparison, the Acer scored 2,836, 15,936, and 55,780, proving, if proof were needed, that there just ain't no substitute for more cores.

The difference in the graphics performance is underlined by the speed at which MSI ran the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modelling benchmark: 18fps compared to 36fps on the Acer.

It's also worth pointing out here that the 2026 Prestige is less powerful than the 2025 model, with its AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 and Radeon 880M underpinnings. That scored 437 points in the 4K benchtest.

MSI's international website alludes to a 2026 model with the Intel Ultra X9 388H CPU and Arc B390 GPU, which would no doubt at least match the 2025 model, but at the time of writing, we've no details regarding UK availability or price.

In the new MSI machine's favour, it can run flat out without even a hint of thermal throttling, produces very little fan noise, and barely gets warm to the touch even around the vent grille on the underside. You could almost be forgiven for thinking the Prestige 16 AI is passively cooled.

The upside of running a more modest chipset is longer battery life. In our standard battery test, which involves looping a video in VLC with the display set to 170cd/m2, the 81Wh battery inside the MSI kept the lights on for 17 hours and 45 minutes.

That's 2 hours 30 minutes better than the M5 MacBook Air, 2 hours and 15 minutes better than the Acer Aspire, and the same, give or take two minutes, as the Asus Zenbook A16.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Is it worth it?

For £1,250, the new MSI Prestige 16 AI is nigh on impossible to criticise. The screen and speaker system are definitely a step forward from the 2025 model, and though you no longer get a MicroSD slot, there's an extra USB-A port to make up for it. The keyboard and touchpad are both top-notch, and the battery life is excellent.

The only area where the new Prestige lacks is in graphics performance when compared to the Radeon 880M-equipped 2025 model and the Arc B390-equipped Panther Lake competition. But of course, the new MSI is quite a bit cheaper than all those alternatives.

Hopefully, MSI will release the Intel Ultra X9 388H / Arc B390 model in the UK to satisfy those who want to run demanding graphics jobs or play a little surreptitious Cyberpunk 2077 at lunchtime, but for everyone else, this model will do very nicely indeed.

MSI Prestige 16 AI+: Specs

Google has teased a new line-up of laptops coming later in the year called Googlebooks.

In what was a brief announcement at the Android Show, Googlebooks appear to be a confirmation of a long-running rumor: a new operating system based on a fusion of ChromeOS and Android, and essentially a Gemini-native successor to Chromebooks.

“We’re bringing together the best of Android, which comes with powerful apps on Google Play and a modern OS that’s designed for Intelligence, and ChromeOS, which comes with the world’s most popular browser,” Google’s senior director for laptops and tablets, Alex Kuscher, wrote in a blog post.

“The result is Googlebook: a new category of laptops built with Gemini’s helpfulness at its core, designed to work seamlessly with the devices in your life and powered by premium hardware. We’re sharing a sneak peek into the Googlebook experience today and will have a lot more to share later this year.”

What to expect with Googlebooks

Googlebooks will be the first laptops designed “from the ground up” for Gemini Intelligence, the company said in its announcement. The first Googlebooks are expected in the fall from the usual vendors such Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

Gemini and its AI capabilities will assist you the moment you open a Googlebook laptop, the company said. One of the first new features is the “Magic Pointer” which adds extra functions as you hover the cursor over various apps.

The cursor will also come alive with “just a wiggle”, according to Google. The wiggle brings up quick and contextual suggestions that depend on where it is on the screen.

Pointing at a date in Gmail, for example, will suggest setting up a meeting. Or selecting two images can create a visualization; the presentation showed a couch being placed in a living room.

Many of the features appeared to be more about everyday life, rather than business use cases. Though it isn’t hard to imagine where capabilities like custom widgets or remote mobile access can help at work.

The latter will allow you to access your mobile from the laptop.

The announcement does raise a few questions, particularly for the future of Chromebooks, but we expect more details to come over the summer.

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Conventional enterprise laptops can often feel bland and stuffy, but the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i offers something a little different. The Lunar Lake-powered 2-in-1 hybrid adopts a sleek and stylish design aesthetic while packing plenty of the same enterprise features you would expect from the Elitebook series – namely, it's similar to the clamshell HP EliteBook laptops.

The key difference here, of course, is the 360-degree hinges that can transform your device into a tablet at a moment's notice, whether you want to use it as a touchscreen or a second display in your setup. Helpfully, it's also a little lighter and trimmer, making it a great option for mobile working, especially for those working with sensitive material. Questions remain as to whether its display is strong and vibrant enough to justify being used as a tablet and whether its battery life offers more than the clamshell version, so you can rely on this 2-in-1 when away from the desk.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Design and display

HP's design aesthetic for its EliteBook family is clean and sophisticated, and the manufacturer brings the same minimalist look and feel to the EliteBook X Flip G1i. It's practically indistinguishable from its cousins, including the likes of the EliteBook 8 G1i or the EliteBook X G1i. Although you aren't likely to stand out from the crowd, there's no reason to be disappointed with a clean and elegant overall look. The silver aluminum chassis exudes freshness, while its rounded corners give it a softer and more accessible feel – akin to that you might feel when using a MacBook.

Its dimensions are consistent with what we'd expect from a machine like this, and impressively, it's even thinner than the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition (which doesn't feature an HDMI port). But its weight is on the heavy side at 1.4kg. For instance, Lenovo's 2-in-1 is 1.32kg, and the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is 1.34kg.

Generally, the device is well constructed and robust, which is the least you could ask for. That's the case whether you're using it as a laptop or if you bend the display back and use it in a variety of tablet modes. The one element that's a bit of a letdown is that the display does feel a tad loose when you tap it too firmly. This is still within the bounds of acceptability – and it's certainly an issue in most 2-in-1s – but firming this up would have given the EliteBook that extra edge.

The display itself isn't completely flush against the lid and instead features a plastic outline that protrudes slightly. Although visually unappealing, it's smart in the sense that it prevents the screen from being marked by the keyboard when shutting it – which it does with a firm snap thanks to the magnetics. Another oddity is that the end of the lid and the main body don't fully line up. It's a minor, and mostly visual, complaint, rather than a functional one, but it stood out nonetheless.

Our feelings about the display itself are generally mixed. The review unit we tested featured an entry-level 1,900 x 1,200 IPS screen with HDR and a 60Hz refresh rate – although you can also buy this laptop with a 2.5K (2,560 x 1,600-pixel) panel with a much smoother 120Hz refresh rate. Both are stated to be 400 nits bright (a little above average), but we imagine the user experience differences are stark, with added sharpness and smoothness rendering it a much better proposition.

The version of the display that we tested, however, only reached 316 cd/m2, which is a little below average. Color accuracy had a better showing with an excellent 100% coverage of the sRGB gamut, backed up by an excellent 76.4% and 88.1% coverage of the Adobe and DCI-P3 gamuts, for photo and video editing, respectively (where scores above 70% and 80% indicate adequacy for professional color work). This pairs with an outstanding 0.18 black level and relatively high 1,694:1 contrast ratio (great results in a non-OLED screen). Capping this off is a 0.29 average Delta-E result and a maximum of 1.05, generally in line with the best laptop displays.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Performance and battery life

Powering the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i is an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor and an Intel Arc Graphics chip alongside 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB SSD. The integrated NPU can also squeeze out a decent 47 TOPS, which is enough to power most innate AI workloads. Unfortunately for the Lunar Lake generation, power is a little compromised for the sake of efficiency – and that's something we certainly noticed in testing this 2-in-1.

Testing this machine using Geekbench 6 produced a single-threaded result of 2,464 and a multi-core score of 10,239. It's not much of a leap from machines built in 2023 and beyond. For example, the last HP Spectre x360 14 scored 2,110 and 10,480 with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip. But this model only offered 11 TOPS of AI power and a comparatively weak GPU. By contrast, the EliteBook X Flip G1i's graphics card scored a solid 28,966 – which is more than usable for visual workloads. Other 2-in-1s that we previously tested hit scores a little higher, including the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition (30,830) and the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (33,349).

On the other hand, this machine's battery life puts it in a much better light, having lasted 16hrs and 27mins in our looped video playback test. It's a decent score compared with the average machine featuring the same Intel chipset. It's roughly an hour longer than the Yoga 2-in-1, for instance, and an hour shorter than the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14. In today's market, anything above roughly 14-15 hours can be considered a good battery life, although there are a handful of machines out there capable of beating 20-plus hours.

The SSD speeds are slightly below average at 5,152MB/s and 4,505MB/s for reads and writes – which is much lower than we would normally see in HP machines, which usually score close to 7,000MB/s for reads and more than 5,550MB/s for writes.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Features

We generally enjoyed using the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i's keyboard. The travel distance is a little on the shorter side, but not as short as some of the consumer-grade devices, and there's a huge amount of snappy force feedback with each keystroke. There's also the downside of a higher resistance with such heavy feedback, meaning it becomes harder to get into a proper touch typing flow. That said, it's still eminently enjoyable to use. We appreciated the inclusion of a full-sized Enter key, but were disappointed that the PG UP and PG DN keys were crammed just above the Left and Right arrows. There are no surprises otherwise, with the Function keys giving an array of useful toggles – including F2 to activate the screen guard that dims the display and decimates the viewing angle in such a way that prevents shoulder surfing and ensures privacy on the move. There's also a shortcut with F11 that opens the MyHP control dock. The EliteBook touchpads are perfectly sized, well-positioned in the center of the machine, and look far better than most you'll find in laptops. But they suffer from a glassy surface that's far too slippery and doesn't offer enough friction for more precise cursor movements. Left-clicking and right-clicking, however, is perfect with plenty of travel distance and feedback.

You'll also benefit from a full complement of ports – which is hard to pull off in a 14-inch machine. The ports include HDMI 2.1, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 and 3.5mm headphone jack on the left-hand side of the chassis, another USB-C port and a USB-A port, in addition to a Nano lock slot and a SIM slot for mobile communications on the right-hand side. Wireless options include Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. Other than a lack of an SD card slot, there's pretty much everything you would need in this impressively compact device.

As with HP's EliteBook family of security-centric laptops, you'll get access to the HP Wolf Security suite alongside a one-year subscription, alongside a plethora of apps like HP Sure Start, Sure Run, Sure Recover, Sure Click, and Sure Admin. Thanks to a 5MP AI infrared camera, you can benefit from facial recognition with Windows Hello, onlooker alerts (notifications that warn you when you're being watched), and presence sensing (meaning the machine can sleep or wake depending on your proximity). There's even a fingerprint scanner built into the power button.

HP also claims that the firmware is protected against quantum computing hacks thanks to the HP Endpoint Security Controller – an isolated, dedicated microprocessor that protects the BIOS. Chances are you aren't going to face those in the wild for a good few years. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Is it worth it?

You're going to be drawn to a machine like this if you're a professional who needs to work on the move and finds value in the configurable form factor – whether you're presenting, viewing content, using it as a secondary display, or just want the option. Although a little on the weighty side, it's a compact and sufficiently stylish device with an excellent build quality and premium feel. Thankfully, if you're working in sensitive areas in particular, the mobility that this machine encourages is also met with a raft of protective and safeguarding features that tries to give you the freedom and peace of mind to work confidently and capably while on the move, without looking over your shoulder; indeed, there's a feature for that.

The display that we tested (a basic 1,900 x 1,200-pixel panel) punched above its weight, so we'd expect good things if you wanted to upgrade to the higher-quality version. The hardware, however, is a little bit of a letdown. That's common with mobile Lunar Lake processors, but the trade-off is better power efficiency with a battery life that will last a full working day, and then some. Overall, there's nothing particularly standout – but nothing particularly worrisome about this solid and sophisticated enterprise laptop that will put even the most paranoid professional's mind at ease.

HP ZBook X G1i review: Specifications