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Asus ROG Phone 5 review: A gaming phone with little compromise

(Pocket-lint) – Gaming phones have become something of a fixture in the Android space; while many flagship devices push their gaming prowess, for a select few, gaming is their raison d’être, their everything.

The ROG Phone is one such device, pushing Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand and weaving into that the experience Asus has gained from its regular phones. And in the fourth-generation of this phone Asus is more ambitious than ever.

Here’s why the Asus ROG Phone 5 is not only a great gaming phone, it’s a great phone outside of that too.

Design & Build

Dimensions: 173 x 77 x 9.9mm / Weight: 239g
Under-display optical fingerprint scanner
3.5mm headphone jack
ROG Vision rear display

Gaming phones often show their colours when it comes to the design. Aside from being large – which the ROG Phone 5 definitely is – you’ll often find more overt graphics and emotive finishes rather than just being a safe black or grey.

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The ROG Phone 5 doesn’t go to an extreme though: from the front it just looks like a normal phone. Flip it over and you’re treated to subtle design touches etched into the rear glass, which also gives some indicator of where the touch points are for the AirTriggers (which Asus describes as “ultrasonic sensor zones that can be customised to perform different functions, such as reproducing actions in specific games and launching specific apps”. We touch upon these in more detail in the last section of this review).

The thing that gives the game away is the ROG Vision display on the rear of the phone. There are two different versions of the display, with a dot display on the regular ROG Phone models and a slightly smaller but more sophisticated display panel on the Pro and Ultimate models – the Pro is shown in this review.

ROG Phone 5 comes in regular, Pro and Ultimate editions

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That blows the subtlety out of the water, allowing you to have RBG illumination on the back of the phone – with the Pro and Ultimate models offering a wider range of graphics and animations – all of which can be controlled through the Armoury Crate app on the phone, just like Asus PC components.

That control includes turning the Vision display off if you don’t want it – but you’ll soon forget it’s there until people mention it. It’s on the back of the phone and it’s rare to be looking at the back of the phone when you’re doing something, so let’s not dwell on it.

There are a couple of other quirks around the body: The USB-C on the base of the phone is offset to one side rather than central (and we don’t know exactly why), while there’s a secondary USB-C on the side of the phone. This secondary USB sits alongside the contact point to power the AeroActive Cooler 5 – the clip-on fan – and both have a rubber seal that presses into the side to keep out dust.

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This cover is probably the worst piece of design implementation on the ROG Phone 5. The fact that there are a couple of spares in the box tell you everything you need to know: you’re going to lose this cover, because it’s a separate piece of rubber.

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We’ve found it flapping off when pulling the phone from a pocket, and just when handling the device. We’re constantly pushing it back into place and a couple of times we’ve found it missing and then located it in the bottom of a pocket.

An out of box experience all phones can learn from

One of the great things about gaming phones is what you get for your money. There are a whole range of phones on offer and none are really expensive compared to flagships from brands like Samsung and Apple. The ROG Phone 5 starts at £799 in the UK – and that’s for a 12GB RAM model with 256GB storage, not the bottom of the range loadout.

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But it’s not just about the core device, it’s about the rest of the experience. Lavishly packaged, opening the ROG Phone 5 is an event. From the cool comic book graphics of inside of the box, that flow through into the startup process for the phone, there’s a sense of theatre. It’s a reward for your custom and it’s so much better than just sliding a phone out of a box.

You also get more in the box: the 65W charger that will deliver a fast charge; the case that brings some grip to what is, admittedly, a slippery phone given its massive size; and the clip-on AeroActive Cooler 5 fan, which integrates a kickstand, two physical buttons, and another RGB logo.

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Some might baulk at this as more landfill, but some companies will make you pay for the charger – and here you’re getting a powerful charger you can use with your other devices too.

Display

6.78-inch AMOLED panel
Up to 144Hz refresh rate
2448 x 1080 resolution

There’s a 6.78-inch display in the ROG Phone 5. It’s big by any standard, with Asus hanging onto the bezels top and bottom. The top bezel integrates the front-facing camera, so there’s no need for a notch or punch-hole.

It’s also a flat display, all practical design decisions made to give you the best gaming experience, ensuring that you get as much visual space as possible. Given how problematic we found the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra’s display, we’re just fine with the ROG Phone 5 going flat.

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The ROG Phone 5 models all stick to a Full HD resolution and while devices like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra can technically produce finer detail, generally speaking that makes little difference. We can’t fault the ROG Phone’s display for detail.

It also offers refresh rates up to 144Hz (if you have any games that support that, there’s a full list on the ROG website), with options to select 60 or 120Hz – or Auto, which will pick the refresh rate based on the content.

HDR 10+ is supported to bring pop to the visuals for high dynamic range content, while that AMOLED panel provides rich colour visuals, with the option to tune that to your preferences.

It’s a great display and about the only thing that separates it from the best displays on the market is the peak brightness. It offers 800 nits, which is still bright enough for most, but Samsung’s top-end offerings will outshine this model – most notable when outside in sunny conditions.

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Flanking the display top and bottom are dual stereo speakers, while there’s also a 3.5mm headphone socket for those wanting to go wired. The speaker performance is stellar, amongst the best you’ll find on a smartphone. It’s rich and immersive, with substantial bass and volume that means you don’t need headphones to get the most from your content.

Hardware & Performance

Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 platform
8GB-18GB RAM, 128GB-512GB storage
6000mAh battery, dual USB-C 65W wired charging

The fact the ROG Phone 5 houses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 platform makes it especially good value for money – as you’re getting the latest flagship hardware that will embarrass some other phones.

Of course it comes in at different price points, with RAM and storage leveraging the price, although not all models will be available in all regions. We actually tested the 16GB/512GB model (the ROG Phone 5 Pro – a model that isn’t planned for the UK; although there’s a 16GB/512GB version of the standard ROG Phone 5, the only difference being the type of display you get on the back of the phone).

The performance is also exemplary. There are a number of elements to this. It’s got that great hardware and, as a result, we’ve found the gaming performance to be outstanding.

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This is a phone that eats hours of Call of Duty Mobile or PUBG Mobile, giving solid gameplay, combined with those design elements and some software enhancements that feel like they give you edge, or at least give you the opportunity to establish new preferences thanks to the bespoke gaming options offered.

We also didn’t find the ROG Phone 5 to get excessively hot under load, despite the option of the clip-on fan.

But the important point about performance is that the ROG Phone 5 also runs fast and smooth outside of gaming. We’ve seen gaming phones that drop the ball when it comes to simple tasks, because of poor software. The ROG Phone 5 is stable, which makes for a great experience.

There’s a huge 6000mAh battery, which is fitting for a phone of this size, again with Asus splitting the battery and enabling 65W wired charging. That makes for really fast charging, with the option to bypass charging – and just have the power used for the system rather than recharging the battery.

Again, this is an option for gamers, so you’re not charging (which produces heat) and loading the system (which produces heat) and could potentially lead to a drop in performance.

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A big battery means big battery life. In regular use the ROG Phone 5 will easily see you through the day and into the next. It’s not a charge every night type of phone. Even with a couple of hours of gaming thrown in – at top brightness and max settings – battery life isn’t a worry. That’s a great position not just for a gaming phone, but any smartphone.

There are power modes available, with X Mode firing up full power to let things rip, and a Dynamic Mode to keep things balanced. You can customise the power modes to suit your preferences with things like network, display, performance, and other controls all selectable.

There’s an under-display fingerprint scanner that’s fast to unlock, while calls comes through loud and clear too – with no detected problems with Wi-Fi or 5G connectivity.

Cameras

Triple rear camera system:
- Main: 64-megapixels, f/1.8 aperture, 0.8μm pixel size
- Ultra-wide: 13MP, f/2.4
- Macro: 5MP, f/2.0
Front-facing selfie camera:
- 24-megapixels, f/2.5 aperture

The camera on any gaming phone is often something of an afterthought. The focus is on the experience of gaming – so the camera is seen as less of a focus. Despite that, Asus is pushing the ROG Phone 5 as having a triple camera system.

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The main camera is a 64-megapixel sensor, using pixel combining to produce a 16-megapixel image as standard. You can shoot in full resolution, but you have to dig into the menu to find that option, which no one is ever going to do.

There’s an ultra-wide lens, giving the equivalent of 0.6x, although the quality isn’t great, with visible blurring around the edges if there’s any detail there – but fine for open shots of expansive landscapes.

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1.0X MAIN CAMERA

The final camera is a macro camera, which we’re generally non-plussed about. As on other devices, macro cameras seem to be thrown in to make up the numbers – and that’s what it feels like here too.

So back the main camera and the performance is reasonable, producing naturally balanced pictures, although perhaps not getting the most out of scenes and not showing as much pop as other cameras we’ve seen can offer.

Low-light shooting offers that slow exposure so you can watch the image get lighter, which we like – and it will take those shots automatically in low light, which means people will actually use it.

There’s a portrait mode for blurring the background that works well enough, although it seems to soften the background with over-exposure which makes results look a little clumsy.

Portrait works on the front and back cameras and we generally prefer the results without portrait mode – and you can’t adjust the levels of blur after the fact, so it’s worth taking a few photos and figuring out what gives you pleasing results so you can change the settings before you take the picture. The selfie camera is generally good, although images quickly get softer in lower light conditions and aren’t good when it gets dark.

There’s no optical zoom on offer here, although you can pinch-to-zoom from the main camera out to 8x. It’s not an especially elegant system and the results are typical of digital zoom, with quality dropping as you increase the “magnification”.

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One of the reasons for the high-resolution sensor – apart from for the benefit of the spec sheet – is to allow 8K video capture, on top of the 4K 60fps option.

The important thing about the camera is that it gets the job done: while other phones will sell themselves on camera features above all else, that’s not really the ethos behind the ROG Phone 5. This phone is all about the power and the gaming experience. So, yes, there are more engaging cameras elsewhere, but at the same time, this Asus will give you perfectly good results in most situations.

Software and custom gaming options

Android 11
Armoury Crate
Custom gaming controls

As we’ve said previously, the software on the ROG Phone 5 runs smooth and fast. We’ve experienced no problems with the tweaks and changes that Asus has made over Google’s Android operating system, and it’s easy to swing in with Google versions of apps rather than supplied alternatives.

It’s running Android 11 too, so the latest version of Google’s OS – although Asus doesn’t quite have the update record that a company like Samsung now offers, so there’s no telling how long it would be before it moves to Android 12 once that’s released later down the line.

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What’s more relevant here is the gaming software and the options that controls. We’ve mentioned Armoury Crate, which will let you control things like the ROG Vision display on the back of the phone, and act as a launch pad for your games.

Within each game you can see how long you’ve spent playing that game, but more usefully you have a record of profiles for that game. You can, for example, restrict background CPU usage when playing a particular game, change the touch performance, turn off background network syncing – all designed to ensure you have the optimal gaming experience.

That you can customise this to each game is great. For something like a shooter where connection and touch matters more, you might want to restrict everything else. For something casual like Pokemon Go, you might be happy to have everything else on your phone happening. It’s freedom to choose, rather than one gaming mode fits all.

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Within games you have access to the Game Genie dashboard too, allowing you to perform essential things, like tweak the brightness, turn off alerts or calls, speed up your phone – and block navigation gestures so you don’t accidentally exit the game.

There’s the option to have stats always showing – CPU and GPU usage, battery, temperature, fps – and you can drag these to anywhere on the screen so they are out of the way.

But it’s the AirTriggers that are the biggest differentiator from other phones, giving you a range of touch zones around the body of the phone that you can customise. That also includes two physical buttons on the AeroActive Cooler accessory too – which might convince some people to use it, as those buttons feel more positive than the touch areas of the phone’s casing.

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The Cooler buttons are great for things like dropshotting in shooters, because you can hit the deck while still firing, and get back to your feet, all without having to touch anything on the screen – which is a real advantage during games.

There are two ultrasonic buttons on the top of the phone, like shoulder buttons, with haptic feedback. These can offer a full range of programmable options – taps, swipes, slides – and they can be divided into two buttons each side, or you can programme and assign a macro to that button for a sequence you might use in a game.

Then there’s motion support, which you can assign to controls in the game – like forward tilt to reload, or whatever you like.

There’s also (on the Pro and Ultimate models only) rear touch zones you can use for slide input for your fingers on the rear of the phone.

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The challenge is how you incorporate all these tools to make things easier for you during games – although setting them up is easy enough and each setup is unique to each game.

Even if you just find one thing that’s useful, then you’re a step ahead. That might be using an additional AirTrigger for an on-screen control you find hard to hit – or that you can then remove from the display so you have less UI in the way of the game.

Verdict

The thing that really hits home about the Asus ROG Phone 5 is that it’s not just a great gaming phone: it’s a great phone full stop.

Yes, you can’t avoid the fact that the majority of phones are now based around the camera experience – and that’s one area that the ROG Phone 5 doesn’t really go to town on. But with huge battery and display, this is a great media phone in addition to a gaming delight.

For keen gamers, there’s a market of phone choices out there – and the ROG Phone 5 should definitely be high up your shortlist. For everyone else, if you can accept that this Asus is designed for gamers first, it’s still an awful lot of phone for the money.

Also consider

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Nubia Red Magic 6

This gaming phone attempts to steal the show with a 165Hz display. Despite being a powerful device that’s good value for money, it does oversell the cameras and also brings with it some software quirks you’ll need to work around.

Read our full review

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Writing by Chris Hall. Editing by Mike Lowe.

Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition

Our Verdict

The new Atom’s headline ability is headphone playback, but don’t underestimate its value as a preamplifier. It’s a classy and versatile addition to Naim’s Uniti range.

For

Top-notch streaming
Great headphone stage
Also a great smart preamp

Against

No HDMI ARC input

Sound+Image mag review

(Image credit: Future)

This review originally appeared in Sound+Image magazine, one of What Hi-Fi?’s Australian sister publications. Click here for more information on Sound+Image, including digital editions and details on how you can subscribe.

UK-based Naim Audio became first renowned for its amplification, proving the importance of power quality from the early 1970s. Three decades later Naim was also quick to recognise the future of file-based and streaming music, and today enjoys great success with its Mu-so wireless speakers, while the Uniti range of all-in-one streaming systems deliver simple but definitely hi-fi ‘just-add-speakers’ solutions.

In a way the Uniti players brought together everything Naim has learned – the wireless, multiroom and control elements of the Mu-sos, with the solid hi-fi amplification developed over decades, including more recent trickle-down tech from the developmental fillip of investment made in the company’s no-holds-barred Statement amplifier project.

Now here comes the Uniti Atom Headphone Edition (£2399/$3290/AU$4299), which takes the smallest of the existing Uniti all-in-ones and does something rather unexpected for Naim – it throws out the part on which the company built its reputation, the amplification.

10 of the best British amplifiers of all time

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

Features

Well, that’s not entirely true. There are no amplifiers for loudspeakers, as provided on the other Uniti units (excepting only the Uniti Core, which adds networked hard-drive storage to the range).

But as the ‘HE’ of the new name suggests, it caters instead to headphones. On the front there are headphone outputs for jacks of full-size quarter-inch (6.5mm in new money) and 4.4mm Penteconn balanced connections, while round the back there’s a second balanced connection on 4-pin XLR.

We’re told that for this product Naim has used an all-new amp implementation designed especially so it delivers the best headphone amplifier experience, including a new transformer design to provide power tailored to the needs of the headphone amplification.

But this is not only a headphone amp. It’s also a preamplifier, and Naim has optimised its preamplifier performance also, “including elements originally used in our flagship Statement Amplifier” it says.

As a preamplifier it offers one analogue input pair on RCA sockets, and then digital inputs: two optical and one coaxial, plus USB-A slots both front and rear. There’s also Bluetooth available, which includes the aptX codec.

What doesn’t it have? It loses from the original Atom the HDMI ARC connection which was handy to play audio from your TV, and there’s still no USB-B connection to play direct from computer.

But its outputs are expanded, its variable preamplifier output available on both unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR outputs to feed your downstream amplification. This could play straight to power amps, since there is full volume control in the Atom HE – either from the remote, from its app, or from the heavenly Naim knob which sits on top, the only disadvantage of this positioning being that it is hidden when the unit goes on a good rack shelf, though its minimal height of 9cm means you should still be able to squeeze your hand in there for a knob spin when the urge presents itself.

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

Streaming

And in addition to physical inputs, this Naim has all the streaming prowess of other Uniti members, and that’s to say as complete a set of protocols as you’ll find anywhere – so many, indeed, that when the range originally launched, it was significantly delayed by the paper trail for all the licensing involved.

So this includes being easily addressed from any Spotify app, free or paid, or using Apple’s AirPlay 2 to stream the output of a Mac or any app on an iOS app, and Chromecast too, for point-to-point streaming from Android devices. Those with music libraries on a PC can use its UPnP ‘server’ function. It’s also Roon Ready, and although the Roon-direct licensing was still going through when it arrived for review, it was nevertheless available in Roon via its Chromecast and AirPlay abilities.

Then there are the services available within the Naim app itself. These include internet radio and podcasts, Tidal, and Qobuz (the latter newly available to Australia). You may note these are services which offer higher-quality subscriptions; Naim emphasises this quality also in its internet radio app, with a section devoted to higher-rate streams than the often grungy desk-compressed pop stations.

And one last batch of capabilities – the Atom HE is multiroom-capable with other Naim equipment including the Mu-so wireless speakers, so you can have music playing in unison (and Uniti) throughout your home. Chromecast and AirPlay 2 offer other paths to multiroom and multi-device playback.

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Setting up

Having previously reviewed the standard Uniti Atom, we found set-up here to be a breeze. You have to pair the remote control by holding it to the full-colour five-inch front-panel panel display while you push ‘Home’ for three seconds. Our Naim app, already installed on an iPad Pro, needed a reinstall before it saw the Atom HE on the network and delivered it a firmware update, losing contact until the update was complete.

Beyond that, we had absolutely zero operational issues, and indeed throughout our testing we were able to generate no criticisms at all – not one – because Naim has honed its highly versatile and potentially complex operation to something near perfection.

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(Image credit: Future)

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(Image credit: Future)

The Naim app presents all its streaming services on one screen, the inputs on a scrolling second screen; if that doesn’t appeal you can use the settings to reorder the inputs to your preference, banishing unused ones to the second screen.

We had connected a Thorens turntable via a phono stage into the analogue input. We connected our computer to an optical input, using a DAC between them as a USB-to-SPDIF converter.

To kick off, we ran the Atom HE’s unbalanced pre-outputs to our resident power amps, always a slightly nervous connection to make when the preamp is digitally controlled and might flick the output to max accidentally. (Once we had Roon connected, we specified a safety level beyond which the volume slider then can’t go.)

We addressed it first from Tidal on the Naim app, then from the Tidal app itself, then from Roon.

Indeed during the Atom’s visit it may have be physically located in one room, but it seemed omnipresent. Wherever we accessed music – on the music room computer, on our Chromebook, the iPhone, a tablet – there was the Naim Atom as a playback device waving at us as if saying ‘Play to me! Play to me!’ There are so many ways to play that surely any current preferred path to playback will fit right in.

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

Listening

We can fully believe Naim’s claim that the preamp of the Atom HE is actually superior to those of the current Uniti range. Even in our initial set-up without the benefit of the balanced connections, all the cues from our favourite tunes poured from power amp and speaker references, dynamically delivered, cleanly resolving the good and the bad.

The effect on Alex the Astronaut’s main vocal for Split the Sky can sound curiously excessive on systems lacking resolution, degenerating into a mush. Here it could be discerned separately, part delay, part reverb. More to the point, the music and the emotion were entirely unchecked. The quite awful subject matter of her remarkable I Like To Dance is chilling; her Triple J cover of Mr Blue Sky – The Go-Betweens’ Lindy Morrison on drums – is sheer joy.

The Tidal stream through the Atom HE easily outperformed Spotify’s relatively softened sound. Naim’s Uniti platform does not support the MQA encoding which Tidal uses to ‘unfold’ its high-res Masters to their high definition – Naim could change this by firmware update, it has said, but is being led by demand.

Whatever you might think of MQA, it may be that uncompressed FLAC high-res streaming as offered by Qobuz and Deezer represents a purer future – after all, with today’s bandwidths defined by streaming 4K video, what need for data compression of high-res music any more?

So with Qobuz newly launched in Australia, we took the opportunity to connect our Roon to Qobuz, and our Roon to the Uniti. Roon’s excellent quality check pop-up box reminded us that Roon via Chromecast dropping the high-res to 48kHz, so we switched to Qobuz direct inside the Naim app. And what a joy that was. Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way was almost alarmingly crisp; details on Toto’s Africa (the left-channel chuckle on the intro) astoundingly apparent, especially as our usual playback preference for this slice of soft rock is the vinyl 45.

Best music streaming services

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

On Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, the continuous rolling drums’n’bass were entirely segregated from the other parts, and the emotional lift of multitracked Kates as we reached the first ‘Come on baby, come on darlin’ was thrilling at an almost tactile level. We began regretting our agreement to return the Atom HE to distributor BusiSoft AV within an unusually brief two weeks; we were barely getting started and we were missing it already.

Headphone playback

Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition specs

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

Inputs: 1 x analogue RCA, 2 x optical digital, 1 x coaxial digital, 2x USB-A

Streaming: Apple AirPlay 2, Chromecast, UPnPT, Spotify Connect, TIDAL, Qobuz, Roon Ready, Bluetooth, Internet radio

Headphones outputs: 6.35mm, 4.4mm Pentaconn, 4 pin XLR

Audio outputs: preamp unbalanced (RCA); preamp balanced (XLR)

Also visiting from Naim’s Australian distributor were the Final Audio D8000 Pro headphones, themselves a mere AU$4999 (£3995, US$4299) with their silver-coated cables trailing away to the Atom HE’s full-size headphone jack like weighty twisted tinsel.

The Naim had not the slightest trouble driving these esoteric 60-ohm planar magnetic headphones to their maximum ability, whether delivering a tight and punchy kick drum under the guitar and synthscape of The Triffids’ Wide Open Road, or highlighting the curiously lo-fi elements opening Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know.

The Naim and Finals delivered a mind-meltingly zingy portrayal of The Go-Betweens’ Streets of your Town, currently resurrected for advertising purposes by Ampol but here crisply separated to the point where our attention was constantly darting around the soundstage to small sonic elements like the cunning combination of panned rhythm guitars, the tight block hits in the left, each element easily individually selectable by the mind’s ear, yet held together in a finely musical whole.

We also ran more affordable headphone references – open AKGs, closed Sennheisers – and there wasn’t a pair which didn’t display their full abilities or receive more than enough power on tap from the Atom HE – enough, indeed, to achieve quite worrying levels without any hint of congestion or distortion.

The relevant figures are 1.5 watt-per-channel output into 16 ohms (from all headphone outputs), and output impedance of 4.7 ohms. The headphone amp remains in pure Class-A except for lower impedance headphones pushed to the extremes of volume, when a Class-AB circuit is “seamlessly” invoked.

If you like it loud (bearing in mind the dangers of so listening), the Atom HE will at least ensure you get your music with a minimum of damaging distortion.

After a head-pumping serve of Wolfmother’s The Joker and the Thief we wondered if we should take a rest, but Qobuz continued serving such delights that we didn’t, instead diverting to some high-res classical. This confirmed the dynamic reserve of the headphone output and a remarkable ability to stay tonally accurate across different impedance headphones. All this was from the standard unbalanced quarter-inch headphone socket; the balanced outputs could potentially lift the Atom HE’s game still higher.

Best headphones 2021

(Image credit: Naim Audio)

Having an assortment of active stereo speakers in residence for our group test this issue, it occurred to us that the Atom HE’s abilities as a preamp perfectly complemented just such devices. The ELAC Navis, for example, has balanced XLR inputs, to which we connected the Atom HE’s balanced outputs.

The result was wildly successful – a brilliant pair of speakers provided with a perfectly-pitched preamp output backed by physical inputs, streams galore, an app, a physical remote control and Naim’s big knob. Adding good active speakers to the Atom HE makes for a wonderfully compact yet versatile system, boosted by its particular powers to make your headphones sing when privacy is required.

Verdict

The Atom HE is an excellent addition to the Naim Uniti range – something genuinely different in offering a streaming preamplifier with a top-quality headphone amplifier. Use it alone with headphones, with power amps, or with active speakers, and you have a system just as versatile in its streaming abilities as the Mu-so, more versatile in its connections, and far higher in its hi-fi quality. And it comes with the best knob in hi-fi. It’s a big thumbs up from us.

Instacart tells entry-level team to return to office, senior managers can stay home

Instacart is shifting to a primarily remote-first workplace, but employees say the company has arbitrarily chosen which teams have to come into the office in a way that hurts junior employees. Workers on the central operations team — which includes logistics and trust and safety — have been told they need to return to the San Francisco office three days a week starting in September and were not given a clear reason why.

“To a lot of employees this policy excluding us from permanent remote work is being interpreted as ‘we trust the majority of the company to be able to work remote permanently, but not these specific employees,’” says one employee who asked to remain anonymous for fear of professional retaliation. “Considering everyone has been remote for over a year, it’s very disappointing.”

Last week, the company announced that 70 percent of the workforce would be remote. “We asked our employees what they wanted the future of work at Instacart to look like, their response? Make it flexible,” a newly updated careers page says. “We know there’s no one-size-fits-all approach for how we do our best work, so we’re introducing a hybrid work environment for when it’s safe for our offices to re-open.”

Workers on central operations say they aren’t sure why they’re being required to come in. While companies like Facebook mandate in-office work for content moderators who handle sensitive information, Instacart is letting the central ops team work from home twice a week — and has allowed them to be fully remote for the past year.

In response to questions from The Verge, an Instacart spokesperson said: “Central Operations employees often work with sensitive proprietary information and data that is managed on-site in Instacart’s offices.”

The team, estimated to be around 100 people, includes many entry-level employees and workers who are new to the tech industry. Employees say the power imbalance makes it difficult to push back on the remote work policy. “A lot of the roles are easily replaceable,” says another worker who asked not to be named. “They can happily find someone else to fill that role if you’re not okay with the policy.”

On the anonymous chat app Blind, one user wrote that managers on the central operations team were told to “silence the issue, when reported, rather than find a solution.” While anyone with an Instacart email address can post on Blind, the comment scared employees who worried they’d be fired if they questioned the mandate. Two commenters say they plan to quit if the policy doesn’t change.

An Instacart spokesperson said it has never told managers to silence the remote work issue, adding: “We always encourage employee feedback on these policies and will continue to create forums for open discussion to ensure every Instacart employee feels engaged, productive, and successful.”

In an internal email obtained by The Verge, an Instacart director said in-person work was a “foundational element to professional growth, team cohesion, cross-collaboration, and sustained performance over time.” But the requirement does not apply to most other teams at the company, nor does it extend to senior managers in the central operations organization. Those employees are able to work remotely, popping into the office a “percentage of time” throughout the month, according to the internal note.

The tension between Instacart employees and management highlights the quandary that many tech companies will likely face as they begin to reopen their offices. While organizations like Twitter and Coinbase have committed to going fully remote, others are attempting a hybrid approach that will doubtless leave some workers frustrated.

That’s partly because many tech workers have moved outside of San Francisco. Natalie Holmes, a research fellow at the California Policy Lab, told the Los Angeles Times that the city was experiencing “a unique and dramatic exodus” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Instacart employees on the central operations team were already upset about having to return to in-person work three days a week when the San Francisco Business Times published an article last week announcing most of the company would be remote. “The article put it in perspective that we were basically the only people who would be required in the office,” the anonymous employee says. “That threw the reason of ‘cross-collaboration’ out the window, since the teams we work with won’t be there.”

The Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel is the dream computer I’ll never own

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The Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel is a computer I will never own. But I really, really wish I could.

Artists, creators, and engineers who are looking for a powerful high-end convertible have all kinds of options on today’s market. But only Acer’s ConceptD line can fold in six different ways. There are not one, but two hinges attached to the display: a traditional clamshell hinge and another one in the middle of the lid that enables the screen to rotate outward. By using the two hinges in tandem, you can put the screen in nearly any position you want. This unique form factor makes the ConceptD 7 Ezel unlike any other laptop on the market.

There are other things that separate the Ezel from something like a MacBook, of course. It also has a sleek look with an attractive finish, a gorgeous 15.6-inch 4K UHD touch display, a built-in Wacom EMR pen, and all the ports you need. The chips on the inside are quite powerful. But you can find similar benefits in many convertibles that are half the price. The people who should shell out thousands of dollars for this device are those who have a need for the combination of its unique form factor and large screen — and the rest of us can be jealous of them from afar.

Before ogling too much over this form factor, you might want to know how much it costs. The $2,499 base model comes with an Intel Core i7-10750H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. For $2,999.99, you can bump the graphics up to a GeForce RTX 2070 and 2TB of storage. I was sent the top model, which has a Core i7-10875H, 32GB of RAM, and a GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, for a whopping $3,999.99. These components are both a generation old — Acer hasn’t refreshed the ConceptD with the latest chips yet — but they still deliver solid performance, as you’ll see later on.

These prices will make the ConceptD 7 Ezel an unrealistic purchase for most people, but there’s a 14-inch ConceptD that’s more affordable if you’re interested in this form factor. For those whose work involves professional design and video editing, CGI, machine learning, and the like, Acer also sells a ConceptD 7 Ezel Pro with an Nvidia Quadro GPU. Those are expensive, and people whose work requires a Quadro likely know who they are.

A normal-looking laptop, until you start bending the screen.

There are all kinds of ways you could theoretically arrange the ConceptD, but Acer has defined six. There’s Laptop (self-explanatory), Pad (tablet mode), Float (screen facing forward, hanging above the keyboard deck), Stand (screen facing forward, forming a tent shape over the keyboard deck), Share (screen facing upward, parallel to the keyboard deck), and Display (clamshell shape, but with the screen facing away from the keyboard).

I started out using the Ezel in Laptop most of the time, but Float grew on me quickly. It brought the screen much closer to me — it’s pretty far away in Laptop mode, given the size of the keyboard deck. I can see the use cases for the other modes as well: I’d love to use Stand to take notes during a lecture, for example, and Share could be useful for drawing while standing at a desk. The one form I can’t really see myself using is Pad because, at 5.6 pounds, the Ezel is too heavy to practically hold as a tablet unless you’re swole.

The one hiccup I ran into is that the screen is very top-heavy. A few times when I picked the device up, the screen would start to fall forward and I’d have to catch it to keep the lid open. My preferences for Windows tablet mode vs. Windows desktop mode also didn’t quite line up with the device’s. It stayed in desktop mode when in Stand, for example, but I’d prefer it switch to Tablet Mode in that form since the keyboard isn’t accessible.

Acer calls this the “Ezel Hinge design.”

The fact that these form factors are useful, of course, doesn’t mean that most people need them. Convertibles like the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 can emulate most of these positions as well (Float and Stand are the really unique ones). The Ezel is really meant for people who will be using the nontraditional forms a lot. For those folks, it has two main benefits: moving the screen around is quite smooth and seamless (you don’t have to use two hands to flip the whole machine around, as you would with a 2-in-1 workstation), and the hinge is also sturdy enough that you can draw in Float and Share with no wobble at all. Of course, this sturdiness comes with a big weight penalty, in addition to its price premium — the Ezel is much heavier than most convertible machines.

That extra heft isn’t for nothing — there are some serious fans in this device. Specifically, there are two “4th-Gen AeroBlade 3D” fans in addition to three heat pipes, and there are vents all over the place including the sides of the case and above the keyboard. The system (which Acer calls its “Vortex Flow” design) did a good job of keeping the chassis cool during my day-to-day work — the bottom sometimes got warm but was never uncomfortably hot, and I never felt much heat on the keyboard or palm rests.

Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel benchmarks

Benchmark	Score
Benchmark	Score
Cinebench R23 Multi	8610
Cinebench R23 Single	1249
Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes	8413
Geekbench 5.3 CPU Multi	7879
Geekbench 5.3 CPU Single	1280
Geekbench 5.3 OpenCL / Compute	91801
PugetBench for Premiere Pro	604

The fans had trouble keeping pace with the CPU, though. Temperatures stayed solidly in the mid-70s to mid-80s (Celsius) during a 30-minute loop of Cinebench — but throughout several runs of a five-minute, 33-second 4K video export in Adobe Premiere Pro, I saw it jump up to the mid-90s, and even high-90s often. Cinebench scores did decrease over time, and export times also got slower.

The ConceptD took two minutes and 55 seconds to complete the video export, which is one of the fastest times we’ve ever seen from a laptop. The Dell XPS 15 with the same processor and a GTX 1650 Ti took four minutes and 23 seconds (though different versions of Premiere Pro can impact export times, so synthetic benchmarks such as Cinebench are more precise for direct comparison).

Chunky as tablets go.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Here’s Stand.
There’s a “specialized silent switch” under the touchpad.
The webcam’s okay. There’s no privacy shutter.
All ConceptDs include a Pantone-validated display.
SD card reader on the front.
On the left: one USB-A, two Thunderbolt 3, one headphone jack, one Kensington lock slot.
On the right: One USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, one DisplayPort, one HDMI, one Ethernet, one power port.
Check out that hinge.

I also ran PugetBench for Premiere Pro, which measures a device’s performance on a number of real-world Premiere Pro tasks, and the ConceptD scored a 604, which beats the XPS 15 as well. The ConceptD also solidly beats the XPS on Geekbench 5 across the board. The XPS isn’t exactly on a level playing field here, since it has a weaker GPU — these results just illustrate the increased performance that the ConceptD will give you for the extra money. Acer’s machine did lose to Apple’s M1 MacBook Pro in both single-core tests, which underscores how powerful Apple’s processor is in single-core workloads.

The Ezel comes with some software features tailored to creative work as well. In Acer’s ConceptD Palette app, you can swap between Native and Adobe RGB color presets, as well as customizable profiles. You can also monitor CPU, GPU, and memory usage to see how much power your apps are using, and you can toggle between various split-screen layouts if you’re multitasking.

Acer says it’s worked with developers to “optimize” the device to work with various software including Premiere Pro, After Effects, Maya, Revit, and KeyShot. You could also run games on the ConceptD, but it wouldn’t be the best choice since the screen is just 60Hz and won’t be able to display very high frame rates.

As is often the case with big workstations, the Ezel’s battery life isn’t amazing. I averaged four hours and five minutes of continuous use with the screen around 200 nits of brightness. That’s not unexpected, considering the high-resolution display and the discrete GPU, but it’s worth noting that you’ll probably need to bring the hefty brick with you if you’re taking the Ezel out and about.

Elsewhere, the ConceptD 7 is a fine laptop to use. The keyboard is a bit flatter than I prefer but comfortable enough. The backlighting is a dark orange color (Acer calls it warm amber) that looks nice against the white deck. The touchpad is a bit small for a laptop of this size and I sometimes hit plastic while scrolling, but it is quite smooth. The chassis itself is a sturdy magnesium-aluminum alloy, and it’s covered in a nice white finish that Acer says is “highly resistant” to dirt and sun exposure. There’s a fingerprint reader built into the power button on the left side of the chassis, which works just fine.

I enjoyed using the built-in stylus, though it’s a bit stiff to pull out of its garage and requires a substantial nail. The pen uses Wacom EMR technology, meaning it never needs to be charged; it draws its power from inside the display. I enjoyed the limited drawing I was able to do on the smooth matte display (I’m an amateur artist at best).

The pen lives on the right side.

Acer says the ConceptD utilizes “improved psychoacoustics” to provide a better listening experience. You can swap between presets for music, voice, movies, and various types of games in the DTS:X Ultra app that comes preloaded if you have external speakers or headphones connected. If you’re using just the laptop, there are Music, Game, Movies, and Voice presets in ConceptD Palette. The dual front speakers themselves deliver not-great audio that’s quite lacking in the bass department.

Do you want to switch to tablet mode?

The ConceptD 7 Ezel is… well, in a word, it’s awesome. But you don’t need me to tell you that you don’t need to spend $4,000 to get an awesome device. If you want a touchscreen convertible with stylus support and can live without quite this much processing power, devices like the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and the HP Spectre x360 15 are half the price of this device, more portable, and also have outstanding screens. The Spectre’s screen doesn’t literally fold over the keyboard, but it’ll work for many of the same use cases. And even for folks who want this particular form factor, the smaller ConceptD 3 Ezel will be a more practical purchase. The ConceptD 7 Ezel is for those who need serious power.

But man, is the ConceptD 7 Ezel a great device for content creators. As a professional reviewer, I’ve used more creator-focused laptops than most people on the planet — and I’ve never used anything like this. It’s a great idea, it’s powerful, it’s well-built, and it’s a lot of fun to use. I won’t recommend that you buy it — but if you do, please know that I’m very jealous of you.

Microsoft tries to evade scalpers by offering Xbox Series X and S to Xbox Insider members

Microsoft is introducing a new “Console Purchase Pilot” program that will give selected Xbox Insider members the chance to register to reserve an Xbox Series X or Series S console directly from the company through their existing Xbox One consoles.

The new program is only rolling out in the US for now, and even if you are given the chance to sign up, it doesn’t mean that you’ll actually be selected to buy one of the highly in-demand consoles.

Today we’re introducing the Console Purchase Pilot, allowing US #XboxInsiders on Xbox One to register for a chance to reserve an Xbox Series X|S console. Check the Xbox Insider Hub on Xbox One for details. Limited space is available and not all who register will be selected. pic.twitter.com/MBkQmbSDWc

— Xbox Insider (@xboxinsider) May 11, 2021

Customers will also have to use the Xbox Insider Hub app on an Xbox One console to both sign up for the Console Purchase Pilot and purchase the console itself — you won’t be able to conduct the transaction on a PC, web browser, Xbox 360, or Xbox Series X / S by design.

That means that the program will be intentionally targeted to dedicated Xbox fans who already own an Xbox One console and are looking to upgrade, and it could help cut down on scalpers. Introduced in 2016, the Xbox Insider program lets dedicated Xbox fans give direct feedback to Microsoft and test future software updates and features ahead of broader public rollouts.

And with next-gen consoles expected to be hard to find for months to come — at its last update, Microsoft said to expect the new Xboxes to be tough to buy until at least June — testing out new ways to directly sell consoles to fans could be the best way to make sure that more units don’t end up on the eBay aftermarket.

Bose gets into hearing aid business with new FDA-cleared SoundControl hearing aids

Bose announced today that it will begin selling direct-to-consumer SoundControl hearing aids for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss on May 18th. They’ll cost $849.95 and will be sold directly by Bose in five states — Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas — before they’re available nationally.

The hearing aids are meant to be fit and controlled by the wearer without needing to see an audiologist for a hearing test and professional fitting. They use standard hearing aid batteries that Bose says will last up to four days if used 14 hours a day. Volume, treble and bass, and modes for different listening environments can be adjusted and preset in the Bose Hear app on iOS or Android. There’s a “Focus” feature with different settings, including a “Front” setting for filtering noise in busy rooms and an “Everywhere” setting that allows all sounds during walks outside or around the house.

Volume and bass / treble adjustment in the Bose Hear app.

Image: Bose

“In the United States alone, approximately 48 million people suffer from some degree of hearing loss that interferes with their life. But the cost and complexity of treatment have become major barriers to getting help,” said Brian Maguire, category director of Bose Hear, in the press release.

Prescription hearing aids can cost several thousand dollars and are rarely fully covered by insurance. Less costly personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) are sold in stores, but they aren’t as effective or adjustable as hearing aids and aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The SoundControl hearing aids are the first to be authorized by the FDA for use without assistance from a health care provider.

An older design for Bose hearing aids with “self-fitting technology” was cleared by the FDA through De Novo classification in 2018, meaning it’s a low-risk product, and there are no direct-to-consumer devices like it on the market. That design had a neckband and a rechargeable battery like Bose’s Hearphones, a hearing amplifier that was discontinued last year. The new design looks more like traditional hearing aids, with a receiver behind the ear and a small tip that sits in the ear canal, and was cleared by the FDA last week based on substantial equivalence to the 2018 De Novo authorization.

TikTok is reportedly pulling a Facebook and adding in-app shopping

TikTok’s next move to compete with Facebook might be to add an in-app shopping feature, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The publication writes that TikTok is testing in-app sales in Europe by partnering with several brands, including UK-based streetwear company Hype.

TikTok’s made some shopping moves in the past, like giving creators the ability to sell merchandise through an integration with Teespring, partnering with Shopify, and reportedly working on some kind of live-video informercial product. This new prototype sounds more like how shopping’s been integrated on Instagram, with a separate shopping tab under a brand’s account that lists products with images and prices, Bloomberg writes.

The Hype account page on TikTok shows what looks like a shopping tab.

The Hype account page currently does show what looks like a shopping section (though it’s blank for my US account) and the company did confirm to Bloomberg that it was participating in the test. We’ve also reached out to TikTok for further confirmation the shopping test is happening.

Shopping and TikTok seem like they could have a real peanut butter and jelly type of relationship. The bite-sized length and “stickiness” of TikTok videos seem perfectly suited for advertising, while the passive watching that TikTok encourages (at least in me) makes it easy to consume a lot of content. So far, this shopping prototype doesn’t sound quite as video-focused as whatever informercial-style feature TikTok was previously considering, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to see links to the hypothetical shopping tab littered throughout a brand or creator’s videos at some point in the future.

It’s also more or less exactly what Facebook’s on its way to doing with Instagram, its TikTok competitor Reels, and the normal Facebook app itself. The company went on a slightly different kind of shopping spree in 2020, adding commerce functionality like the previously mentioned shopping tab, product information in Reels, and it hasn’t stopped there. Facebook is also testing sticker ads in Stories.

Wherever TikTok lands with shopping, tests like these seem to show the viral video app is ready to take advantage of its status as a household name and grow — whether it’s shopping or spreading TikTok features across other apps.

Xbox’s Quick Resume feature gets new group option in May update

The Xbox Series X / S’s handy Quick Resume feature, which suspends supported games so that they boot up more quickly when you come back to them later, is getting some nice improvements in the May Xbox update.

Once the update is installed on your console, you’ll be able to see which games are kept in Quick Resume with a new tag, and you’ll also be able to make a group of games in Quick Resume so you have access to all of them in a single spot. Microsoft is also promising that Quick Resume will have “improved reliability and faster load times,” Microsoft’s Jonathan Hildebrandt said in a blog post.

A Quick Resume group.

Image: Microsoft

The new update also adds passthrough audio for media apps like Disney Plus and Apple TV, meaning that audio from those apps can be sent directly to a compatible HDMI device. There are also new parental settings that let parents unblock multiplayer mode for individual games and a new dynamic background.

The May update should be rolling out now, and it might already be available for you. While writing this story, I booted up my Series X and it installed.

Microsoft also announced that it will be sunsetting the Xbox One SmartGlass app for PC starting in June. “This means the SmartGlass app will be removed from the Windows Store and there will be no further updates for those who have the app already downloaded to their devices,” Microsoft said.

YouTube will pay $100 million to creators using its TikTok competitor

YouTube plans to pay $100 million to creators who use YouTube Shorts, its TikTok competitor, throughout the next year. The goal is to encourage creators to pick up and continually post to its new service, which doesn’t otherwise give creators a built-in way to make money.

Exactly how much creators can earn is still up in the air. YouTube says that it’ll reach out to creators on a monthly basis, looking for people with the most engagement and views. “Thousands” of creators could get paid each month, YouTube says, and basically anyone who posts to Shorts is eligible. The one caveat is that their videos have to be original content, and, of course, abide by YouTube’s community guidelines.

YouTube started launching Shorts in the US in March. The short videos appear in YouTube’s mobile app and, just like TikTok (or Instagram Reels or Snapchat Spotlight), you can swipe from one to the next in an endless full-screen feed.

Other companies have taken the same approach to encouraging creators to stick with their platform. TikTok launched a $200 million creators fund in July 2020, and Snapchat paid out $1 million per day for a period of time after its TikTok competitor, Spotlight, launched in November 2020.

Payments will be available in the US and India — the two regions Shorts has launched — to start, but YouTube plans to expand its availability as it rolls out the service to more regions. There’s no specific date yet for when YouTube will start offering payments. YouTube says the fund will last from its start this year through some point in 2022.

Meet the real Alexa: voice actor reportedly responsible for Amazon’s AI assistant revealed

Amazon’s Alexa has a voice familiar to millions: calm, warm, and measured. But like most synthetic speech, its tones have a human origin. There was someone whose voice had to be recorded, analyzed, and algorithmically reproduced to create Alexa as we know it now. Amazon has never revealed who this “original Alexa” is, but journalist Brad Stone says he tracked her down, and she is Nina Rolle, a voiceover artist based in Boulder, Colorado.

The claim comes from Stone’s upcoming book on the tech giant, Amazon Unbound, an excerpt of which is published here in Wired. Neither Amazon nor Rolle confirmed or denied Stone’s guess, which he says is based on conversations with the professional voiceover community, but Rolle’s voice alone makes for a compelling case.

Listen to the videos below: the first an advertisement for Cherry Creek North, “Denver’s premier outdoor retail destination,” and the second an introduction to Hapyn, a social app that seems to now be defunct (its Play Store entry was last updated in 2017). You can absolutely hear Alexa’s reassuring tones in Rolle’s voice. Or, to be more precise, you can absolutely hear where Alexa’s reassuring tones come from when listening to Rolle.

Here’s how Stone writes up the process in selecting Alexa’s voice:

Believing that the selection of the right voice for Alexa was critical, [then-Amazon exec Greg] Hart and colleagues spent months reviewing the recordings of various candidates that GM Voices produced for the project, and presented the top picks to Bezos. The Amazon team ranked the best ones, asked for additional samples, and finally made a choice. Bezos signed off on it. Characteristically secretive, Amazon has never revealed the name of the voice artist behind Alexa. I learned her identity after canvasing the professional voice-over community: Boulder, Colorado–based voice actress and singer Nina Rolle. Her professional website contains links to old radio ads for products such as Mott’s Apple Juice and the Volkswagen Passat—and the warm timbre of Alexa’s voice is unmistakable. Rolle said she wasn’t allowed to talk to me when I reached her on the phone in February 2021. When I asked Amazon to speak with her, they declined.

We’ve pinged Amazon and Rolle to confirm her involvement in creating Alexa, but don’t expect to hear much back. If the company isn’t interested in confirming Stone’s account, it suggests this is a bit of history they’d rather not draw attention to, for whatever reason.

Providing the voice for such a ubiquitous product can have its own drawbacks, too. The original voice artist behind Siri, Susan Bennett, revealed herself in 2013 (after seeing an article from The Verge dissecting the process behind the creation of synthesized voices, incidentally) but said she’d been wary about being associated with Siri. “I was conservative about it for a long time […] then this Verge video came out […] and it seems like everyone was clamoring to find out who the real voice behind Siri is, and so I thought, well, you know, what the heck? This is the time,” Bennett told CNN.

Of course, although we can hear both Bennett and Rolle’s voices in their AI doppelgängers, it’s impossible to say without inside knowledge exactly what traces of the original remain. Creating a synthetic voice starts with real audio samples, but this data is exhaustively quantized and remastered to such a degree that answering the question of whether the final product is the same as the original is best reserved for the shipbuilders of Theseus.

What is, fun, though, is listening to the other examples of Rolle’s voiceover work on her website. Although she offers a restrained performance in the videos above, she’s much more animated and lively in other commercial samples. It really shows how, despite the ever-increasing sophistication of Alexa’s voice, it still lacks the range of the real thing.

The team behind Alto’s Adventure is launching a new app — and studio — aimed at kids

Snowman is best-known for games like Alto’s Adventure and Skate City, but soon the company will be exploring a very different realm: children’s apps. Today, Snowman announced an upcoming game called Pok Pok Playroom, which will be launching on May 20th on the App Store. It’s a charming, minimalist experience aimed at kids between two and six, designed to encourage open-ended play through a handful of different digital toys. But Pok Pok isn’t just an app, it’s also the name of a brand-new creative studio spun off from Snowman that will be explicitly focused on making these kinds of experiences.

Pok Pok has been in the works for several years. It started life as a side project for Esther Huybreghts and Mathijs Demaeght, who were working as artists at Snowman while also raising two young boys. (The two now serve as creative director and design director of Pok Pok, respectively.) They wanted to find something where they could work together and explore their creativity outside of their day jobs. At the same time, they were coming to grips with raising two children and figuring out how to introduce screentime in a healthy way.

“We wanted him to have some screentime,” Huybreghts says of her youngest child. “When we started looking for an app, we had a high standard of what we wanted. We didn’t want anything addictive, or loud and overstimulating. We couldn’t really find anything that was up to our standards so we decided to build something ourselves.”

Photo: Pok Pok

They showed it to their co-workers, and it wasn’t long before it became a full-time production and, eventually, the focus of a brand-new studio. “It was immediately interesting,” Snowman creative director Ryan Cash says. Pok Pok Playroom features several different virtual toys, including things like a simple drawing tool and a board full of fun switches and buttons to play with. For the most part, the digital toys are inspired by real-world ones.

“We wanted to bring open-ended play to a device, and most of the toys we liked, in our real playroom, had that same open-endedness to them,” says Huybreghts. Melissa Cash, co-founder and CEO of Pok Pok, adds that “the choice to be inspired by some of these toys was very intentional, because these are timeless toys that have been in our lives for generations. We wanted Pok Pok to have that same feeling of being a timeless toy that grows with your children. They’re designed to reveal more things as your kids become more curious.”

That idea of open-ended play is core to Pok Pok. The games don’t feature high scores or fail states, or many other elements associated with a typical video game. Instead, much like a real-world pile of wood blocks or bucket full of die-cast cars, everything is left up to the player. “The goal starts with the child,” Huybreghts explains. “We don’t tell them what to do. Every game they play is led by them.”

In some ways, Playroom is most interesting for the things it doesn’t have. There are no in-app purchases to worry about — instead, the game will be available through a subscription of $3.99 a month or $29.99 per year, with a 14-day free trial. And the experience has been streamlined so that kids can play with it independently. That means no tutorials or text to trip them up, and a simple and clear UI where it only takes one or two taps to get to different places in the app. “It was a very conscious decision not to have any text, because we wanted an app that was as hands-off as possible,” Huybreghts notes.

Photo: Pok Pok

The team also worked closely with a range of advisors, including teachers, early childhood educators, and sensory experts from the US, Canada, and Australia who consulted on Playroom. In one instance, for example, signs featuring gibberish text were removed based on feedback from advisors, so that young players wouldn’t get confused while they’re learning to recognize letters. “While we have worked very closely with them, they’ve never come to us with a really big critique, which would’ve been a bad reflection on us,” Huybreghts says.

Pok Pok Playroom launches next week, and the plan is to continue to update it after launch, hence the subscription. That means adding more elements to existing toys, as well as introducing new ones. The goal is to still remain relatively small and accessible even after these expansions. “We don’t want to give kids the Netflix problem, where you’re just scrolling and scrolling and you go to bed because you can’t figure out what to watch,” says Melissa Cash.

Cash notes that “a big part of our work starts when we launch,” as the team hopes to make changes and additions based largely on the feedback from players. But for Huybreghts and Demaeght, the launch of Playroom also marks the end of one unexpected journey. What started as a quest to build an app to keep their own family occupied has turned into a brand-new company and commercial product.

“It was never meant to be a big-budget project like this,” says Huybreghts. “If I had known, I would’ve added eyebrows and noses to the people.”

Dan D’Agostino Progression Integrated

Our Verdict

The Progression is a hugely capable and versatile integrated. Rarely have we come across an amplifier that offers such sonic insight and control

For

Staggering clarity and detail
Superb build and finish
Modular nature

Against

Headphone socket on the rear panel

Dan D’Agostino Master Audio Systems (to use the company’s full name) only plays at the top table. Despite its hefty price tag, the Progression Integrated amplifier is the starting point for the brand’s range, but that doesn’t make it a diluted facsimile of products further up the chain. It’s more like everything the brand knows in a condensed package.

At its most basic, this is a line-level analogue integrated amplifier costing £19,998 ($18,000, AU$34,995). But add the optional digital module for an extra £6000 ($5000, AU$8995) and you get a good range of digital inputs alongside network streaming capabilities.

Want to play records too? There’s a switchable moving magnet/moving coil phono stage module available for an extra £2250 ($2000, AU$3995) and it offers a decent range of cartridge loading options. In case you wondered, it is possible to fit both the digital and vinyl modules at the same time. As an aside, it’s unusual to see such a large difference in the USA and UK prices given the exchange rate.

Our review sample of the Progression has the digital module fitted, which has us wondering whether it should even be described as an amplifier – maybe streaming system would be more appropriate?

Features

(Image credit: Dan D’Agostino)

The category lines between product types have blurred significantly in recent years and this is yet another example. No matter, though. As a just-add-speakers unit, the Progression Integrated is a truly mouth-watering proposition.

Dan D’Agostino Progression Integrated tech specs

(Image credit: Dan D’Agostino)

Power output 200W (8ohms)

Inputs 4x balanced XLR, 2x RCA, USB-A, optical, coaxial, Ethernet, wi-fi

Outputs Balanced XLR stereo

Dimensions (hwd) 18 x 43 x 43cm

Weight 26kg

It’s a powerhouse, no doubt. The combination of discrete, balanced, direct-coupled circuitry with a generous power supply results in a claimed power output of 200W per channel into an 8ohm load. That’s plenty, but the impressive thing is that the claimed power doubles as the load impedance halves. In practical terms, that means this unit is capable of driving any speaker to serious levels without issue.

Connectivity is good, with four balanced XLR inputs, plus two single-ended options (one of which would be used for the optional MM/MC phono module if chosen).

The phono module’s gain of 60dB should be able to accommodate all but the lowest output moving coil cartridges on the market without issue. There are a variety of selectable cartridge loading options available to help fine-tune the performance with the cartridge of your choice.

The digital board fitted to our review sample is also well equipped. Buy this and you get digital inputs – a USB type-B, coaxial and optical – along with a network renderer and access to streaming services such as Tidal, Qobuz and Spotify. The digital module can connect to your network wirelessly, though we always recommend going the wired route for the extra stability it brings. Roon compatibility is also on the menu.

The module’s onboard DAC supports music files up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM and DSD256, which should be more than enough for most people. It also decodes MQA, so you can make the most of Tidal’s hi-res Masters offering alongside other recordings so encoded.

Build

(Image credit: Dan D’Agostino)

There’s no complaining about the D’Agostino’s build quality. This is an immaculately crafted beast. Every surface is beautifully finished and that large volume dial moves with impressive smoothness, exhibiting nothing in the way of obvious play. The two power meters look a little ornate but work well in their dual role of showing volume and signal level. They also help when we want to set the balance between the channels more accurately.

The dedicated Progression app to run the streaming module is decent, too. It looks like a reskinned version of the well-established mConnect media player software, and we have no issue with that. We’ve used mConnect for a number of years with various products and it has proved reliable. Some of the amplifier’s controls are only available here, so you can’t change digital input or select the internal streamer any other way than using the app.

This integrated runs warm in use, so it makes sense to take care over positioning. Make sure you leave plenty of room for ventilation around it and that your chosen support is comfortable with the amp’s hefty 26kg weight.

Any amplifier at this level demands high-quality sources, of course. While the built-in digital module might be all the source that most people will need, we also plumb in our reference Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer to test the line level and digital inputs. Our usual Technics SL-1000R/Kiseki Purple Heart MC record player together with Nagra’s Classic Phono (phono stage) provides back-up as an alternative analogue source.

At the other end of the signal chain, we have our trusty ATC SCM50 speakers alongside Wilson Benesch’s Precision P2.0 floorstanders and ProAc’s new K1 standmounters. The Progression shows no particular preference and works well with all of them.

Even the 6.3mm headphone output proves unfussy, delivering great results with the likes of the Focal Stellia and Beyerdynamic T1 (3rd Generation) over-ears. However, it’s a shame the designer thought that putting the headphone output on the back panel was a good idea. It plainly isn’t.

Sound

(Image credit: Dan D’Agostino)

Listen to this D’Agostino in full flow and you get a glorious experience. At this level, it’s fair to expect excellent detail resolution and superlative transparency, and we get both. We play Jupiter from Holst’s Planets Suite and are swept along with the energy and drama on offer.

This is an amplifier that excels at displaying the power and scale of an orchestra in full swing. Yet, despite all the sonic fireworks, it’s the Progression’s framework of composure and control that is most striking. It never sounds stressed no matter how high the volume level goes or complex the music gets.

It’s a taut and precise presentation; one that edges towards the lean side of neutral without going as far as to be criticised for being thin or lacking in tonal colour. It’s this balance that allows the amplifier to sound so nimble for something so muscular.

Stereo imaging is terrific. The Progression paints a broad and expansive soundstage and populates it with crisply focused instruments. The orchestra is convincingly layered and there’s a pleasing impression of depth. This positional grip isn’t compromised when the music gets difficult either.

We switch to Massive Attack’s Heligoland and are floored by the D’Agostino’s low frequencies. They’re superbly defined, beautifully layered and punched out with rare agility. There’s plenty of muscle and authority of course, but that’s to be expected given the power output on offer. What surprises – and impresses – us the most, though, is the Progression’s articulate nature.

Things are surefooted rhythmically rather than truly enthusiastic, but there’s enough in the way of drive and musical momentum to keep us satisfied. Unlike many similarly priced, high-powered alternatives, the D’Agostino manages to sound musically cohesive and emotionally engaging.

The midrange is wide open and delivers Hope Sandoval’s vocals on Paradise Circus brilliantly. Her voice is rendered in an unusually clean and precise manner, though the Progression avoids sounding clinical by having enough in the way of natural warmth and dynamic nuance to convince. The highest frequencies certainly aren’t shy, but they remain nicely integrated and brim with information.

The D’Agostino’s sonic strengths shine through regardless of whether we use analogue or digital inputs. The onboard streaming module holds its own against similarly priced alternatives too, though such is the clarity of the analogue circuitry that a carefully chosen (invariably pricier) premium music streamer would deliver even better results, as listening to the Naim ND555/555 PS DR through it proves.

Our time with the D’Agostino had us trawling through our music collection, impatient to hear what all those familiar tracks sound like through it. It’s rare to find such a powerful amplifier sounding so transparent and responsive.

Verdict

There’s no doubt the D’Agostino Progression Integrated is a hugely capable product. It delivers a superb all-round performance and its modular nature means it offers far greater flexibility than most rivals. Regardless of whether you’re after a straight high-end integrated or something more fully featured, the Progression Integrated is something that must be heard.

SCORES

Sound 5
Features 5
Build 5

MORE:

Read our guide to the best stereo amplifiers

Read our Chord DAVE/Ultima 5 review

Read our Nagra Classic Preamp/Classic Power review

Read our Mark Levinson No.585 review

Sony now lets you use the DualSense pad to play PS5 on your nearby Mac, iPhone, iPad, and more

It’s a little-known fact that you can sling a PS5 or PS4 to another room of your house, streaming your games to a Mac or Windows PC, iOS or Android device, or even an old PS4 with Sony’s PS Remote Play app. But until recently, you could only remotely control your shiny new PlayStation 5 with the old DualShock 4 gamepad.

That’s now changing, as Sony has just announced the PS5’s new DualShock controller is supported across every Apple platform running the latest operating system, including iPhones, iPads, iPod touches, and Apple TVs running 14.5 and Macs running macOS Big Sur 11.3.

I just gave it a quick try myself with an iPhone 12 mini and a recent iPad Pro, and I have some thoughts!

The good news: if the only controller you own is a DualSense controller, it totally works — and your awesome adaptive triggers come along for the ride.

Here is some bad news:

There’s no haptic feedback. Absolutely zero. It feels extremely weird.
Each time you want to switch devices (to your iPhone or back to your PS5), you’ll have to manually pair your DualSense again. That was true of previous pads as well, but I was hoping they’d fix it.
The built-in microphone, headphone jack, and speaker don’t work. The speaker is a serious loss — games like Returnal use it in combination with haptic feedback to add some serious immersion.
The streaming quality, as always, will depend heavily on your home wireless network. Give it a try, though; it’s free!

You’ll have to decide whether these things defeat the purpose of pairing a DualSense with an Apple device. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll keep my DualSense hooked up to the PS5 where it can actually help me sense things, and use a DualShock 4 (or third-party pad) when I want to stream.

It’s also more ammunition for the argument that we should be able to play PS5 games on our PS5 with a PS4 pad. This is the second time Sony has shown that limitation is totally arbitrary: first when it allowed us to control PS5 games with the PS4 controller over Remote Play to start, and now again with this signal that the DualSense’s sensing abilities are optional when streaming games over a network.

Apple wants Xbox testimony pulled from Epic Games trial

Matthew Wilson
3 hours ago
Apple, Console, Featured Tech News

Last week, the Epic Games v Apple trial officially kicked off, with days worth of testimonials. Microsoft’s VP for gaming, media and entertainment, Lori Wright, was called up to the stand during the trial, but Apple is now questioning the credibility of the testimony and wants it thrown out.

As reported by The Verge, Apple’s legal team has requested an “adverse credibility finding” regarding Wright and the testimony given on behalf of Microsoft and Xbox. During the trial, Wright claimed that Microsoft has never made a profit from sales of Xbox consoles, but stated that the company does make money on services and subscriptions like Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass and games sold through the Xbox store.

Apple takes issue with this claim that Xbox hardware has never been profitable, particularly since the company’s lawyers can’t verify those claims. Prior to the trial, documents were requested from several parties, ranging from Microsoft to Valve.

As it turns out, Microsoft did not turn over some of the documents requested, which Apple believes would show profit and loss statements for the Xbox division. Apple’s lawyers are also arguing that while Wright says Xbox does not compete with the iPhone or the App Store, no documentation to validate this claim was produced.

Whether or not Wright’s testimony is permissible still remains to be seen, as a judge has not ruled on Apple’s latest filing.

KitGuru Says: The Epic Games v Apple trial has been very interesting to follow. Do you think Microsoft has truly never made a profit selling Xbox consoles?

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Nvidia’s Marbles at Night RTX demo is now free to download

João Silva
3 hours ago
Featured Tech News, Graphics, Software & Gaming

During the Nvidia RTX 30 series announcement in September 2020, Nvidia showcased the ray-tracing capabilities of its newly announced graphics cards using the Marbles at Night demo. Now, the demanding demo is freely available for all to test out first hand.

Marbles at Night is a physics-based, playable demo that uses the RTX 30 series’ ray-tracing capabilities to render a photo-realistic scene. The demo also uses DLSS to optimise performance and visual sharpness.

When Nvidia showed the Marbles at Night demo running for the first time, the system was equipped with an RTX 3090. To give you an idea of how demanding this demo is, this GPU is capable of running it at 1440p and 30 frames per second.

The minimum system requirements are as follows:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
CPU: 4-core Intel Core or 4-core AMD Ryzen
GPU: Any RTX GPU with 6GB of VRAM
RAM: 16GB
Video driver: 456.71 (Windows) or 455.28 (Linux)

As for the recommended system requirements, they are:

OS: Windows 10 64-bit.
CPU: 8-core Intel Core or 8-core AMD Ryzen
GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 or Quadro RTX 5000
RAM: 32GB
Video driver: 456.71 (Windows) or 455.28 (Linux)

For those interested in testing the demo, you can download the demo through Nvidia’s Omniverse Launcher, which is currently in open beta. Once you download and install the app, you can download the demo and try it out.

KitGuru says: Are any of you going to test out Nvidia’s Marbles at Night demo? If you do, let us know how it runs on your system.

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When the PS5 was first revealed, one of the most controversial aspects to the console …