Spotify now boasts 155 million premium subscribers and 345 million monthly active users, according to its latest earnings report released today. Those numbers represent a 24 percent and 27 percent year-over year increase. Its biggest increase was in ad-supported monthly active users, which rose 30 percent to 199 million. Last quarter, it reported having reached 144 million subscribers, and 320 million monthly active users.
However, despite the growth in listeners, The Wall Street Journal notes that the average revenue per user fell by 8 percent to €4.26 (around $5.13) compared to a year ago. That’s because of the discounted plans used to lure in new subscribers, and the lower prices it charges in markets like Russia and India. Ad revenue was up, however, accounting for 13 percent of revenue despite historically bringing in less than 10 percent.
Spotify now has 345 million monthly active users.Image: Spotify
Overall Spotify still made a loss of €125 million, but that’s down from the €209 million loss it made the year before. It’s rare for Spotify to post a profit as the company continues to invest in growth, according to the WSJ.
The earnings announcement comes as Spotify continues to make big investments outside of music, the service’s traditional strength. It recently made moves into audiobooks, experimenting with offering recordings of celebrities reading public domain books like Frankenstein, and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Spotify is also investing heavily in podcast. This quarter, the company continued to sign big names for its podcast business like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and Ava Duvernay. It now offers more than 2.2 million podcasts through its service, with podcast consumption up nearly 100 percent compared to the same time a year ago. Spotify says that 25 percent of its users engaged with podcast content during the quarter.
Spotify has argued that its investment in podcasts in particular increases usage, engagement, and customer retention, and present an opportunity for it to decrease its reliance on licensing music from labels. Spotify reiterated that belief in today’s earnings release.
However, some analysts say the investment in podcasts has yet to meaningfully pay off, CBNC recently reported. Writing in an investor note, analysts at Citi said that “to date, we have not seen a material positive inflection in app downloads or Premium subscriptions” as a result of Spotify’s podcast investments. Last year, reports indicated that Spotify was exploring the possibility of a subscription podcast service, opening up another source of income.
This earnings report won’t be Spotify’s last major announcement of the month. Yesterday the company teased a “Stream On” event taking place on February 22nd. In today’s release, the company said it will use the event “to share the latest on the state of global audio streaming and where it’s headed in the future.”
Caviar develops its very first smartphone. The Caviar Origin is a classic and luxurious phone model with traditional push buttons that runs on Android OS.
The Russian company Caviar is known for decorating and enriching existing Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy smartphones with precious and durable materials. This time however, the company developed their own smartphone that runs on Android OS. Their new creation is called ‘Caviar Origin’, it’s a classic push-button phone made of luxury materials. The phone design is inspired on the luxurious Vertu push-button feature phones.
The Caviar Origin is designed for people that love a simple set of functions with personal data protection but with an exclusive and luxurious design. Thanks to Android OS, users will be able to install any desired app. In addition, Caviar will have WhatsApp pre-installed as this is one of the most used apps to send and receive messages to friends, colleagues and family.
Luxury and classic Android phone from Caviar
The new push-button phone is still under development. Currently the Caviar Origin is a working prototype with its own user interface, based on Android 11. The design of the feature phone is fixed, but the material of the body is not completely decided yet. Caviar wants to make this a luxury edition with gold, gems and other rare materials.
The expected release date is Q4 2021. The phone comes in a limited quantity. Prices of the Caviar original will start at $1,000 USD. The upper price limit will be determined by the clients’ preferences and the rich imagination of the designers.
Ilse is a Dutch journalist and joined LetsGoDigital more than 15 years ago. She is highly educated and speaks four languages. Ilse is a true tech-girl and loves to write about the future of consumer electronics. She has a special interest for smartphones, digital cameras, gaming and VR.
While we thought its radio sources need a little tonal attention, the highlights here are playback from CD, from streaming music services and Bluetooth.
For
Compact music system
Endless paths to music
CD and streaming
Against
Edgy sound on radio sources
Variable results for ‘3D audio’
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.
We don’t recall a product ever ‘coming good’ during a review to the quite same extent as did the Ruark R3 Compact Music System. It positively alarmed us when we first turned it on. But by the end of our time with this streaming tabletop music system we were using it daily for pleasure as much as for assessment. Join us in our journey with this timeless design from a UK company which has made this genre of smart radiogram-like music system something of a specialty.
Build & facilities
The R3 is a table-top audio system (£629, $790, AU$1299) which stands some 42cm across and 17cm high, bringing together CD replay, reception of DAB+, FM and internet radio, streaming via network and Bluetooth (with aptX), Spotify Connect, Tidal and other music services… pretty much everything, in short, that the modern music world has to offer.
You can plug in additional sources – there’s one optical and one analogue input, also a minijack headphone output and a ‘line out’ at full level, so you could run the whole gamut of sources into a hi-fi amp or a recorder.
Ruark’s great skill is in offering this potentially overwhelming profusion of sources in a friendly box – old-style, you might even call it, with its grey cloth grille and walnut casing, though a more modern-looking soft-grey lacquer finish is also available.
On top is the company’s longstanding Rotodial for control, while a small infrared remote is also included, along with app control from a smart device. And if it’s going bedside, you can avail yourself of the useful alarm clocks, snooze and sleep timer functions.
Ruark’s other skill is sound quality. This is a company we can still remember of old as Ruark Acoustics, making fine British loudspeakers with thrusting names like Sabre and Swordsman through the 1980s and 1990s. Then in the 2000s when digital radio was trending, Ruark developed the little R1, which the UK’s Sunday Telegraph hailed as “the Aston Martin of DAB radios”.
Such was the R1’s success that traditional loudspeakers fell by the wayside (though “never say never”, says owner Alan O’Rourke), and the reinvented Ruark Audio now has a range of radio and streaming solutions, from the latest Mk4 version of the R1 ‘deluxe’ up to a large four-legged radiogram of the future, the highly desirable R7 Mk3.
So Ruark has a heritage of hi-fi sound, and we’ve enjoyed many of its players in the past, so were looking forward to this new R3.
(Image credit: Ruark Audio)
Setting up
We had no problems setting up the R3; we gave it Ethernet and attached the antenna required for radio reception; this may confuse newbies by flopping around loosely, but we knew from previous Ruark visits that there’s a special aerial spanner in the packaging for this very purpose!
We began our listening by sampling its skills with radio. We selected digital radio and, being fresh from the box, the R3 scanned Sydney’s airwaves and found some 70 available DAB+ stations all awaiting selection via a shuttle of the R3’s top Rotodial. And all were sounding pretty unpleasant – very spitty in the treble, artificial-sounding, with voices thin in their midrange content, and music lumpy in the bass.
We changed to internet radio – it was no better, indeed slightly worse on low-resolution stations. We were worried by this, to be honest: it was not the sound we expect from Ruark devices, which normally present a warm friendly radio sound.
We hastened to the tone controls through the menus. There are four elements to the tone controls: bass and treble adjustment, a loudness option which was ‘on’ by default, and – ah! – a ‘3D’ option. This 3D option was also on by default. Switching it off went a long way to removing the artificial spittiness from the radio sources.
We further tamed the treble by a few notches, left the loudness on, and kept the bass in its central position. This brought the radio sections back to what we’d expect from Ruark – full and friendly, just a teeny bit fizzy up top but no longer distractingly so.
The remote control has three large preset buttons, which are available separately for each source, so three for FM, three for DAB+, three for internet radio. You store them by simply pressing and holding the button when listening to a station.
But in fact there are 10 presets for each type of radio; you can access the rest by pressing and holding the ‘preset’ button then pressing the left-right buttons to reach presets 4 to 10. Recall them the same way, without the holding. It’s easy, versatile, and very useful.
Best hi-fi systems 2021: micro, hi-fi, vinyl
App control
For those with less than 20/20 vision who can’t read the small lettering on the front display across the room for source selection (let alone the tinier menu options), there’s a handy free app available for control. This is Undok, the control app from Frontier Silicon, maker of the smart module within the R3.
We’ve long enjoyed Undok, and are pleased to see it back after an unexplained hiatus. Undok controlled the R3 effectively, though not entirely. For example, there’s access to bass, treble and loudness, but not the all-important ‘3D’ option, for which you’ll need to use the remote and/or Rotodial to switch on or off.
App quirk two: we tried to rename the R3, but it refused to change to ‘Ruark R3’… yet when we jokingly tried ‘Simon’, that was OK. Turns out that you can only pick a one-word name, e.g. Ruark.
App quirk three: the bass slider in the app was glitchy, advancing a few notches, then jumping back again, up then back – very odd.
But otherwise the app is very useful for local control, for switching sources, for saving presets. One tip for internet radio: if there’s a station you can’t find (our local community station, for example, was not listed), you can head to Frontier Silicon’s site https://smartradio.frontier-nuvola.net, set up an account, link your R3, ‘manage favourites’, and enter the URL manually. The station then appears under ‘My Favourites’. Nice flexibility!
Best Bluetooth speakers 2021: portable speakers for every budget
Radio listening completed, we switched to music streaming. For Spotify you use the Spotify app and point it at the Ruark for playback – we were pleased to find this works with free Spotify as well as paid (which isn’t the case for many streaming platforms and products).
And it was immediately evident that for all the other inputs – music services, CD, Bluetooth streaming – the R3’s sound balance was completely different. Gone was all the spittiness, gone the bass lumpiness. So we headed back to the tone controls, put the treble and bass back to zero, left the loudness on – and turned the 3D sound on.
And with these sources you should definitely try the 3D sound option. It gives the sound a real lift, a widening, an additional enjoyability, though it still occasionally has deleterious effects on certain tracks. We played Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al from Spotify Free and all was good.
But on the next track, Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard, the janglier right-channel guitars became nastily edgy and artificial until we turned ‘3D’ off again. We tried the same track from our own CD-quality collection sent by Bluetooth (which supports both AAC and aptX), and this softened the edginess somewhat, but it still sounded better with 3D off.
The more we played, the more songs reacted badly to the 3D setting, and we ended up keeping it off, with one notch down also on the treble slider to prevent residual fizziness in the treble.
So for best sonic results, adjust the tone options whenever you switch from file-based playback to radio, and vice versa – especially disabling the 3D sound for radio sources. It’s a shame the R3 can’t remember your tone preferences for each source (as it can for input levels, which are trimmable for each analogue and digital input), and we’d go so far as to suggest Ruark should simply disable 3D sound entirely for FM, DAB and internet radio sources, as its effects there are particularly nasty. Better still, a big ‘3D Sound’ button on the remote control would allow easily toggling of this sound mode, as on, say, a soundbar.
But if you’re happy to pop over to the R3 and switch this manually each time, you can enjoy the best which the R3 has to offer, which is considerable. It’s a delightful CD player, for example, those full-quality files filling the room with well-balanced sound. And the louder you play, the happier the R3 seems to be; the bass available from the two 75mm drivers is remarkable as you raise the level; its response begins in the 40s of hertz and rises impressively smoothly.
Soft recordings get a boost from the treble lift of the sonics here; Paul McCartney’s My Valentine has rarely sounded so well-defined. And as with all Ruark units we’ve tested, the R3 is adept with classical music, and we blasted forth the London Musici’s 1991 Conifer/Technics recording of Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ symphony to confirm the R3’s adherence to this track record, pushing up the bass a tad to underpin this dynamic piece.
The R3 proved equally enjoyable from streaming music services. From Apple Music we streamed Neil Finn’s 2010 solo concert at Sydney’s intimate Seymour Centre, and the Ruark did a lovely job of presenting Finn’s voice and the decay of both artificial and venue reverb as he switched from guitar to piano, serving the latter with both percussive attack and pianissimo softness, as required.
There is a ‘Music Player’ option which you can use to play either from USB or from music shares on the network, although unfortunately the R3 couldn’t see our NAS drive of music (only our PVR, from which it bravely offered to play episodes of Home and Away etc., but of course couldn’t). From USB it was able to play MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV and FLAC, the last two up to 24-bit/48kHz, so no support for higher-res PCM or DSD.
Note that Ruark has chosen to include not a standard USB-A slot but rather a USB-C 5V charging connection, very up-to-date of it, except that you can’t plug in normal USB sticks and drives. USB-C sticks are widely available, so that’s what we used. Adapters are also available, though when we tried one, the R3 announced that ‘USB hubs are not supported’. Sticks must also be formatted in FAT-32 format.
(Image credit: Ruark Audio)
Verdict
So quite the journey we enjoyed with this versatile music system. While we thought its radio sources need a little tonal attention, its highlights are playback from CD, from streaming music services and Bluetooth, and overall it’s an impressively easy-to-use and attractive table-top unit which accesses pretty much every kind of music under the sun, delivered effectively under local, remote or app control.
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Epson’s EH-LS300 UST projector is practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.
For
Powerful bright image
Free-to-air TV catch-up services
Convenient way to get a really large picture
Against
No Netflix or Prime support
No Ethernet
1080i/50 and 576i/50 issues
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.
Ultra-short-throw projectors are going great guns. Even mainstream companies not previously or not recently involved in projection (LG, Samsung, Hisense) have realised that a projector sitting on a bench can deliver a large-screen ‘TV-like’ experience with a convenience that a conventional projector cannot when it has to be pushed back in the room or hung on a ceiling.
As a consequence the ultra-short-throw is rapidly evolving. Since it’s going to work like a TV, shouldn’t it have speakers? Shouldn’t it be smart, like a TV? Yes it should. So here comes Epson, a company which declares itself the world no.1 in projection (on the reasonable basis it has been declared so by Futuresource Consulting for the last 17 consecutive years), with models for just this space. The ‘4K Pro UHD’ EH-LS500 arrived first, and now this EH-LS300, which offers Full-HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. With such underlying expertise, but a lower resolution, does it deliver the promised new age of UST?
Build
Ultra-short-throw projectors use a combination of lenses and mirrors to cast the picture up onto a screen almost immediately above them. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B is a fairly compact specimen at 467mm wide and 400mm deep. Inside there are three 15.5mm LCD projector panels using Epson’s C2 Fine technology, and a laser diode. That kind of light engine works by firing the laser into some phosphor, which then produces a bright white light.
The use of this kind of light engine means several good things. Firstly, long life. The projector is rated at 20,000 hours of lamp life. Secondly, the projector turns on fast – 5.5 seconds when in standby, according to our stopwatch, or 6.5 seconds if it has been disconnected from power. It goes off fast as well.
And the lamp can be controlled in level to help darken scenes. Epson says that the dynamic contrast ratio is as much as 2.5 million-to-1 (on the datasheet) or 1.5 million-to-1 (in the US manual we found online).
There are two HDMI inputs, a USB socket for playing back video content from a USB stick, and Wi-Fi for the smart TV stuff. Surprisingly, there’s no Ethernet connection – we’d prefer that option rather than having to rely on Wi-Fi in our somewhat RF-congested modern environments. But it is dual-band Wi-Fi – 2.4GHz and 5GHz – supporting the 801.11ac standard, so it may well outperform the usually-installed 100Mbps Ethernet of many devices. (Our 100Mbps test clip was pretty choppy… but we do have an extremely busy Wi-Fi environment.)
Best projectors 2021: Full HD, 4K, portable, short throw
(Image credit: Epson)
Sound
A nice touch: built-in sound that is quite good. As always, we believe that the sound of your system should match the scale of the video. Since the Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers big vision, a decent external sound system should be in order. But absent that, we were quite impressed with the audio built into the projector. Epson relied on the audio expertise of Yamaha for this: a 2.1-channel forwards-firing audio system with 20W of power, better than any actual TV that we’ve used – and we’ve used plenty. We also checked the Audio Return Channel capability via HDMI to a connected home theatre receiver, and it worked perfectly well.
Setting up
The projector is available on its own at £2500 ($2000, AU$4000). But in Australia you can also get it as a package with an ‘Ambient Light Rejection’ screen in 100 inches (AU$5099 package) or 120 inches (AU$5699). These employ a surface treatment which reduces the reflection of light coming from above or directly in front, increasing their contrast ratio when there’s light in the room. These screens weren’t available to us at the time of review, so we used our regular viewing screen.
Epson EH-LS300 tech specs
(Image credit: Epson)
Projection technology: 3 x 15.5mm C2 Fine LCD panels
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 pixels
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Lamp: Laser diode
Lamp life: 20,000 hours (Normal and Quiet modes)
Brightness: 3600 lumens (both white and colour); 1800 lumens (ECO mode)
Inputs: 2 x HDMI, 1 x USB, Wi-Fi
Outputs: Optical digital audio
Control/other: Mini-USB (Service)
Dimensions (whd): 467 x 133 x 400mm
Weight: 7.2kg
In a couple of ways an ultra-short-throw projector is a little trickier to set up than a regular projector. There is no zoom lens, for example, so the size of the picture is determined entirely by the distance between the projector and the screen – far less than a conventional projector, but still significant for the largest screen sizes. For a 100-inch screen, the distance from the wall to the back of the projector (the side facing the wall) should be 26.6cm. With the largest recommended screen size of 120 inches, the distance is just 38.6cm. The projector itself is getting on for 40cm deep, so its front will end up more than 75cm from the wall – which is a lot of bench depth.
The other slightly tricky thing is that the image is cast at such an extreme angle you have to adjust everything with better-than-millimetre precision. The slightest angle to one side and you have a marked trapezoid of a picture. You really don’t want to be nudging the projector when you’re dusting.
But there is a clever adjustment system for picture geometry. There’s even a dedicated button on the remote. With this you can drag the corners of a box to make sure everything’s square. It’s kind of like a supercharged keystone correction system. But like keystone correction, it’s done digitally, which means that Full-HD input signals are no longer directly mapped onto the display pixels, so detail is lost. So it’s best avoided if you can.Get the physical placement right instead.
Last thing on physical set-up: we found the focus adjust lever quite spongy, so a bit tricky to get the focus exactly right. With perseverance we did succeed. (One of the oddities about this kind of projector: focus adjustment has basically no effect at all at the bottom of the screen, which is always in focus, and a massive effect at the top.)
As for the smart set-up, Android TV has this well under control. You just use the Google Home app on your phone – it works on iPhones as well – which talks you through with very little fuss. We had the unit connected within a couple of minutes.
(Image credit: Epson)
Performance
It turns out that 3600 lumens allows a surprisingly viewable picture even under the full glare of our room’s fluorescent tubes! Not that we did any kind of critical viewing that way, we hasten to add. But we suspect that kids would be perfectly satisfied with afternoon cartoons served this way, especially onto an Epson directional screen. And it’s fine for the news and such. So consider this not just a home cinema device, but a (kind of) everyday TV.
Then, when night fell, we started to use it as a real home cinema projector. And we were impressed. What impressed us? The colour and the black levels. The subjective black levels were entirely satisfying. Which is to say that with all the material we viewed – including HDR content from 4K Blu-ray – the black elements of the picture seemed, well, entirely black. And yes, 4K Blu-ray, because even though the projector delivers 1080p output, it supports Ultra-HD inputs including HDR (and Dolby Vision, which it treats as HDR).
We jammed in as much night-time viewing as we could in the time available, and we must say that we found it entirely satisfying: bold, accurate colours; sharp, detailed image.
The EpiqVision quickly demonstrated that it’s not really one for interlaced video in Australia. With both 576i/50 and 1080i/50, it seemed simply to assume that all such signals were video-sourced. So it applied motion-adaptive deinterlacing, rather than checking to see if a simple weave might be better for any given bit of video. Most of the time you won’t notice this, but occasionally there’ll be some lines or grid in the picture which adversely interact with the processing and develop distracting moire patterns. The solution, as always: use a source with good quality deinterlacing.
Best portable projectors: the best mini projectors 2021
Network streaming
When you first set the Epson up, you’re offered a default bunch of apps, including (in Australia) TV station apps such as iView, SBS On Demand and so on. There’s YouTube, Google play Movies & TV, Disney+ and Stan, Vimeo, Spotify and Tidal and a whole lot more. Even after we’d finished the setting up, it took a little while to download and install them one by one. It was kind of fun watching them pop up in the list of apps as they were loaded. When it had finished, we went to fire up Netflix – one of the paid video services to which we subscribe. We couldn’t find it.
So we figured we’d try Google Assistant to help us find it. A press of the microphone button on the remote and the utterance of the word Netflix, and the projector announced in the familiar Google Assistant voice, ‘Here’s Netflix on the Google play Store’. And there was, indeed, the play Store entry for Netflix. Only problem was, at the bottom of the screen it said, ‘Your device isn’t compatible with this version.’ This was also the case for Amazon’s Prime Video.
We checked the projector’s website and, sure enough, there it was in the fine print: “Not all streaming apps are natively available on the EpiqVision EH-LS300B. An external streaming media device is required to stream some services, including Netflix. Netflix cannot be streamed using Chromecast from Android TV, iOS, Mac or Windows devices.” (We assume by that ‘Android TV’ that Epson actually means Android, as in an Android phone.)
In other words, not only does this projector not support Netflix, apparently you can’t stream Netflix from your phone to the projector via Chromecast. We tried. In fact, we could kind of stream Netflix from our phone, but only in the slowest, choppiest most broken-up way. To compare, we plugged an actual Chromecast with Google TV device into one of the EpiqVision’s HDMI inputs, and found that Netflix would stream fairly smoothly via that route.
YouTube, by contrast, streamed smoothly via either route, as did iView and SBS On Demand and Stan. We did find it quite puzzling why any version of Android TV would not support Netflix and Prime, the second and fourth most popular streaming services (that’s counting YouTube as being number one).
Apparently the projector is also able to support video calls using the Epson Online Meeting app – powered by Zoom. You’ll need to plug a camera and microphone into the USB socket for that.
(Image credit: Epson)
Verdict
Aside from the inability to play Netflix and Prime Video direct, we were impressed. The Epson EpiqVision EH-LS300B delivers a bright and impressive image to a large screen – and we would indeed recommend using a screen such as one of Epson’s, rather than a non-flat non-reflecting bit of wall, because we assure you, walls will never get the image truly flat. Plus the good quality sound and the extremely long-life light source makes this unit practical for everyday use, with some limitations, as well as for truly immersive bigscreen movie nights.
aApple just yesterday released its latest update for macOS Big Sur with improved Bluetooth reliability and a handful of bug fixes. And today, it’s rolling out the first beta of macOS Big Sur 11.3, which will bring further refinements to Safari, Reminders, Apple Music, Apple News, and other apps. This update will also try to improve the experience of running iPhone and iPad apps on M1 Macs, which can still be a little awkward at this early stage (and without a touchscreen display).
iPadOS apps will now appear larger than before — if your screen size allows for it — and beta testers will find a new preference pane for iPhone and iPad apps that’ll let them better personalize the “touch alternatives” keyboard commands. Touch alternatives allow for “keyboard alternatives for tap, swipe, and drag gestures, and enables multi-finger gestures using the option key and a trackpad.”
Big Sur 11.3 will make Safari’s start page more customizable, letting you rearrange the different sections (favorites, Reading List, Siri suggestions, etc.) to your own liking. Developers will gain the ability to make extensions that run on the new tab page, and they can also take advantage of a new web speech API to integrate speech recognition on their web pages.
As for the Reminders app, you’ll be able to sort your reminders based on title, due date, priority, or creation date. And with this update, Apple will let you easily print your reminders if a paper copy might prove helpful when running to the store or completing other tasks.
Apple Music gets small tweaks like a shortcut to your “Made for You” personalized playlists and mixes. Live and upcoming special events will be highlighted in the For You tab, as well. The Apple News app is undergoing some design improvements in the Apple News Plus tab to make your magazines and newspapers easier to reach (and download).
And like the upcoming iOS 14.5 update, macOS Big Sur 11.3 adds support for the latest Xbox and PlayStation DualSense controllers; the same compatibility is coming to Apple’s mobile devices as part of iOS 14.5.
Apple’s rocky rollout of iCloud password sync on Windows has hit another bump: you can no longer download the version of the app that allowed syncing passwords from your Apple devices with your Chrome web browser on a Windows PC (via Windows Central). Version 12 of Apple’s iCloud for Windows app released last week with supposed support for the feature, but the Chrome extension to make it work wasn’t available until two days ago. Now, version 12 is gone from the Windows Store, with version 11.6 taking its place.
Weirdly, the changelog on the Windows Store still says that the password syncing functionality is present. However, upon downloading, the app shows the version as 11.6 in the top right. We verified this for ourselves, and you can see there’s no password sync option in our first screenshot below.
The version of the app we downloaded today, 11.6.
Version 12 of the app with the passwords option, downloaded January 27.
As The 8-Bit notes, the late-to-the-party Chrome Extension is still available on the Chrome Web Store, at least for now. Anyone still on version 11 of the iCloud for Windows app, though, won’t be able to upgrade and take advantage of the extension anyhow. But if you currently have version 12 on your computer, Windows won’t make you downgrade to the previous version.
It’s unclear why Apple pulled the update — the reviews for the Chrome extension aren’t good, but many of them are users reporting that it doesn’t work on Mac, which it’s not designed for. Whatever the reason, this has been one of the messier rollouts I’ve seen from Apple in recent memory. The story, it seems, is the same as the last time I wrote about iCloud Passwords for Windows: if you want them, you’ll have to wait a bit longer.
Apple was didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Instagram is disabling the ability to share (and reshare) posts from your feed to stories as part of a test to see how it changes engagement with the popular feature. The company announced the change in a notification banner sent to users in “select countries” where the test is being conducted, Social Media Todaywrites. We’ve reached out to Instagram for specifics on exactly which countries are participating and will update if we hear more.
“We hear from our community that they want to see fewer posts in Stories,” the notification starts. “During this test, you won’t be able to add a feed post to your Story.” Resharing posts to stories is a fairly common practice, though it does create situations where you’ll see a post in your feed and then immediately see that post duplicated in your friend’s stories.
However annoying this situation may be, it’s worth noting that sharing posts to stories is how many artists, businesses, and organizations get in front of users, due to Instagram’s algorithm favoring friends and family. For example, shoving feed posts in stories opens up the opportunity for the mutual aid organization in your neighborhood to get more donations. Taking away the ability to reshare is responding to a behavior Facebook and Instagram encouraged in the first place by placing stories so prominently in the app and offering the ability to share them.
For now, disabling reshares remains a test, much like the changes to likes the company considered and the variety of new app layouts it has prototyped. But the timing is a bit ironic: Twitter is currently testing the ability to share tweets to Instagram stories as stickers. So you might start seeing a lot more reshares in your stories from an entirely different social media platform.
For some of you on iOS, we’ll be testing sharing a Tweet as a sticker to Instagram too! Tap the Instagram icon in the Tweet share menu to add the Tweet as a sticker in a Story.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) December 10, 2020
Oculus has detailed what’s coming in its v25 software update for Quest and Quest 2 headsets. The most notable change for both developers and users is App Lab, a new method for distributing in-development VR apps that doesn’t require Oculus Store approval and also doesn’t require sideloading. Think of this software as the equivalent of early access for VR.
Oculus shared in its press release that it wants to keep the bar for quality high for its store, so it’s splintering off App Lab apps from its main storefront. But it wants to foster a community where developers can openly and easily share their in-progress creations with Quest owners.
After a developer submits their App Lab app to Oculus, users can access it easily through a URL, or they can be found by searching for their exact name in the Oculus Store. SideQuest, a popular site that hosts applications and games that can be sideloaded onto the Quest headset, will also host App Lab apps. Presumably, many of the apps and games hosted there might soon get App Lab support, making it easier for people to try some of the experiences hosted there without sideloading.
App Lab grants developers the ability to broadly open their apps up to the general public to try or to generate unique keys if you want to only allow certain people to access them. And from the user’s perspective, any App Labs apps you download can be found in your Quest library of apps and games.
These apps have debuted on App Lab.Image: Oculus
Oculus says that over 10 App Lab titles have launched, including the experiences pictured above. Though, the site presented an error when I clicked them at the time of publishing.
Several other features are coming in this update, including Messenger for VR, allowing you to keep Facebook chats going while you’re immersed in your Quest headset. The Oculus release notes also mention “Stationary Guardian 2.0,” bringing some more quality-of-life improvements for when you want to safely use VR while in a stationary location instead of using roomscale.
Whether you use VR software in roomscale or stationary mode, Oculus’ Passthrough shortcut is now easier to access and no longer buried in its experiments settings. The feature allows you to see your surroundings through the Quest or Quest 2’s outward-facing cameras by double-tapping the section where the headband meets the headset.
In case you’ve ever wanted to pair a Bluetooth mouse to your Quest headset, you’ll soon be able to do that, too. To find this feature, head to settings, click “Experimental Features,” and you should find it there soon.
(Pocket-lint) – Each year Lego unveils stacks of new sets that combine top name franchises, other brands and the best of traditional series such as Lego City and Lego Technic.
There are hundreds of new sets to choose from and, now that Lego appeals to huge numbers of adults as well as kids, the choice is almost endless and it’s impossible to collect everything.
Lego’s Creator Expert Gingerbread House has plenty of charm
But what do we think are the best Lego sets around? Here’s our definitive top 10 at the moment. We’ve purposely chosen from several different ranges at different price points, too.
Our pick of the best Lego sets to buy today
Lego
Lego 76119 Batmobile
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This faithful recreation of the 1989 Batmobile has a whopping 3,300 pieces weighing over 3kg (yes, over three kilos of bricks!). It’s an absolute stunner and we’ve heard from a little bird that Lego sold thousands of them as soon as they went on sale.
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Lego 21034 Architecture London Skyline
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Lego’s Architecture series isn’t cheap, but the sets make great gifts. There’s a diverse range of places now available, with New York, Paris, Las Vegas and more all covered. There’s also a more detailed London set of Trafalgar Square, too.
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Lego 41167 Disney Frozen II Arendelle Castle Village
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Lego is now famed for its tie-in products, especially with Disney who it has worked on with numerous franchises including Cars and, of course, Star Wars. This three-level castle comes with Anna, Elsa and Kristoff mini dolls (a bit like minifigures) and is for ages 5 and up.
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Lego 42096 Technic Porsche 911 RSR
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Yes, we are going a bit wild for Technic, but it’s hard not to – some of the sets around now are truly fantastic. This Porsche 911 RSR is one of the best Technic cars as it actually looks like the original and is available at comparatively low prices at the moment.
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Lego 60180 City Great Vehicles Monster Truck
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OK, we’ll admit it – we’ve got a lot of time for City Lego and it’s not all about the nostalgia. This Monster Truck is quite brilliant and any 5-7 year-old would love it. It’s so good because the suspension is, basically, a little bit of Technic utilising a couple of elastic bands. As such, the truck is able to mount obstacles just like a real monster truck.
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Lego 60203 City Ski Resort
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At the other end of the City scale is this – a stunning alpine resort that’ll be a top playset for young skiiers especially. Complete with shop, ski patrol, helicopter, skidoo and 4×4 with snowplough, there’s plenty to occupy. There’s even an apres-ski bar, too.
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Lego 70423 Hidden Side Paranormal Intercept Bus
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Hidden Side is Lego’s latest theme; it uses an AR app on your phone to bring the sets to life. While the series is a bit of a hotchpotch in terms of what it offers (and the app is, too), there are some great sets in the range. Our pick is this school bus, which is a pretty solid set in itself – long after the appeal of Hidden Side has waned, this set will be great as part of a Lego City setup.
Lego
Lego 75243 Star Wars Slave I – 20th Anniversary Edition
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Another top Star Wars set is this – the Slave l which is part of Lego’s 20th anniversary reissue of some key Star Wars sets (it’s 20 years since Lego’s first Star Wars set which coincided with The Phantom Menace). As well as Boba Fett, Han Solo, Zuckuss and 4-LOM, you also get a bonus 20th anniversary Princess Leia minifigure with display stand.
Lego
LEGO 75292 Star Wars The Mandalorian Bounty Hunter Transport Starship
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The Mandalorian has taken the world by storm, and its second season is proving similarly popular. The main character’s transport ship is a particularly distinctive spaceship that’s made for this great new kit, perfect for a wide range of ages of Star Wars fan.
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Lego 42110 Technic Land Rover Defender
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We so want this! Revealed at the same time as Land Rover showed off the real new Defender, the Lego recreation is an extremely detailed model with working steering wheel, forward-folding rear seats, 4-speed sequential gearbox, all-wheel-drive with three differentials, independent suspension and six-cylinder engine.
Writing by Dan Grabham. Editing by Max Freeman-Mills.
(Pocket-lint) – Each year Xiaomi’s Redmi offshoot – known for its budget phones – updates its latest and greatest with a mid-cycle ‘T’ variant, adding a little more to proceedings. In the case of the Redmi Note 9T the goal was to step beyond the already impressive Note 9 – which we found to be a stellar affordable 5G phone.
Problem is, things don’t always go entirely to plan. When we first received the Note 9T it had a software version that we couldn’t then get to update after moving into the phone – which caused umpteen issues with disappearing apps, inability to Cast, intermittent Bluetooth connections, payment verification problems, and more.
But, fear not, it was resolvable. A hard reset later and after installing all relevant apps manually from the Google Play Store, the Redmi Note 9T – on MIUI version 12.0.4 – ironed out the most pertinent of those highlighted problems. But was that initial dark cloud a sign of what was to come, or has our week-long experience using the Note 9T been all sunny skies?
Design & Display
Finishes: Nightfall Black, Daybreak Purple
Build: Glass front panel, plastic rear & frame
Dimensions: 161.2 x 77.3 x 9.1mm / Weight: 199g
Side-positioned fingerprint scanner (in power button)
Display: 6.53-inch LCD, 1080 x 2340 resolution, 19.5:9 aspect ratio
It’s all too easy to forget that the Redmi Note 9T is a fairly budget phone. Because, ultimately, it doesn’t look like one. Xiaomi does a decent job in hiding away any real telling signs. No, you don’t get the premium glass rear or other flashy colours as you might further up various ranges, but that’s hardly a concern for a device that isn’t pretending to be a flagship.
Pocket-lint
Dressed in its ‘Nightfall Black’ finish here, the Redmi Note 9T is more than befitting of its price point. That plastic rear has a subtle texture that helps to hide fingerprinting, while the protruding circular camera unit – well, ‘designated area’ really, as the top and bottom of the actual protrusion are squared-off absentees – makes the rear panel look altogether more like a case (it’s not, though, as it’s not removable – and, no, don’t try and pull it really hard).
The 6.53-inch screen is the kind of scale that’s very current, delivering decent resolution too. Typically around this price point there’s a fall-out from Full HD to a lower density – look at the Moto G9 Power, for example – but the Redmi holds onto that Full HD+ resolution across its well-proportioned 19.5:9 aspect ratio panel. That’s as sharp as you need.
It’s not the very brightest or most colour-popping LCD panel ever, but you’d never notice that in isolation (as we have a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra running in tandem, however, it’s clear as day – but the Samsung is more than four times the price). Initially we had issues with the 9T’s auto-dimming being overzealous, which is particularly notable when ambient light is low. It’s a long-time issue for the series – and one that Motorola used to have, but since fixed – that we hope Xiaomi’s software will address in the future.
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Rather than opting for an under-display fingerprint scanner sign-in method, the Note 9T has a side-positioned fingerprint scanner, which doubles-up as the power button. While this position has never been our favourite – largely because Android apps now present a massive ‘press here’-style fingerprint on the screen itself, so you’ll typically want to press the screen – it’s largely effective in this setup, responsive the majority of the time, and easy to reach.
Performance & Battery
MediaTek Dimensity 800U processor, 4GB RAM
64GB storage (128GB optional), microSD slot
5,000mAh battery, 18W fast-charging
MIUI 12 software
5G connectivity
Performance is a game of two halves though. That’s the one thing that gets us about the Redmi Note 9T. It always feels as though there’s some jostling between software – battery optimisations and specific permissions, for example – and the hardware on offer. Because MediaTek’s Dimensity 800 is no slouch – it’s a decent enough chipset designed to bring 5G connectivity to a wider audience.
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But the whole package doesn’t always play ball. There’s a lot of tinkering that you’ll need to do with this Redmi to get the most out of it. Whether that’s ensuring per-app permissions are setup to allow, say, Strava to keep tracking – it’s still hit-and-miss anyway – or for the vibration to just dang well stop (it’s on by default in silent mode, which is bananas if you ask us; plus there’s a separate treatment for touch vibration feedback hidden elsewhere in the menus), there’s a sense that Xiaomi’s MIUI software still isn’t quite simple and easy enough.
That was even telling after our first install, with version 12.0.1 fired up, and the numerous issues we had, as mentioned up top in this review. It goes to show just how incredibly important a smooth software experience is – and that’s what we’ve been saying these Redmi devices haven’t quite handled perfectly to date (Xiaomi’s Mi 10T Pro felt like a step down from the 9T Pro to us too). But if you’re OK with knowing what you’re getting then it’s not a big issue, per se, it’s just that competitors like Motorola do better by comparison – if you’re alright with getting a less powerful device for about the same cash, anyway.
Pocket-lint
But back to Redmi. The Note 9T has the guts inside to handle a variety of tasks, including gaming. But there are still bugs, especially when it comes to graphics. In South Park Phone Destroyer – yes, we’re a bit obsessed, it’s our standard benchmark for any mobile device review as a result – top layer graphics (i.e. the cards you play in the game) won’t display. Which is a massive problem that means the game is close to unplayable – we’ve only been able to continue on another device. Nothing to do with smoothness or frame-rate – that stuff’s all fine – just an experience with how this hardware and software combination doesn’t quite succeed.
However, get everything arranged as you like – there’s an app drawer or full screen icons options – and the experience is amenable. And it’ll last for a long time – as the 5,000mAh battery on board helps things last an age. We’ve been getting only about half way through the charge over the course of a single day, so two-day life really isn’t out of the question.
Pocket-lint
Software plays a major part in that longevity though. And it’s why you’ll need to tell certain apps through background settings that they’re allowed to run at all times, self launch, and do as they please. Which is rather reflective of the Redmi Note 9T experience.
Cameras
Triple rear camera system:
Main (26mm equivalent): 48-megapixel, 0.8µm pixel size, f/1.8 aperture
Macro: 2MP, f/2.4 / Depth: 2MP, f/2.4
Single punch-hole selfie camera (29mm equiv.)
13-megapixel, 1.12µm pixel size, f/2.3 aperture
Last up is the camera arrangement. It’s a triple rear unit – we know it looks like a quad arrangement, but the fourth is the LED light/flash – that, well, only really contains one camera of much use.
Pocket-lint
As is typical with budget phones these days there’s the sense that “more equals better”. We don’t think so, though, as it just makes for a more cumbersome looking rear unit, with the 2-megapixel macro and 2-megapixel depth sensors most likely never going to be used at all.
Which leaves the main 48-megapixel sensor to do the hard work. It uses pixel binning – that being it combines four into one – to squeeze more colour and detail out of a scene, rendering frames as 12-megapixels by default. But that’s still huge – it’s like a 4K TV with yet another half-a-4K-TV all pressed into the one image. So scale is no issue whatsoever.
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What’s more trying are certain shooting conditions. We got some decent shots in the late evening, with colours still popping nicely considering the lack of light. But there’s some visible grain that detracts from the detail.
The Note 9T’s main camera is perfectly good enough for a phone – results are even better in daylight – and it fits the bill of what to expect here. Just don’t forget to turn off the default watermark otherwise you’ll want to punch yourself after seeing it plastered over every image (why oh why it’s even an option we have no idea).
Pocket-lint
To the front is a punch-hole selfie camera, which cuts a circular opening through the screen. It’s a little large and almost casts a shadow onto content sometimes, which is odd, but it’s all par for the course these days. It’s 13-megapixels and can deliver selfies with usable results.
Overall, the Note 9T sounds like it’s got a grand selection of cameras, but it’s an oversell. Disregard the ‘triple’ on the rear – and it’s a bit of a shame there’s no ultra-wide to be found – and it’s got a workable main and selfie camera combination.
Verdict
The Redmi Note 9T represents great value for money. It’s got a big screen with ample resolution, it doesn’t look or feel like a budget phone – yet affordability is very much its key strength.
So what’s the catch? Well, there’s a bit of push and pull with the software. To get the most out of this phone you’ll need to tinker a bit to get some apps to function to their fullest. And while we’ve experienced some typical issues – excessive screen dimming on the software side, the cameras being an oversell on the hardware side – there’s also been some unexpected oddities, such as particular graphics not loading within games.
Given the context of its asking price, however, the Redmi Note 9T is a capable device that will deliver more core power and features than, say, a comparable Motorola device. But we feel there’s so much more just beneath the surface that’s desperate to get out.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Moto G 5G Plus
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It’s a spot more cash, but Moto’s software experience is just that much better out of the box. It suffers some similar hardware issues to the Redmi – the cameras being an oversell, there’s no under-display fingerprint scanner – but, for us, the user experience here is just a cut above.
Read our review
Pocket-lint
Redmi Note 9
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Xiaomi is offering massive discounts on the already affordable ‘non-T’ version of the Redmi Note 9. If you can find it for a sub-£/€200 price point then it’s a no-brainer choice, even over the 9T!
A speed demon that prioritizes raw performance, the Alienware m17 R4 puts plenty of pop into a sleek but bulky chassis.
For
Unrivaled performance
Snappy keyboard
Attractive design
At present, RTX 3080 is the fastest laptop graphics card around, but not all RTX 3080-powered laptops are created equal. Many vendors use Nvidia’s Max-Q technology, which prioritizes power efficiency and low fan noise over high performance. Alienware’s m17 R4, however, seeks to pump out every possible frame, deploying a special cooling system and eschewing Max-Q to make its top-of-the-line configuration one of the best gaming laptops,
But the Alienware m17 R4 is not just a speed demon. Starting at $2,106 ($3,586 as tested), this laptop has a snappy keyboard, a sleek sci-fi inspired design with plenty of RGB and an optional 360 Hz screen. You just have to live with a heavy chassis and the occasional bout of fan noise.
Editor’s Note: The Alienware m17 R4 review unit we tested came with a 512GB boot drive and 2TB RAID 0 storage drive. While this hardware is for sale, it is normally shipped to consumers with the 2TB RAID 0 drive as boot drive.
3x USB Type-A 3.2, 1x HDMI 2.2, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt 3, 1x microSD card reader
Camera
1280 x 720
Battery
86 WHr
Power Adapter
330W
Dimensions (WxDxH)
15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches
Weight
6.6 pounds
Price (as configured)
$3,586
Design of the Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 has the same sci-fi inspired “Legend” design as both its immediate predecessor, the m17 R3, and its sibling, the Alienware m15 R4. Available in “lunar light: white or “dark side of the moon” (black), the m17 R4 looks like a giant starship, rocketing through space. The body (ours was white) has a black rear end that juts out like the jet engine on the back of an imperial cruiser. The number 17 on the lid appears in a sci-fi font that you might find adorning a secret warehouse at Area 51.
There’s a honeycomb pattern for the vents on the back, above the keyboard and on the bottom surface. We can only assume that Alienware aliens live in some kind of hive where they are all doing CUDA core calculations.
And, of course, there’s lots of RGB lights to brighten the mood in outer space. The keyboard has four-zone RGB and there are customizable lights on the back edge and in the alien heads on the back of the lid and the power button.
The chassis is made from premium materials: a magnesium alloy with matte white or black paint, covered by a clear coat for extra durability. The interior uses Alienware’s cryo-tech cooling technology which has 12-phase graphics voltage regulation, 6-phase CPU voltage regulation and a CPU vapor chamber.
At 6.6 pounds and 15.74 x 11.56 x 0.87 inches, the Alienware m17 R4 is not exactly light or thin, not that would you expect that from a 17-inch laptop with a Core i9 CPU and RTX 3080 graphics. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G (5.95 pounds, 15.9 x 10.8 x 1.0 inches) and Razer Blade Pro 17 (6.1 pounds, 15.6 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches) are both significantly lighter, though the Aorus is thicker. The Asus ROG Flow X13, which we’re also comparing to the m17, is much thinner and lighter (2.87 pounds, 11.77 x 8.74 x 0.62 inches), because it’s a 13-inch laptop that gets its RTX 3080 graphics via an external dock.
The Alienware m17 R4 has plenty of room for ports. On the right side, there are two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, along with a micro SD card reader. The left side contains a Killer RJ-45 Ethernet 2.5 Gbps port, a 3.5mm audio jack and another USB Type-A port. The back holds a Thunderbolt 3 port, a mini DisplayPort 1.4, an HDMI 2.1 connection, Alienware’s proprietary graphics amplifier port and the power connector.
Gaming Performance on the Alienware m17 R4
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Sporting an Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU and an Intel Core i9-10980HK CPU, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 is as fast of a gaming laptop as you can get right now. Thanks to Alienware’s strong cryo-tech cooling solution and the company’s willingness to include a full version of the RTX 3080, rather than the Max-Q variants in some thinner notebooks.
When I played Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra RTX settings, the game ranged between 61 and 72 frames per second, depending on how intense the action was at any given time. The frame rate improved to between 85 and 94 fps after I changed to Ultra settings with no RTX. In both cases, the fan noise was really loud by default. Changing the fan profile to quiet improved this somewhat while shaving only a couple of fps off, and only in intense scenes.
The Alienware m17 R4 hit a rate of 120 fps in Grand Theft Auto V at very high settings (1080p), eclipsing the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and its Max-Q-enabled RTX 3080 and Core i7-10870H CPU by 20%. The Asus ROG Flow 13 with its Ryzen 9 5980HS CPU and external RTX 3080 dock, was also a good 13% behind while the RTX 2080 Super-powered Razer Blade Pro 17 brought up the rear.
On the very-demanding Red Dead Redemption at medium settings, the m17 R4 achieved an impressive rate of 79.7 fps, besting the Aorus 17G and ROG Flow X13 by more than 20%. Saddled with last year’s card, the Razer Blade Pro 17 was a full 29 % behind.
Alienware’s behemoth exceeded 100 fps again in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, hitting 103 while the Aorus 17G and the ROG Flow X13 hovered in the mid 80s and 60s. On this test, surprisingly, the Razer Blade Pro 17 came close to matching the m17 R4.
Far Cry New Dawn at Ultra settings also provided a great example of the Alienware m15 R4’s dominance. It hit a full 105 fps where its nearest competitor, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G could only manage 92 fps with the Asus ROG Flow X13 and Razer Blade Pro 17 were both in the 80s.
To see how well the Alienware m17 R4 performs over the long haul, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark at RTX, the highest settings level, 15 times at 1080p. The laptop was remarkably consistent, averaging 75.6 fps with a high of 76.2 and a low of 75.4. During that time, the average CPU speed was 4.19 GHz with a peak of 5.088 GHz. By comparison, the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, got an average frame rate of just 59.6 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.47 GHz and the Asus ROG Flow X13 managed a slightly-higher 65.2 fps with an average CPU speed of 3.89 GHz.
Productivity Performance of Alienware m17 R4
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With its Core i9-10980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and dual storage drives, which include both a 2TB RAID 0 PCIe SSD (2 x 1TB) and a 512GB SSD, and that RTX 3080, our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 can be a powerful work tool.
On Geekbench 5, a synthetic benchmark that measures overall performance, the m17 R4 got a single-core score of 1,318 and a multi-core score of 8,051, which wa slightly ahead of the of the Core i7-10870H-powered Gigabyte Aorus 17G on both counts but behind the Asus ROG Flow X13 and its Ryzen 9 5980HS on single-core performance while creaming the Razer Blade Pro 17, which we tested with a Core i7-10875H.
The storage in our review unit came misconfigured slightly, with a 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD as boot drive and a significantly faster 2TB RAID 0 drive made from two 1TB NVMe PCIe SSDs. Dell sells this hardware, but consumers receive units with the 2TB as boot and the 512GB SSD as a secondary, storage drive.
In our tests, copying about 25GB of files, the 512GB drive managed a mediocre 379.7 MBps, but the 2TB drive hit an impressive 1305.5 MBps, which beats the Aorus 17G (869 MBps), the ROG Flow X13 (779.5 MBps) and the Blade Pro 17 (925.2 MBps).
The Alienware m17 R4 took just 6 minutes and 44 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. That time is 21% faster than the Aorus 17G, 18% quicker than the Flow X13 and a full 29% ahead of the Blade Pro 17.
Display on Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 comes with a choice of three different, 17-inch display panels: a 1080p panel with 144 Hz refresh rate, a 4K, 60 Hz panel and the 1080p, 360 Hz panel in our review unit. Our panel provided sharp images and accurate but mostly unexciting colors, along with smooth, tear-free gaming.
When I watched a trailer for upcoming volcano-disaster-flick Skyfire, the red-orange of lava bursts was lively and the green trees in a forest seemed true-to-life. Fine details like the wrinkles in actor Jason Isaacs’ forehead also stood out.
In a 4K nature video of a Costa Rican jungle, details like the scales on a snake and colors like the red on a parrot’s feathers were also strong, but not nearly as strong as when I viewed it on the 4K, OLED panel from the Alienware m15 R4 I tested recently. On both videos, viewing angles on the matte display were strong as colors didn’t fade even at 90 degrees to the left or right.
In Cyberpunk 2077, details like the threads on a rug or the barrel of a gun were prominent and colors like the red and yellow in the UI seemed accurate but didn’t pop.
The Alienware m17 R4’s display registered a strong 316.2 nits of brightness on our light meter, outpacing the Aorus 17G (299.6), the Razer Blade Pro 17 (304.4) and the Asus ROG Flow X13 (281.6). According to our colorimeter, the screen can reproduce a solid 80.6% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is about on par with the Aorus 17G and slightly behind the Razer Blade Pro 17, but miles ahead of the ROG Flow X13.
Keyboard and Touchpad on Alienware m17 R4
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With a deep, 1.7mm of travel, great tactile feedback and a full numeric keypad, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a fantastic typing experience. On the tenfastfingers.com typing test, I scored a strong 102 words-per-minute with a 3% error rate, which is a little better than my typical 95 to 100 wpm and 3 to 5% rate.
Not only does the keyboard have a full numeric keypad, but it also sports four customizable macro keys above the pad on the top row. The Alienware Command Center software allows you to set these to launch a program, enter text or use a pre-recorded set of keystrokes when you hit them. I found programming them very unintuitive, however.it. Alienware Command Center also allows you to set RGB colors or lightning effects for four different zones on the keyboard.
The 3.1 x 4.1 glass touchpad, which uses Windows precision drivers, offers great navigation with just the right amount of friction. Whether I was navigating around the desktop or using multitouch gestures such as pinch-zoom or three-finger swipe, the pad was always accurate and responsive.
Audio on Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4’s audio system outputs sound that’s loud enough to fill a mid-sized room and rich enough to dance to. When I played AC/DC’s “Back in Black” with the volume all the way up, the sound was mostly accurate, but some of the high-pitched percussion sounds were a little harsh. Earth, Wind and Fire’s bass-heavy “September” sounded great, with a clear separation of sound where instruments such as the horns section appeared to come from a different side of the notebook than, for example, the drums.
Gunshots and the sound of my NPC friend Jackie yelling at me to stay down sounded sharp and clear in Cyberpunk 2077. However, I had to turn the volume way up to compensate for the fan noise when the system was on high performance settings. Even on the “quiet” thermal setting, fan noise was quite prominent.
The preloaded Alienware Command Center app has an audio section that lets you tweak the sound settings and choose among profiles such as Music, Movie, Shooter and Role Play. I found that the default “Alienware” profile sounded about the same as the Music one, but disabling the audio enhancement definitely made the sound flatter.
Upgradeability of the Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 has three different M.2 SSD slots, all of which are accessible and user upgradeable. The first slot is an short 2230 length and the other two are both the normal 2280 size. Unfortunately, the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard and therefore not replaceable.
Opening the Alienware m17 R4 should be easy: there are eight Philips-head screws, some of which come out and the others of which you can just loosen, on the bottom panel. In our testing, getting the screws loosened was easy by prying off the bottom panel was challenging and required several minutes with a spudger. Once the panel is off, all three SSDs are visible, but are covered by copper heat sinks you can easily unscrew.
Battery Life on Alienware m17 R4
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Forget about using the Alienware m17 R4 without a power outlet for any length of time. The laptop lasted just just 2 hours and 5 minutes on our battery test, which involves surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. That’s awful in comparison to all of its competitors as both the Gigabyte Aorus 17G and Razer Blade Pro 17 lasted for an identical 4 hours and 41 minutes. But this is a 17-inch, 6.6-pound laptop so portability isn’t a primary concern.
Heat on Alienware m17 R4
The main touchpoints on the Alienware m17 R4 stay relatively cool when you’re not gaming and remain warm but tolerable when you are. After we streamed a YouTube video for 15 minutes, the keyboard hit a reasonable 35.5 degrees Celsius (95.9 degrees Fahrenehitt), the touchpad was a chilly 26.2 degrees Celsius (79.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and the underside was just 36.6 degrees Celsius (97.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
After running the Metro Exodus benchmark for 15 minutes to simulate gaming, those temperatures were obviously higher. The keyboard hit 35.5 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit), the touchpad measured 35 degrees (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and the bottom hit 50 degrees (122 degrees Fahrenheit).
When I played Cyberpunk 2077, the area around the WASD keys measured about 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit) but the key caps themselves didn’t feel uncomfortably warm to touch. At performance settings, the fan noise was extremely loud.
Webcam on Alienware m17 R4
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Alienware m17 R4’s 720p webcam is nothing special. Even when I shot it in a well-lit room, an image of my face was filled with visual noise and fine details like the hairs in my beard were blurry while colors such as the blue in my shirt and the green on the walls were muted. You’ll get by with this built-in camera if you need to, but you’d be better off springing for one of the best webcams.
Software and Warranty on Alienware m17 R4
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The Alienware m17 R4 comes preloaded with a handful of useful first-party utilities.
Alienware Mobile Connect allows you to control your Android handset or iPhone from your laptop, taking calls and texts for the desktop.
Alienware Command Center lets you control all the RGB lighting effects, set keyboard macros, tweak audio settings and even modify the performance settings and thermals to go for better performance or quieter and cooler temps. You can even change the max frequency, voltage and voltage offset for the CPU manually if you have an unlocked CPU and want to try overclocking.
As with any Windows laptop, there’s also a small amount of preloaded bloatware, including a trial of Microsoft Office, links to download Photoshop Express and Hulu and free-to-play games like Roblox.
Alienware backs the m17 R4 with a standard one year warranty on parts and labor that includes in-home service (if there was already a remote diagnosis). You can pay extra to extend the warranty up to five years and you can add accidental damage protection with no deductible.
Configurations of Alienware m17 R4
When you purchase the Alienware m17 R4 from Dell.com, you can custom configure it with your choice of a Core i7 or Core i9 CPU, RTX 3070 or 3080 GPU, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 4TB of storage. You can choose white or blackcolor options and you can also pay extra to get per-key RGB lighting instead of the standard 4-zone lighting we tested.
You also get a choice of screens that includes 144 Hz and 360 Hz 1080p panels, along with a 4K, 60 Hz panel that promises to hit 100 % of the Adobe RGB color gamut. If you value image quality over fps, we recommend the latter, because the color on our 360 Hz panel was ok, but not exciting.
Our review configuration of the Alienware m17 R4 currently goes for $3,586.79. For that price, you get the Core i9-10980HK, RTX 3080 graphics, the 360 Hz display, 32GB of RAM and a combination of storage drives that includes two, 1TB M.2 PCIe SSDS in RAID 0 and a 512GB M.2 SSD by itself for a total of 2.5TB of storage. Dell lists the RAID drive as the boot drive in its store but our review model came with the 512GB drive as boot and the 2TB RAID drive as storage, which seems odd.
Bottom Line
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
At this point, it’s hard to imagine someone making a gaming laptop that’s significantly more powerful than the Alienware m17 R4 we tested unless they use desktop parts. The RTX 3080 is currently the fastest mobile GPU around, especially since Alienware didn’t opt for Nvidia’s more power efficient Max-Q technologies.. Using a strong cooling system, pairing it with a Core i9-10980HK, and you have performance that’s often 20% faster than competitors that also use RTX 3080s.
In addition to its strong performance, the Alienware m17 R4 offers a deep, tactile keyboard and a unique, attractive design that’s all its own. The 360 Hz screen is more than capable, but unless you’re a competitive gamer, you can go with the default screen or, better yet, go for the 4K panel which promises much richer colors.
The biggest drawbacks for this epic laptop are those which are kind of inherent to any 17-inch laptop which turns the performance volume up to 11. It’s heavy, has short battery life, emits plenty of fan noise. It’s also quite expensive. It would be nice if, for this price, you got a better-than-awful webcam, but most laptop webcams are terrible.
If you want to save a few dollars or you need a little more battery life, consider the Gigabyte Aorus 17G, which goes for $2,699 with similar specs (but just 1TB of storage) to our Alienware m17 R4. The 17G lasts more than twice as long on a charge and weighs 0.65 pounds less than the m17, but its gaming performance isn’t as good.
If you don’t feel attached to the 17-inch form factor, consider the Alienware m15 R4, which has the same design and keyboard but is much more portable, albeit hotter. It also has an optional, 4K OLED panel which has incredibly vibrant output. However, if you want the ultimate 17-inch gaming rig right now, the Alienware m17 R4 is your best choice.
January was a huge month for Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation released the Raspberry Pi Pico, a brand new board that serves as a microcontroller and uses the organization’s first custom silicon, the RP2040 CPU. There’s now an entire ecosystem of Pico products to go along with all the traditional best Raspberry Pi accessories and HATs.
While the influx of Pico projects is just getting started, the onslaught of awesome innovations based on traditional Pi models continues unabated. February’s best Raspberry Pi projects list includes an Etch-a-Sketch, an intercom and a Lego sorter.
Star Wars-Themed Raspberry Pi Terminal
(Image credit: Maz_Baz)
Cyberdeck projects provide a fun way to be creative and productive. This maker decided to pay homage to Star Wars by theming this Raspberry Pi cyberdeck after the classic sci-fi movie franchise. It can be used for basic things like browsing and coding.
Why we love it:
The force is strong with this Raspberry Pi project, what’s not to love? The concept is fun enough in itself but the final execution makes for a quality machine that can actually be used in a practical manner.
Read:Raspberry Pi Star Wars Terminal
Raspberry Pi Intercom
(Image credit: Bruno, Chordata)
Keeping up with everyone while working from home can be tricky. This project bridges the at-home communication gaps that come with remote working by using a Raspberry Pi to control a custom intercom. It has multiple buttons and relies on Telegram to transfer audio.
Why we love it:
This is a simple and fun project that brings people together in a time when we’re living at a distance. It’s well-designed and hits every marker for an at-home DIY project with the kids. All you need is a Raspberry Pi Zero, a speaker, some buttons and a little bit of patience.
Read:Raspberry Pi Intercom
Raspberry Pi Pico Tetris Demo
(Image credit: Jools64)
While we wait for more Pico projects to roll in, there’s already a couple we can show off! This maker was eager to get the Pico running and developed a quick Tetris demo using Pimoroni’s Display Pack Module. The buttons control the piece direction, speed and orientation.
Why we love it:
We’re super excited for the Pico projects that are coming and this one is a delicious taste of what’s to come! For something thrown together in a few hours, it looks great and like fun to play. We could easily sink an hour into some Pico Tetris if we aren’t careful.
Read:Raspberry Pi Pico Tetris Demo
Raspberry Pi Monitors Your Power Usage
(Image credit: Mark Bryan Milligan)
Keeping an eye on your bills is one thing, but anticipating them by monitoring your own power usage is an entirely new level! This project uses a Raspberry Pi to help monitor power usage and solar panel data.
Why we love it:
Raspberry Pis are a popular choice for smart-home makers and it’s projects like this that demonstrate why. This is an incredibly useful and fascinating application of the Raspberry Pi.
Read:Raspberry Pi Power Monitoring System
PiStation 2
(Image credit: Farizno)
This PlayStation 2 looks like your average, beloved, unsuspecting console from the ’90s but, in fact, it’s home to our favorite SBC. That’s right! This PlayStation 2 is a retrogaming emulator running on the Raspberry Pi.
Why we love it:
It’s a beautiful meld of retro hardware and modern technology. If you’ve got an old, broken console that can’t be refurbished, projects like these are a great way to bring a little life back into them.
Read:Raspberry Pi Playstation 2
Raspberry Pi Etch-A-Sketch
(Image credit: BenB116)
We know you’ve probably seen an Etch-a Sketch before but have you ever seen one so huge? This Raspberry Pi operated board has working knobs and can automatically draw a pre-programmed image for you. The housing was 3D printed while the image displayed is a custom app running in a browser window on the Raspberry Pi.
Why we love it:
We’ve never seen a Raspberry Pi project quite like this one! It’s wonderfully creative and makes for a well-finished piece of art that can be displayed inside your home.
Read:Raspberry Pi Etch-a-Sketch
Raspberry Pi 4-Track Looper
(Image credit: he Psychotenuse)
This groovy Raspberry Pi project is cool enough to make you get up and dance. This maker used a Raspberry Pi to make a 4-track audio looper. He even provides a real-time demo which we absolutely recommend our readers check out.
Why we love it:
Why spend money on specialized hardware when you can make it yourself and even customize your experience along the way? This project is really cool and looks like it would be plenty of fun to recreate at home.
Read:Raspberry Pi 4-Track Looper
Raspberry Pi PlottyBot
(Image credit: Ben Akrin)
Plotters are fun and all, but this one copies your handwriting and can even memorize it as a custom font! This awesome Raspberry Pi project is known as PlottyBot and can also be used to reproduce images. The pen can be replaced with a fountain pen which provides more options for specialized ink.
Why we love it:
We’re writers, what did you expect? It uses fountain pens and a Raspberry Pi. This project is brilliantly crafted and demonstrates the power of creative discipline. Excellent work!
Read:PlottyBot Raspberry Pi Plotter
Raspberry Pi Universal Lego Sorter
(Image credit: Daniel West)
Can’t find the Lego brick you need? We feel you. That’s where this Lego brick sorting Raspberry Pi project comes in! It’s beyond thorough, using AI and machine learning to predict and sort unfamiliar brick shapes.
Why we love it:
It’s made of LEGO bricks for LEGO bricks. There’s just too much fun in this project not to love it! The sorting process is extremely well designed and the final LEGO design is a nice finishing touch.
Read:Raspberry Pi LEGO Brick Sorter
Custom Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Tablet
(Image credit: Ostahos)
Makers have tried to make Raspberry Pi tablets before, but the thick form factor of models like the 3 B+ and 4 always gets in the way. This custom PCB solves that issue by providing a platform for the CM4 module to operate a touchscreen panel.
Why we love it:
This Raspberry Pi project provides all the power of a CM4 module with the user-friendly experience of a tablet interface. It’s one thing to build your own Pi project but designing an open-source PCB is an extra step that gets points in our book.
Read:Raspberry Pi CM4 Tablet
MORE: Raspberry Pi GPIO Pinout: What Each Pin Does
He’s real, he’s here, and I am so happy. The stonks guy is now a five-inch-tall, $30 thing you can buy, complete with a line graph that’s forever up 69 percent. It first debuted last July, but don’t let that stop you.
Officially his name is Meme Man, and he’s the wonky former mascot of at least one surrealist meme page, though he began his life as a failed model of a human head over at 4chan’s 3D modeling board. Meme Man, however, has transcended his origins. You probably know him best in his banker config, confidently and wordlessly asserting that the Line Will Go Up and that numbers, by extension, can be trusted.
I’m not gonna lie to you: I have never wanted anything so dumb so badly before. Possibly that’s because of the climate. A pack of wild redditors nearly bankrupted at least one hedge fund last week; the memes (and Meme Man) were naturally omnipresent. The frenzy of posts was intoxicating, and people were hopeful that by buying GameStop stock they might change the balance of our hopelessly broken financial system. It wasn’t silly, either; hope springs eternal from the human breast, and what’s a market if not the reification of people’s hopes and desires?
Anyway, Youtooz, the company behind the figurine, has written an incredible backstory for their product. “On the NASDANQ ^ NDQA 0.69USD (+69%), it’s always a bull run. Standing at five inches tall, Stonks has been immortalized in vinyl form,” the company writes. “Dressed in a black tailored suit and tie, you can be sure that this investor knows what he’s talking about.” And they’re right. Who knows more about the stock market than a guy in a black suit and tie?
However, the situation seems a little dark, at least for today. $GME is down many, many percentage points; it looks like the frenzy is starting to calm, and that the lines are righting themselves. Things are returning to the mean. The correct lines are going up again, and the invisible hand has returned to its invisible position. (It had previously halted trading on GameStop stock in Robinhood because of that app’s liquidity crisis brought on by retail redditors.)
The stonks guy, however, holds. Because playing the market isn’t about today — it’s about tomorrow, and the day after that, and the months and weeks and years it takes for storylines about property and capital to play out. The market is about the belief in a better future for you; investing is a fundamentally individual pursuit. The stock market is as good a place as any to place your fears and dreams about the future, though its abstraction might prevent you from looking at the world around you and wondering how everything was assigned its value.
Instagram is making it easier to bring back deleted posts. The company is rolling out a “recently deleted” feature in the app that’ll allow you to review content you’ve deleted, including photos, videos, reels, IGTV videos, and stories, and restore them. Instagram is positioning this feature as helpful against hacks, particularly if hackers gain control of an account and start deleting content. Starting today, users will need to confirm they’re the account owner through either text or email in order to permanently delete or restore content.
Deleted items will stay in the folder for 30 days, and if not touched, they will automatically delete after that point. Deleted stories are the exception, however: they will only stay in the recently deleted section for 24 hours before they’re permanently removed. To access the folder, navigate to Settings > Account > Recently Deleted.
Clearly, Instagram wants to give people chances to keep their content before permanently removing it. The app already offers an archive, or a way to keep posts without them being publicly available, and with this feature, it’s allowing people to keep their posts as an option, even if they want to initially delete them. Instagram benefits from having more content, and thereby more data, on users. The more it can encourage people to keep their posts, the better it is for the service.
Correction 2/2, 12:22 PM ET: This story initially stated that users need to confirm they’re the account holder in order to access the feature in general, but they actually only need to do so to permanently delete or restore content. We’ve updated to reflect this change.
What’s the first thing you think of when someone says the word ‘multi-room’?
For most, we imagine it’s a dedicated set-up from a single manufacturer such as Sonos or Bluesound, with its connected ecosystem of speakers, soundbars, soundbases and hi-fi components. Or perhaps you’d think of AirPlay 2, a gateway for an iOS source (Apple device) to stream music to multiple compatible products.
If you want to mix and match from multiple manufacturers, cherry-picking devices in order to get the best performance and fit for each room, DTS Play-Fi could be an option worth looking into. The app-controlled, wireless, multi-room platform has been licensed to several hi-fi brands and consequently sits at the functionality core of excellent streaming products such as the What Hi-Fi? Award winning Audiolab 6000N Play (pictured below) and five-star Arcam rPlay music streamers.
It claims to provide “premium wireless audio for every room of your house”, and works across a wide array of products. So, let’s take a look at what it does, how it does it and what products utilise it…
Multi-room audio: everything you need to know
What is DTS Play-Fi?
(Image credit: Audiolab)
DTS Play-Fi is, at the most fundamental level, a platform and app that lets you connect and control various hi-fi devices together in order to stream audio from one to another. This can be within one room for a multi-channel set-up, or across multiple rooms in your home. Multi-room aside, it can just be used to facilitate network streaming in one standalone product.
The range of compatible devices includes portable wireless speakers, stereo systems, A/V tuners, preamps, amplifiers, music streamers and media servers – all of which can be managed on your smartphone, tablet, PC or TV via the dedicated app. DTS Play-Fi launched in 2012 and originally its app was only available only on Android. But now its dedicated control app is available on iOS, Kindle Fire (the operating system on Amazon’s Fire tablets) and Windows PCs too, as well as on TVs.
On Windows, however, there are two varieties of Play-Fi app: a free version and a “Play-Fi HD” version. The latter costs $14.95 (approximately £10), which buys you a code for from the DTS online store and ultimately gives you greater control over your audio as well as higher quality.
Best multi-room systems 2021
Best multi-room speakers 2021
How does it work?
Download the app and you should quickly see a list of available devices. Tap to select it, then choose audio from a number of sources including Amazon Music (including Amazon Music HD), Tidal, Deezer, Spotify and Qobuz, as well as internet radio stations via iHeartRadio, SirusXM and Radio.com. Apple Music is not available on the service at the moment.
Some DTS Play-Fi-compatible products will also support AirPlay and AirPlay 2, Apple’s simple method of streaming audio and video directly from iPhones, iPads and other devices. However, this isn’t available in every DTS Play-Fi product; it’s the manufacturer’s decision whether to implement it or not. Similarly, that’s the case with Google Chromecast and Spotify Connect.
You can configure two separate speakers into a stereo pairing – one playing the left channel audio, the other playing the right – using the app, or (if you have at least six DTS Play-Fi compatible products) create a 5.1 surround-sound system.
Those speaker groups can then be designated as ‘Zones’, which allows you to delegate music to different rooms of your house. For example, you could have a Tidal stream going to the speakers in your living room while a Deezer stream plays in the bedroom.
A new companion app, called DTS Play-Fi Headphones, also lets you stream audio from select DTS Play-Fi-connected products (soundbars, stereo amps and speakers) to a pair of headphones over wi-fi. DTS claims the wi-fi connection is better than Bluetooth headphones (which can introduce latency issues) and its AV synchronisation technology means there shouldn’t be any syncing issues between picture and audio when watching TV.
To use it, you have to connect your wired headphones to your smartphone or tablet with the app on it, up to four people can be connected to one stream, and users can even listen at different volumes. The free app is available on iOS and Android.
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Does DTS Play-Fi support hi-res music?
DTS Play-Fi will play MP3, M4A, AAC, FLAC, WAV and AIFF files. They can be streamed up to a 16-bit/48kHz resolution limit without compression – anything bigger will be compressed by default.
However, this can be changed using the service’s Critical Listening mode, which lets you stream 24-bit/192kHz music across your wi-fi network. A word of warning, though: since those files are generally pretty large (many of our hi-res music files are between 30MB and 70MB per track, compared to 3.5MB for the average MP3 file) and thus require greater bandwidth to stream, DTS advises using a wired connection for more reliable performance.
High-resolution audio: everything you need to know
Which products support DTS Play-Fi?
Among the vast array of products supporting DTS Play-Fi are soundbars, systems and speakers from – deep breath – Audiolab, Anthem, Arcam, Aerix, Definitive Technology, Integra, Klipsch, MartinLogan, McIntosh, Onkyo, Paradigm, Philips, Polk, Quad, Rotel, Phorus, Pioneer and Sonus faber.
Most recently, product announcements include the Quad Artera Solus Play streaming system, a range of Philips audio kit and TVs, and kit by Porsche Design.
You can see the full list of supported brands here.
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How to add a streamer to your hi-fi system
How many products can you connect using DTS Play-Fi?
In the words of The Notorious B.I.G., the sky’s the limit. You could theoretically connect as many products as you like together, but DTS recommends a maximum of 32 Play-Fi devices per home network, lest performance start to suffer.
Up to 16 Play-Fi products can stream the same song, whether that’s from your phone, tablet, or Windows PC. You can designate a maximum of four zones, with each zone streaming audio from a different source.
Up to eight people can use the same wi-fi network to stream songs using DTS Play-Fi (provided they’re all using different devices).
Adding a music streamer to my hi-fi system has been a revelation (and a frustration)
Does DTS Play-Fi support voice control?
In a word, yes. DTS Play-Fi supports voice control most exhaustively via Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant. This functionality is available in two ways: “integration of Alexa Voice Services” (which is for products with the Alexa voice assistant built-in) or, most commonly, “Works with Alexa” (which means you’ll be able to control Alexa-based music streams on DTS Play-Fi products via an Echo device).
Play-Fi-connected smart speakers such as the Onkyo P3, Pioneer F4 and Phorus PS10 have integrated Alexa, so you can shout commands at it just as you would Amazon’s own Echo speakers.
To use Alexa with other Play-Fi products (such as those from McIntosh or Martin Logan – basically anything without microphones built in) you’ll need to ask any of the above smart speakers or an Echo or Dot to play music, which it will then do across the rest of your Play-Fi products. There’s a long list of Works with Alexa-supporting DTS Play-Fi products, which we can be found here.
Speaking of Alexa, DTS Play-Fi products now support Alexa Cast, allowing users to send and control music directly from the Amazon Music app to them. See compatible products here.
How about Apple’s Siri voice assistant? Music playback on Play-Fi products that support AirPlay 2 can be started via voice commands to Siri or to a HomePod. Alternatively, users can use spoken commands to add AirPlay 2 speakers into a group with a HomePod or even transfer music playback from the HomePod to other AirPlay 2 products in the home.
Amazon Echo smart speakers: which Alexa speaker should you buy?
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What are the DTS Play-Fi alternatives?
Many other companies offer their own services to connect up audio kit – controlled through bespoke apps. Sonos is the obvious standout in that respect – its multi-room speakers routinely win What Hi-Fi? Awards for ease of use and excellent support of numerous streaming services, plus exclusive features such as Sonos Trueplay.
Streaming products from the likes of Naim, Linn, Audio Pro, B&O and Bose (and many more) use their own streaming apps, while Bluesound, NAD, Dali use the shared BluOS platform, and Denon and Marantz use the shared HEOS platform.
Then there’s arguably the most ubiquitous platforms: Apple AirPlay 2 and Google Chromecast, which have been integrated across a huge variety of wireless products, allowing you to mix-and-match products in your streaming household.
One thing’s for sure, it’s no longer difficult to make a multi-room audio system. If anything, it’s just harder to choose which of the many paths to go down.
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