(Pocket-lint) – Apple has finally announced a refresh of its flagship streaming box, the Apple TV 4K.
The last model was released in 2017 and was decently specced for its time. The new one is faster and includes some extra bells and whistles, but does that mean you need to upgrade?
We look at the features and specifications of both to help you make that decision.
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What’s the same?
Main “puck”-style box design – measuring 3.9 x 3.9 x 1.4mm
Access to thousands of TV shows and movies
Streaming services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and, of course, Apple TV+
Apple Arcade support
Apps and games
4K HDR, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos support
Bluetooth 5.0
Available in 32GB and 64GB variants
If you own an Apple TV 4K already, you’ll already know much of what to expect. The box itself is identical in size and shape, for starters.
The 2017 model is 4K (2160p) capable, just like the newer version, and is capable of playing all the same content. Both offer access to a wide variety of streaming services, including Apple’s own TV+, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer (in the UK). Movie rentals and purchases can be played equally well through them too. And they each can play the games that come with the Apple Arcade subscription.
Both devices are capable of 4K playback in HDR or Dolby Vision (depending on your TV), and can feed Dolby Atmos surround sound to a compatible AV receiver, TV or sound system.
Bluetooth 5.0 is support for connection to the included remote or other accessories. AirPlay 2 is also support by each of the machines. As too is Apple’s new TV calibration mode, which is available on the latest version of tvOS.
What’s different?
A12 Bionic processing
HDMI 2.1
High Frame Rate (HFR) support – up to 60fps
New Siri Remote
802.11ax Wi-Fi 6
While the latest Apple TV 4K model looks the same as its predecessor, there are some differences under the hood, as we detail below. There is also a brand new remote control.
Siri Remote
Perhaps the most obvious generational changes can be found on the included remote. We weren’t huge fans of the touchpanel on the previous version, so are pleased to see that’s been replaced by a new chickwheel.
There are still touch elements to it, to help with cursor use and navigation, but the Siri Remote now has clickable direction buttons on the wheel. It can also be used as a scroll wheel by running your finger around the circular edge.
The new remote comes in recycled aluminium, and the Siri button has been switched to the side – more like an iPhone. There’s a new mute button and a power button at the top that can also be used to turn on/off your TV through IR or HDMI CEC.
As before, the remote is rechargable, with a claimed battery life of “months” on a single charge (in normal use).
A12 Bionic
A new processor (upgraded from the A10X Fusion) means the latest Apple TV 4K should run more quickly than before and is capable of more powerful features – some of which could come down the pipeline at a later date. The A12 Bionic is the same processor used by the Apple iPad mini (4th generation) and 2020 iPad.
High Frame Rate
HFR is supported for the first time, with the new Apple TV 4K able to playback HDR video at upo to 60 frames-per-second. This includes 4K video.
That’s especially great for iPhone 12 Pro users who shoot videos in 60fps. You will be able to stream them to your TV in the higher frame rate over AirPlay 2. You will need an HFR supporting TV as well, of course, but most modern 4K HDR TVs are capable of 60fps playback too (ie. 60Hz and above).
HDMI 2.1
The HDMI output has been upgraded to HDMI 2.1 (from 2.0a) to enable the HFR support. Other benefits might become apparent over time.
Wi-Fi 6
With the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) wireless standard now supported you will be able to more seamlessly stream higher bandwidth content – including 4K 60fps video.
Conclusion
To be honest, there’s not a load of new changes, even considering the four year gap between models. However, the latest Apple TV 4K will updoubtedly be faster in operation and, therefore, more capable with processing-heavy applications. That will include games on Apple Arcade.
As is the way of such things, you might find some apps and games released in the future will only run effectively on the new model. But then, you might want to hold on from upgrading until then.
The one huge improvement comes in the shape of the new remote. It’s definitely better thought out, in our opinion. But even then, you needn’t upgrade for that alone as it’ll also be available as a optional extra and will work on the 2017 model too.
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There’s a much clearer reason to upgrade if you own the standard 1080p Apple TV, though. If you have one of those and have been holding off to see what happens, now’s a great time to consider taking the plunge.
Most importantly, the pricing remains the same between generations, so if you’ve never owned an Apple TV before, you can expect to get all the new features for the same price.
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If a $100 budget phone is the fast-food dollar menu and a $1,000 flagship is a steakhouse dinner, then the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G sits comfortably halfway between the two: the laid-back all-day cafe with surprisingly tasty food.
It’s good. More importantly, it’s good where it matters. Sure, you have to order your food at the counter and get your own water refills, but it’s worth it because brunch is fantastic and the prices are reasonable.
The A52 5G is the highest-specced of the budget A-series Galaxy phones we’ll see in the US this year, offering all of the basics for its $499 price tag along with a few good extras. Its 6.5-inch screen comes with a fast 120Hz refresh rate that’s scarce at this price point. Its main camera includes optical image stabilization, something I missed when I used the more expensive OnePlus 9. The A52 5G is rated IP67 waterproof for some extra peace of mind. And hey, there’s still a headphone jack! In this economy!
Still, this isn’t a flagship, and costs had to be cut somewhere. The device’s frame and back panel are plastic, and while I like the matte finish on the back, there’s a certain hollowness when you tap on it that’s not very reassuring. There’s also no telephoto to complement the wide and ultrawide cameras, just digital zoom plus a depth sensor and macro camera of dubious usefulness.
The important stuff is here, though. Samsung has the A52 5G on its list for monthly OS updates currently, and it says it will offer three years of major Android OS updates and at least some security support for four years. That will go a long way toward making the most out of your investment in this phone, and it will help you take advantage of its headline feature: 5G — Sub-6GHz, specifically, with hardware-level support for the C-band frequencies carriers will start using in 2022.
It’s getting more common to see 5G offered in midrange and budget phones, but in this country, it’ll be a couple more years before our 5G networks are truly good. Healthy device support for the next few years makes it more likely that the A52 5G will actually last long enough to make it to that 5G promised land.
The A52 5G offers solid everyday performance with a Snapdragon 750G chipset and 6GB of RAM.
Samsung Galaxy A52 5G performance and screen
The A52 5G uses a Snapdragon 750G processor with 6GB of RAM, and the combination feels like a good fit here. You can certainly push it out of its comfort zone with heavier tasks like webpages with JavaScript, and I noticed it hesitating a moment too long when opening the camera app from the lock screen. But for day-to-day tasks and social media scrolling, it keeps up well.
As in last year’s model, the screen is where the A52 5G (and Samsung generally) really stand out. This is a 6.5-inch 1080p OLED panel that’s rich, bright, and generally lovely to look at. Plus, it offers all of the velvety smoothness that comes with its 120Hz refresh rate. Swiping between home screens, opening apps, scrolling through Twitter — it all just feels nicer with a fast refresh rate.
Even considering the additional power needed for the 120Hz screen, the A52 5G’s 4,500mAh battery consistently lasted well into the next day in my use. I managed to get two full days out of it when I forgot to charge it overnight and decided to embrace chaos and just plow through on the remaining charge. This was with light to moderate use, and I was down to low double-digit battery percentage by the end of day two, but my gamble paid off.
One feature I continue to fight a losing battle with on the A52 5G is the in-display optical fingerprint sensor. I’ve been chastised by the phone many times for not leaving my finger on the sensor long enough, and I almost always need at least two tries to get it to register. That hit rate goes down significantly outside in bright light.
These problems aren’t unique to this device, and you can just opt to use (less secure) facial recognition or a plain old PIN to lock and unlock the phone. But there are nicer in-display fingerprint readers in pricier phones like the OnePlus 9 and Samsung’s own S21, so it’s a trade-off to be aware of.
The Galaxy A52 5G ships with Android 11, which is great. The less good news is, as we saw in the S21 devices earlier this year, Samsung’s latest take on the OS stuffs a lot of unwanted apps, ads, and general clutter into the UI. I see enough ads throughout my day as it is, and I do not appreciate seeing one more when I check the weather on my phone’s own weather app.
If there’s a positive way to look at this situation, it’s that it feels more forgivable on a budget phone than on a $1,000-plus flagship. But I’d rather not have the ads at all. If you buy the similarly priced Pixel 4A 5G, you give up a lot of other features from the A52 5G, but you get an ad-free experience.
Housed in the rear camera bump are a standard wide, ultrawide, macro, and depth sensor.
Samsung Galaxy A52 5G camera
The A52 5G includes three rear cameras, plus a 5-megapixel depth sensor. You get a 64-megapixel standard wide with OIS, 12-megapixel ultrawide, and the seemingly obligatory 5-megapixel macro camera. There’s also a front-facing 32-megapixel selfie camera.
Taken with 2x digital zoom
Taken with ultrawide
Taken with ultrawide
The 64-megapixel main camera produces 16-megapixel images in its standard photo mode that are bright with the very saturated colors you’d expect from a Samsung phone. Sometimes the look is pleasant, but more often than not, it’s a little much for my taste. The good news is that this sensor is capable of capturing lots of fine detail in good lighting, and it even does well in dim to very low-light conditions.
I put its night mode up against the Google Pixel 4A, which is still the low-light champ in the midrange class. There’s more noise visible in the A52 5G’s night mode shot, and details have a watercolory look, but while the 4A hangs on to its title, the A52 5G is quite close behind.
Left: Galaxy A52 night mode. Right: Pixel 4A night mode.“,”image_left”:{“ratio”:”*”,”original_url”:”https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465175/samsung_night_crop.jpg”,”network”:”verge”,”bgcolor”:”white”,”pinterest_enabled”:false,”caption”:null,”credit”:null,”focal_area”:{“top_left_x”:0,”top_left_y”:0,”bottom_right_x”:2040,”bottom_right_y”:1580},”bounds”:[0,0,2040,1580],”uploaded_size”:{“width”:2040,”height”:1580},”focal_point”:null,”asset_id”:22465175,”asset_credit”:null,”alt_text”:””},”image_right”:{“ratio”:”*”,”original_url”:”https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22465178/pixel_night_crop.jpg”,”network”:”verge”,”bgcolor”:”white”,”pinterest_enabled”:false,”caption”:null,”credit”:null,”focal_area”:{“top_left_x”:0,”top_left_y”:0,”bottom_right_x”:2040,”bottom_right_y”:1580},”bounds”:[0,0,2040,1580],”uploaded_size”:{“width”:2040,”height”:1580},”focal_point”:null,”asset_id”:22465178,”asset_credit”:null,”alt_text”:””},”credit”:null}” data-cid=”apps/imageslider-1619271003_9454_116978″>
Left: Galaxy A52 night mode. Right: Pixel 4A night mode.
The Pixel 4A is still the better camera in good lighting, too, but the differences are more subjective here. The 4A goes for more subdued color rendering, and the A52 5G’s images lack a little contrast in comparison.
So the A52 5G can’t beat the generation-old imaging tech in the 4A, but that might say more about the Pixel than anything else. Aside from that, the A52 5G turns in good all-around camera performance. Images from the ultrawide sometimes have a little cooler color cast but are generally good. The selfie camera offers two zoom settings: a slightly cropped-in standard wide view and an ever-so-slightly wider angle. The “focal length” difference between the two is almost laughably small.
At its default settings, the selfie camera does a fair amount of face smoothing and brightening. I don’t think it quite crosses the line into hamcam territory, but it certainly has that telltale “maybe it’s AI, maybe it’s Maybelline” smoothed look to it.
If you want to go full hamcam, there’s a new mode just labeled “fun” in the camera app with AR face filters brought to you by Snapchat. There’s a different selection of them every day, and you don’t need a Snapchat account to use or share them.
I’m tempted to dismiss them as “for the youths,” but maybe this is really for the olds like me who would rather not join another social platform if I can possibly avoid it, thank you very much. At last, I can transform my face into a piece of broccoli and share it with the world without logging in to Snapchat — three years after the kids have all moved on to something else. Anyway, it’s there, it works, and you can indeed turn your face into broccoli.
Good hardware and healthy software support make the A52 5G worth spending a little more on.
There’s a lot that the Galaxy A52 5G gets right. Maybe the most important feature is one that sounds much less exciting than cool headline specs: security updates for at least the next few years. At $500, this is the higher end of the budget market, but a few extra hundred dollars is likely easier to swallow if you know you’ll get a couple more years out of your investment.
Samsung has invested in hardware in all the right places: the 120Hz screen makes for an elevated user experience, battery life is good, camera performance is strong, and a healthy processor / chipset combination handles daily tasks well.
What I didn’t love — the cluttered software, fussy fingerprint sensor, a tendency toward oversaturated color in photos — feels more forgivable when the phone gets the nonnegotiable stuff right. The Pixel 4A 5G is probably this device’s closest competition, and it beats the A52 5G on camera quality and a cleaner UI, but it’s a smaller device without a fancy fast refresh rate screen. Depending on how you feel about either of those things, the 4A 5G might be the better pick for you.
In any case, the A52 5G is a good midrange phone today. But just as importantly, it will be a good phone a few years from now. With solid hardware and a software support system to back it up, this is a pricier budget phone that’s worth budgeting a little extra for.
Two newly leaked images suggest that AMD considered building an extreme flagship for its Big Navi family featuring a liquid cooling system and called Radeon RX 6900 XTX. The Navi 21 GPUs already rank near the top of the best graphics cards, and also place high on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy. Adding liquid cooling to the mix, similar to what’s been done in the past with the RX Vega 64 Liquid, R9 Fury X and R9 295X2, would allow AMD to reach higher clocks and performance.
A member of the Chiphell forums published two pictures claiming to be the reference design of AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XTX graphics card. The images were then republished by a Weibo user. The images show a board with a large heatsink with the letter “R” on its shroud, hiding a waterblock underneath.
(Image credit: bswvae/Weibo)
The shroud also has red accents and the ‘Radeon’ inscription on its side, which is very similar to those on the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon 6900 XT graphics cards.
But unlike the 6900 XT, the so-called Radeon RX 6900 XTX does not have a backplate (not that it is particularly surprising for a pre-release product). The board also appears to come with a 120mm radiator and one fan.
(Image credit: bswvae/Weibo)
While AMD has not yet released a Radeon RX 6900 XTX product, it has worked to deliver the ultimate version of the 6900 XT with 5,120 stream processors and very high clocks. AMD Recently started supplying partners with its “unlocked and unleashed” Navi 21 XTXH silicon that can boost all the way to 2.73 GHz on Sapphire’s Toxic Radeon RX 6900 XT Extreme Edition, and to about 2.50 GHz on AIBs by ASRock and PowerColor (up from 2.25 GHz recommended by AMD).
Assuming AMD did play around with a RX 6900 XTX card, it’d be interesting to know how far it was willing to push the GPU. Some of the extreme cooling systems designed by AMD’s partners seem more capable than its liquid cooler at first glance.
In general, while the Radeon RX 6900 XTX speaks the same design language as AMD’s reference Radeon RX 6800 and 6900-series graphics cards, it’s unclear if the card in the images was meant to be a commercial product, a sample for game developers, or a one-off prototype.
AMD is not new to liquid cooling. The company offered the Radeon R9 Fury X and Radeon Vega 64 Liquid Cooling boards with a closed-loop liquid cooling system. Ultimately, the company moved to a triple-fan cooler with a large heatsink as a more practical cooling solution.
World’s Fastest Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards
Sapphire Toxic Radeon RX 6900 XT EE
PowerColor Liquid Devil Ultimate RX 6900 XT
ASRock RX 6900 XT OC Formula
Radeon RX 6900 XT
Base
?
?
2,125 MHz
1825 MHz
Game
2,375 MHz
2,305 MHz
2,165MHz
?
Boost
2,500 MHz
2,375 MHz
2,295 MHz
2250 MHz
Performance Game
2,525 MHz
2,480 MHz
2,365 MHz
–
Performance Boost
2,730 MHz
2,525 MHz
2,475 MHz
–
Cooling System
Hybrid
Custom LCS
Triple-fan
Triple-fan
While we still don’t have hard proof of a 6900 XTX under consideration or in the works, it would make sense for AMD to allow its partners to release extreme specced Radeon RX 6900 XT SKUs that could push the Navi 21 silicon even further, especially with rumors of Nvidia planning to announce a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the near future.
Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 3090 nearly always outperforms AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT, but a heavily factory-overclocked Navi 21 XTXH can successfully compete against a slightly cut-down GA102 that carries ‘only’ 12GB of memory. Whether either card will be available for purchase at reasonable prices this year is another matter entirely.
Visiting Super Potato in Akihabara is usually a key reason why many die-hard gamers want to venture to Japan. The flagship Super Potato store (of the eight total in Japan, according to its Twitter) is nondescript, yet its shelves are covered wall-to-wall in rare yet reasonably priced games and consoles. It’s a magical place that’s a store-meets-museum. It’s fun enough to just look around, but if you’re a collector, there aren’t many places left where you can walk in and pick up a Virtual Boy headset or find a cache of Sega Dreamcast games that never released outside of Japan.
My point is that you absolutely should go at some point if you can. But thankfully, going there in person isn’t the only way you can peep the store’s vast collection of retro Japanese video games. Per IGN, the beloved store has taken at least some of its wares to eBay, and you can shop your heart out without leaving the country or your computer seat.
Many of the games listed are for the Famicom and Super Famicom released in Japan, so they’re in Japanese. (Note: if you have an NES, this affordable adapter will let you play imported Famicom games on it. For SNES, this YouTube video walks through breaking two tabs in its cartridge bay to let Super Famicom games fit inside.) Super Potato’s online store currently lists games like Final Fantasy I + II for the Famicom, Super Metroid for the Super Famicom, as well as Japanese versions of the original Game Boy and Nintendo 64 for a fair price, I might say.
Shipping to the US for most items costs $20, which is also reasonable. I’d expect Super Potato’s eBay listings to change frequently, so it’s a great site to bookmark, especially if importing games is a hobby. Who knows what you’ll find tomorrow or the next day?
You probably won’t find this limited edition version of Metal Gear Solid for the PS1, signed by Hideo Kojima and Yoji Shinkawa.
Tourism has sharply declined around the world during the pandemic, and since Super Potato likely relies on gaming-obsessed tourists for a chunk of its revenue, branching out to eBay seems like a smart way to give gamers what they want. But once the pandemic ends, I highly suggest visiting the store in person if you have the opportunity. Then take as many pictures as you can so you can remember the store — or in my case, to put them in articles like these.
In the elevator, eagerly anticipating the doors opening to Super Potato’s packed shelves.
You may have heard of the new Apple products announced at the company’s “Spring Loaded” event this week — including the redesigned colorful iMac, the location-tracking AirTags, and the boosted specs on the next iPad Pro. But there was another big event focused on Apple this week: on Capitol Hill.
This week on The Verge’s flagship podcast, The Vergecast, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn discuss Apple’s Tuesday hardware event with Verge news editor Chaim Gartenberg as well as Wednesday’s congressional hearing dedicated to antitrust in the App Store with Verge politics reporter Makena Kelly.
The show bridges the gap between Apple announcing a Tile competitor and Tile speaking in front of Congress the following day.
Listen here or in your preferred podcast player to hear the full discussion.
Further reading:
What we’re learning from the rare cases of COVID-19 in vaccinated people
Alexa can now tell you where to find a COVID-19 vaccine
Doctors are testing a prescription video game for COVID-19 ‘brain fog’
Wisconsin amends Foxconn’s contract to reflect radically smaller project
Apple’s Spring Loaded event: the 8 biggest announcements
Apple Podcasts launches in-app subscriptions
Can Apple get you to pay for podcasts?
Apple AirTag hands-on
Apple’s AirTags don’t have a built-in keychain loop, and we have some thoughts
Apple announces new Apple TV 4K
Apple unveils an improved remote for its Apple TV
Yes, older Apple TVs can also be calibrated with your iPhone
Apple announces thinner iMac with M1 chip and bright colors
New Touch ID Magic Keyboards work with all M1 Macs, not just the iMac
Apple launches new iPad Pro with M1 processor
How the M1-powered iPad Pro compares to other iPad models
Any video conferencing app can use the iPad Pro’s fancy zoom and pan camera
Big iPad, Mini LED: why Apple’s new iPad Pro display is better and brighter
Put macOS on the iPad, you cowards
Congress is diving into the App Store fight
Lina Kahn on Amazon’s antitrust paradox
Apple’s $64 billion-a-year app store isn’t catching the most egregious scams
Sen. Tammy Duckworth on hate crimes, racism, and environmental justice
Asian Activists are tracking the surge in hate crimes as police reporting falls short
Inside the glass fibers connecting our wireless world
(Pocket-lint) – Audiophile brand Bowers & Wilkins has always taken its sweet time in adopting new technologies. It told Pocket-lint in the past that this is intentional – it likes to wait until the market matures and its own high audio quality standards can be met.
It was relatively late to market with a Bluetooth speaker and wireless heaphones. And, it only adopted active or adaptive noise-cancellation when it was sure its tech wouldn’t hamper audio performance.
That’s why it is also late to the party with true wireles in-ears. And, do you know what, we don’t mind. The flagship Bowers & Wilkins PI7 in-ear true wireless headphones are proof positive that a softly softly approach can reap dividends.
In many ways, these ‘buds remind us of the excellent Sony WF-1000XM3 earphones. Except smaller, more confortable, and with even more musicality. That’s the benefit of hindsight in effect right there.
The best Lightning headphones 2021 for your iPhone or iPad
By Dan Grabham
·
Top headphones capable of handling lossless 48kHz digital audio from Apple devices.
What you get in the box
When you open the box, you see a tasty-looking, small-scale case. It’s a bit larger than an Apple AirPods equivalent but a lot smaller than many we’ve also had through the Pocket-lint testing bed.
Pocket-lint
The case comes with a USB-C port and a couple of buttons, including a Bluetooth pairing button that allows you to connect it to your device without needing to take out the ‘buds.
A USB-C to USB-C cable is included, but you’ll have to provide your own charging plug. That does mean it is capable of being fast charged, though. It can also be charged wirelessly, if you have a Qi mat handy.
The case has a further neat trick up its sleeve too: it can also act as a Bluetooth transmitter. Using an additional included USB-C to 3.5mm mini jack cable, you can plug the case into any source and transmit audio to your PI7s wirelessly.
This feature could be great for listening to in-flight entertainment – rather than buying something such as the RHA Wireless Flight Adapter – for example, or for using with a Nintendo Switch, which doesn’t currently support Bluetooth headphones. The case will also pair with other Bowers & Wilkins wireless headphones – such as the B&W PX7 released in 2020 – so can simultaneously transmit audio to those too.
Design and fit
The Bowers & Wilkins PI7 in-ears are beautifully designed. We are testing the white version – they are also available in charcoal.
They are extremely comfortable and light, with a matte finish to the plastic and neat metallic element on the outer tips. It’s meant to be a gold finish but, depending on the light, can look gunmetal grey at times.
The eartips are silicone, with the medium sized tips on the earbuds as default. You get a couple of extra silicone tips in the box, in small and large.
Pocket-lint
In our ears, they fit very well indeed and are extremely comfortable. We wouldn’t imagine getting earache from these over long periods, unlike some competitors (although these first impressions are based on having the PI7s for a few days, so a full, in-depth test is yet to follow).
What we will say though, is that as the larger plastic section needs to fit inside the bowl of your ear, some with smaller ears may struggle to place it successfully.
The ‘buds are water- and dust-proof, which is great for indoor workouts. But, we’re not sure they’re secure enough for running outdoors. Very few non-sport TWS in-ears are, to be honest.
There are touch controls on each of the earphones. You can tap to take a call, pause, play and rewind music, and adjust noise-cancelling and activate your chosen voice assistant. There are also wear sensors on each, so when you remove either, the music stops. It plays automatically when you put them back in.
Set-up and battery life
Setting up the Bowers & Wilkins PI7 in-ears is a doddle. For iPhone users, you just need to head to your Bluetooth settings screen and press the button inside the case for a couple of seconds. The headphones should appear in your list for connection.
Pocket-lint
It’s even easier on Android devices with Google Fast Pair enabled. Just place the case nearby and open the case lid. Then follow the instructions on your phone.
You also need to download the Bowers & Wilkins Headphones app to control a couple of the features and/or update the PI7s or their case. Once paired via Bluetooth, you can search for your in-ears through the app – this will bring up a dedicated settings section.
The app will also show you the battery status of each earbud and the case. It gives you control over the adaptive noise-cancellation tech (switching it on or off, or choosing whether to have it automatically adjust depending on your surroundings). You can also change the strength of the noise-cancelling effect via a transparency slider.
Battery life is claimed to be up to 4 hours of playback for each ‘bud, with a further 16 hours from the case. We are yet to test that fully.
Audio performance
We’ve been hugely impressed by the audio performance and signature in our listening tests so far.
The B&W PI7 headphones support Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive lossless wireless tech, although we’re yet to give that a thorough workout. We have, though, streamed plenty of Tidal Masters tracks via an iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Naturally, this isn’t the best we could get but it’s close to what we expect most users will acheive.
Pocket-lint
Led Zeppelin’s Bring it on Home (remastered) sounded deep, involving, and with excellent separation. As too did The Kink’s Shangri-La (the stereo mix). While it is weird writing about the imperfections in a recording, they are often what makes a certain version so good, and every squeaky guitar slide is picked out by these headphones.
Bass is impressive too. Each earbud has its own amplifier, supporting a custom 9.2mm drive unit. This works greatly across all fequencies, but bass certainly benefits.
Aside from obvious hip-hop examples, the opening bars of the 2019 remix of Come Together by The Beatles are throaty and tangible. All from tiny in-ears with no cable attached. Amazing.
First Impressions
We want to investigate further before we give our full opinion, but so far, it seems like Bowers & Wilkins is onto a winner with the PI7 wireless in-ears.
These earbuds are extremely high quality and look tasty to match. Their musicality is right up there, but then so is the price, so you would expect as much.
That’s probably our only quibble for now – the B&Ws are almost twice the price of Apple’s AirPods Pro equivalents. Indeed, there are few high-end alternatives priced quite so highly.
Bowers & Wilkins does counter that with the less expensive PI5 – released at the same time – but we haven’t heard those yet to give you a decent comparison, and they don’t come with the Hi-Res Audio specifications.
Still, we’d imagine there are plenty willing to pay a premium price for premium performance. We’ll soon follow up with a full review to let you know if it’s justified. So far, so good, however.
Flagship features and a big, clear screen make this mid-priced mobile a good option for your pocket
For
Good for gaming
Detailed picture performance
Decent built-in speakers
Against
Screen could be subtler
Flat audio performance
Alec Baldwin may be the best known, and arguably most talented, of his siblings but as Trey Parker and Matt Stone once wrote: you know what sucks about being a Baldwin? Nothing! Thankfully for Billy, Daniel, Stephen and the OnePlus 9 smartphone, life always has room for a little brother.
With only two members of the OnePlus 9 family, finding a niche as the more affordable smaller sibling should be no problem at all. The OnePlus 9 is still a big phone and its 6.55-inch display means it can bring some serious scale to your portable viewing.
Not only does the OnePlus 9 have an HDR10+-supporting, 120Hz AMOLED screen, it also has a Hasselblad camera set-up on board too. And it charges so quickly that by the time you remember that you plugged it in, it’s probably full and ready to go.
Granted, there are a few nips and tucks to the specs compared with the OnePlus 9 Pro but, with around a quarter off the Pro’s price tag, this Android handset has the tempting promise of a flagship phone at a mid-range price.
Pricing
The OnePlus 9 is priced at £629 for the Astral Black and Arctic Sky versions, which come with 128GB of storage space and 8GB of RAM in the UK and Europe. The Winter Mist OnePlus 9 is £729 and comes with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM.
In the US, only the Astral Black and Winter Mist finishes are available, but both come with 8GB RAM and 128GB of storage. The US OnePlus 9 is priced at $729.
Features
(Image credit: OnePlus)
A phone with a 6.55-inch screen is just about small enough to carry out most of your operations one-handed without fear of dropping it, although swiping from the top and bottom without adjusting your grip makes for some pretty intensive thumb yoga. Laid next to the OnePlus 9 Pro, the standard OnePlus 9 is just 4mm shorter at 160mm long and a little thinner at 8.7mm rather than 9mm, but has the same 74mm width.
Despite its fibreglass polymer frame, the finish still feels premium for a non-metal phone. The three-way sliding switch for the silent, vibrate and ring profiles is a particularly nice touch. Underneath that, there is the power button, on the opposite side is the volume rocker with the USB-C port and SIM tray on the bottom edge. Sadly, there’s no 3.5mm headphone socket.
OnePlus 9 tech specs
(Image credit: OnePlus)
Screen 6.55in AMOLED
Resolution 2400 x 1080 (402ppi)
Rear camera 48MP, 50MP, 2MP
Front camera 16MP
Dolby Atmos Yes
Finishes x3
Dimensions (hwd) 16 x 7.4 x 0.9cm
Weight 192g
For wireless audio, there’s Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX and aptX HD included as well as LDAC technology, which allows hi-res audio streaming over Bluetooth at up to 24-bit/96 kHz.
As for that screen, it’s a 2400 x 1080 AMOLED panel with a fixed 120Hz refresh rate and a pixel density of 402ppi. Compared with the 9 Pro (525ppi), it’s a little less sharp and slightly dimmer too, with a peak brightness of 1100nits rather than the 1300nit display on the Pro. On top is a flat piece of Gorilla Glass, under which is a hidden fingerprint reader, though you can also unlock the phone using face recognition.
Those looking to dive into some on-the-go TV and film watching will appreciate the HDR10+ and HDR10 support with plenty of HDR compatibility to be found on Netflix and others. You can play locally stored MKV, MOV, MP4, H.265 (HEVC), AVI and other video file formats. The display proportions offer a maximum possible 20:9 aspect ratio, but while most content is edged by a pair of black bars, premium gaming titles use the whole screen width.
Game Mode Pro is a handy feature of Oxygen OS – an otherwise light skin on top of Android 11. It shuts off notifications from popping up on your screen, restricts background app use to divert as much processing power to your gaming as possible and prioritises your network use for game data. We also like the way it brings quick access to options such as WhatsApp messaging, Instagram and screen recording with a small, pull-down menu at your thumb.
(Image credit: OnePlus)
The gameplay itself is well handled. The fast refresh rate of the display helps your gaming feel lag-free, both on and off-line. OnePlus has installed its Cool Play vapour cooling system, but even after one round of PUBG Mobile, the handset still feels pretty warm.
Despite that, and the fixed 120Hz rate, the 4500mAh battery takes us well beyond a day of heavy use. Should you need to recharge more regularly, you’ll be pleased to note that the Warp 65T charger included in the box takes just under 30 minutes to fill your phone.
As with the OnePlus 9 Pro, owners of this handset benefit from a Hasselblad-calibrated camera array. Here, it is a three-lens set-up, with a main 48MP camera, a 50MP ultrawide and a monochrome shooter, but no telephoto. There is 12-bit colour depth stills imaging available in Pro Mode for RAW files and you can capture 8K video at 30fps and 4K video at 60fps.
Telephoto aside, the performance of the camera is right up there with that of the 9 Pro’s. The optical image stabilisation works a treat for the handheld tracking shots around our test facilities. The results look almost as if they were shot using a camera dolly and there’s the odd jump only with fast pans. The colours are bright and rich, if not quite as real-world accurate as the best smartphones.
As with its bigger brother, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip orchestrates the action with great aplomb. There’s barely a glitch or stutter in our time with the phone and we’d expect it to stay that way with regular updates and fixes to the OS, the UI and third-party apps.
Screen
(Image credit: OnePlus)
If you’re expecting the performance of the OnePlus 9 to match that of the OnePlus 9 Pro, think again – that extra spend goes on more than just an aluminium frame and some curved glass. But there is a lot to like about the OnePlus 9’s picture performance.
It’s easy to lose ourselves in the story of The Witcher in HDR on Netflix. It’s a bright and engaging image with a decent degree of punch and no wanting for detail in light and dark areas of the screen. The opening shots across the shaded interior of a barn reveal lots of detail in the shadows without doing much damage to the black depth. Even when the frame becomes split between that darkness and the bright daylight on the faces of the young lovers outside the barn, the overall exposure levels remain well pitched.
We’re just as pleased with how the OnePlus 9 handles SDR. The Display P3 mode brings a good blend between the natural look of the Missouri countryside and the exciting colours of sci-fi space as we watch Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 in Full HD. If you’d rather not get your hands dirty in the settings, pull the colour temperature towards ‘cold’ or use the Natural preset.
As with the OnePlus 9 Pro, though, there’s room for improvement. The very best handsets maintain a slightly inkier black depth and add a bit more of a dynamic HDR feel, while some displays are a touch more careful with shading. It’s most apparent when looking at faces – the skin complexion of the lovers in The Witcher episode, for example, are fairly uniform in their production, when colour and lighting could be handled a little better.
But these performance compromises are in line with the 9 Pro, which also favours dark detail over black depth. The 9 Pro is sharper, a little brighter and the colours go a touch further before starting to look artificial but, given the difference in price, this is to be expected. The OnePlus 9 still makes for some worthy big-screen viewing at this point in the market.
Sound
(Image credit: OnePlus)
But while the screen can be classed as ‘good’, the audio performance of the OnePlus 9 is firmly in the average category. It plays your favourite tracks faithfully enough but is never going to thrill you. That doesn’t mean that it’s not without its charms, though.
OnePlus’s ‘Dual stereo speaker’ set-up is fine for listening to music or watching a film without headphones. Dialogue is clear and sound effects are identifiable, while music is balanced and not without a sense of presence. We’d recommend listening without the Dolby Atmos music processing, but both ‘Film’ and ‘Music’ modes come across well.
Listening to Biffy Clyro’s Many Of Horror, the OnePlus 9 conveys that powerful sense of emotion. There’s definition and clarity to the vocals and the squeaky slides up the guitar strings of the intro, even if it’s not the most detailed delivery we’ve heard. The volume on the device doesn’t go particularly high but reaches the top with hardly any distortion.
For headphones listening, it’s best to axe the processing and set the OnePlus 9 to ‘None’ under ‘Style Preference’ in the sound settings. It doesn’t do much to make up for this phone’s underwhelming dynamics but keeps music as rhythmic as possible. We play Blue Monday by New Order and the impact of the electro beats and synth sounds is in line with the OnePlus 9 Pro’s performance. The more expensive model has a better stab at organising the sounds but, paired with a decent set of headphones, there’s still plenty to enjoy here.
But with busier tracks, there’s more of a sense of what could have been, sonically. We hit play on Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden, hoping for a taste of moody grunge. But while all the instruments are there and tonally in balance, Chris Cornell’s voice comes across flat and expressionless. Nor is there a change of gear when the drum fills announce the chorus. Ultimately, this phone plugs the music gap while we’re out and about, but not an awful lot more.
Verdict
There aren’t many smartphones that offer so much screen real estate at this price. The fact that it’s such an involving picture performance is a compelling reason to buy the OnePlus 9.
Our doubts are mostly on the audio side, as some rival phones make music on the go a more exciting affair. If you use a dedicated music player or are looking for a mobile phone primarily for its video performance, then don’t let its sonic drawbacks put you off. Between the high-performing chipset, the lag-free gaming, the Hasselblad camera and the scale and quality of the screen, there are plenty of reasons why the OnePlus 9 is a good idea.
TP-Link’s mid-range AX6000 offers Wi-Fi 6, 2.5Gb WAN and lots of ports at a reasonable $270. While the software is simple and 2.4 Ghz performance isn’t great, this is a solid option, if you don’t expect too much.
For
+ Affordable Wi-Fi 6 option
+ Abundant Ethernet ports
+ Ease of setup and interface
+ Supports Link Aggregation
+ Excellent compatibility across all clients tested
Against
– Dual-band only
– No Wi-Fi 6E
– Simplistic software
– Unexceptional 2.4 GHz throughput speeds
TP-Link’s Archer AX6000 Next-Gen Wi-Fi Router sits somewhere between a full-tilt gaming router like the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 and basic budget options like TP-Link’s sub-$70 Archer A7 AC1750. The Archer AX6000’s ‘middle of the road’ approach results in a router that’s larger than some, with lots of antennae (8) and gigabit Ethernet ports (8, plus a 2.5GB WAN). You also get Wi-Fi 6, though not the newer 6E that makes use of the less-cluttered 6 GHz band.
But the Archer AX6000 doesn’t feature the red accents and dancing LED’s that often adorn gaming routers. It also does not have a ridiculously high price tag. As of publication, it was selling for about $270–a far cry from flagship gaming options that often sell in the $500 range.
Is this more general-purpose approach to a router setup still perform well enough for serious gamers to take notice? Read on as we delve into the Archer AX6000’s full feature lest and performance testing to find out.
Design of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The AX6000 takes a more subtle approach to design than its flamboyant gaming counterparts (like the flagship Archer AX11000). While it comes with eight permanently attached antennae and a horizontal design, it goes with a black plastic exterior that looks more business than gaming. But there’s some flash here, in the form of an LED on the top center, behind a shiny gold TP-Link badge, that glows blue when all is working (and red when it isn’t). But the light is easily disabled with a dedicated hardware button–important if your router lives near your TV or in a bedroom.
AX6000 is on the larger end of the spectrum at 10.3 × 10.3 × 2.4 inches (261.2 × 261.2 × 60.2 mm), and it weighs 3.5 pounds (1.59 kg). That’s nearly as big as the Asus Rapture GT-AXE1000, at 10.4 x 10.4 x 2.9 inches and 3.94 pounds. But the Archer AX6000’s antennae are shorter than on most routers, and they come permanently attached, so all you have to do when taking the router out of the box is flip them up.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Specifications of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
In terms of hardware specs, the AX6000 can definitely go toe-to-toe with higher-end routers. You get a 1.8 GHz quad-core processor with two additional coprocessors, 1 GB of RAM and 128 MB of flash storage.
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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Ports are also ample, with the WAN port a speedy 2.5 Gbps, plus eight gigabit LAN ports, basically giving you an integrated switch for plenty of wired connections. Link Aggregation is also supported, should you want to give extra bandwidth to a particular device. There are also a pair of two USB 3.0 ports (one Type-A and one Type-C) for connecting things like external storage to share on your network.
All that aside, the wireless department is where the AX6000 starts to show its mid-range limitations. The router is dual-band, rather than the more robust tri-band options found on higher-end gear. That means the AX6000 has a single 2.4 GHz option, rated at up to 1148 Mbps and a single 5 GHz for up to 4804 Mbps of throughput–hence (with the help of the usual rounding) the 6000 designation. Also, this router supports Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), but not the newest Wi-Fi 6E spec. So your devices get to live in the more crowded and mainstream bandwidths, rather than in the newly opened (and therefore much-less crowded) 6 GHz band.
That said, the aforementioned Asus ROG Rapture router is the only model we’ve tested so far that supports Wi-Fi 6E, and there are still very few devices (aside from some new phones) that are out there waiting for a 6E router to connect to.
Setup of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Setup of the TP-Link Archer AX6000 is fairly simple and took less than 10 minutes. After the requisite unboxing, we appreciate that the eight antennas come pre-attached, so just have to be rotated into their vertical position (although a few may be disappointed that they cannot be manually fine-tuned and adjusted to maximize reception).
Software setup can be done via the TP-Link app for the smartphone, or via the web browser, with the latter as our method of choice. We were given opportunities to choose a router password, the Wi-Fi password, and upgrade the firmware. This got us dialed in right away and was a painless and efficient process.
Features of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
We found the software for this router to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the interface is easy to use; we doubt more novice users will get confused using it. The converse for this is that compared to actual gaming routers, it’s less robust. You get fewer fine controls and not as much flexibility as some other offerings.
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The Quality of Service (QoS) offers a reasonable solution to allow for some adjustability. The choices include Gaming (which was used for our testing), Standard, Streaming, Surfing, and Chatting. There is also a Custom setting to allow for finer control of prioritization of traffic when your network needs don’t fit into a preset setting. There is also an option for Device Prioritization, so for example you can make sure your Gaming PC gets a higher priority than other clients on the network.
Security of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The security functionality on the Archer AX6000 also strikes a delicate balance between simple and capable. We do like that the AX6000 has integrated network security, and are glad that the subscription is included, taking it a notch above budget routers. The security is powered by Trend Micro, but the functions are limited to just three: a Malicious Content Filter, an Intrusion Prevention System, and Infected Device Quarantine. There’s also a Parental Controls function to limit screen time for younger family members.
Performance of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
2.4 GHz near
2.4 GHz far
5 GHz near
5 GHz far
132 Mbps
76 Mbps
789 Mbps
301 Mbps
The TP-Link Archer AX6000 proved to be quite stable during our testing. We connected a variety of clients to it, including laptops with Intel chips, an iPhone, and multiple Android smartphones. All devices connected easily and consistently to the AX6000.
Throughput testing with an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 chipset showed decent, although unexceptional Wi-Fi 6 speeds. At the time that this router was introduced the speeds were quite solid, but given newer Wi-Fi 6E gear and the significantly faster speeds offered, the AX6000 feels more mid-range than it did in 2019. While the 5 GHz near speed of 789 Mbps is certainly solid, the throughput on the 2.4 GHz of 132 Mbps when close, and 76 Mbps on the far test offered no significant advantage over even older 802.11ac routers.
Testing Configuration
QoS
FRAPS Avg
Max
8K Dropped Frames
Pingplotter Spikes
Latency
Ethernet
no
123.7
158
n/a
0
235
Ethernet + 10 8k videos
no
96.8
121
34.90%
3
259
Ethernet + 10 8k videos
yes
119.4
146
28.80%
2
259
5 GHz
no
127.3
149
n/a
0
249
5 GHz + 10 8k videos
no
119.3
147
14.10%
0
275
5 GHz + 10 8k videos
yes
120.7
140
49.90%
1
257
2.4 GHz
no
123.6
156
n/a
0
68
2.4 GHz + 10 8k videos
no
45.2
91
16.30%
9
156
2.4 GHz + 10 8k videos
yes
88.8
123
47.20%
11
306
Again, the AX6000 showed its strengths and weaknesses in our testing. We did obtain some definitely fast gaming scores on our test game of Overwatch, such as 123.7 fps when wired, and an even slightly faster frame rate of 127.3 fps when connected via 5 GHz, both with nothing else running.
From a gameplay standpoint, when connected via 5 GHz, the fps were well maintained, both without the QoS at 119.3 FPS, and a slightly faster, and close to wired speed of 120.7 fps with the QoS activated with our ten 8K videos streaming in the background.
We also had some concerns, such as the high latency on all of the wired connection testing situations that went as high 259 milliseconds. The 2.4 GHz gaming score with background video congestion without QoS dragged to a much slower 45.2 fps. While activating the QoS improved the frame rate to 88.8 fps, we were disappointed to see how much the video streaming got sacrificed as the dropped frames went from 16.3% to a stuttering 47.2%.
Pricing of the TP-Link Archer AX6000
A strong point of this AX6000 is the pricing. At a suggested retail price of $299, it’s an affordable way to acquire a robust higher-end Wi-Fi 6 router. And street price seems to consistently hover at $269 at the time of this writing, dropping this router more solidly into the mid-range category in terms of pricing.
Conclusion
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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
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(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
The TP-Link AX6000 is a decent mid-range router, offering good value for the dollar. We like the solid 5 GHz throughput speeds, the high fps gaming scores when connected via Ethernet or 5 GHz, the integrated 8 port switch, and the included security subscription.
But there are some shortcomings, including slower 2.4 GHz throughput (at this point only really an issue with older devices), the high dropped frame rate on video streaming with QoS activated for gaming, the simplified interface, and the lack of tri-band. Overall, for a general-purpose, mid-range router, there is plenty to like about the AX6000, including decent overall gaming performance.
But if maximum gaming speed is your priority and your network is often congested by lots of people and devices vying for bandwidth, you may want to spend more on something that handles this better, with less latency and frame drops. TP-Link’s own Archer AX11000 performed better on that front for about $100 more, while also delivering an extra 5 GHz band to ease congestion. But that router also suffered from a fair amount of dropped frames in our congestion testing.
Burgeoning projector specialist Xgimi has launched a pair of flagship portable projectors for the more luxury end of the mini machine market. The Xgimi Horizon and Xgimi Horizon Pro are designed for indoor room-to-room use and mark a new range for this 2013-created company.
The Xgimi Horizon Pro is a 4K HDR model based on the True 4K pixel shifting system which uses a non-4k image sensor to create the 8.3 million distinct pixels required for a 4K picture. It’s bright sounding at 2200 ANSI lumens with an LED light source lifetime that’s rated at 30,000 hours.
That bulb helps make for a fast boot and warm up time with Xgimi quoting just six seconds from button press to maximum operation. You can get an image size anywhere between 40-300in with a throw ratio of 1.2:1.
There’s also a handy AI image-sensing system on board which auto focuses and auto keystone corrects the picture. It’s even intelligent enough to avoid any obstacles such as light switches, plants or vases if projecting onto a wall. There’s a fitting for a tripod screw underneath to make sure you can get your positioning just right.
The 21 x 22 x 14cm body of the Xgimi Horizon Pro has an aluminium frame with a 2 x 8W Harman Kardon speaker system that’s Bluetooth-enabled in case you’d like to stream any audio from a portable device too.
There is little detail on ports so far but there’s wired and wireless networking. Apps are available through the Android TV 10 OS which includes Google Assistant voice control. This won’t guarantee the availability of your favourite streaming services but you will be able to cast content from most missing apps from your mobile or tablet.
The Xgimi Horizon Pro is expected to retail at $1,699 / £1,699 with it planned to launch for pre-order on 10th May.
If that sounds a little strong on the pocket, then the non-Pro variant, the Xgimi Horizon, is just $1,099 / £1,099. It’s almost exactly the same on paper but the resolution maxes out at an SDR 1080p instead. Both projectors can handle 3D content at Full HD. Glasses are not included.
MORE:
Best projectors 2020: Full HD, 4K, portable, short throw
How to set up your projector and get the best picture
Twitter user InstLatX64 has discovered a mysterious AMD 4700S processor that’s evidently part of an AMD 4700S Desktop Kit. It’s plausible that the developer kit is the same one that Microsoft was utilizing to develop one of its Xbox consoles.
Although not officially a member of the Ryzen family, we suspect that the AMD 4700S probably takes after the Ryzen 4000 (Renoir) mobile APUs. If that’s the case, the AMD 4700S should be employing AMD’s Zen 2 cores, meaning this could be an engineering sample of the processor that powers the Xbox Series X or Series S.
The Xbox Series X and Series S utilize a custom octa-core AMD Zen 2 processor. Other than the clock speeds, no official name was given to the chip. The one inside the Series X features a 3.8 GHz clock speed and 3.6 GHz clock with SMT, while the variant for the Series S is clocked at 3.6 GHz with a 3.4 GHz SMT clock.
A Geekbench 5 submission (via Leakbench), which dates back to March 29, shows the AMD 4700S with an eight-core, 16-thread configuration and 8MB of L3 cache. The obscure processor’s specifications coincide with mobile Renoir for sure. The AMD 4700S seemingly sports a 3.6 GHz base clock and 4 GHz boost clock. The desktop kit reportedly comes equipped with 16GB of memory as well.
The AMD 4700S scored 998 points and 8,589 points in the single-and multi-core benchmarks, respectively. For comparison, the Ryzen 9 4900HS, which is the Ryzen 4000 flagship, averaged 1,083 points in the single-core test and 6,994 points in the multi-core test. While the Ryzen 9 4900HS delivered up to 8.5% higher single-core performance, the AMD 4700S offered up to 22.8% higher multi-core performance.
What’s even stranger is that AMD recently released the firmware and corresponding drivers for the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit. There are drivers for the chipset, onboard audio and the Ethernet port. Digging a bit into the firmware, we found mentions of Cardinal, which could be the internal codename that AMD is using for this particular desktop kit. The files are dated yesterday (April 19), so they are very fresh.
Developer kits aren’t typically available to the general public. However, Finnish retailer Tulostintavaratalo has listed the AMD 4700S 8-Core Desktop Kit on its online store for €263.71 (~$317.38) with a delivery time spanning from 14 to 30 working days. While the AMD 4700S remains a mystery, it does appear that AMD is selling it in the retail channels.
Apple has just announced a new Apple TV streaming box, replacing the Apple TV 4K that came out in 2017. The new model retains the name of the prior model but comes with a more powerful A12 Bionic chip that lets it play HDR video at higher frame rates. It’s also powerful enough to support 60fps Dolby Vision playback over AirPlay from a compatible iPhone.
The old Apple TV 4K, which has been Apple’s flagship set-top box for four years, supports 4K streaming as well as HDR, including Dolby Vision. It also supports Dolby Atmos sound codecs. But it doesn’t support 120Hz refresh rates, which might be important should you ever want to play serious games on an Apple TV. It also has the most notoriously bad remote control.
Fortunately, Apple has completely redesigned the remote for the new Apple TV 4K with an improved, more ergonomic design and more capabilities. The new remote is thicker than the prior model, has a new five-way touch controller in place of the maligned swipe pad of the original, and a proper power button to turn off your TV. The Siri search button has been moved to the side of the remote, under your right thumb.
Apple did not redesign the Apple TV box itself — it remains a squircle-shaped puck that you have to put on a shelf or entertainment center, unlike the dongle designs that many of Apple’s competitors use now. A new feature allows the Apple TV to optimize the colors of your TV screen using the light sensor on an iPhone. Apple says it is working with a number of content providers to produce high frame rate HDR content for the new Apple TV, including Fox Sports, NBCUniversal, Paramount Plus, Red Bull TV, and Canal Plus.
The new Apple TV 4K starts at $179 for 32GB of storage and will be available to purchase starting on April 30th. A 64GB model will also be available for $199. Apple is also selling the older Apple TV HD, which is limited to 1080p resolution, with the new remote for $149.
All of those prices are a lot higher than Apple’s competitors, such as Amazon, Google, and Roku. Apple is betting once again that people will pay for performance and ecosystem in a set-top box and is charging a hefty premium for it.
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On paper, the Surface Laptop 4 is a Surface Laptop 3 with better chips.
In look and feel, very little has changed from the last generation. Sure, there are differences here and there: the Laptop 4 is ever-so-slightly thinner, and there’s a new “Ice Blue” color option. But you get the same 3:2 touchscreen, the same port selection, and the same design.
The big changes are on the inside. You can configure both the 13.5-inch and 15-inch Surface Laptop models with either Intel’s 11th-Gen processors or AMD’s Ryzen 4000 processors. Microsoft promised that these improvements would deliver significantly better performance and battery life than the previous Surface generation.
So this review will largely focus on the new system’s performance. But my priority wasn’t to compare the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 that we received to its predecessor. For one, the Laptop 3 set a low performance bar — it had mediocre battery life, and couldn’t even play a 4K 60FPS video without stuttering, so even a competent budget laptop would blow that out of the water. But more importantly, there’s another company out there that recently made a huge chip upgrade to its flagship models, which has left most other 2020 chip upgrades in the dust: Apple, with its Arm-based M1. So my big question when looking at AMD’s new Ryzen 7 Surface Edition (also known as the AMD Ryzen 7 4980U Microsoft Surface Edition because of course it is) is: Does it beat Apple’s M1?
The answer is no. For the most part, it’s still not quite as good. But that may not matter to Surface Laptop 4 buyers — at least, not yet.
First, a quick tour of the Ryzen 7 Surface Edition. This chip isn’t AMD’s top gun; it’s part of the Ryzen 4000 generation, and the Ryzen 5000 mobile series has been out for a few months now. It’s a bit disappointing to see that the Surface is still using the older Ryzen chips, since much of the new generation is based on a new architecture (Zen 3, to the 4000 series’s Zen 2) that has delivered performance gains.
Of course, that doesn’t make the Ryzen 7 4980U a bad chip. Ryzen 4000 chips outperform Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake processors across the board. The 4980U in particular has eight cores, and AMD’s excellent Radeon integrated graphics. Note that the M1 also has eight cores, but those cores aren’t created equal. An easy way to think of it is that AMD’s chip has eight all-around-pretty-good cores, while Apple’s chip has four high-performance cores and four weaker cores. You’ll see that difference reflected in our benchmark results later on.
In addition to that processor, the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4 I reviewed comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. It costs $1,699. The most comparable M1 MacBook Pro is also $1,699. If you’re not looking to spend that much, you can get the 15-inch Laptop 4 for as low as $1,299 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which puts it neck-in-neck with the entry-level MacBook Pro, but with a bigger screen. The 13.5-inch Laptop 4 is priced more closely to the fanless MacBook Air, starting at $999 for a Ryzen 5 4680U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. Then, there are the Intel models. You can get a 13.5-inch system with a Core i5 starting at $1,299 (also with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage), and a 15-inch system with a Core i7 starting at $1,799 (16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage). It’s all quite confusing, so I recommend visiting Microsoft’s site for yourself to mix and match.
The 13.5-inch model comes in Platinum, Ice Blue Alcantara, Matte Black, and Sandstone. The 15-incher comes in Platinum and Matte Black.
To see how our test system stacks up, I ran various synthetic benchmarks as well as a 5-minute, 33-second 4K video export in Premiere Pro. See the results below:
Surface Laptop 4 15-inch benchmarks
Benchmark
Score
Benchmark
Score
Cinebench R23 Multi
8144
Cinebench R23 Single
1242
Cinebench R23 Multi looped for 30 minutes
8077
Geekbench 5 CPU Multi
7028
Geekbench 5 CPU Single
1163
Geekbench 5 OpenCL / Compute
14393
PugetBench for Premiere Pro
176
Right off the bat, this system is a huge improvement over the Surface Laptop 3. It took 16 minutes and 33 seconds on the video export, where its predecessor took over three hours. (16:33 is a slower time than we’ve seen from many Intel models, but that’s expected since AMD chips don’t support Intel’s Quick Sync.) The Laptop 4 also beats multi-core synthetic results we’ve seen from Intel’s top Tiger Lake chips in the MSI Prestige 14 Evo and the Vaio Z, as well as the 16-inch Intel-based MacBook Pro,
Intel models max out at a quad-core Core i7-1185G7.
But the more interesting comparison is to the M1 machines. The Surface Laptop 4 solidly beats both the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air on Cinebench R23 Multi, and that task alone — it lost to both machines on every other test we ran, including all three Geekbench tests, the Puget for Premiere Pro benchmark, and the Premiere Pro export. That may seem confusing but (again) it makes sense when you think about the architecture of both chips — the Ryzen chip does better on the task where it can show off all eight of its powerful cores. That indicates that you’ll do well with the Surface Book if you’re running heavy multicore workloads, where you’re more suited to the M1 if you’re primarily doing pretty much anything else.
Of course, that’s far from the whole story. The reality is that most people who want a 15-inch screen probably don’t care if there’s a better-performing 13-inch machine floating around. And the MacBook that’s comparable in size — the MacBook Pro 16 — is significantly more expensive than the Surface Laptop 4, and comes with older Intel chips. So why am I comparing this device to M1 systems, you may ask? Really, I’m benching this laptop against an imaginary 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which (rumor has it) will launch sometime in the third quarter of this year. Given the results I’m seeing here, the release of a machine like that would make the Surface Laptop 4 a tougher purchase to justify.
That said, there are two big advantages the Ryzen-powered Surface Laptop 4 could very well have over a 16-inch M1 MacBook. The first is battery life. I got an average of 10 hours and 52 minutes using this device as my primary driver, which is some of the best battery life I’ve ever seen from a 15-inch laptop, and one of the best results I’ve seen from a laptop this year. That beats both of the M1 MacBooks, and destroys the 16-inch Intel MacBook as well. If there’s an area where Microsoft really makes its case, it’s here.
The Laptop 4 also knocks cooling out of the park. The Laptop 4’s fans did a really excellent job cooling the system. Throughout my fairly standard load of office multitasking (including around a dozen Chrome tabs, Spotify streaming, and the like), the chassis remained downright cold. During the more intense tests I ran, the CPU remained steadily in the mid-70s (Celsius) with occasional spikes up to the mid-80s — jumps up to 90 were rare. I was able to run our 4K video export several times in a row without any negative impact on results, and I didn’t see a huge dip in Cinebench results over a 30-minute loop either.
The screen maxed out at 370 nits — a bit dim for outdoor use, as you can see here.
If you’re a fan of the 15-inch Surface Laptop’s design, you’ll be happy to know it hasn’t changed much. One of the big advantages of this device is how thin and light it is, at just 0.58 inches thick and 3.4 pounds. For context, it’s almost a pound lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and over half a pound lighter than the lightest Dell XPS 15. It’s actually only a bit heavier than the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
With that said, those who aren’t diehard Surface fans may find the Laptop 4’s design a tad dated. In particular, the bezels around the 3:2 screen are quite chunky. That makes sense on a convertible device like the Surface Book 3 or the Surface Pro 7, which you need to be able to hold as a tablet, but doesn’t fit as well on a clamshell. If you put the Laptop 4 next to any member of the XPS line, you’ll see how much sleeker and more modern the latter looks. That doesn’t mean the Laptop 4 is ugly; it’s just falling further behind other Windows laptops each year.
The port selection is also the same, which is good news and bad news. The Laptop 4 retains a USB-A port, which I stubbornly believe is still a necessity for modern laptops (looking at you, Apple and Dell). But there is just one, and neither the Intel or AMD model supports Thunderbolt on their lone USB-C ports, which is disappointing on a laptop at this price. The Surface Laptop could certainly do with more port options, even if it’s competitive with what Apple and Dell are offering in terms of numbers. (In addition to the USB-A and USB-C, you get a headphone jack and Microsoft’s proprietary charging port.)
The Windows Hello webcam is fine, delivering a serviceable picture, and the dual far-field microphones had no trouble picking up my voice. The speakers, which now support Dolby Atmos 9, sound quite clear, with good volume and bass and percussion that are audible (though not booming). Despite having Atmos speakers, our Laptop 4 unit didn’t come preloaded with Dolby Atmos software or anything similar to tune the audio.
All 15-inch models have an aluminum body.
My least favorite part of this laptop is the keyboard. It’s just a bit flat and mushy for my taste. I respect that some people prefer wider, flatter keycaps, of course. But I would take an XPS 15, MacBook, or Surface Book keyboard over this one — it’s just not quite as snappy or satisfying.
Overall, it’s tough to identify a true competitor to the 15-inch Surface Laptop 4. Put it next to a Windows workstation like the $1,200 entry-level Dell XPS 15 and the Surface wins on power, battery life, and weight. It’s a good purchase for someone who wants an excellent combination of efficiency and multicore performance in a 15-inch chassis, but doesn’t need the grunt of a discrete GPU.
The keyboard is backlit and has 1.3 mm of travel.
But that window of opportunity may be closing, because there’s very likely a larger M1 MacBook Pro on the way. I think there’s a good argument that people in the group described above (who don’t need a device right this second) should sit back and wait to see what Apple does in the next few months before committing to Microsoft’s machine, provided they don’t have a hard preference for operating systems.
On the other hand, even if the larger MacBook Pro is spectacular, there are some advantages the Laptop 4 will certainly retain (it runs Windows, and it’s built like a Surface Laptop) and some it will probably retain (it’ll likely be lighter than the MacBook Pro 16). And, of course, plenty of people need a laptop right now. In today’s market, among today’s 15-inch laptops, the Surface Laptop 4 is a pretty damn good buy. Microsoft didn’t change much about the outside — but on the inside, it really pulled through.
Rotel has announced sequels to some of its 14 and 15 Series integrated amplifiers. The A14MKII, RA-1572MKII and RA-1592MKII are second-generation models that leverage design elements from the brand’s high-end Michi Series, benefitting from upgraded circuitry and components.
The A14MKII (£1195, $1600) – the successor to the A14 – is the flagship integrated model in Rotel’s 14 Series, building upon its predecessor with a new 32-bit/384kHz-supporting Texas Instruments DAC. Rotel says it has made 25 component changes in the DAC output filters alone. That’s complemented by changes in the power supply, spurred by Rotel’s Tribute models. The new A14MKII is a well-equipped machine, too, featuring analogue and digital connections (including USB-type B and MM phono sockets), aptX Bluetooth, MQA decoding and rendering, and support for Roon. All of the MKII models feature Ethernet and RS232 connections for control system integration.
Moving over to Rotel’s 15 Series we have the all-new flagship RA-1592MKII (£2295, $3200), delivering 200 watts of Class AB power into 8 ohms and benefitting from “upgrades to all critical circuits”. The 32-bit/384kHz Texas Instruments DAC utilises 12 new coupling capacitors with improved frequency response and higher component tolerances, while other component changes include upgraded capacitors.
(Image credit: Rotel)
Connectivity expands upon the A14MKII’s with XLR balanced and front-panel USB (for iOS device) socketry, too.
Below that is the new RA-1572MKII (£1595, $2100), which too benefits from component changes – 33 this time! – in acoustic and filter capacitors and the power supply. The RA-1572 too has a comprehensive analogue- and digital-friendly connectivity list featuring aptX Bluetooth, USB and MM phono.
The Rotel A14MKII, RA-1572MKII and RA-1592MKII integrated amps are available to order now, with shipping expected to begin in May in the United States and Canada, with the rest of the world to follow.
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AMD’s EPYC Milan processors launched last month with 120 new world records to their credit in various applications, like HPC, Cloud, and enterprise workloads. But variants of these chips will eventually come to the market as Threadripper models for high end desktop PCs, and AMD’s server records don’t tell us too much about what we could expect from the PC chips. However, the company recently broke the Cinebench world record with its Milan chips, giving us an idea of what to expect in rendering work. Just for fun, we also ran a few tests on Intel’s new flagship 40-core Ice Lake Xeon chips to see how they stack up against not only AMD’s new record it set with the server chips, but also a single AMD Threadripper processor.
During the latest episode of AMD’s The Bring Up YouTube video series, the company took two of its $7,980 EPYC Milan 7763 chips for a spin in Cinbench R23, a rendering application that AMD commonly uses for its desktop PC marketing (largely because it responds exceedingly well to AMD’s Zen architectures).
As a quick reminder, AMD’s flagship 7763 server chips come armed with the 64 Zen 3 cores and 128 threads apiece and have a 2.45 GHz base and 3.5 GHz boost frequency. All told, we’re looking at a Cinebench run with 128 cores and 256 threads, which you can see in the tweet below:
So sieht das aus, wenn sich 2x 64 Zen-3-Kerne durch den Cinebench R23 fressen. pic.twitter.com/o9jiZeKPlRApril 15, 2021
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The dual 7763’s scored 113,631 points, while the previous world record weighed in at 105,570 (as per HWBot rankings). AMD says it used a reference server design with conventional air cooling for the test run, so there were no special accommodations or overclocking. The system peaked at 85C and 403W during the test run. Here’s AMD’s official HWBot world record submission.
1K Unit Price / RCP
Cores / Threads
Base / Boost – All Core (GHz)
L3 Cache (MB)
TDP (W)
AMD EPYC Milan 7763
$7,890
64 / 128
2.45 / 3.5
256
280
Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
$8,099
40 / 80
2.3 / 3.2 – 3.0
60
270
That isn’t much info to work with, but it’s enough for us to set up our own test. We ran a few tests with a dual Xeon 8380 Ice Lake Xeon server we used for our recent review. Much like AMD’s test system, this is a standard development design with air cooling (more details in the review). The Xeon system houses two $8,099 10nm Ice Lake Xeons with 40 cores 80 threads apiece that operate at a 2.3 GHz base and 3.2 GHz boost frequency. Yes, AMD’s Milan outweighs the Xeon system, but the Ice Lake 8380 is Intel’s highest-end part, and both chips come with comparable pricing.
We’re looking at the EPCY Milan server with 128 cores and 256 threads against the Intel Ice Lake system with 80 cores and 160 threads. Our quick tests here are not 100% like-for-like so take these with a grain of salt, though we did our best to match AMD’s test conditions. Here are our test results, with a few extras from the HWBot benchmark database mixed in:
Cinebench Benchmarks
Score
Cooling
Chip Price
2x AMD EPYC Milan 7763
113,631
Air
$15,780
1x Threadripper 3990X (Splave)
105,170
Liquid Nitrogen (LN2)
$3,990
2x EPYC 7H12
92,357
Air
?
2x Intel Xeon Platinum 8380
74,630
Air
$17,000
1x Threadripper 3990X (stock)
64,354
All-In-One (AIO) Liquid Cooling
$3,990
As you can see, in Cinebench R23, the dual EPYC Milan 7763’s are 34% faster than the dual Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s. AMD lists a 403W peak power consumption during its tests, but we assume those measurements are for the processors only (and perhaps only a single processor). In contrast, our power measurement at the wall for the Xeon 8380 server weighed in at 1154W, but that includes a beastly 512GB of memory, other platform additives, and VRM losses, etc., meaning it’s just a rough idea of power consumption that isn’t comparable to the EPYC system.
Naturally, Cinebench R23 results have absolutely no bearing on the purchasing decision for a data center customer, but it is an interesting comparison. Notably, a single Threadripper 3990X, when pressed to its fullest with liquid nitrogen by our resident overclocking guru Splave, still beats the two Xeon Platinum 8380’s, though the 8380’s pull off the win against an air-cooled 3990X at stock settings (measured in our labs).
Finally, we decided to see how two Ice Lake Xeon 8380’s compare against a broader set of processors. Intel suffered quite a bit of embarrassment back at AMD’s launch of the 64-core Threadripper 3900X for high-end desktop PCs, as this $3,990 processor (yes, just one) beat two of Intel’s previous-gen 8280 Xeons in a range of threaded workloads. Intel’s Xeon’s weighed in at $20,000 total and represented the company’s fastest server processors. Ouch.
In fact, those benchmark results were so amazing that we included an entire page of testing in our Threadripper 3990X review comparing two of Intel’s fire-breathing behemoths to AMD’s single workstation chip, which you can see here. As a bit of a redux, we decided to revisit the standings with a quick run of Cinebench R20 with the new Intel 10nm Xeons. Notably, this test is with an older version of the benchmark than we used above, but that’s so we can match our historical data in the chart below:
(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)
Unfortunately, we don’t have a dual-socket EPYC Milan 7763 system to add to our historical test results here, but we get a good enough sense of Ice Lake’s relative positioning with this chart. The two Intel Ice Lake 8380’s, which weigh in at $17,000, beat the single $3,990 Threadripper 3900X at stock settings. That’s at least better than the dual 8280’s that lost so convincingly in the past.
However, a quick toggle of the PBO switch, which is an automated overclocking feature from AMD that works with standard cooling solutions (no liquid nitrogen required), allows a single Threadripper 3990X to regain the lead over Intel’s newest 10nm flagships in this test. Intel’s latest chips also can’t beat AMD’s previous-gen EPYC Rome 7742’s, which are 64-core chips.
Of course, this single benchmark has almost no bearing on the enterprise market that the Ice Lake chips are destined for, and the latest Xeon’s do make solid steps forward in a broader range of tests that do matter, which you can see in our Ice Lake 8380 review.
GeForce RTX 3080 Ti (Image credit: Lok LOK/Facebook)
Facebook user Lok LOK has snapped various photographs of shipping boxes with MSI graphics cards that are reportedly heading to the U.S. One of the boxes seemingly contains MSI’s unreleased GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Ventus 3X 12G OC, lending credence to the rumors of GeForce RTX 3080 Ti’s arrival in May.
However, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti isn’t the only SKU that MSI is sending to Los Angeles. Nvidia’s flagship GeForce RTX 3090 is also part of the shipment although we couldn’t see the exact model of the graphics card. The other photographs also showed a few boxes of MSI’s Radeon RX 580 Armor 8G OC and GT 710 2GD3 LP. Both graphics cards are outdated by today’s standards, but given the ongoing shortage, anything is better than nothing. Furthermore, the Radeon RX 580 is still the one of the best mining GPUs that money can buy.
According to the latest rumors, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti could arrive with 10,240 CUDA cores, 80 RT cores and 320 Tensor cores. The leaked photographs paint the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti with 12 GB of memory, putting to rest the ongoing debate of hether it would come with 12GB or 20GB. The memory chips should be GDDR6X clocked at 19 Gbps. Across the rumored 384-bit memory interface, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti should be good for a memory bandwidth up to 912.4 GBps.
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MSI GPU Shipment (Image credit: Lok LOK/Facebook)
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MSI GPU Shipment (Image credit: Lok LOK/Facebook)
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MSI GPU Shipment (Image credit: Lok LOK/Facebook)
There is strong but unverified information that Nvidia is reworking its Ampere silicon to put a halt to Ethereum mining. If that’s the case, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, which is reportedly based on the GA102 die, will debut with Nvidia’s reveamped silicon with improved anti-mining mechanisms. Word around town is that once mining activity is detected, the algorithm slashes the hash rate down to 50%.
While Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 can go toe-to-toe with AMD’s Radeon RX 6900 XT, the Ampere offering also costs $500 more. Nvidia has a respectable Ampere lineup, but the chipmaker doesn’t have anything that competes in the $1,000 bracket. The reason for the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti’s existence is to face Radeon RX 6900 XT at the $999 price mark.
If you’ve been hunting for a high-end Ampere graphics card, we encourage you to keep your eyes peeled in the upcoming weeks. We don’t know just how many units are en route to the U.S. but they’ll likely sell out fast. The reality of the matter is that the graphics card shortage doesn’t look like it’ll improve anytime soon. What little of the graphics cards that make their way to U.S. retailers will in all probability sell out quickly.
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