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Anycubic Photon Mono Review: Resin Printing at High Speeds

Our Verdict

The Anycubic Photon Mono is an MSLA resin 3D printer that offers fast print speeds, highly-detailed models, and a seamless user experience at a very-affordable price.

For

+ Low cost
+ High quality prints from the 2K LCD
+ Mono LCD screen prints parts quickly
+ Photon Workshop slicer app is easy-to-use

Against

– Software lacks some key features
– Uses proprietary FEP film

Based on its specs alone, the Anycubic Photon Mono is an impressive MSLA resin printer that becomes a knock-out when you factor in the retail price of around $230. With a per-layer cure time of about two seconds, the Photon Mono is capable of printing tall, highly-detailed parts quickly while offering a seamless print preparation experience with the included Photon Workshop software. Quality-of-life features such as the angled build platform to prevent resin from pooling and the pour spout on the resin vat make this a machine that’s as easy to use as it is to look at.

Specifications

Machine Footprint	9.8″ x 9.8″ x 12.9″ (24.9cm x 24.9cm x 32.8cm)
Build Volume	5.11″ x 3.14″ x 6.49″ (130mm x 80mm x 165mm)
Resin	DLP Photopolymer Resin
UV Light	405nm Matrix Parallel Light Source
Masking LCD Resolution	2560 x 1620
Masking LCD Size	6.08″
Interface	2.8″ LCD Touchscreen
XY Axis Resolution	.051mm

Anycubic Photon Mono: Included in the Box

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The resin storage vat and the build platform are included in the packaging but not assembled on the printer. In addition to the components you need to assemble the printer, Anycubic has also included many of the common consumables used in resin 3D printing in the box: several paper filters for filtering unused resin, a surgical-style facemask for wearing while handling the resin, a bag full of blue nitrile gloves (you’ll go through a lot of these) and a pair of scrapers for removing parts from the build platform and the resin vat.

Anycubic Photon Mono Design

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Photon Mono uses an LCD with a resolution of 2560 x 1620 to selectively mask the 405nm UV light source which cures the liquid resin in the vat. The LCD is precisely taped to the upward facing surface of the base to keep it level with the top as well as to prevent any resin from leaking into the machine. The base of the Photon Mono is made from injection-molded plastic, which felt a little less sturdy than the solid metal base found on the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro.

The resin vat is held in place with a pair of easy-to-tighten thumbscrews that clamp down into a recessed circular feature, holding it rigid while the build platform drops down on the FEP film.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Z motion is controlled with a threaded rod that is kept rigid with a linear bearing that travels along the Z axis. The build platform is suspended from an arm that appears to be a solid piece of aluminum which feels sturdy and doesn’t have much flex during the printing process. This means the build platform makes a clean separation from the FEP film on the vat after each layer is exposed, which leads to a more reliable printer.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The resin vat itself had a few surprises that caught me off guard, but were welcome changes from the typical featureless rectangular vat that I was expecting. For one, the vat has a graduated volume legend embossed directly onto the walls which lets you determine the rough amount of resin in the container with just a glance. It also has a pour spout (and a lip) on one corner, which means that the process of pouring resin out is a much cleaner operation than with a hard edge which liquid will spill over and get onto the bottom of the FEP film.

Unlike other resin 3D printers such as the Elegoo Mars Pro, the FEP film cannot be swapped out with a generic replacement, and requires a proprietary FEP film that is sold by Anycubic as a pair for $11.99. This is a reasonable price for the replacement, but it’s worth noting you may want to keep a few extras on hand if you’re using the machine regularly. And if Anycubic stops making them, your printer could become useless.

Anycubic Photon Mono Setup

The setup process for the Photon Mono is fast, simple and beginner-friendly. The included power supply plugs into the rear of the unit, the build platform and vat took me well under an hour to calibrate and fill respectively, and the transparent yellow UV-resistant cover sits flush on top of the base. The included user manual is well-written and easy to follow and I had no problem setting up the machine while following along.

Leveling the Build Platform on Anycubic Photon Mono

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Anycubic Photon Mono requires you to level the build platform with the masked LCD to make sure the layers are exposed evenly as they are cured. The build platform also requires a very slight offset to compensate for the FEP film at the bottom of the vat which is present during printing. To accomplish both tasks in one step, Anycubic has included a piece of paper with the Photon Mono that can be used to protect the LCD while also creating a slight offset during leveling.

“This paper can be used for leveling” is what the included 210mm x 150mm piece of paper has written on it in two languages, so that’s exactly how I used it. After loosening the four bolts holding the build platform against the bracket, I lowered the Z to 0, tightened the screws, and reset the home. This entire process took me about three minutes, and the calibration was spot-on. I had some issues with the Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K, which uses a similar leveling process but had parts that weren’t quite flush, making the calibration of the Photon Mono a breeze in comparison.

Printing Safety with Anycubic Photon Mono

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Photon Mono uses 405nm UV resin, a material that you need to handle safely when in an uncured state to avoid injury. The resin can be harmful when making contact with skin, so make sure to wear gloves when pouring, cleaning up, or handling uncured resin. I also make sure I’m wearing gloves when removing the build platform after a print, as the resin tends to pool on top of the platform and can drip off while the platform is being removed. The build platform on the Photon Mono has a triangular profile, which lets any resin on top slowly drip down during printing.

Make sure you use the Photon Mono in a well-ventilated room to minimize the danger from inhaling fumes. Any spills or uncured resin stuck to a surface should be cleaned using 99% Isopropyl Alcohol and the container for the resin should be kept closed and secured when not actively pouring material.

Printing the Included Test Print on the Anycubic Photon Mono

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The included USB stick contains a sample test print that has already been prepared for printing on the Photon Mono, and I was impressed with both how ambitious the part was as well as how well the printer performed. I used Elegoo Ceramic Gray Water Washable Resin for all the prints in this review. The sample test print (descriptively named TEST.pwmo) is a lattice structure in the shape of a cube with two floating bars that read ANYCUBIC PHOTON.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

This cube highlights the ability of the Photon Mono to print complex parts due to the rigidity of the machine. The build platform is suspended from a gantry that is made from a solid piece of aluminum, and the linear rail it travels on offers highly precise and repeatable motion. I didn’t see any bowing, bending or other defects on the test part, and the overall accuracy of the print was impressive.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

As indicated by the text printed on the base, the average diameter of the circular feature measured right around 35mm, with most measurements being slightly over by about .02mm to .04mm. Anycubic doesn’t have a published XY tolerance for the Photon Mono, but the XY accuracy of the machine is stated as .051mm, which seems reasonable for the measurements taken.

Preparing Files for Printing with Photon Workshop

(Image credit: Anycubic)

Anycubic includes its Photon Workshop software for preparing .STL files for resin printing with the Photon Mono, Photon Mono X, and other Anycubic MSLA 3D printers. Having the print workflow organized sequentially at the top of the software (import model, hollow, add drain holes) made the file preparation a quick and easy process.

When you select a printer configuration in Photon Workshop, the exposure time and other related settings are automatically adjusted to the defaults for the machine. These settings worked well with the Elegoo Ceramic Gray Water Washable resin, and I didn’t need to make any adjustments to the exposure time.

(Image credit: Anycubic)

Once a model has been prepared and sliced for printing, Photon Workshop exports a .pwmo file which is readable by both the Photon Mono as well as Photon Workshop. Opening the file presents a preview of the print in a layer-by-layer fashion allowing you to see which pixels will be exposed on the LCD screen. The layer parameters (exposure, Z lift, etc.) are also listed, and can be directly edited in case you want to switch the settings for a different resin. The total amount of resin used is listed at the bottom, so you know how much resin to add if your vat is starting to get low.

I’ve used the slicer Chitubox in the past with the Phrozen Sonic Mini 4K, so this is the stage in the process where I would normally check for islands in the print; small individual or isolated exposures that don’t connect to the main body. These can cause issues by potentially sticking to the FEP or floating away during printing and getting stuck to the print later on. Photon Workshop doesn’t offer a way to easily search for and remove these islands, something that has driven users to a third party software called Photon Validator which can view and edit .pwmo files. Given the usefulness of this feature and its inclusion in the popular slicing app Chitubox, adding it to Photon Workshop would be a big benefit for users looking to streamline their printing process.

Printing with the Photon Mono

(Image credit: Anycubic)

I used the Griffin model by digital artist Sishir Bommakanti as a first test of the Photon Workshop preparation process. The file was easy to process and the supports were generated automatically after adjusting the angle of the file for printing.

This model wasn’t particularly thick, so I didn’t bother to hollow it or add drain holes, and printed it solid. I angled it over the build platform to generate support under the base, and also increased the support density to give the model more anchor points to the build platform. The settings (listed below) are the default for the Photon Mono in Photon Workshop, and as you’ll see, they worked great for this model.

Layer Height	0.05 mm
Bottom Exposure Time	40 seconds
Exposure Time	2.0 seconds
Bottom Layer Count	6

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Griffin model printed in just under five and a half hours and I didn’t run into any surprises during the process. The support structure kept the model anchored down despite the 100ml of resin used in the printing process. After it finished printing , I rinsed the model in warm water and removed the automatically generated support structures, which detached easily and didn’t leave any major marks on the surface. Curing the model was straight-forward as well, and the model didn’t warp or crack during the process.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

A small hole is present on the wing, a result of the model having a near-zero thickness at certain points. This means that the feature width is below the minimum XY resolution (.051mm), and doesn’t get printed. It’s an interesting defect to see on a resin print, as most FDM 3D printer slicer software can automatically detect thin walls and add thickness to prevent this style of defect. I searched through the Photon Workshop documentation, but didn’t see any ability to resolve this problem.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Printing Finely-Detailed Miniatures on the Photon Mono

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The speed of the Photon Mono is something that I wanted to test out, so I printed the 75mm scale Verdant King mini from Loot Studios. This model has support material already generated from the original artist, and the total height of the model is 118.73mm. This file prints out in about six hours, which works out to a build speed of right around 20mm/hour while printing at a .05mm layer height and two second exposure.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The model showed quite a bit of detail, and I could easily remove the support structure without damaging the thin features on the helmet and fingers. The hollow portion of the rib cage was very impressive due to the amount of internal and external detail that was captured in the print.

Bottom Line

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

I was impressed with the Anycubic Photon Mono, period. The rock-solid gantry, combined with the thoughtful design touches on the resin vat and build platform are clearly designed to make the printing process as easy as possible. The parts I printed had a very high level of detail and the Photon Mono was able to easily create organic and complex shapes, something an FDM filament printer like the Creality Ender 3 might struggle with.

By including their Photon Workshop software with the Photon Mono, Anycubic has clearly put work into the out-of-the-box experience for new users. However, I did find the software somewhat limiting, and I preferred using the Chitubox software that runs natively with the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro.

I also found myself wishing the USB input was on the front of the printer as with the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro instead of the side, as this means anyone hoping to set machines side-by-side will need to add a buffer between them. These differences may not justify the $100 price difference between the Photon Mono and the Mars 2 Pro for beginners, but if you’re hoping to dive into the more advanced slicer settings offered by Chitubox it might make sense to consider the more expensive Mars 2 Pro.

When you consider the typical retail price of $230, this machine is an absolute bargain for anyone looking to dive into the world of resin printing while still offering enough features to be attractive to a pro user looking for a small volume machine.

Hexgears Impulse Keyboard Review: Incredible Typing and Hot Swapping on a Budget

Our Verdict

The ultimate typing keyboard at a budget price, the Hexgears Impulse provides amazing key feel out of the box and also lets you swap switches.

For

Hot-swappable key switches
World-class typing experience
Lightweight and compact
Great value

Against

No software
Dull light show

When I first reviewed the Hexgears Impulse in 2019, I was impressed with its compact design, budget-friendly price and the incredible typing experience, highlighted by its Kailh Box White Switches. A few months ago, the company made a small but critical revision that makes this full-size gaming keyboard even more compelling. The revised Impulse (which is not being listed with a new name or model number) now has hot-swappable switches, which means that, if you would like to replace the default Box Whites with something else, you can use an included switch-puller to do just that.

However, if you like clicky switches, you may never want to change. Available on very few keyboards, the Kailh Box Whites have ever-so-slightly less travel than traditional Cherry MX Blue switches but fantastic feedback that allows you to hit the keys frequently in a shorter timespan and with much greater comfort.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Available for just $99 with RGB pudding-style keys and hot-swap capability and a mere $89 for one that’s not hot-swappable with white / gray keycaps, the Hexgears Impulse is an incredible bargain and one of the best gaming keyboards. However, you lose out on custom software and have a slightly-less vibrant light show than some competitors offer.

Specifications

Switches	Kailh Box White (tested), Kailh Box Brown, Hako Clear
Cable	Braided USB Type-A
Key Caps	PBT Pudding or Gray / White
Construction	Plastic Shell, Metal Inside
Lighting	RGB / White Backlight
Size	17.25 x 6 inches (43.8 x 15.2 cm)
Weight	2 pounds (918 g)

Design of the Hexgears Impulse

It doesn’t have the most premium design, but despite its low price, nothing about the Hex Gears Impulse looks or feels cheap. The top of the Impulse’s outer shell is made from painted aluminum while the bottom is black plastic, and on the inside, it uses a rigid metal mounting plate that gives it plenty of stability. A tapered top edge that curves down like a waterfall adds a nice touch of style. And speaking of water, the keyboard is IP56 water resistant so it can survive a small spill.

The Impulse is available in one of two styles. The $99 RGB style features colorful backlighting and “pudding style” keycaps that have translucent sides and a black top surface with translucent markings. The $89 model has white backlights behind its solid gray and white keys (the letters and numbers are white while most special keys are gray). Only the RGB model allows hot swapping of switches.

If you don’t like clicky switches, the Hexgears Impulse is also available with quiet, Kailh Box Brown tactile switches. If you don’t mind or even like audible feedback, the White switches have an amazing feel you shouldn’t deny yourself.

Hexgears Impulse Non-RGB Version has nicer keycaps.

Whichever model you choose, the caps are made from durable PBT plastic, and there’s an RGB light ring that surrounds the entire top surface. As is typical for mechanical keyboards, there’s a braided, non-removable USB Type-A cable that connects to your computer.

Unfortunately, the RGB model just isn’t that snazzy. The combination of the cloudy translucent plastic on the pudding keycaps and the muted light that shows through them leads to a visual experience with colors that aren’t as vibrant as you get on other RGB gaming keyboards, like the Patriot Viper V765, the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT or Razer BlackWidow V3 Pro.

Though it doesn’t have colorful lights behind the keys, I prefer the look of the white and gray keys. The aesthetics on this monochrome model reminded me of my old IBM Model M keyboard, but with a touch of RGB magic from the ring.

Hexgears Impulse

At 17.25 x 6 inches (43.8 x 15.2 cm), the Hexgears Impulse is very compact for a 104-key keyboard with a full set of keys and numpad. By comparison, the Patriot Viper V765 (18.4 x 6.4 inches / 45.5 x 20.3 cm) is quite a bit larger, though the Viper also finds room for media controls, something the Impulse lacks. At 2 pounds (918 grams), it’s heavy enough to feel stable on your desk without being a heavy lift.

Unlike some other keyboards that either have no feet at all or feet that lift it only a tiny bit off of the desk, the Hexgears Impulse has two sets of flip outs that give it different heights. With both feet retracted, the keyboard is a mere 0.8 inches (2cm) high, and with the smaller feet extended, that lifts it only 0.1 inch (0.25cm) higher. However, with the larger feet enabled, the back of the keyboard measures a full 1.25 inches (3.2cm), a lift of 0.45 inches (1.1cm). That makes it noticeably taller than the Patriot Viper V765, which tops out at 1.1 inches (2.8cm). The added height makes typing on the Impulse that much more comfortable.

Hot-Swap Capability of Hexgears Impulse

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

If you were to place the original version of the Hexgears Impulse next to version 2, you wouldn’t notice a difference. However, in the box, you get a keycap puller and a switch puller, which allow you to yank out the preloaded switches and replace them with any Cherry MX-compatible switch you want. This keyboard makes it as easy as possible to change mechanical switches without any soldering.

Removing the keycaps with the included key puller is easy, but yanking out the switches with the cheap metal switch puller is a hassle. To get them out, I had to carefully place the tiny tabs on the puller’s legs under the plastic of each switch and yank really hard. Popping in new switches was really simple, as all I had to do was put them into the hole and push.

Though I love the Box White switches the Impulse comes with, I wanted to try Kailh’s Box Jade switches which promise a slightly crisper click. In my testing, the Jade switches popped in perfectly and worked flawlessly with the Impulse’s keycaps.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Interestingly, actually typing on a full keyboard with a switch is way different than just clicking one sample switch on a switch tester. While the Jade and White switches felt nearly identical outside of the keyboard, the Jades felt much heavier during actual typing, even though both are rated for the same actuation force.

This exercise taught me that I like the Box White switches better, but ultimately, it shows the power of having a hot-swappable keyboard. You can buy switches of different kinds and type on them, without the effort and expense of building a custom keyboard or desoldering switches from an existing one.

There aren’t many hot-swappable, full-size keyboards on the market, so the Hexgears Impulse really stands out. The Glorious GMMK, another full-size keyboard that hot swaps, goes for $109.

Typing Experience of Hexgears Impulse

Wow, just wow. The Hexgears Impulse, provided you get it with the Kailh Box White switches, offers an amazing typing experience, which, even two years after I first tried it, is the best I’ve ever had on a mechanical keyboard. The clicky, Kailh Box White switches offer the perfect balance between feedback and resistance.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Where popular Blue and Green-style switches have 4mm of travel and actuate at 2mm, the Box White switches have 3.6mm of travel with a 1.8mm actuation point. That’s still plenty of travel, but the lower actuation point allows you to activate each key just a little bit quicker.

The keys feel lighter and easier to press than Blue or Green, but the tactile feedback is just as strong if not stronger, and the sound of the click is marvelous. Hexgears made the bold choice of putting a Blue-style switch under the spacebar only, because the largest key (which most people hit with their thumbs) should be a bit stiffer. At first, I thought that having a different switch under just one key was a weird choice, but I found the added resistance helpful. As a result, I enjoyed typing on the Impulse more than on the Viper V765, which has White switches under every key, including the spacebar.

Because of the fantastic switches, the solid, matte texture of the keycaps and the strong incline from the flip-out feet, I scored 111 words-per-minute with a 3% error rate on the 10FastFingers.com test. That’s my best score ever and far above my typical 95 to 100 wpm.

You can also buy the Hexgears Impulse with the non-clicky, but tactile Kailh Box Brown switches and the company says it may add more switch options eventually. However, it’s the White Box option that we tested and recommend.

RGB Lighting and Controls on Hexgears Impulse

The Hexgears Impulse has no software at all; you control everything via keyboard shortcuts. On the bright side, you can count on the Impulse to work the same way whether you use it on a computer with Windows, Linux, macOS or even with a set-top box. On the dim side, you need to remember (or read) a lot of key combinations in order to change the lighting or set up macro keys.

However, overall, I appreciate Hexgear’s decision to forgo software altogether rather than making a half-hearted effort or, like Razer keyboards do, nagging you to install something every time you plug in.

Setting up macros is a fairly frustrating process so you’d be better off finding your own macro software. The very-limited instruction card, which is just a list of key combinations, is confusing. But eventually I figured out how to record macros and assign them to one of the five possible macro keys (Y,U,I,O and P). However, you can’t edit the macros nor can you change the timing of a recording to insert delays, because there’s no software. And, in order to use the macros, you first have to hit Fn + Y to activate “macro mode,” which means that you can’t use any of those keys for their regular functions.

You can set per-key lighting on the RGB model, but there are only nine colors you can choose from for each letter. Want a royal blue instead of the dull blue that’s available? Get a different keyboard.

As is commonplace on any RGB keyboard, the Impulse also has a series of built-in lighting effects, such as breathing and wave motions. You can speed or slow these down and change the brightness level, but that’s about the only way to customize them. And, as I noted above, the color on the lights is bland.

Gaming Experience on Hexgears Impulse

The Hexgears Impulse offers a solid gaming experience. Whether I was playing a simple sandbox game like Lego Worlds, an epic adventure such as Rise of the Tomb Raider or a first-person shooter like Call of Duty II: Black Ops, the keyboard was responsive and easy to use.

If hitting too many keys at once is a concern, the keyboard lets you toggle between 6 key rollover and full key rollover modes by hitting Fn + ~. However, in my gaming experience, I never had an issue.

When it comes to gameplay, the Blue-switch spacebar is a double-edged sword, because if you need to jump rapidly you can’t press it as quickly as the White-switched spacebar on the Patriot Viper V765 (in fact, all of the White-switch keys on the Viper V765 seemed a little softer, perhaps because I had broken it in for longer). So what’s great for typing isn’t necessarily as good for fast-paced gaming. However, because the keys are hot-swappable, you’re always welcome to put a different switch under the spacebar, provided you have one.

The Impulse’s biggest gaming downside, however, is its lack of serious macro and lighting controls. While other keyboards have software that lets them customize their look and shortcuts by software, the Impulse gives you the same five macro keys for everything. There’s nothing you can do about the lighting, but you can have a better macro experience by installing third-party software, such as Clavier+ or AutoIt.

Bottom Line

It’s not a perfect gaming keyboard, but the Hexgears Impulse (with Kailh Box White switches) is an incredible value that offers the best typing performance I’ve ever experienced, surpassing even my old-school IBM-style keyboard and others I’ve used with Cherry MX Blue or Razer Green switches. Better still, the new hot-swap capability means that you can try out other switches, and see if there are any you like even better.

If you’re not interested in hot swapping and don’t care about having RGB effects (apart from a ring around the keyboard itself), you can save money and get a more subtle and professional looking design with the $89 monochrome model.

However, if you’re looking for a better gaming experience with superior lighting, macro creation and media controllers, the Patriot Viper V765, which has Box White switches, is a better choice. And if money is no object and you don’t mind Cherry MX Blue switches, consider the Corsair K95 RGB Platinum XT, which has dedicated function keys, powerful software and attractive, highly-customizable RGB lighting.

But if you want the ultimate typing experience or the ability to hot-swap switches, the Hexgears Impulse is your best choice.

16 of the best Rega products of all time: turntables, amps and phono stages

To call Rega a little bit dominant in the world of turntables would be rather an understatement. After all, of the 30+ turntable What Hi-Fi? Awards we’ve dished out over the last five years, Rega has scooped up around half of them, leaving its rivals to scrap over what’s left.

The current Award-winning turntables didn’t come out of nowhere: they’re the culmination of over four decades of tireless development and refinement and built upon the legacy of the turntables that have gone before.

But while record players and cartridges are what Rega are most renowned for, and quite rightly so, the British company has also excelled in a range of electronics – mostly amplifiers and phono stages – over the years that have many an accolade and an impressive heritage of their own. It’s got a few pairs of speakers under its belt, too, having recently launched the Kyte.

That makes this a perfect time to revisit Rega’s greatest hits, from its very first turntable to its most recent What Hi-Fi? Award-winners across a number of categories.

Rega Planet (1973)

Pre-Rega, founder Roy Gandy spent his free time installing, upgrading and repairing turntables. Dismayed by the poor reliability of the decks he was seeing, Gandy set out to make an alternative with real solidity and longevity.

He also wanted his first turntable to look different to everything else that was available at the time. “Why can a turntable not have three outrigger points spinning round, that people might buy as a piece of sculpture?” he asked.

The result of his experience, goals and theorising was the Rega Planet, with its three-spoke, steel and aluminium platter and Acos Lustre tonearm. This was also the beginning of Rega as a company.

Rega Planar 3 (with RB300 arm) (1983)

As you’d assume from the name, the Planar 3 was not the first Planar by Rega. What’s more, the model we’re highlighting here wasn’t even the first Planar 3. What makes this the Planar 3 to focus on is the RB-300 tonearm that came pre-installed on it.

Having used Japanese and Danish manufactured arms for the first decade of its life, Rega’s own RB-300 and RB-250 took performance to new levels and received plaudits that you might not expect, with Modern Metals magazine proclaiming that it was ‘still trying to figure out how you produce such a long cored hole so accurately’.

More importantly (we hope), we proclaimed at the time that the RB-300 edition of the Planar 3 ‘seemed to get so much more off the discs’. This is arguably the point at which Rega came of age.

Rega Brios (1991 and 2018)

(Image credit: Rega)

The original Brio amplifier first launched in 1991 – it was the company’s third model after the higher-end Elex and Elicit – ever since has pedalled a reputation for being a musically engaging affordable amplifier.

The generations we’ve seen over the years have all stayed true to the original’s musical foundations, managing to be sonically engrossing to entertaining and mostly class-leading degrees. And while they haven’t strayed far from the original design in terms of aesthetics and connectivity – half-width casing and analogue-only connectivity is infused into their design DNA – the performance benchmark they set has continued northwards. The current, sixth-generation Brio – the standout iteration alongside the first-gen model – is the best in the line yet: a stickler for detail and dynamics, rhythm and timing and, perhaps the simplest, truest summation, outright fun.

Read the Rega Brio review

Rega P5 (2002)

Rega spent much of the ’80s and ’90s focused on electronics and speakers, ensuring that someone looking to build an entire two-channel system could do so using Rega components alone. New decks were occasionally launched along the way but it’s the P5 and its 15mm glass platter of 2002 that we’re picking out.

The idea here was to bring some of the features of the company’s more premium turntables – particularly the P25 of 1998 – within the reach of more hi-fi fans, hence the aluminium surround, complex CNC machined skeletal low mass micro-fibre plinth, and the RB700 tonearm of the P7.

Rega P3-24/Elys 2 (2007)

It would take Rega 24 years to launch the second-generation Planar 3, called the P3 2000, but then just seven years to launch the third model – the P3-24.

This model kept much of what made the original Planar 3 great but added some serious upgrades, including a new plinth, arm and motor.

You could buy just the turntable and arm for £400, but our sample was also fitted with Rega’s own Elys 2 cartridge, a model that would become part of the Rega furniture for years to come.

It was a terrific-sounding package, with class-leading and rival-obliterating drive and rhythmic ability. It’s fair to say this turntable left a lasting impression, so much so that it won the Product of the Year Award twice in a row.

Read the Rega P3-24/Elys 2 review

Rega RP8 (2012)

Rega’s goal of combining lightness and rigidity bore striking fruit in 2012 with the launch of the RP8.

The skeletal plinth was constructed using little more than foam – closed cell, polyolefin foam to be precise. Phenolic resin skins were added to both top and bottom surfaces to deliver higher rigidity and an element of damping, but the RP8’s plinth still wound up being seven times lighter than that of the original Planar 3.

To say we were impressed by the RP8 – which is still available, by the way – would be an understatement. ‘When the company really goes for it, shooting for the stars rather than trying to meet a price point’, we said, ‘the results are spectacular’.

Read the Rega RP8 review

Rega Naiad (2013)

It should be clear by now that Rega is renowned for building brilliant turntables at the relatively affordable end of the spectrum, which is why the Naiad might come as a bit of a surprise – it costs £30,000. Not that you can buy one even if you had the money: only 50 were ever made.

Built to celebrate Rega’s 40th birthday, the company considers the Naiad to be the ultimate representation of its engineering ideas when executed with little regard for cost or ease of manufacture. In other words, it’s the best deck Rega knows how to make.

Unfortunately, we’ve never tested the Naiad – there’d be little point reviewing a product almost no-one could buy – but it’s fair to assume it should sound pretty special, given Rega’s track record. And it sure is pretty.

The making of: Rega Naiad

Rega Elex-R (2014)

(Image credit: Future)

Rega’s Elex-R arrived in 2014, 13 years after the original Elex, which was the company’s second-ever amplifier following its debut Elicit the year prior. It’s still going strong today – something we’re very thankful. Because while the Elex-R’s five-time What Hi-Fi? Award-winning streak came to an end in 2019 when Cambridge Audio’s better-connected CX models showed up, it still remains a go-to for analogue purists who aren’t worried about digital connectivity.

As with the Elicit and Brio siblings, its biggest strength lies in its effortless, uncompromising musicality; it’s the kind of product that gets straight to the heart of the music and conveys all the emotion in the recording with ease. We anticipate the next-generation Elex (which we’d imagine is due in the not-too-distant future) with avid eagerness.

Read the Rega Elex-R review

Rega RP1 Performance pack (2014)

We’ve always been fans of Rega’s entry-level turntable, the RP1, but this enhanced version took things to a new level.

Mostly, this is the same turntable we know and love, but with a few key tweaks. For starters, there’s a new, thicker drive belt. You also get a new mat: it’s thicker, and made of natural wool as opposed to the synthetic material of the original. The moving-magnet cartridge is new, too, with the standard Ortofon OMB5 having been replaced by Rega’s own Bias 2.

We proclaimed the RP1 Performance pack a ‘blindingly good turntable for the money, and a great entry point into the world of vinyl’.

Read the Rega RP1 Performance Pack review

Rega Planar 2 (2016)

In 1976, three years after Rega’s creation, the Planar 2 launched as one of the brand’s very first turntables. Its S-shaped tonearm was then replaced in 1984 with Rega’s RB250, and at the turn of the century a brand new version of the deck – fittingly named the P2 2000 – took its place in Rega’s catalogue until 2005.

Over a decade later, the Planar 2, having been developed over the past two years, was brought back from the dead – this time with the unabbreviated ‘Planar’ name.

The only things existing from the original being the drive belt and the plastic mouldings for the dust cover lid hinges, despite the two decks looking remarkably similar. But changes included a new plinth, power switch, 24v low-noise motor, central bearing, platter and feet. Quite a lot, then.

Most importantly, the Planer 2 received Rega’s new RB220 tonearm, which features new ultra-low friction ball bearings, a stiffer bearing housing and an automatic bias setting, making it virtually plug ’n’ play.

We proclaimed it a ‘proper step-up in performance from the RP1’, which is saying quite a lot.

Read the Rega Planar 2 review

Rega Planar 3 (2016)

Despite there being a 40-year gap between the original and current Planar 3, we surmised that if we put the two side-by-side, ‘most people would be hard pushed to find any differences beyond the smarter plinth and the updated tonearm’.

In actual fact, almost every part had been revised since the last iteration – the P3-24 of 2007. The company had, fairly unusually, put some real effort into the styling, too. The core of the turntable was the same, though: simple, well-engineered and designed to put performance first.

“Want the best value turntable on the market?”, we asked. “This is it”.

And it is still.

Read the Rega Planar 3 review

Rega Planar 6 (2017)

£1400 is no small price to pay for a turntable, particularly when a perfectly capable version of the same turntable is available for £200 less. But, such is the quality of the combination of Planar 6 and Ania cartridge, it’s a price well worth paying.

‘It’s a frankly astonishingly refined and mature sound’, we said in our review of the Planar 6, ‘with refinement adding to the deck’s customarily musical and insightful performance’.

It won an Award that year and repeated the feat in 2018. Will it be third time’s the charm? You certainly wouldn’t bet against it.

Read the Rega Planar 6 review

Rega Aura MC (2018)

(Image credit: Rega Research)

While Rega is a leading light at the more affordable end of the turntable and electronics fields it is a part of, ever mindful of value, it certainly knows how to make high-end products too. The Aura MC phono stage, which launched at £3999 ($5995), demonstrates that entirely.

Largely thanks to a three-stage symmetrical FET (Field Effect Transistor)-based main circuit board that’s packed with good quality components and driven by a generously specified power supply, the Aura MC is a virtuoso with moving coil cartridge-fitted record players, able to squeeze every last drop of energy from music signals it’s handed – not surprising considering that’s what Rega components do best. “If you have a system that can make the most of a phono stage of this level, dive right in,” is how we ended our review, and two years on from penning that statement we stand by it.

Read the Rega Aura review

Rega Planar 8 (2018)

If you’re not one of the lucky 50 who managed to get hold of the Naiad, above, you should probably take a good look at this Planar 8, which is designed to encapsulate the essence of the Naiad at a far more affordable price.

To these eyes it’s a gorgeously designed turntable that looks like nothing else out there. It’s vastly more capable than Rega’s more affordable models, too, including the Planar 6.

‘Rega has pushed the boundaries of performance at this level and has given premium rivals positioned above it plenty to worry about’, we said at the time, and little has changed since.

Read the Rega Planar 8 review

Rega Planar 1 Plus (2018)

When we heard Rega had finally developed a turntable with a built-in phono stage, the reaction of the What Hi-Fi? reviews team was a mixture of relief, anticipation and a fair bit of “about time, too”.

The Planar 1 Plus is essentially a Rega Planar 1 turntable with the Rega Fono Mini A2D built in. Both are Award-winning products, of course, and Rega says it only felt natural to combine them together. We absolutely agree.

‘Rega has struck gold in combining two superb products into one’, we said, commenting that in some ways it’s actually a better performer than when the turntable and phono stage are bought and combined as separates. This is a future classic and no mistake.

Read the Rega Planar 1 Plus review

Rega Planar 10 (2019)

(Image credit: Rega)

While the sparkliest jewels of Rega’s crown are arguably its lower-ranging Planar decks, its mainstream range-topper is the pinnacle of the Planar series and demonstrates the level of impressive engineering available at this price point.

The closest the company has got to building a production version of the Naiad – closer still than after the Planar 8 that came just before it – it’s an exceptional performer that packs clever engineering and fine build into a visually striking design. In fact, it’s the most sonically capable turntable we’ve heard at this price. If you really want to find out what’s hidden in that record groove, start here.

Read the Rega Planar 10 review

MORE:

10 of the best British record players of all time

12 of the best Cambridge Audio products of all time

10 of the best Wharfedale speakers of all time

Razer Viper 8K Review

Introduction

Founded in 1998, Razer is a US-based peripherals and gaming-equipment company. With the Viper 8K, Razer updates and phases out their original Viper. The main upgrades concern the sensor, which is now Razer’s Focus+ capable of 20,000 CPI and a polling rate of up to 8000 Hz. Other than that, the Viper 8K is still a fully ambidextrous (symmetrical) shape with side buttons on both sides, a 69 g lightweight construction, and injection-molded rubber side grips for improved durability. Razer optical switches are used for the main buttons, ensuring low latency along with no double-clicking. The feet are made out of pure PTFE, while the usual customization options are provided through Razer Synapse, including for the RGB lighting settings, all of which can be saved to the on-board memory.

Specifications

Razer Viper 8K
Size:	126.73 mm x 57.6 mm x 37.81 mm
Size (inches):	4.99″ x 2.27″ x 1.49″
Ambidextrous:	Yes
Weight:	69 g
Number of Buttons:	7 (including wheel click)
Main Switches:	Razer Optical
Wheel Encoder:	Mechanical
Sensor:	Razer Focus+ (PAW3399)
Resolution:	100–20,000 CPI
Polling Rate:	125/500/1000/2000/4000/8000 Hz
Cable:	1.80 m, braided
Software:	Yes
Price:	$79.99
Warranty:	2 years

Vaccines are changing how we interpret COVID-19 numbers

It’s never been possible to know for sure how many people in the United States are sick with COVID-19 at a particular time. Instead, we combine all of the metrics — the percentage of tests run that come back positive, the number of new cases reported each day, people coming to the emergency room sick with COVID-19 symptoms — to get an estimate. It’s like the story of the blind men and the elephant: experts can feel out the different pieces of information to get a sense of what an outbreak looks like, even when they can’t see it directly.

We’ve seen the same elephant emerge over and over again over the past year. First, the percentage of tests that come back positive increases. After a slight lag, hospitalizations start to rise, and then deaths. But this time, there’s a new wrinkle: vaccinations. That’s going to change the pattern and make the COVID-19 trends over the next few weeks and months harder to interpret.

One of the most important data points to track the virus’s spread has been the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19-like illness at a particular time. It’s a concrete metric. If someone is so sick that they need to be hospitalized, they’re usually in the hospital. Other measures, like the case rate and test positivity rate, are finicky; they fluctuate based on how many people decide to get tested.

“Hospitalizations are our hard outcome. Everything else is so dependent on testing,” says Melissa McPheeters, co-director of the Center for Improving the Public’s Health through Informatics at Vanderbilt University. That’s why we’ve looked to hospitalization trends to get a sense of the direction of the pandemic, even when case rates wobble.

Now, COVID-19 cases are starting to go up again in the United States. But this time, over 70 percent of people over the age of 65 in the United States have received a first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s the group that, if they catch the virus, is most likely to be hospitalized or to die. Now they’re vaccinated — and their risk of hospitalization and death is incredibly small.

That could throw our normal data patterns out of whack. Cases could go up because many states are relaxing restrictions while most people still aren’t vaccinated. But the unvaccinated people getting sick may be younger and less likely to be hospitalized.

Our normal method of visualizing the elephant wouldn’t work anymore. It’s a good problem to have — fewer people in the hospital is a wonderful victory. But when case numbers wobble and testing goes up and down, hospitalizations will no longer be a reliable backstop to clarify what’s happening with the pandemic. “I don’t know that we can get as good of a sample of what’s going on in the community,” McPheeters says.

It might mean that we need to recalibrate the way we monitor the pandemic. Maybe there will be fewer people in the hospital, but we could take a closer look at that group, for example. If lots of people from one area of a city are in the hospital, or people who work in a similar industry, that might be a signal that there is more virus in that particular community — which could help people to determine their risk and show officials where to direct resources. “It’s not just how many people, it’s who is ending up in the hospital,” McPheeters says.

For the past year, people have scrutinized COVID-19 metrics to guide decisions on how they should behave — whether to send kids to school, meet up with a few friends, or get groceries delivered. Eventually, as more people get vaccinated, new patterns could start to emerge that might guide that analysis. And when the pandemic starts to fade, we won’t have to scrutinize the COVID-19 numbers quite as closely. But for now, everything is in flux, and we can’t assume that a number means the same thing today as it did in January.

Here’s what else happened this week.

Research

Unlocking the Covid Code

Take a deep dive into the world of genetic sequencing — and explore how this tool could change public health in a post-pandemic world. (Jon Gertner / The New York Times)

No one can find the animal that gave people COVID-19

Groups are searching for the animal that first passed the virus that causes COVID-19 to humans, kicking off the pandemic. It’s not an easy task, and international politics is making it that much harder. (Anthony Regalado / MIT Tech Review)

Development

AstraZeneca’s wild ride

On Monday, AstraZeneca announced that its vaccine was 79 percent effective. The next day, the government issued an incredibly unusual public rebuke of the company, saying those numbers were outdated. AstraZeneca released new numbers later this week finding that it was really 76 percent effective. Whew. In the end, it’s a pretty good vaccine with a bad communications problem. The FDA committee hearings for this one are going to be interesting. (Nicole Wetsman / The Verge)

Pfizer Begins Testing Its Vaccine in Young Children

Children under 12 are starting to participate in clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines. Pfizer and Moderna are both starting their own trials to test how well the vaccines work in younger patients — and whether they are safe. (Apoorva Mandavilli / The New York Times)

Here’s a great video from our colleagues at Vox explaining the differences between vaccine efficacy numbers.

Perspectives

There were the two weeks in the summer when all she could smell was phantom smoke. The odor was so strong that she woke up one morning startled, convinced that something in her house was on fire. Sometime later, she was able to smell her boyfriend’s cologne again—but instead of the familiar scent she had always loved, it was a sickening chemical odor. There’s also the hand soap at work, which used to smell generically fruity to her but now smells exactly, and eerily, like Burger King Whoppers.

— Sarah Zhang writes about Ruby Martinez’s experience recovering her sense of smell after COVID-19 in The Atlantic.

As of December 10, my health-care plan had billed me for $536,000. My plan paid for most of it, but I still owe around $150,000. That doesn’t include my bill for the implant. The medical bills lag; it takes months for things to come through. At first, it was stressful for me to look at them, but now it’s a joke. I look at them and think, I don’t know how to pay that. My premium is $750 a month, and my co-workers have been chipping in to cover that.

— Liza Fisher tells journalist Wudan Yan about the costs of COVID-19 in a story for Intelligencer.

More than Numbers

To the more than 505 million people who have been vaccinated — thank you.

To the more than 125,864,307 people worldwide who have tested positive, may your road to recovery be smooth.

To the families and friends of the 2,761,409 people who have died worldwide — 547,756 of those in the US — your loved ones are not forgotten.

Stay safe, everyone.

Bose Frames Tempo review: the specs to beat

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It’s still fair to call audio sunglasses a niche category, but with Bose offering several models, Amazon in the game, and counting recent announcements from Razer and JLab, it’s certainly a growing one. There are people out there who just aren’t particularly fond of earbuds — often because they dislike the feeling of silicone tips plugging up their ears. Open-style products like the standard AirPods and Galaxy Buds Live are one alternative, but then you still face the possibility of losing them. If you’re running on a trail or out for an intense bike ride, it’s not an insignificant risk.

For those people, I can absolutely see the appeal of the Bose Frames Tempo, which have speakers built right into their frame and will stay planted on their face no matter how strenuous outdoor activity gets. The Tempo glasses are the sportiest model of Bose’s Frames family, clearly geared at hikers, runners, cyclists, and anyone else who spends a good chunk of their time outside. Bose says they’ve also got the best sound performance of the bunch.

From the front, they look like your typical pair of Oakley, Nike, or Under Armour sunglasses. Bose is clearly going after that same market with the $250 Tempos. If you’re more fashion-forward or looking for a pair of audio sunglasses that don’t give the impression you’re in the middle of a triathlon, you’ll want to stick with the Tenor or Soprano styles of Frames. These come with black mirrored lenses in the box, but Bose also sells a couple of other pairs of $40 lenses that you can swap in to let different amounts of light pass through. The oversized temples are where it becomes more obvious that these are audio sunglasses.

But there’s a benefit to that chunky design: unlike the Tenor and Soprano Frames, which use a proprietary charger, the Tempo model has a regular USB-C connector on the left temple. Bose says the frame is made from “TR-90 nylon.” There’s not much give, but they feel rugged to me, and they’ve got an IPX4 water and sweat resistance rating, so if you get caught running or biking in the rain, they’ll survive.

The large temples are the obvious tell that these are audio sunglasses.

For the first couple of days wearing the Tempos, I felt a slight squeeze at the sides of my head that got uncomfortable. Now, I’ve got an extremely large dome — they used to have to bring out a special-sized helmet in Little League, friends — but thankfully, the fit loosened up a bit because this pressure went away by the end of the first week. The sunglasses didn’t get loose enough to where they started bobbing on my head or anything; they still felt nice and secure. (My friend Theresa, who has a normal-sized head, never mentioned any headache-inducing tightness.) Bose includes three sizes of nose tips in the box, and I found the large to be the right match. Even if my face was covered in sweat from a long run, the nose tips helped ensure the sunglasses didn’t slide around.

The frames have an IPX4 rating for water and sweat resistance.

The controls that Bose came up with are wonderfully foolproof, which is crucial when you’re trying to stay focused on other things. You swipe across the right temple to raise or lower the volume, and on the underside of that temple is a small circular button that you can press to play / pause, double-tap to skip tracks, or triple-tap to go back. In no time at all, these controls felt so natural and easy. Powering off the Frames Tempo just takes holding down the button for a few seconds. Or you can flip them over and lay them down with the top of the frame on a surface. After two seconds in that orientation, they shut off. (You can disable this in settings, but I found it really convenient and, again, natural.) Battery life is listed as eight hours, and that’s lined up with my experience so far. The sunglasses take roughly an hour to charge back to 100 percent. Bose’s mobile app lets you update the sunglasses’ firmware, but there aren’t any EQ controls or other options that adjust their performance.

The sunglasses stay firmly in place through all sorts of outdoor activities.

Describing the sound quality of audio sunglasses can be tricky. They’re nothing like headphones or earbuds since these are essentially down-firing speakers pointed at your ears. But Bose stepped up its game compared to the first-generation Frames, which I’ve tried on occasion. These have more life to them across the whole EQ range.

There’s a surprising amount of separation between vocals and instrumentation, and the Frames Tempo have a nice clarity and even-handed balance. There’s more bass than before, but this is where I think it’s most important to set reasonable expectations: the low end you get from any decent pair of in-ear buds will blow these out of the water. No contest. That said, Bose has at least reached a place where the bass no longer sounds anemic or flat, which is a legitimate improvement over the first-gen Frames. It’s there and perceptible.

Sound bleed is easily canceled out by everyday street noise, but if you’re inside with the volume turned up, people nearby will be able to tell that you’re listening to music. These are sunglasses, after all, so I imagine those situations will be few and far between. The Bluetooth connection has held stable throughout the vast majority of my time with the Frames Tempo so far. No complaints there.

Voice calls while wearing the Tempos have also been a joy. Callers say I sound nearly as good as when speaking directly into my phone, and something about taking calls with your ears totally open just feels very cool.

Bose sells additional $40 pairs of lenses that let in different amounts of light.

Even after a relatively short time using the Frames Tempo, I get this audio glasses thing. I really get it. It’s like Dieter recently wrote: “Not having to put in or take out headphones changes your relationship to audio — it’s just always available, always there when you want it.” Do I wish I could pop clear lenses into them and wear them everywhere? In theory, you bet. But this style wouldn’t really work for that, nor is it what the Tempos are meant to be at the end of the day. So I can’t knock Bose for the disappointment I feel when switching back to my normal glasses, which now seem so very primitive.

The Bose Frames Tempo let you hear the world around you with no obstructions — with a soundtrack playing over everything, while at the same time giving your ears a bit of a break compared to normal earbuds. At $250, they will be a tough sell for some. But I’ve come to realize that audio sunglasses are the exact sort of thing you won’t ever realize you needed. Until you put ‘em on — and all of a sudden, you do.

Photography by Chris Welch / The Verge

OnePlus 9 Pro vs Oppo Find X3 Pro: Battle of the super flagships

(Pocket-lint) – The line between Oppo and OnePlus may be blurring at the management level, and when it comes to launching smartphones in their homeland in China, but when it comes to delivering flagships in western markets, they still take different approaches to things.

For the start of 2021, Oppo delivered the Find X3 Pro as its standout performer while OnePlus has launched the OnePlus 9 Pro. The two phones both offer top notch specs and performance, but with the prices driving higher this year, how do you choose between them? Should you spend more on the Oppo or is the 9 Pro good enough?

Design

Oppo: 163.6 x 74 x 8.3mm – 193g
OnePlus: 163.2 x 73.6 x 8.7 mm – 197g
Oppo: Gloss Black, Blue and White colours
OnePlus: Morning Mist (silver), Forest Green and Stellar Black colours
Both: Aluminium and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 construction – IP68 water/dust resistant

There was a time when Oppo and OnePlus flagships looked very similar to each other, but with the latest range, that’s no longer true. Of course, from the front they both look almost identical, given they have the same sized skinny-bezeled display and a hole-punch camera in the left corner. Turn them over however, and there’s no way anyone’s confusing these two.

Oppo’s latest premium phone is unlike anything else on the market. The glass curving up to the camera housing is all part of the same glass that makes up the rest of the phone’s rear. That means you get an attractive, seamless look and feel. Plus that matte frosted glass on the blue model makes it feel super soft.

Pocket-lint

OnePlus has taken a vastly different approach, placing its cameras in a rectangle protrusion which is attractive in its own right. Each lens is surrounded by a metal ring, making them stand out visually, while the camera housing is colour matched to whatever the colour of the phone is.

Despite both being large phones, the Oppo is noticeably slimmer in the hand, and it feels more nimble and lightweight in the palm than the OnePlus does. Technically, there’s not a lot of difference in measurements, but holding the two yields very different feels.

Both have metal and glass construction and both are water and dust resistant up to IP68 rating, so which ever one you go for, it should survive being caught in the rain or dropped in a basin full of water.

Display and software

Both: 120Hz LPTO AMOLED 6.7-inch display
Both: QuadHD (1440 x 3216) resolution
Both: 1300 nits peak brightness + HDR10+ compatible
Oppo: ColorOS 11 based on Android 11
OnePlus: Oxygen OS 11 based on Android 11

The one area these two phones really are identical is in the display used on the front. Both have exactly the same 6.7-inch LTPO AMOLED display capable of reaching refresh rates up to 120Hz and a peak brightness of 1300 nits.

Maximum resolution for the both is set at QuadHD+ or, specifically, 1440 x 3216 pixels which gives it a density of 525 pixels per inch. That means they’re among the brightest, sharpest and smoothest displays currently available on any phone.

Both use an adaptive frame rate technology too, so that means if you’re looking at a still or slow-moving page, they adapt to the frame rate needed for that page. In the process, that means less power is wasted refreshing the display and as a result, it uses less battery.

Pocket-lint

Both feature Always On ambient displays too, although Oppo gives you more available style options to choose from. Plus, you get the ability to design and customise your very own.

OnePlus used to be the customisation champion with Oxygen OS, but Oppo has pulled ahead in this department offering more wallpapers that take advantage of the fluid, smooth display and giving you more fingerprint animation options.

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Both sets of software let you enable various display features like a comfort tone that adapts the white balance based on your current ambient lighting, plus the ability to schedule night modes and kill blue light.

We experienced some quirks with Oppo’s notification system during the review however, where the OnePlus didn’t seem to suffer with as much inconsistency here.

Hardware and performance

Both: Snapdragon 888 processor
Oppo: 8GB/256GB or 12GB/256GB RAM/storage
OnePlus: 8GB/128GB or 12GB/256GB RAM/storage
Both: 4500mAh battery (2x 2250mAh)
Oppo: 65W Super VOOC 2.0 wired and 30W Air VOOC wireless charging
OnePlus: 65W Warp Charge wired and 50W Warp Wireless charging

Like its displays there are some clear similarities when looking at the internals of the two phones. Namely: they both have the Snapdragon 888 processor inside keeping everything ticking over smoothly.

Pocket-lint

They both even use the same speedy LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 storage, so that means that not only do your apps and games all run smoothly, but downloads and installations are quick too. Especially if you happen to live in a 5G area and can download over 5G.

What’s interesting here is that while batteries are the same size (4500mAh), we had slightly better battery life with the Oppo. No doubt, this is in part down to its pretty aggressive background task management. Still, sometimes we were able to get through two full days with the Find X3 Pro, where the OnePlus 9 Pro was a couple of hours short of making that mark.

Despite that, both will easily get you through a full day even if you’re someone who’s on the move constantly, listening to music, making calls and catching a few Pokemon on your travels.

With both being part of the same tech family, you often find similar charging technology in the companies’ devices and it’s no different here. Both use a proprietary flash charging system that can reach up to 65W speeds.

What’s different here is the OnePlus’ phone will retain those speeds for longer and can charge a battery from 1-100 per cent in under 30 minutes. The Find X3 Pro will take a few minutes longer to do the same, but in truth, both charge really quickly.

Pocket-lint

It’s in wireless charging where the OnePlus 9 Pro has the clear advantage. Its Warp Charge 50 Wireless can give you a full battery in 43 minutes using the bespoke wireless charging stand while Oppo’s 30W charge will take noticeably longer (around an hour).

Cameras

Oppo: quad camera system on the rear
- 50MP f/1.8 wide camera with OIS
- 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide
- 13MP telephoto zoom (2x optical) + 3MP micro lens
OnePlus: quad camera system on the rear
- 48MP f/1.8 wide camera with OIS
- 50MP f/2.2 ultrawide
- 8MP telephoto zoom (3.3x optical) + 2MP monochrome
Oppo: 4K up to 60fps
OnePlus: 8K up to 30fps, 4K up to 120fps

In our experience, it’s in the camera department where you notice the biggest differences between the two phones. Both have high quality wide and ultrawide cameras, but Oppo opted to put the same 50-megapixel sensor on both, giving consistent results between them. Both give colour rich, detailed and warm shots.

The OnePlus 9 Pro we found quite inconsistent at times, offering photos that looked cool and blue from the primary and warmer shots like the Oppo from its ultrawide.

Pocket-lint

Both phones have a telephoto zoom lens and although the Oppo only goes up to 2x optical, we found it delivered higher quality results than the OnePlus’ 3.3x optical zoom lens. It was sharper and delivered relatively decent images up to 5x where the OnePlus lost a lot of detail and went quite mushy at times even at its lowest zoom.

Add to that the fact that the Oppo also delivered sharper, better looking images in its night mode vs. OnePlus Nightscape mode and it’s clear that the Find X3 Pro is the much better camera experience overal.

That’s without mentioning the gimmicky Micro lens which lets you get really close into objects and see right into their contruction at an almost microscope-like level. It’s fun to play with, but hard to get sharp in-focus shots from.

Pricing and availability

Oppo: From £1099
OnePlus: From £829

It’s no surprise to see OnePlus’ latest premium model cheaper than the Oppo alternative, however, to see the company’s phones getting so expensive in recent years must be difficult for some of its early fans. With prices starting at £829 in the UK, it’s as expensive as some big-name flagship phones, but still comes in cheaper than phones that are similar in terms of specs and features.

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Oppo’s phone is a flagship device at a flagship price, and creeps over the £1000 barrier just as Samsung and Apple have done in recent years. It sees itself as a true flagship that doesn’t need a discounted price to persuade people to see value in its offering.

Conclusion

Ultimately there are likely only a couple of things that will sway you one way or the other on these two phones. A major factor will likely be the price. Oppo’s top tier phone is more expensive than OnePlus’, and looking at the spec sheet there may not be enough difference between them to warrant that extra money.

With that said, given the more consistent and excellent performance of the cameras on the Oppo, and the more refined design – particularly on the matte blue model – we think that’s extra money worth spending if you’re happy to pony up the extra cash.

Writing by Cam Bunton.

Garmin Enduro review: Superior stamina

(Pocket-lint) – The Garmin Enduro is a brand new watch range with one goal in mind: to give the biggest battery life you’ll find on any multisports watch when you put GPS tracking to work.

It’s also looking to appeal to endurance athletes offering that big battery in a lighter watch design than other battery powerhouses in its range – like the Garmin Fenix 6 and the Forerunner 945.

There’s some new features on the software front too, including as VO2 Max scores for trail running and an advanced ClimbPro feature that will now help you better strategise tackling hilly routes and courses.

That big battery life unsurprisingly comes with a big price tag though. So does the Enduro deliver the goods to make it worth spending on?

Design & Display

Weighs: 58g (titanium), 72g (stainless steel)
Measures: 51 x 51 x 14.9mm
1.4-inch 280 x 280 display
Size options: 51mm only
10ATM waterproofing

If you like small watches, then the Enduro is not for you. It’s got a 51mm case size to give it a stature similar to Garmin’s Fenix 6X and it’s the same thickness as the biggest model option in the latest Fenix range.

Pocket-lint

You’ve got your pick of titanium and or stainless steel polymer cases – with the former offering a significantly lighter build to keep on your wrist day and night. It means it’s almost as light as Garmin’s Forerunner 945 watch.

It’s been partnered up with one of Garmin’s UltraFit nylon straps, both ends of which are adjustable with a Velcro strap to secure it in place. It’s interchangeable, so you can swap it for a range of different straps including leather, silicone or metal bands.

Partnered up with the titanium case option, this nylon strap helps to make this big watch an easier one to live with when you’re tracking or just using it day in, day out.

In typical Garmin fashion, there’s an array of five physical buttons to navigate a display. This isn’t a touchscreen or full colour panel. Instead it’s a 1.4-inch, 280 x 280 transflective display, matching the one on the Fenix 6X for size and resolution. It’s nice and big, so it’s easy to see in all conditions with a backlight in tow for nighttime or early morning sessions.

Pocket-lint

The neon ring around the display is an indication that Garmin’s Polar Glass lens is included, giving you solar charging powers to offer an additional battery boost. As a package, you’re getting a watch that’s been slapped with a 10ATM waterproof rating that does make it safe for a swim and leaving it on in the shower. Well, and the rest: 10ATM means it’s actually good for depths of 100m, so it could survive some diving too.

The Enduro gives off serious Fenix vibes, and while it’s definitely a bulky beast, grabbing it in titanium and pairing it up with a lighter feeling strap means you can enjoy that big screen without it weighing heavy on your wrist.

Fitness & Features

Built-in heart rate monitor
GPS, GLONASS, Galileo
Pulse oximeter sensor
24/7 fitness tracking
Advanced ClimbPro
Trail VO2 Max

The Enduro gives you pretty much all you could want and most of what Garmin has to offer on the fitness, health monitoring and smartwatch front.

Pocket-lint

All the key outdoor and indoor sensors are in place, including a barometric altimeter and its Pulse Ox blood oxygen saturation monitor – although the latter that will sap up battery life if you have it in use 24/7. You’ve also got the main satellite players covered and once the Enduro recognised our running terrain, it picked up a signal nice and quick.

One surprising feature that doesn’t make the cut is topographic maps, which you will find on the Fenix 6 Pro series and the Forerunner 945. This feature has apparently been left out to preserve battery life and does still offer real-time breadcrumb navigation and the ability to upload routes to the watch.

It seems like a strange one to not include on a watch built for spending a lot of time outdoors and we have to take Garmin’s word that it would have such a noticeable impact on its big battery numbers.

Pocket-lint

As a fitness tracker, it’s a lot of what we’ve already seen on Garmin’s other watches. Features like adaptive step tracking and the inactivity ‘move bar’ are present, as is the sleep monitoring (which still can feel a little heavy handed on the amount of sleep it tracks and pales in comparison to Fitbit or Polar’s more reliable sleep tracking features).

When you switch to sports tracking mode, you’re getting pretty much everything you’d find on a Fenix 6 series watch. A multitude of sports modes covering core sports like running, swimming and cycling indoors and outdoors. There’s hiking, climbing, skiing and and a whole lot more besides.

Garmin has introduced a new ultra running mode that adds a rest timer to take in consideration of stopping at aid stations, cutting off the GPS, so you have a more accurate representation of your finish time. This is no longer unique to the Enduro, though, as Garmin has since rolled out the mode to its latest Fenix and Forerunner 945 watches.

It’s the same story with the new advanced ClimbPro and Trail VO2 Max. We’ll start with ClimbPro, which has been on Garmin watches for a while and is a feature designed with helping wearers to better strategise for hilly routes or races by giving a heads-up about big ascents. It’s a feature where you need to upload routes to the watch so it can give you that information in real time. Now it will also factor the descent and flat sections, giving you more information to form how you tackle the terrain.

Best Fitbit fitness tracker 2021: Which Fitbit is right for you?

By Britta O’Boyle
·
26 March 2021

Pocket-lint

The other new feature is VO2 max for trail running, which is a feature unsurprisingly designed for spending time off-road and will factor in the more challenging terrain to generate a score to gauge of your current state of fitness. We ran with a Fenix 6 without that VO2 Max trail option and there was a 1-2 point score difference. Theoretically, it shouldn’t greatly differ, but if you spend more time on the trails than the road, it’s a nice little extra to have.

Other features of note including new mountain biking specific metrics, along with the ability to generate flow and grit measurements, to offer an insight into the level of difficulty of the trail you’ve been riding on.

Garmin has also included the heat and altitude acclimation and advanced training metrics introduced on its top-end Forerunner and Fenix watches. It’s also brought over its recovery advisor and suggested workouts features that debuted on the Forerunner 745 and are useful to have if you want to add structure to running or cycling or have a better idea of when you should take on a heavy training session or take a rest day.

Pocket-lint

As a smartwatch, you don’t get a built-in music player here, which would be a noticeable drain on battery life based on our experiences with Garmin watches that do support it. You do still get notification support (for Android and iPhones), Garmin Pay for contactless payments, and access to Garmin’s Connect IQ Store to top-up on apps, watch faces, widgets and extra data fields.

Performance & Battery Life

70 hours GPS battery life
80 hours with solar power
Up to 65 days in smartwatch mode

Battery life is the headline draw of the Enduro and Garmin talks some pretty big numbers as for how far the Enduro is capable of going.

Pocket-lint

In smartwatch mode, it will deliver up to 50 days or 65 days when you factor in solar charging. There’s some other impressive numbers like lasting a year in basic battery saver watch mode, or the 65-95 days in expedition GPS mode, when you choose to sacrifice some GPS accuracy.

It’s when you don’t sacrifice that GPS accuracy and opt for the most accurate tracking where the Enduro continues to impresses. Garmin states it can last 70 hours in full GPS mode or 80 hours with solar charging. We should clarify that those solar numbers are based on spending three hours a day outside and exposing the screen to 50,000 lux conditions.

To put those numbers into context, Polar’s Grit X outdoor watch offers 40 hours in full GPS tracking mode, while the Coros Vertix outdoor watch goes bigger with 60 hours when putting that GPS to use.

Pocket-lint

What we can say about those battery numbers in full GPS mode, is that they appear to hold up. A few hours of running saw the battery life drop by three per cent. That was a similar battery dent we saw with the Polar Grit X and the Coros Vertix.

At the time of writing this review we haven’t needed to touch the charger for about three weeks – and that’s when putting this watch to regularly GPS use, monitoring sleep, heart rate, and receiving smartphone notifications. That tells you everything about this watch performs.

There’s very little battery drain in-between those tracking times too. On most days it was a couple of per cent – and that was with a tracked activity or two as well.

If you really feel the need to optimise the battery usage further, there’s also the Power Manager features that were introduced on the Fenix 6 to disable features that could be a drain on that battery.

Pocket-lint

Outside of meeting those big battery claims, this operates much like the Garmin watches that sit around it. It performed well for tracking activities like running and trail running and the heart rate monitor held up for HIIT home workouts as well. Though to make the most of the heart rate based analytics and insights, we’d recommend grabbing a heart rate monitor chest strap to get more useful information.

Verdict

If you crave big battery life, then that’s exactly what the Enduro offers. It holds up well when GPS is in use and doesn’t horribly drain in-between those times either.

The lighter titanium version is comfortable to wear and the nylon strap helps to keep the weight down if every gramme matters.

Software extras are no longer unique to the Enduro and that missing topographic maps support is more disappointing than the lack of music features.

The Enduro also doesn’t come cheap, but if having bucketloads of battery life and having most of the great features from the Fenix appeals to you, you might just break the bank for it.

Also consider

Pocket-lint

Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar

squirrel_widget_3801972

If you want maps, music and battery life that should still be good to last a big day out on your legs or bike, you can cast your eyes over at the Fenix Six with solar powers.

Read our review

Pocket-lint

Polar Grit X

squirrel_widget_238706

Polar’s first outdoor watch offers sizable battery life and some useful features like smart refuelling that will have endurance athlete appeal and you won’t find on the Enduro.

Read our review

Writing by Michael Sawh. Editing by Mike Lowe.

Monster Hunter Rise on the Nintendo Switch is small but mighty

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Games Review

Monster Hunter makes a triumphant portable return

More than a decade ago, in a lifetime before The Verge, Monster Hunter on the PSP was my commuting game of choice. I’d spend a couple of hours a day tackling solo quests as my train wound through the Japanese countryside, then compare loot with friends late at night as we teamed up to take on the monsters we couldn’t beat alone.

2018’s Monster Hunter World couldn’t hope to replicate that experience. World sought to reimagine the series as a primarily online adventure that took advantage of powerful hardware — and it was a huge success, bringing Monster Hunter to a far bigger Western audience than it ever managed before. World was a great game, and Capcom clearly moved Monster Hunter in the right direction. But for me, something was missing.

That’s where Monster Hunter Rise comes in. It’s a Nintendo Switch-exclusive game that builds upon World’s advances — but now you can take it on the go.

Monster Hunter Rise isn’t altogether a new idea. The last time a major new Monster Hunter game first came to a home console — 2009’s Monster Hunter 3 for the Wii — it was coming off the huge success of an earlier PSP release. Monster Hunter 3 brought a lot of advances to the series, but a straight port to the less powerful PSP wouldn’t have been practical for technical reasons, so Capcom adapted much of its elements and contents into a new PSP game called Monster Hunter Portable 3rd. It ended up being the bestselling game in the series, at least until World came along, and it was the version that ate up the most time for me on those train rides.

That’s basically what Capcom has done with Monster Hunter Rise. It’s not a Switch port of World — it’s better. Almost all of what made World a huge leap forward for the series is here, and Rise evolves the formula further while operating within a scope that makes more sense for the Switch. The result is an all-new game that feels at home on its portable hardware instead of having been compromised to fit.

Monster Hunter Rise might be the most technically impressive Switch game I’ve seen to date; it’s certainly the most impressive one that isn’t made by Nintendo. Running on Capcom’s RE Engine, the character models and monsters look very close to those of World — especially on the small Switch screen. Capcom has done an excellent job of preserving World’s essence and style on less powerful hardware.

The biggest concessions are the environments. The stages feel more like old-school Monster Hunter games than they did in World, with less elaborate designs and fewer graphical flourishes like dense foliage. Unlike the older games, though, the subsections aren’t broken up by loading screens, which helps Rise play similarly to World’s more free-flowing style.

In fact, Rise goes even further in that regard. Traversing around the environments is faster than ever thanks to two new elements: a pet dog called a Palamute that joins you in battle and lets you ride on its back, and a tool called the Wirebug that can be used to zip up walls and hop onto monsters, occasionally even controlling them in large-scale confrontations with other beasts. What Rise’s stages lack in complexity they add in verticality, and while your targets are marked on the map from the start this time around, you’ll often find yourself figuring out how to meet them on their level.

Rise feels even better suited for portable play than the earlier games, since you’ll never find yourself wandering around aimlessly in search of a monster. Other alterations save seconds that will add up over hundreds of hours — you now exhaust the supply of resources from a mining outcrop or a bonepile with a single button tap, for example.

Otherwise, Rise is a typical Monster Hunter game. It’s a fairly complex action RPG where you’re choosing one of several weapon classes with which to hunt increasingly dangerous beasts, harvesting them for materials that you can use to craft new weapons and armor to take on even more dangerous beasts. The game is certainly an acquired taste, and I’m not sure the constant barrage of tutorial pop-ups explaining obscure mechanics will be as helpful for newcomers as Capcom seems to think they will.

What will help, though, is that Monster Hunter Rise just isn’t very difficult compared to other games in the series, even World. I found the “village” quests that progress the story and get you to the endgame unusually easy — it’s like they’re the actual tutorial. I’m experienced with the series, but by no means an incredible player, yet I dispatched most new monsters much faster than usual on my first try. The village quests are never the true meat of any Monster Hunter game, so I think it’s fine for them to serve as a fun campaign that anyone can blast through.

There’s also a series of more challenging “hub” quests available from the start, and those should dispel the notion that Rise isn’t focusing on existing fans. But it’s hard to review any Monster Hunter game ahead of its launch because I’ve had very little time to test it online, let alone see how the player base takes to its most challenging content. Rise’s longevity will largely be down to its endgame design and how Capcom handles future updates, neither of which can be known at this point.

At least for now, Rise looks like a more solid package in terms of content than World was at launch before its major Iceborne expansion. It’s certainly not lacking in monsters, and the variety is broader than what World offered, with several old favorites and some imaginative new designs.

Monster Hunter Rise is the most accessible game in the series to date, and it might well prove to be the best. I’m not willing to call that just yet, because a lot will depend on how its post-launch support turns out. But Capcom absolutely has the bones of a classic here already. Almost everything that was great about World is also true of Rise, unless you want to run it at 4K / 60fps. If you do (and I do, too), there’s a PC version coming next year.

It feels like Monster Hunter is coming full circle with Rise. The series started on the PS2, sure, but it only really became a cult phenomenon when it moved to portables, and that’s where it’s now returned after World brought it to an even bigger global audience. You don’t need to have a lengthy commute to appreciate how Monster Hunter benefits from a portable format.

One of the joys of the Switch is that it allows you to slot in game time when you otherwise wouldn’t be able to, even if it’s as basic a situation as your living room being occupied. Monster Hunter has always had that just-one-more-quest impulse for series fans, and with its breezy new design and portable form factor, Rise should see a lot more converted to the cause.

Monster Hunter Rise is available for the Nintendo Switch today.

Vergecast: OnePlus 9 review and this year’s first big tech congressional hearing

Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast, The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering the biggest stories.

This week, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn bring in Verge reporter Allison Johnson to chat about her review of the One Plus 9 and how the phone compares to the company’s 9 Pro model as well as other Android flagship phones out in the market.

The second half of the show is dedicated to Congress’ first big tech hearing of 2021 with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Politics reporter Makena Kelly stops by while the hearing is ongoing to comment on the effectiveness these types of proceedings have on making new tech regulation a reality, the live Twitter trolling conducted by Dorsey himself, and Zuckerberg’s thoughts on reforming Section 230.

There’s a whole lot more in between all of that — like Intel’s big changes coming with its new CEO, an augmented audio reality startup taking on theme parks, and a class action status for the butterfly keyboard suit against Apple — so listen here or in your preferred podcast player for the full discussion.

NZXT’s first AMD motherboard is sleek and packed with USB ports

NZXT’s first AMD motherboard is the N7 B550. Like the Intel versions that preceded it, the N7 B550 has a slick design with the option of either a black or white shroud that covers the bulk of the board itself. No doubt NZXT hopes the motherboard’s clean appearance will make it an appealing option for anyone with a windowed PC case like NZXT’s own H series cases.

Beyond its looks, the N7 B550 appears to offer very capable performance if a review from Tom’s Hardware is anything to go by. Designed in collaboration with established motherboard manufacturer ASRock, the motherboard uses the B550 chipset which works with both AMD Ryzen 3000- and 5000-series CPUs and offers PCIe 4.0 support. Integrated fan and RGB controllers mean the components can be managed through NZXT’s Cam software.

The N7 B550 offers a good array of USB ports.

Image: NZXT

In terms of connectivity, there’s an impressive 10 USB ports available on the rear of the motherboard, including a USB Type-C port, and two M.2 slots for NVMe storage. Wireless connectivity includes support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. Check out the review from Tom’s Hardware for a full spec and performance rundown.

It’s a solid debut for a company that’s typically better known for its PC cases and CPU coolers, although its reputation was dented earlier this year when it had to recall one PC case over fire safety concerns. The N7 B550 is available now for $229.99.

Panasonic Soundslayer soundbar review: Does it truly ‘slay’ gaming audio?

(Pocket-lint) – If you want to make a worthwhile difference to the sound of your TV, you’re spoilt for choice where soundbars at the lower end of the budget scale are concerned. Equally, if you feel your games console experience requires a sonic rocket, there are numerous LED-happy gaming soundbars ready to do a job for you.

But what if you want both – and you want something small and discreet enough to cause minimal disruption to your viewing and/or gaming environment(s) at the same time? Your shortlist has suddenly become quite a lot shorter.

You can now add the Panasonic SC-HTB01 – or Soundslayer, as it’s also rather excitably known – to your shortlist, though. It may be physically small, but it’s big on performance.

Design

Ports: 1x HDMI input, 1x HDMI output, 1x optical input
Dimensions: 52 x 431 x 132mm / Weight: 1.8kg
Finish: Matte Black only

Obviously, the big news is how small the Panasonic is. It’s perfectly proportioned to sit discreetly underneath your TV or games monitor, and at this weight it’s hardly a burden to move it from one position to another. But it’s still big enough to be fitted with reasonably sized speaker drivers.

‘Design’ doesn’t really seem to be something that’s happened to the SC-HTB01 – rather, its drivers and accompanying electronics have been put into a housing which has then been mostly covered with acoustic cloth. Its plastics feel ordinary. It’s basically not much to look at – although it’s easy to imagine Panasonic thinking that’s entirely the point.

‘Bland’ isn’t the same as ‘badly made’ though – this, after all, is Panasonic we’re talking about. The Soundslayer may not be visually stimulating, but it’s properly screwed together and feels made to last.

Features

Decoding: Dolby Atmos & DTS:X supported
Modes: Game, Standard, Music, Cinema
4K HDR passthrough supported

There is a brief suite of physical connections on the rear of the soundbar. A couple of HDMI sockets – one input, one ARC-enabled output – a digital optical input, and a USB socket (for updates only).

Panasonic

Via HDMI, the Soundslayer can handle 4K HDR content as well as multi-channel audio up to a hefty 24bit/192kHz standard – so Dolby Atmos and/or DTS:X soundtracks present no problems. Wirelessly connectivity is handled by Bluetooth 2.1 – hands up who remembers when that was the cutting edge of wireless streaming technology?

The SC-HTB01’s equaliser (EQ) presets let you know where it thinks it belongs. Presets for ‘music’, ‘cinema’ and ‘standard’ attest to its flexibility – but within the ‘game’ preset there are sub-settings for ‘RPG’, ‘FPS’ and ‘enhanced voices’ (which is excellent when listening at very low volume levels).

Interface

Included remote control

It’s not a problem, in and of itself, that the Panasonic has no voice assistant or control app. It’s not a problem that everything, from subwoofer level and overall volume level to EQ preset and Bluetooth pairing, is taken care of by a full-function remote control handset.

Panasonic

No, the problem is that the remote control seems to have been selected on the basis that there were no more affordable options available. It’s small, hard, thin, unpleasant to hold, and very nearly as unpleasant to use.

But at least there is one included, we suppose.

Sound quality

Drivers: 2x 4cm full-range, 2x 1.4cm tweeters, 1x 8cm woofer, 1x passive radiators
Configuration: ‘2.1’ channel output
80W of Class D power

Behind that mild-mannered exterior, two 40mm full-range drivers and two 14mm tweeters face forwards. On the top of the ‘bar there’s an upward-firing 80mm bass driver, alongside passive low-frequency radiators. Panasonic is striving for a ‘2.1’ channel effect with this five-driver layout, and has fitted the SC-HTB01 with 80 Watts of power with which to make it happen.

Panasonic

There’s also a bass reflex slot at the front of the cabinet, just in case that passive radiator doesn’t quite pull its weight. Naturally, this upward-firing configuration means the Panasonic shouldn’t be positioned with surfaces directly above it.

So how does all that come across? Well, if you’ve been using the audio system integrated into your TV or your monitor up until now, the SC-HTB01 will thrill you with the scale and drive of its sound.

The combination of judicious speaker driver placement and careful EQs means the Panasonic sounds bigger – and in every direction – than seems likely from a soundbar this tiny. There’s no mistaking its presentation for that of a dedicated Dolby Atmos soundbar, naturally, but the Soundslayer’s soundstage is taller, deeper and (especially) wider than it would seem to have any right to be.

Best Alexa speakers 2021: Top Amazon Echo alternatives

By Britta O’Boyle
·
26 March 2021

At the top of the frequency range it carries plenty of detail, and gives treble sound lots of substance to go along with their considerable bite. Further down, the midrange is nicely shaped and projects forward well – even without the intervention of the EQ presets.

It’s down at the bottom of the frequency range, though, that the Panasonic both triumphs and fails. This isn’t the first soundbar to have mistaken ‘overconfident bass’ for ‘excitement’ – and, to be absolutely fair, the SC-HTB01 controls the low-end stuff pretty well. It certainly doesn’t drone and doesn’t blossom into the midrange, either. But it definitely overplays its hand where bass is concerned – ‘punchy’ is one thing, but being repeatedly punched while trying to watch TV or concentrate on a game is quite another.

Panasonic

The big, bassy emphasis doesn’t help the Panasonic’s overall detail retrieval, which is a pity. It’s possible to independently adjust the ‘subwoofer’ level using the remote control, but the effect is not so much to reduce the soundbar’s outright wallop as to rob it of its dynamism.

That’s unfortunate, because the Soundslayer ordinarily has more than enough dynamism to maximise any game soundtrack you care to mention. It can put a huge amount of distance between ‘stealth’ and ‘assault’, which adds a lot to the gaming experience.

It works well for movies, too – when the soundtrack demands a shift from ‘quiet and contemplative’ to ‘massive attack’, the Panasonic relishes the opportunity. It’s so much more accomplished than the sound of your average TV, and consequently far more involving.

The temptation, naturally, is to go all-in on the volume – but that would be a mistake. The Soundslayer’s tonal balance, which at moderate volume levels is pretty well judged, takes a definite turn for the ‘hard and unforgiving’ if you decide to press on. Treble sounds get edgy and thin, and the bass stops punching and starts slapping. Stick to reasonable levels, in other words – it’s not only your neighbours who will thank you.

Verdict

Keep its limitations in mind and there’s lots to like about the Panasonic SC-HTB01. It may not quite be the ‘soundslayer’ it purports to be, but it’s a convenient and capable way of giving your games and movies a bit more sonic oomph. As long as you don’t get carried away with volume, anyhow.

Also consider

Yamaha

Yamaha SR-C20A

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Slightly bigger than the Panasonic, slightly less expensive too, but designed to do much the same job. It is similarly unruly when the volume get big, too, but overall is probably a marginally better bet.

Read our review

Writing by Simon Lucas.

Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 2x16GB Review: The RGB-Less Commoner

Our Verdict

The Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 is a memory kit that gels great any processor. If you can find it in your region, it’s worth your attention.

For

Decent performance
Overclocking upside
Low-profile, RGB-less design

Against

Currently unavailable at U.S. retailers

Not every piece of computer memory needs to have fancy heatsinks or flashy illumination. There are still those among us that appreciate the simpler things and prefer the insides of their systems to not look like a dance hall. If you belong to that crowd, Klevv’s Bolt XR series of memory fits the description nicely. Today we’ll put the company’s Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 memory kit, which comes with a density of 32GB spread across two 16GB memory modules, to the test to see how well it performs against other flashier kits.

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Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

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Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The Bolt XR memory modules are as minimalistic as they come. Featuring a light, bronze color, the memory checks in with a simple, embossed design that’s devoid of RGB illumination. The aluminum heat spreader helps passively cool the memory module, and the low-profile body puts the Bolt XR on the compatibility list for compact systems. The memory measures 36.7mm tall, offering great harmony with modern motherboards and big CPU air coolers.

Klevv Bolt XR DDR4-3600 C18 (Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Klevv equipped the Bolt XR modules with an eight-layer PCB and a dual-rank design. Each memory module is 16GB and employs Hynix H5AN8G8NDJR-VKC (D-die) integrated circuits (ICs).

The default frequency and primary timings for the Bolt XR memory modules are DDR4-2666 and 19-19-19-43, respectively. If you opt for the easy setup, the Bolt XR comes with one XMP profile that jacks the frequency up to DDR4-3600 and automatically configures the timings and DRAM voltage to 18-22-22-42 and 1.35V, respectively. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.

Comparison Hardware

Memory Kit	Part Number	Capacity	Data Rate	Primary Timings	Voltage	Warranty
G.Skill Trident Z Royal	F4-4000C17D-32GTRGB	2 x 16GB	DDR4-4000 (XMP)	17-18-18-38 (2T)	1.40 Volts	Lifetime
Crucial Ballistix Max RGB	BLM2K16G40C18U4BL	2 x 16GB	DDR4-4000 (XMP)	18-19-19-39 (2T)	1.35 Volts	Lifetime
G.Skill Trident Z Neo	F4-3600C16D-32GTZN	2 x 16GB	DDR4-3600 (XMP)	16-16-16-36 (2T)	1.35 Volts	Lifetime
Klevv Bolt XR	KD4AGU880-36A180C	2 x 16GB	DDR4-3600 (XMP)	18-22-22-42 (2T)	1.35 Volts	Lifetime
Patriot Viper Steel RGB	PVSR432G360C0K	2 x 16GB	DDR4-3600 (XMP)	20-26-26-46 (2T)	1.35 Volts	Lifetime

Our Intel test system consists of an Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex on the 0901 firmware. On the opposite side, the AMD testbed leverages an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and ASRock B550 Taichi with the 1.30 firmware. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio handles the graphical duties on both platforms.