Audio Pro has a great track record when it comes to making the best wireless speakers, but now it’s turned its hand to truly portable models. Behold the Audio Pro P5, the firm’s first speaker that’s small enough to fit in a handbag.
The firm has been one of the most consistent of recent years when it comes to making great multi-room speakers. The C3, C10 and T3+ have all picked up four- or five-star scores in our reviews, which is why this new rival to the best portable speakers is so enticing.
Measuring 22 x 10cm, the P5 is a bit bigger than the Amazon Fire 7 tablet, so will easily slip into a decent-sized handbag, tote bag or backpack. Despite these diminutive dimensions, Audio Pro claims the P5 still offers “the powerful sound Audio Pro is known for”. Don’t expect C10 levels of bass, but we have high hopes for solid sound nevertheless.
It’s wind- and rain-resistant, but not fully waterproof, like some Bluetooth speakers. So you can take it to the beach or pool, but don’t drop it in the water. The wrist strap should help avoid that.
The P5 is available from Tuesday 15th June and will cost £140 ($150). That’s pricier than our current Bluetooth champ, the JBL Flip 5, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare. We’ll bring you a full review as soon as we can.
MORE:
Check out the best Bluetooth speakers around
See what all the buzz is about: Audio Pro multiroom system review
Bang & Olufsen has gone big, or at least a bit bigger, with the arrival of a 55-inch Beovision Contour OLED TV to sit alongside its 48-inch model.
Based on the latest LG panel technology, the luxury set from the famous Danes comes fitted with a sound system based on the company’s Beosound Stage soundbar. Eleven drivers and amplifiers lurk within, ready to produce a three-channel experience with Dolby Atmos support.
The speaker array includes a set of 4 x 4-inch bass drivers which are custom made with enclosures that allow a larger movement of the cones, said to improve bass performance down to as low as 30Hz.
All of this, of course, is discreetly tucked away into the kind of tasteful aluminium frame that the Struer-based company specialises in manufacturing at its Factory 5 facility. Naturally, the remote control, the Beoremote One, is also crafted from a single piece of matching metal.
There are three mounting options available: the rotating aluminium floorstand (pictured above); Bang & Olufsen’s wall bracket; and a tabletop stand made from a solid, rectangular aluminium billet that allows the TV to be placed on a shelf.
There are also three aluminium frame finishes for the TV itself – Silver, Black Anthracite or Gold Tone – and a choice of wood veneer or fabric for the speaker grille.
The 55-inch Beovision Contour is available to buy now at £6300/$7750 or £7100/$9200 with the wood veneer.
MORE:
Take a look at the best Dolby Atmos soundbars you can buy.
Read the Sennheiser Ambeo Soundbar review – the best high-end soundbar we’ve tested.
Hynix has been one of the “big three” memory manufacturers for decades. Together with Samsung and Micron they have been dominating the memory market and are producing a substantial percentage of the world’s DRAM and NAND memory. A few years ago the company “Hynix”, which was originally founded as “Hyundai Electronics Industrial Co” in 1983, was sold to “SK Group”—a large Korean conglomerate, hence the name “SK Hynix”. Just last year, Hynix decided to purchase Intel’s NAND business for $9 billion.
The SK Hynix Gold P31 SSD was announced in October last year and has since been receiving attention from enthusiasts. Today we finally bring you our review of the Hynix Gold P31, which is built with only Hynix components—an ability that only Samsung had in the past. The controller is an in-house design by Hynix, called ACNT038 or “Cepheus”. The flash chips are modern 128-layer 3D TLC. A LPDDR4-3733 DRAM chip provides 1 GB of memory for the mapping tables of the SSD.
The Hynix Gold P31 comes in capacities of 512 GB ($75) and 1 TB ($135). Endurance for these models is set to 500 TBW and 750 TBW respectively. Hynix includes a five-year warranty with the Gold P31.
In 2019, facing down extensive investigations by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Timesthat showed Apple’s App Store clearly and consistently ranking its own apps ahead of competitors, Apple claimed it had done nothing wrong — a secret algorithm containing 42 different variables was working as intended, top executives told the Times, insisting that Apple doesn’t manually alter search results.
Why do I bring this up? An intriguing email chain has surfaced during the Epic v. Apple trial where it sure looks like Apple did the exact opposite — admitting it manually boosted the ranking its own Files app ahead of the competition for 11 entire months.
“We are removing the manual boost and the search results should be more relevant now,” wrote Apple app search lead Debankur Naskar, after the company was confronted by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney over Apple’s Files app showing up first when searching for Dropbox. “Dropbox wasn’t even visible on the first page [of search results],” Sweeney wrote. You can read the whole email chain embedded a little ways below.
As you’ll see, Naskar suggested that Files had been intentionally boosted for that exact search result during the “last WWDC.” That would have been WWDC 2017, nearly a year earlier, when the Files apps first debuted.
The email chain actually reflects fairly well on Apple overall. Apple’s Matt Fischer (VP of the App Store) clearly objects to the idea at first. “[W]ho green lit putting the Files app above Dropbox in organic search results? I didn’t know we did that, and I don’t think we should,” he says. But he does end the conversation with “In the future, I want any similar requests to come to me for review/approval,” suggesting that he’s not entirely ruling out manual overrides.
But Apple tells The Verge that what we think we’re seeing in these emails isn’t quite accurate. While Apple didn’t challenge the idea that Files was unfairly ranked over Dropbox, the company says the reality was a simple mistake: the Files app had a Dropbox integration, so Apple put “Dropbox” into the app’s metadata, and it was automatically ranked higher for “Dropbox” searches as a result.
Apple manually boosts its first-party apps in search results? Funny, I feel like somebody testified under oath that that never happens https://t.co/mTgnw8d8CK
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) June 7, 2021
I’m slightly skeptical of that explanation — partially because it doesn’t line up with what Naskar suggests in the email, partially because Apple also told me it immediately fixed the error (despite it apparently continuing to exist for 11 months, hardly immediate), and partially because the company repeatedly ignored my questions about whether this has ever happened with other apps before.
The most Apple would tell me is that it didn’t manually boost Files over competitors, and that “we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor” as a general rule.
But honestly, it may not matter whether Apple manually boosted its own apps or not. What matters is the result: for 11 months, Apple’s new Files app owned exact searches for its competitor Dropbox, a company Steve Jobs reportedly swore he would kill off, and it took the CEO of a prominent Apple partner emailing the company before Apple did something about it. And based on The Wall Street Journal’s investigation, Apple may not have done much: the Files app still ranked #1 in the App Store for cloud storage in June 2018, a month after this email chain was resolved, according to an infographic that accompanied the WSJ story.
Besides, the distinction between a “manual” boost and any other kind of boost may be purely academic. Algorithms are written by people, after all. If Apple can build a 42-factor algorithm that gives its own apps favorable results, why would it need to override that algorithm and risk its emails getting caught up in a lawsuit years from now?
It could just tweak that algorithm at will — which is exactly what it did to resolve the WSJ and NYT’s scrutiny two years ago. It only took a single engineer to change the algorithm in July 2019, according to the Times, and Apple’s own apps immediately fell in App Store rankings. But that time, executives said the previous formula wasn’t a mistake. Apple simply wanted to make it look less like its own apps were getting special treatment. So it “improved” the algorithm to achieve the new result it wanted.
Apple provided this statement:
We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for customers to discover and download apps, and a great business opportunity for all developers. App Store Search has only one goal — to get customers what they are looking for. We do that in a way that is fair to all developers and we do not advantage our apps over those of any developer or competitor. Today, developers have many options for distributing their apps and that’s why we work hard to make it easy, fair and a great opportunity for them to develop apps for our customers around the world.
Founded in 1999, Thermaltake is a PC case, power supply, and peripherals company based in Taiwan. The ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB is part of an entire line of products consisting of a mouse bungee, mouse pad, headphones, headphone stand, and a wired variant of the M5 RGB. Capable of either wired, 2.4 GHz, or Bluetooth operation, the ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB is capable of up to 100 hours of battery life without illumination in 2.4 GHz mode and up to 200 hours using Bluetooth. The ARGENT M5 Wireless RGB is symmetrical, which means it has side buttons on both sides, and its button layout can be reversed in the software, enabling left-handers to use it normally. Through the software, several RGB lighting effects can be set up and synchronized with other ARGENT devices, including Razer Chroma enabled ones. The sensor is PixArt’s PAW3335 capable of 16,000 CPI, and the scroll wheel is made out of aluminium for better durability and grip.
(Pocket-lint) – The Polar Ignite 2 is the follow-up fitness watch to the 2019 original. While it gives you all those key sports watch features, its key skills are to track your workouts and tell you the ones you should be doing next.
The relatively low asking price puts it up against the likes of the now older Apple Watch Series 3 or Fitbit Versa 3, but does the second-gen Polar deliver enough spark?
Design and display
1.2-inch IPS TFT touchscreen, 240 x 204 resolution
43mm case diameter, 8.5mm thick
Waterproof to 30 metres
Weighs 35g
The Ignite 2 is virtually identical to the original watch. It has the same-sized round polymer case, with a single physical button tucked away in the bottom corner, and a touchscreen controlled display.
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That’s partnered up with a silicone strap with a traditional watch-style buckle that comes in two size options. Those straps are removable too with a simple pin mechanism, letting you quickly swap for one of Polar’s dressier options or a strap that looks a lot like one of Apple’s sport bands.
Polar is offering some more colourful options here too as well. There’s now champagne, blue, black, and pink strap options to go with the four case colour options.
The Ignite 2 is a light watch – at just 35g – and we’ve found it’s been very comfortable to wear 24/7. If you like the idea of a watch that doesn’t sit big and bulky on your wrist, then it’s got appeal.
The biggest design change over the Ignite lies with the more textured, grippier finish on the case. With the right case and strap combo, it gives a slightly nicer-looking watch than its predecessor, but it’s the smallest of changes where pretty much everything else otherwise remains the same.
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Another element that hasn’t changed is the screen. It’s the same 1.2-inch touchscreen display that offers the same in the way of overall quality and viewing angles. It’s not as crisp, vibrant or as colourful as an AMOLED screen, but it’s a good enough screen surroundings to soak up your stats.
What isn’t so good is the still lingering lagging you get when interacting with this screen. It was the same on the first Ignite and clearly Polar hasn’t sought to improve things regarding the screen’s slightly delayed response.
Software and performance
Phone notifications, music controls and weather forecasts
Works with Polar Flow and third-party apps
As is the case with all of Polar’s watches (aside from a brief play with Google’s Wear OS for its M600 watch), it sticks to packing on its own in-house operating system.
It’s a software that pairs to your phone over Bluetooth and does offer the ability to pair up external Bluetooth heart-rate sensors. In the Ignite 2 you don’t get the ANT+ connectivity you get on more expensive Polar watches to widen the support of devices you can connect it to.
The software experience is similar to what you’ll find on Polar’s top-end watches, albeit with a greater emphasis on using the touchscreen to navigate your way around the interface. You can commence workout tracking in the same fashion, while swiping left and right on the watch screen will drop additional information around the watch face, such as current heart rate, activity tracking data, and a useful weekly summary of your training.
Polar has sought to offer more smartwatch features on the Ignite this time around, rolling out features that have already appeared on its Vantage series and Grit X watches. Along with the same notification support, you now getting weather forecasts, the ability to adjust the look of watch faces, and there’s now music controls here too.
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They’re not groundbreaking features, but they’re ones that make the Ignite 2 more useful to have around when you’re not just working out. They work well enough, too, although displaying notifications still feels a little clunky. The music controls are easy to use and work with third-party apps like Spotify, though, which is good news.
Off the watch, your go-to place for setting things up is the Polar Flow phone app or desktop app, but this is a watch that will play nice with third-party apps if you want to bypass Polar’s own once you’ve set things up. Much like Garmin, there’s a lot going on in Polar Flow and it pays to spend some time to get to know where things live in the app and get a sense of what all of the extra training insights mean.
Sports and fitness tracking
FitSpark workout recommendations
Nightly Recharge measurements
Pool swim tracking
Despite its small stature, Polar still manages to pack in quite an impressive array of features into the Ignite 2. There’s built-in GPS, the same Precision Prime heart rate monitor technology used on its pricier Vantage watches, and a rich collection of training features like adaptive running programmes.
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For sports tracking, you’re getting access to over 130 profiles – with activities like running, cycling, pool swimming the best served. There’s also profiles for HIIT and cross training, with a bigger emphasis on monitoring heart rate to measure effort levels during those workouts.
GPS signal pick-up was nice and snappy on our outdoor runs and distance tracking accuracy and core running metrics were in line with a similarly-priced Garmin watch.
In the water, however, the Polar wasn’t so good. Accuracy of tracking laps was fine on shorter swims, but accuracy waned noticeably over swimming longer distances above 400-500 metres.
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If you’re hoping for a reliable heart rate monitor, then the one on the Ignite 2 performed well in most of our tests. On runs and home workouts, it was a few beats per minute (bpm) out from a Garmin HRM-Pro chest strap monitor. For something more intense like interval training, that accuracy and ability to keep up with the sudden spikes and drops in heart rate shows though. It’s not a terrible performer, but if you yearn for supreme accuracy, take the opportunity to pair up an external sensor.
One of the standout features on the Ignite 2 is FitSpark. This is Polar’s smart suggested workouts feature that looks at the types of sessions you’ve logged with your watch to recommend workouts you should do around them. So it may suggest working on strength if you’ve been smashing the cardio lately, or adding some mobility work to better balance your training.
It works really well too, clearly instructing you what to do during the workouts and will start a countdown and send a vibrating buzz to let you know when to prepare for the next workout. It’s not a feature unique to this Polar watch, but it’s one that’s great to use if you’re not sure about what to do when it comes to training.
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If you’re yearning for some of the more advanced training analysis you get on Polar’s other watches, you can still get details on your cardio load status and you can learn more about whether you’re under- or over-training. You can now also understand what’s fuelling your run with the new Energy Sources feature – this heart rate-fuelled feature gives you a breakdown if you’ve used carbohydrates, proteins or fats to power a workout.
The Ignite 2 doubles up as a pretty solid fitness tracker too. It will track steps, distances, nudge you when you’ve not been active for a period of time, and display in the app a breakdown of when you were most active during the day.
But what’s really impressive with the Ignite 2 is the sleep tracking. It offers all the typical things you’d expect to find on a sleep monitoring watch, including a breakdown of sleep stages including REM sleep and sleep scores. Where things get interesting are the Nightly Recharge measurements, which aim to help you better assess if you’ve recovered from a tough physical day. It looks at sleep quality and how your autonomic nervous system calms during the early hours of sleep to generate the measurement. It can then offer tips on whether you should train or why you might have had a bad night of sleep.
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The accuracy of sleep tracking ultimately dictates how useful this feature is – and against a Fitbit’s pretty impressive sleep tracking the Polar held up really well on that front. So if you’re looking for a watch that tracks sleep but also offers useful, actionable insights based on that data, the Ignite 2 fits the bill.
Battery life
165mAh battery, up to 5 days per charge
100 hours in training mode
20 hours GPS battery life
The Ignite 2 promises to deliver up to five days of life in smartwatch mode – with continuous heart rate monitoring in use. When you’re using GPS, you can expect to get 20 hours of tracking time. And there’s now a new training mode that will record workouts up to 100 hours.
What we’ve learnt over our experience with Polar’s latest watches is that they can come up a little short on those claims. That doesn’t change with the Ignite 2. It’s clear the more advanced sleep monitoring features Polar has introduced have quite a noticeable drain on battery – and you can’t turn it off. You can disable continuous heart rate monitoring, which will get you to that five day mark – otherwise it’s more like four.
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When you’re putting GPS tracking to use, you’re getting around the same battery life as a similarly priced watch from Garmin, but significantly more GPS battery life than what you’re going to get from any Apple Watch model. If you want something that can get you just under a week of training, then that’s what the Ignite 2 will get you.
When it’s time for charging, Polar retains the same disc charger that clips onto the back and takes over an hour to get from 0-100 per cent, so it’s a relatively snappy charger.
Verdict
Polar hasn’t made wholesale changes compared to the first Ignite, instead focusing on improving the look and trickling down some features from its pricier watches into the Ignite 2.
But it’s got pretty much everything you could want in a fitness watch, offering solid tracking for most activities, plenty in the way of data, features and insights, and is a light and comfortable watch to live with.
Features like FitSpark and the Nightly Recharge measurements is what really makes the Ignite 2 stand out from the similar price competition. The latter though clearly is a drain on battery life.
As a smartwatch you’ll get more from the likes of Garmin, Fitbit and Apple. But in terms of a fitness watch first and foremost there’s a lot to like here.
If you like the idea of a watch that does a great job of bringing training and recovery closer together and helping you make sense of it, the Ignite 2 is worth strapping on.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Apple Watch Series 3
While you’ll have to live with much less battery life, the Series 3 gives you a better screen, smartwatch features, and pretty solid sports tracking in a more attractive, customisable look.
Read our review
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Garmin Venu Sq
The square Venu Sq is in a similar price range and again offers a nicer display and more smartwatch features like Spotify offline playlist support.
Read our review
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Pocket-lint
Polar Unite
If you can live without the built-in GPS, the Unite offers those great FitSpark and Nightly Recharge measurements for less money.
All in all, Asus’s Chromebook Detachable CM3 is a nice package. It’s a 10.5-inch tablet with magnetically-attached fabric cover and kickstand. It’s $389.99 as tested, which means it’s priced far below all kinds of convertible Chromebooks. I’m not the first to make this comparison, but it’s a slightly more expensive, and slightly fancier version of the $269 Lenovo Chromebook Duet (currently listed at $269) that impressed me so much last year.
I think the CM3 is a slightly worse purchase than the Duet for most people who are looking for a secondary device, or a small Chromebook for a student. The CM3 does offer a few noticeable benefits over the Duet, but I’m not sure they’re worth $100. While features like a dual-folding kickstand, a garaged stylus, and a headphone jack are nice to have, none of them are as central to a device’s user experience as its processor. And while $269 is an acceptable price to pay for a tablet with a MediaTek chip, $389.99 is pushing it.
With all that said, I don’t have many problems with this Chromebook. It’s just in a bit of an odd spot.
My test unit includes 128GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, a 10.5-inch 1920 x 1200 display, and a MediaTek 8183 processor. There’s a 64GB version listed at $369.99 as well. 64GB isn’t a lot of storage (and there’s no microSD card slot for expansion on the CM3), so my config is the one I’d recommend most people go for.
The most important thing to understand about the CM3 before you buy it is the size. It’s small, with just a 10.5-inch screen. This brings benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, it’s quite slim and portable, at just 0.31 inches thick and 1.1 pounds (2.02 pounds with the keyboard and stand attached). It’s the kind of thing I could easily carry in my purse.
On the other hand, a 10.5-inch screen is cramped for a desktop OS like Chrome OS (though it is bright enough to use outdoors, and I appreciate that it has a 16:10 aspect ratio — 16:9 would be unbearable for me at this size). But it was too small for me to comfortably use as a work driver. I had to zoom out far to be able to see everything I needed to in my Chrome windows.
It also means there’s only so much space for the keyboard deck, which is also cramped. The touchpad, in particular, is small. The keyboard itself is roomier than the Duet’s, though — it has a surprising amount of travel and a satisfying click. While the small keys are a bit of an adjustment, none are small enough as to be unusable.
Small doesn’t mean cheap, and the CM3’s build is fairly sturdy overall. The palm rests and detachable keyboard deck feel quite plasticky, but the tablet itself is aluminum (with “diamond-cut edges”, per Asus). The magnetic cover is made of a woven fabric, and looks quite similar to the cover of the Chromebook Duet. The cover is included with the price of the CM3, which isn’t the case with some detachables (such as Microsoft’s Surface Go line).
A USI stylus lives in the top right corner of the chassis — it’s firmly in there, so you’ll need a nail to tug it out. It’s small, and not my favorite stylus I’ve ever used, but it is there and does work. The Duet supports USI styluses, but it doesn’t come with one, so that’s one advantage the CM3 brings.
The main way the CM3 is unique to other detachables is that its kickstand folds multiple ways. That is, you can fold it the long way when you’re using the tablet like a laptop, or you can flip the tablet vertically and fold the kickstand horizontally. This is a cool feature I haven’t seen before, and it does work — I was never worried about the CM3 falling over in either direction.
On the other hand, the only real use case I can think of for the horizontal position is video calls where you don’t need to have the keyboard attached and are okay with the camera being on the side of the screen. You can take your own view, but I’d rather use an iPad or dedicated tablet for these purposes and have the camera in the right place.
My unit did have a bit of fraying on the edges of the keyboard deck, which was disappointing to see on a brand-new device, even at this price. The kickstand cover also slipped off the tablet a few times while I was adjusting the height, which isn’t something that ever happened with the Duet.
Speaking of convertibility, the CM3 has a two-megapixel front-facing camera as well as an eight-megapixel rear-facing camera. Both cameras deliver a surprisingly reasonable picture. I wasn’t too washed out when I did a video call outside, nor was I too grainy in dim light. That said, the dual-camera setup is another cool-sounding feature that probably isn’t the most pragmatic: The rear camera isn’t good enough for actual photography of any kind, and the best use case is probably for snapping pictures of a whiteboard in class. It also takes a few seconds for the CM3 to swap between cameras (it’s not nearly as quick of a swap as it is on an iPhone, for example) so it wouldn’t have saved me a ton of time over just whipping out a phone.
The CM3’s MediaTek MTK 8183 is a hybrid chip that’s mainly used in Android tablets. (It’s a different MediaTek chip from the one that was in the Duet last year, but very similar to the one in uh, Amazon’s new Echo Show 8 smart display.) It’s far from the most powerful processor you can find in a Chromebook, but that’s by design — battery life is going to be a higher priority for many folks who are considering a device as portable as the CM3.
The battery life is, in fact, excellent. I averaged 12 hours and 49 minutes of continuous use running the CM3 through my regular workload of Chrome tabs and Android apps including Slack, Messenger, Twitter, Gmail, Spotify, and an occasional Zoom call with the screen at medium brightness — over an hour longer than I saw from the Duet with the same workload. This is already a heavier load than many people may want to put the CM3 through, so you may get even more time between charges. The 45W USB-C adapter juiced the CM3 up to 40 percent in an hour, making it much faster than the Duet’s wimpy 10W charger.
That battery life doesn’t come free, though, and the CM3’s performance was a mixed bag. It works fine in Chrome, for example, albeit with a teensy bit of sluggishness when swapping tabs and resizing windows, as well as other Google services like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Meet (and it comes with a free 12-month 100GB membership to Google One for the rest of this year). Gaming is also fine — Flipping Legends and Monsters were both smooth and stutter-free, regardless of whether the CM3 was plugged in or running on battery.
I also think Chrome OS’s tablet mode, which the CM3 supports, has gotten pretty good. It uses Android-esque gesture controls that can help flatten the learning curve for new Chromebook users. Swiping up brings you to the home screen, for example, and swiping right swaps between web pages. You can access a version of Chrome specifically for tablets, which allows you to easily open, close, and reorder tabs with drags, swipes, and large buttons. It’s not quite like using an iPad, but I do think it’s a smoother experience than Windows’s tablet mode (especially in Chrome).
All you have to do to switch in and out of tablet mode is snap the keyboard on and off — it takes a second, and my windows didn’t always quite go back to the way I’d arranged them when I put the keyboard back on, but it’s a reasonably smooth affair overall.
But the CM3 didn’t perform well on every task I needed. Sometimes when I was trying to use Slack or Messenger over a pile of Chrome tabs, something would freeze. Zoom calls were possible — which is more than can be said for some budget Chromebooks — but I did run into lag between audio and video inputs. Slack froze and crashed quite often, and Spotify crashed a few times as well.
Access all kinds of Android apps through the Google Play store.
Photo editing was where I really ran into trouble. Lightroom was basically unusable on the CM3 with just a few things running in the background — I tried to edit a batch of around 100 photos, and could consistently only get through a few before the program crashed. I tried to move over to Google Photos, which also eventually crashed, and ended up having to do everything in Gallery. Of course, not everyone will be editing photos on their Chromebook, or pushing it as hard as I was pushing this one, so it’s a matter of knowing your own needs.
Speaking of Zoom meetings, the dual speakers are okay for Zoom calls but not too much more. The songs I played had stronger percussion than I sometimes hear from laptop speakers, but it was thin and tinny overall. The microphone did seem to work well, and didn’t have trouble picking up my voice on calls.
This was a difficult product to score. I do think the CM3 is a great device. And it does offer a few benefits over the Chromebook Duet that justify it costing a bit more. I’d probably purchase it over the Duet myself for the keyboard alone if I were looking for this type of device — the versatile kickstand, built-in stylus, and decent build quality are nice perks as well.
But “if I were looking for this type of device” is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. I’m not looking for a MediaTek device, and there’s a reason I’m not. The battery life is impressive, sure, but it’s just not enough horsepower for the workload I need. And if you are someone whose needs are suited to this low-powered processor (and there are plenty of these people in the world), I really think $389 is at the very high end of what you should be spending.
Sure, the CM3 has a (just okay) stylus, a kickstand with a funky fold, slightly better battery life, and one extra port. But it’s also on par with or slower than the Duet in most tasks I tried, the audio is worse, and it’s thicker and heavier. Given all that, I’m not convinced the CM3’s advantages are worth $100 to most people who are shopping in this category.
The team behind SpaceX’s growing satellite internet network Starlink is in talks with “several” airlines to beam internet to their airplanes, the project’s vice president said during a conference panel on Wednesday. Expanding Starlink from rural homes and onto airlines is an expected move for Elon Musk’s space company as it races to open the broadband network commercially later this year.
“We’re in talks with several of the airlines,” Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX’s VP of Starlink and commercial sales, told a panel at the Connected Aviation Intelligence Summit on Wednesday. “We have our own aviation product in development… we’ve already done some demonstrations to date, and looking to get that product finalized to be put on aircraft in the very near future.”
Since 2018, SpaceX has launched nearly 1,800 Starlink satellites out of the roughly 4,400 it needs to provide global coverage of broadband internet, primarily for rural homes where fiber connections aren’t available. The company is in the midst of a Starlink beta phase that promises up to 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload speeds, with tens of thousands of users so far. Most are paying $99 per month for internet under that beta, using a $499 bundle of a self-aligning Starlink dish and Wi-Fi router.
Last year, SpaceX filed plans to test Starlink on five Gulfstream jets. And in March, SpaceX sought FCC approval to use Starlink with so-called Earth Stations in Motion — industry jargon to refer to basically any vehicle that would receive a signal, including cars, trucks, maritime vessels, and aircraft. Musk clarified on Twitter at the time: “Not connecting Tesla cars to Starlink, as our terminal is much too big. This is for aircraft, ships, large trucks & RVs.” Another FCC filing from last Friday requested approval for testing across five US states of an updated receiver with a square-shaped antenna, a basic design commonly associated with aircraft antennae.
Hofeller said the design for SpaceX’s airline antennas will be very similar to the technology inside its consumer terminals, but “with obvious enhancements for aviation connectivity.” Like those consumer antennas, the aviation hardware will be designed and built by SpaceX, he said. The airborne antennas could link with ground stations to communicate with Starlink satellites.
For Starlink to provide connectivity to airplanes flying over remote parts of the ocean, far from ground stations, will require inter-satellite links — a capability in which satellites talk to each other using laser links without first bouncing signals off ground stations. “The next generation of our constellation, which is in work, will have this inter-satellite connectivity,” Hofeller said.
SpaceX launched its 29th batch of Starlink satellites from Florida on May 26thPhoto by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Competition is fierce between Musk’s Starlink network and the growing industry of low-orbit satellite internet providers. New competitors include so-called mega-constellations from Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, which has yet to launch any of its planned 3,000 satellites, and the UK’s OneWeb, which has launched 182 satellites of roughly 640 planned. All of those satellites will be in low-Earth orbit, a domain below the more distant geostationary orbits of larger internet satellites that currently provide internet services to commercial aircraft.
Established US competitors for in-flight internet are Intelsat and ViaSat, which operate networks of satellites in geostationary orbit. ViaSat recently announced plans to use its next-generation satellite network on Delta’s mainline fleet. The California-based company is planning a 300-satellite low-orbit network of its own as well as a new geostationary trio that will start launching early next year. It is already a diehard competitor to SpaceX. ViaSat has threatened to sue the Federal Communications Commission for not doing an environmental review on a recent Starlink modification.
SpaceX appears confident that it can outlast the more established competition. “All in all, passengers and customers want a great experience that [geostationary] systems simply cannot provide,” Hofeller said on the panel. “So it’s going to be up to the individual airline whether they want to be responsive to that, or if they’re okay with having a system that is not as responsive to their customers’ demand.”
OneWeb, which was pulled out of bankruptcy last year by the UK government and Indian telecom giant Bharti Global, is also targeting in-flight internet services with its constellation and has been far more public with its plans than SpaceX. Asked by the panel moderator when customers can expect to use in-flight internet with any of the competing satellite networks currently expanding in low-Earth orbit, OneWeb’s VP of mobility services Ben Griffin estimated “the middle part of next year… maybe sooner.” Airlines want to see developed hardware and services that work first, he added.
“We have been talking to airlines for quite some time, so there’s no lack of interest,” Griffin said during the same panel. SpaceX’s Hofeller was cagey when the question turned to him — “What Ben said is correct. People want to see the hardware, they wanna see the constellation, and so we’re driving that hard as fast as we can. When the announcement will be? To be determined. Don’t know. Hopefully sooner rather than later.”
(Pocket-lint) – Whether you agree with the polarising design or not, Apple’s AirPods became an overnight phenomenon back in 2017. Since then those in-ear wireless buds have gone on to become the number one sellers in the world – and you only have to head to any city street to see how many people are wearing a pair.
Following the launch of a tweaked second-gen AirPods earlier in 2019, Apple has deemed the headphone popular enough to expand the range with the AirPods Pro. But this isn’t just about offering tweaks; no, it’s a completely redesigned experience, adding active noise-cancellation (ANC) and more.
But with so many in-ear headphone choices on the market, do the AirPods Pro offer a decent package or are you better off going with Bose, Sony, or a myriad of other options? We’ve be wearing them since launch.
A pro design
Each bud: Measures 30.9 x 21.8 x 24mm maximum / Weighs 5.4g
Wireless charging case included (45.2 x 60.6 21.7mm / 45.6g)
There are two elements to the AirPods Pro that you need to worry about: in the ear and in the pocket.
The carry case, which doubles as the charging case, is shorter in height but wider in design than the one you’ll find with the original AirPods. It’s still very much just as pocketable, in fact one of the most pocketable in-ear headphones cases on the market, and comes in a gloss white finish. It’s also included as standard.
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The AirPods Pro headphones slot into the case and instantly drawn in by magnets and start charging immediately. Charging can be done via a Lightning cable or by putting the case on a wireless charging pad, even the newer MagSafe charging pucks.
The Pro design is considerably different to the AirPods. The most noticeable difference is the inclusion of silicone tips to improve the fit or ‘seal’, while the thin rod that hangs out of your ear isn’t especially long. This short length will certainly appeal to those who thought the originals’ design just looked odd.
Finding your fit
Three silicone tip sizes; small, medium, large
Vent system for pressure equalization
Ear Tip Fit test via iOS 13.2
Uses Apple H1 chip
Connecting the AirPods Pro for the first time is incredibly simple. You simply open the case near your iPhone (running iOS 13.2) and press ‘connect’ on the screen. It’s as simple as that thanks to the use of Apple H1 chip – as also found in the AirPods and Beats Powerbeats Pro.
Unlike AirPods, the Pro requires a secondary step, which involves running an Ear Tip Fit Test. Using both the internal and external microphones within the headphones, iOS 13.2 analyses the sound and tweaks its profile to sound better for you.
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The process, which involves playing some music, takes about five seconds. It’s during this time that it will determine whether you’ve got a good fit, and if not recommend you change the silicone tip to another size – there is a small, medium, and large options included. For us the medium worked perfectly and we were up and running with a minute.
The silicone tips feel a little tight in the ear – more so than the standard AirPods, but not that they’re uncomfortable – so Apple has included air vents to try and reduce potential pressure and isolation build up. It calls this a “vent system for pressure equalization”, and in all the time we’ve been wearing them they’ve been fine. It doesn’t hurt wearing them for a long period of time, and if you have concerns over whether or not they would be as easy to put in and out as the standard AirPods, they aren’t.
Active Noise Cancelling (ANC)
Internal and external microphones actively listen for noise changes
Adaptive EQ and Transparency Mode
One of the main features of the AirPod Pro is ANC, or active noise-cancelling technology. This uses the in-built microphones to check the ambient noise around you over 200 times a second and react accordingly, dumbing down external sound. This is the same process as other noise-cancelling headphones, designed to negate wind tear and other real-time sounds around you as best as possible.
You can also dial-down the feature if you want to hear more around you – a feature called Transparency – which allows you to hear people talking, given the frequency cut-off. This is all controlled via a squeeze of the AirPods Pro, via your iPhone volume control settings, or using the Apple Watch.
We’ve used them on the London Underground, the train, by the sea side, cutting the grass, and on a plane, and in all cases the Pro earbuds cut out the majority of the noise. Classical music fans will no doubt love the Pros, as will those that want to really immerse themselves in the music.
Pocket-lint
Switching between the two modes with that squeeze will take a little getting used to, as there’s a specific indented area where you need to squeeze. Precision is key; as is speed: do it too quickly and you’ll stop the track. It’s yet another new control mechanism that you’ve got to learn. Overtime it has become second nature.
Another interesting side effect is wearing the AirPods Pro while talking. Because of the microphones both internally and externally that are trying to cancel the noise, your own voice is amplified when in Transparency mode. The best way to describe it is akin to speaking into a microphone while wearing headphones to hear yourself. You don’t get that experience when you’re on a call with ANC on, although the silence is somewhat alien if you’re used to hearing lots of noise around you all the time when on a call, and if the environment you are in is loud, we’ve found your voice is cancelled out, according to the person at the other end. Our advice is not to use ANC when talking to people on the phone.
Music sounds better with you
5 hours battery life / 4.5 hours with ANC enabled
Custom high dynamic range amplifier
Custom high-excursion Apple driver
We’ve tested the new AirPods Pro with a range of music, from dance tracks from Ministry of Sound, to the Interstellar soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, and everything inbetween from Pink Floyd to Billie Eilish.
Pocket-lint
What is clear is that the AirPods Pro are considerably better than the standard AirPods and certainly hold their own compared to the competition.
The originals focus of the AirPods was on ease of use rather than amazing sound quality, whereas the AirPods Pro address that latter point espeically when you factor in support for Apple’s Spatial Audio technology that’s now rolled out on Apple Music and is available on both the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max and will be coming to more apps and services later this year with iOS 15.
Following the launch we’ve been listening to a number of tracks in Spatial Audio. Some tracks are clearly enhanced by the new experience, while others are barely noticeable. When you do notice it though, the results are amazing. The best way we can describe it, is that It’s a bit like 4K on your TV. Some can see the changes instantly and refuse to watch anything else, while others will be more than happy with the HD footage and wonder what the fuss is about. Apple has big plans for Spatial Audio bringing it to everything from FaceTime calls to games. All that’s left is to see whether the industry embraces it and then runs with it. That’s where things will really start to get interesting.
The Spatial Audio feature also works with movies and that really sings when connected to an iPad or iPhone, especially when it’s been recorded in Dolby Atmos.
But you don’t need Spatial Audio to enjoy the AirPods Pros. They work perfect well in standard stereo whether that’s listening to music, watching a movie or TV show, or taking a voice call. Sure, the Pro doesn’t come as bass-focused as the PowerBeats Pro, for example, but still certainly delivers a decent sound for what they are. For many they will be more than good enough for commuting, especially once you factor in the ANC performance and when available Spatial Audio.
Best USB-C headphones for Android phones 2021
By Dan Grabham
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Verdict
We are incredibly impressed with the ease of setup and quality of sound that the AirPods Pro deliver. Active noise-cancellation makes a huge difference to ambient noise, making these in-ears far more capable than the originals, and Spatial Audio enhances the music experience to the “next level”.
The Pro is more comfortable to wear and better sounding than we were expecting from Apple, too, given the previous AirPods experience.
But with Beats offering the Powerbeats Pro for a smidgen less cash, the AirPods Pro isn’t the only H1 chip-touting in-ear wireless headphones in town. They will be better if you want to be more “active” or are worried that the AirPods Pro will fall out – they shouldn’t but we also know that some people’s ears just aren’t suited to this type of headphone.
And falling out, or should we say taking out, is one of the big advantages here. Popping them in and out of our ears for the last two years has been easy, and if you make a lot of calls, that’s almost worth it on its own.
The ease of use and great sound, make this a great buy.
This article was originally published on 29 October 2019 and has been updated to reflect its full review status
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Beats Powerbeats Pro
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Like the sound of active noise-cancellation but want more bass and bigger sound? That’s where Beats comes into play, if you’re willing to pay the extra for the improved quality.
A controversial amendment pushed by Jeff Bezos’ space firm Blue Origin passed the Senate Wednesday night, inching closer to becoming law. Crammed inside a mammoth science and technology bill designed primarily to counter competition from China, the amendment would allow NASA to spend up to $10 billion on its embattled Moon lander program. Aside from countering China, it also marks the latest development on Bezos’ warpath to counter competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
For Blue Origin, the $10 billion boost is a key weapon in an enduring rivalry between the country’s two richest people — one way or another, the company hopes parts of the funding could help give it a better chance to compete with SpaceX. It’s just one front in a wide-ranging effort to change the outcome of NASA’s watershed Human Landing System competition: the space agency gave SpaceX, and only SpaceX, a $2.9 billion contract in April to launch its first two missions to the Moon by 2024, upsetting expectations that two companies would be picked.
NASA says it picked SpaceX because it had the best and most affordable proposal, and only SpaceX because it didn’t have enough funds to pick a second company. Last year, Congress gave NASA a quarter of what it requested to fund two separate lunar landers. Blue Origin and Dynetics, the two losing companies, filed protests with the country’s top watchdog agency, the Government Accountability Office, triggering a pause on SpaceX’s award that could last until August 4th. Among dozens of counterarguments, Blue Origin says NASA unfairly gave SpaceX a chance to negotiate its contract that other bidders didn’t get and unfairly snubbed its roughly $6 billion proposal.
Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
The stakes are high: If the GAO supports Blue Origin’s arguments, it could reset the whole lunar lander competition and delay NASA’s goal to put humans on the Moon by 2024 — the main deadline in the agency’s Artemis program. If the GAO rejects the company’s protest, things proceed as planned and SpaceX resumes — or begins — its Moon lander work.
But, in its two-pronged fight on Capitol Hill and at the GAO, Blue Origin might not want any ruling on its protest at all.
Lawyers and lobbyists for Bezos’ company argue that NASA, at any time during the GAO’s review of the protest, can simply exercise its ability to make a formal “corrective action” to its HLS decision, enter negotiations with any of the two losing bidders, then pick one as a second contractor that would develop its lunar lander alongside SpaceX — without having to reopen the whole competition. If the corrective action plan settles any of the issues raised in Blue Origin’s protest, then GAO lawyers would dismiss the protest. Such settlements are not uncommon — nearly half of all 2,137 bid protests last year were dismissed because an agency took corrective action.
But it’s extremely unlikely NASA would opt to suddenly reverse its HLS decision through a corrective action. Formally responding to Blue Origin’s protest late last month, the agency fiercely defended its award decision in a lengthy rebuttal filed with the GAO, according to people familiar with the process. Agency staff involved in the NASA effort worry that a reversal could set a bad precedent and are concerned that adding another company might jumble the terms of SpaceX’s current award and potentially spawn another legal nightmare.
Then-nominee Bill Nelson speaks at his Senate confirmation hearing before taking office as NASA administrator.Photo by Saul Loeb-Pool / Getty Images
However, one reason to correct the decision, some argue, would be if NASA had some assurance that it’d have enough money to pay for a second contractor. That’s where Blue Origin’s herculean lobbying effort comes into play.
Senators Maria Cantwell, a senior Democrat from Blue Origin’s home state of Washington, and Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, proposed the amendment that passed the Senate last night. In its original version, it would have vaguely forced NASA to pick at least one more contractor within 30 days from the bill’s enactment and use $10 billion to fund the whole program — SpaceX’s contract and the hypothetical second company’s contract — through 2026. Cantwell had been irked by NASA’s decision to pick one company and penned the language to promote commercial competition, aides say.
When we landed on the moon, there was great collective pride in that achievement. Our space program should be something that we ALL take part in. We shouldn’t hand over $10B in corporate welfare to Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, who are jointly worth $350B, to fund their space hobby. pic.twitter.com/f1uLPXPjuR
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 26, 2021
A bipartisan chorus of opposition followed, with Sen. Bernie Sanders — one of Washington’s leading critics of Jeff Bezos and other billionaires — calling it a “multi-billion dollar Bezos Bailout” and counter-proposing to delete the Cantwell-Wicker language entirely. “I’ve got a real problem with the authorization of $10 billion going to somebody who, among other things, is the wealthiest person in this country,” Sanders, who voted against the bill last night, said earlier this month. “Cry me a river,” said Republican Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a tweet on Blue Origin’s protest. “Jeff Bezos lost out on a space contract so now Senate inserts a Bezos bailout provision for $10 billion for his space company??”
The “Bezos Bailout” discourse began when SpaceX lobbyists distributed a lobbying memo to lawmakers last month calling the Cantwell-Wicker amendment “a $10 billion sole‐source hand‐out” that “will throw NASA’s Artemis program into years of litigation.”
“THIS AMENDMENT IS NOT ABOUT COMPETITION. THIS IS A HAND‐OUT,” the SpaceX memo, a copy of which was shared with The Verge and first reported by TheWashington Post, screams in all-caps. It adds: “Blue Origin has received more than $778 million from NASA, the Air Force, and the Space Force since 2011, and it has not produced a single rocket or spacecraft capable of reaching orbit.”
The amendment doesn’t explicitly command NASA to add another Moon lander contractor to work alongside SpaceX, or even pick Blue Origin for that matter — chunks of the $10 billion could very well go to SpaceX in the future. But the 30-day deadline was seen as a de facto mandate to do so, since creating a new development program in that slim window would be unlikely, and because Blue Origin’s lander proposal came in second place behind SpaceX’s. After weeks of negotiations between NASA and Congress, the amendment’s 30-day deadline was expanded to 60 days, and the funding year stops at 2025 instead of 2026, according to the version of the bill that passed, locking in a concession intended to give NASA more flexibility to use the $10 billion according to its original plan.
That plan includes future competitions, like a development program that could give companies some $15 million to mature their lunar lander designs, or a bigger competition to provide NASA with routine transportation to the Moon. But Blue Origin doesn’t want to wait for those programs to open up. It’s leading a national team of companies it marshaled in 2019 to build a winning Moon lander proposal. That team includes Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, two publicly traded space and defense contractors that could decide to jump ship and work on their own proposals for the follow-up awards, some in the space industry speculate.
Image: Peter Parks / AFP via Getty Images
Bezos’ National Team, though, is still together. Draper Laboratory, the third firm on Blue Origin’s team, won a separate $49 million contract late last month to build avionics software partially to support “NASA’s Artemis campaign of missions to not just return to landing on the moon, but to create a sustained presence in lunar vicinity,” according to a contract document. It’s unclear if that software will support SpaceX’s Moon lander, Starship.
“Draper’s work under this award may include NASA’s human landing system, but we don’t know yet,” Pete Paceley, Draper’s vice president of civil space, told The Verge, adding that Draper remains a member of the National Team. “If we do work on HLS under this contract it will be in direct support to NASA.”
As for the Blue Origin-backed Cantwell amendment, which survived the Senate, it’s unclear if it’ll survive the House. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), who chairs the House committee and subcommittee that oversees NASA, has come out against NASA’s overall approach to getting to the Moon. A spokeswoman for Rep. Johnson declined to offer comment on the fate of the amendment. In an earlier statement related to NASA’s award to SpaceX, Rep. Johnson said there was still an “obvious need for a re-baselining of NASA’s lunar exploration program, which has no realistic chance of returning U.S. astronauts to the Moon by 2024.”
No one knows when the House could vote on the amendment, and it’s unclear how much it’ll change in the process. Other members of Congress have thrown their support behind NASA’s Moon program. NASA’s new administrator, former Senator Bill Nelson, has been barnstorming Capitol Hill with meetings and public statements since the first week he took office, rallying support for his agency’s Moon program.
“The U.S. Innovation and Competitiveness Act, which includes the NASA authorization bill, is an investment in scientific research and technological innovation that will help ensure the U.S. continues to lead in space and sets us on a path to execute many landings on the Moon in this decade,” Nelson said in one such statement from late Tuesday, after the Senate passed the science and technology bill that the Cantwell amendment was crammed into. “I applaud the Senate passage of the bill and look forward to working with the House to see it passed into law.”
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti continues the Ampere architecture rollout, which powers the GPUs behind many of the best graphics cards. Last week Nvidia launched the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, a card that we felt increased the price too much relative to the next step down. RTX 3070 Ti should do better, both by virtue of only costing $599 (in theory), and also because there’s up to a 33% difference between the existing GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3080. That’s a $100 increase in price relative to the existing 3070, but both the 3070 and 3080 will continue to be sold, in “limited hash rate” versions, for the time being. We’ll be adding the RTX 3070 Ti to our GPU benchmarks hierarchy shortly, if you want to see how all the GPUs rank in terms of performance.
The basic idea behind the RTX 3070 Ti is simple enough. Nvidia takes the GA104 GPU that powers the RTX 3070 and RTX 3060 Ti, only this time it’s the full 48 SM variant of the chip, and pairs it with GDDR6X. While Nvidia could have tried doing this last year, both the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 were already struggling to get enough GDDR6X memory, and delaying by nine months allowed Nvidia to build up enough inventory of both the GPU and memory for this launch. Nvidia has also implemented its Ethereum hashrate limiter, basically cutting mining performance in half on crypto coins that use the Ethash / Dagger-Hashimoto algorithm.
Will it be enough to avoid having the cards immediately sell out at launch? Let me think about that, no. Not a chance. In fact, miners are probably still trying to buy the limited RTX 3080 Ti, 3080, 3070, 3060 Ti, and 3060 cards. Maybe they hope the limiter will be cracked or accidentally unlocked again. Maybe they made too much money off of the jump in crypto prices during the past six months. Or maybe they’re just optimistic about where crypto is going in the future. The good news, depending on your perspective, is that mining profitability has dropped significantly during the past month, which means cards like the RTX 3090 are now making under $7 per day after power costs, and the RTX 3080 has dropped down to just over $5 per day.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: Not Great for Mining but Still Profitable
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Even if the RTX 3070 Ti didn’t have a limited hashrate, it would only net about $4.25 a day. With the limiter in place, Ravencoin (KAWPOW) and Conflux (Octopus) are the most profitable crypto coins right now, and both of those hashing algorithms still appear to run at full speed. Profitability should be a bit higher with tuning, but right now, we’d estimate making only $3.50 or so per day. That’s still enough for the cards to ‘break even’ in about six months, but again, profitability has dropped and may continue to drop.
The gamers among us will certainly hope so, but even without crypto coin mining, demand for GPUs continues to greatly exceed supply. By launching the RTX 3070 Ti, with its binned GA104 chips and GDDR6X memory, Nvidia continues to steadily increase the number of GPUs it’s selling. Nvidia is also producing more Turing GPUs right now, mostly for the CMP line of miner cards, and at some point, supply should catch up. Will that happen before the next-gen GPUs arrive? Probably, but only because the next-gen GPUs are likely to be pushed back thanks to the same shortages facing current-gen chips.
Okay, enough of the background information. Let’s take a look at the specifications for the RTX 3070 Ti, along with related Nvidia GPUs like the 3080, 3070, and the previous-gen RTX 2070 Super:
GPU Specifications
Graphics Card
RTX 3080
RTX 3070 Ti
RTX 3070
RTX 2070 Super
Architecture
GA102
GA104
GA104
TU104
Process Technology
Samsung 8N
Samsung 8N
Samsung 8N
TSMC 12FFN
Transistors (Billion)
28.3
17.4
17.4
13.6
Die size (mm^2)
628.4
392.5
392.5
545
SMs / CUs
68
48
46
40
GPU Cores
8704
6144
5888
2560
Tensor Cores
272
192
184
320
RT Cores
68
48
46
40
Base Clock (MHz)
1440
1575
1500
1605
Boost Clock (MHz)
1710
1765
1725
1770
VRAM Speed (Gbps)
19
19
14
14
VRAM (GB)
10
8
8
8
VRAM Bus Width
320
256
256
256
ROPs
96
96
96
64
TMUs
272
192
184
160
TFLOPS FP32 (Boost)
29.8
21.7
20.3
9.1
TFLOPS FP16 (Tensor)
119 (238)
87 (174)
81 (163)
72
RT TFLOPS
58.1
42.4
39.7
27.3
Bandwidth (GBps)
760
608
448
448
TDP (watts)
320
290
220
215
Launch Date
Sep 2020
Jun 2021
Oct 2020
Jul 2019
Launch Price
$699
$599
$499
$499
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti provides just a bit more theoretical computational performance than the 3070, thanks to the addition of two more SMs. It also has slightly higher clocks, giving it 7% more TFLOPS — and it still has 27% fewer TFLOPS than the 3080. More important by far is that the 3070 Ti goes from 14Gbps of GDDR6 and 448 GB/s of bandwidth to 19Gbps GDDR6X and 608 GB/s of bandwidth, a 36% improvement. In general, we expect performance to land between the 3080 and 3070, but closer to the 3070.
Besides performance specs, it’s also important to look at power. It’s a bit shocking to see that the 3070 Ti has a 70W higher TDP than the 3070, and we’d assume nearly all of that goes into the GDDR6X memory. Some of it also allows for slightly higher clocks, but generally, that’s a significant increase in TDP just for a change in VRAM.
There’s still the question of whether 8GB of memory is enough. These days, we’d say it’s sufficient for any game you want to play, but there are definitely instances where you’ll run into memory capacity issues. Not surprisingly, many of those come in games promoted by AMD, it’s almost like AMD has convinced developers to target 12GB or 16GB of VRAM at maximum quality settings. But a few judicious tweaks to settings (like dropping texture quality a notch) will generally suffice.
The difficulty is that there’s no good way to get more memory other than simply doing it. The 256-bit interface means Nvidia can do 8GB or 16GB — nothing in between. And with the 3080 and 3080 Ti offering 10GB and 12GB, respectively, there was basically no chance Nvidia would equip a lesser GPU with more GDDR6X memory. (Yeah, I know, but the RTX 3060 12GB remains a bit of an anomaly in that department.)
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Design: A Blend of the 3070 and 3080
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Unlike the RTX 3080 Ti, Nvidia actually made some changes to the RTX 3070 Ti’s design. Basically, the 3070 Ti has a flow-through cooling fan at the ‘back’ of the card, similar to the 3080 and 3090 Founders Edition cards. In comparison, the 3070 just used two fans on the same side of the card. This also required some tweaks to the PCB layout, so the 3070 Ti doesn’t use the exact same boards as the 3070 and 3060 Ti. It’s not clear exactly how much the design tweak helps with cooling, but considering the 290W vs. 220W TDP, presumably Nvidia did plenty of testing before settling on the final product.
Overall, whether the change significantly improves the cooling or not, we think it does improve the look of the card. The RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti Founders Editions looked a bit bland, as they lacked even a large logo indicating the product name. The 3080 and above (FE models) include RGB lighting, though, which the 3070 Ti and below lack. Third party cards can, of course, do whatever they want with the GPU, and we assume many of them will provide beefier cooling and RGB lighting, along with factory overclocks.
One question we had going into this review was how well the card would cool the GDDR6X memory. The various Founders Edition cards with GDDR6X memory can all hit 110 degrees Celsius on the memory with various crypto mining algorithms, at which point the fans kick into high gear and the GPU throttles. Gaming tends to be less demanding, but we still saw 102C-104C on the 3080 Ti. The 3070 Ti doesn’t have that problem. Even with mining algorithms, the memory peaked at 100C, and temperatures in games were generally 8C–12C cooler. That’s the benefit of only having to cool 8GB of GDDR6X instead of 10GB, 12GB, or 24GB.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: Standard Gaming Performance
TOM’S HARDWARE GPU TEST PC
Our test setup remains unchanged from previous reviews, and like the 3080 Ti, we’ll be doing additional testing with ray tracing and DLSS — using the same tests as our AMD vs. Nvidia: Ray Tracing Showdown. We’re using the test equipment shown above, which consists of a Core i9-9900K, 32GB DDR4-3600 memory, 2TB M.2 SSD, and the various GPUs being tested — all of which are reference models here, except for the RTX 3060 (an EVGA model running reference clocks).
That gives us two sets of results. First is the traditional rendering performance, using thirteen games, at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K with ultra/maximum quality settings. Then we have ten more games with RT (and sometimes DLSS, where applicable). We’ll start with 4K, since this is a top-tier GPU more likely to be used at that resolution, plus it’s where the card does best relative to the other GPUs — CPU bottlenecks are almost completely eliminated at 4K, but more prevalent at 1080p. If you want to check 1080p/1440p/4K medium performance, we’ll have those results in our best graphics cards and GPU benchmarks articles — though only for nine of the games.
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The RTX 3070 Ti does best as a 1440p gaming solution, which remains the sweet spot in terms of image quality and performance requirements. Overall performance ended up 9% faster than the RTX 3070 and 13% slower than the RTX 3080, so the added memory bandwidth only goes so far toward removing bottlenecks. However, a few games benefit more, like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Strange Brigade — all of which show double-digit percentage improvements relative to the 3070.
Some of the games are also clearly hitting other bottlenecks, like the GPU cores. Borderlands 3, The Division 2, Far Cry 5, FFXIV, Metro Exodus, and Red Dead Redemption 2 all show performance gains closer to the theoretical 7% difference in compute that we get from core counts and clock speeds. Meanwhile, Watch Dogs Legions ends up showing the smallest change in performance, improving just 3% compared to the RTX 3070.
The RTX 3070 Ti makes for a decent showing here, but we’re still looking at an MSRP increase of 20% for a slightly less than 10% increase in performance. Compared to AMD’s RX 6000 cards, the 3070 Ti easily beats the RX 6700 XT, but it comes in 6% behind the RX 6800 — which, of course, means it trails the RX 6800 XT as well.
On the one hand, AMD’s GPUs tend to sell at higher prices, even when you see them in places like the Newegg Shuffle. At the same time, RTX 30-series hardware on eBay remains extremely expensive, with the 3070 selling for around $1,300, compared to around $1,400 for the RX 6800. Considering the RTX 3070 Ti is faster than the RTX 3070, it remains to be seen where street pricing lands. Of course, the reduced hashrates for Ethereum mining on the 3070 Ti may also play a role.
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Next up is 1080p testing. Lowering the resolution tends to make games more CPU limited, and that’s exactly what we see. The 3070 Ti was 7% faster than the 3070 this time and 11% slower than the 3080. It was also 7% faster than the 6700 XT and 6% slower than the 6800. While you can still easily play games at 1080p on the RTX 3070 Ti, the same is true of most of the other GPUs on our charts.
We won’t belabor the point, other than to note that our current test suite is slightly more tilted in favor of AMD GPUs (six AMD-promoted games compared to four Nvidia-promoted games, with three ‘agnostic’ games). We’ll make up for that when we hit the ray tracing benchmarks in a moment.
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Not surprisingly, while 4K ultra gaming gave the RTX 3070 Ti its biggest lead over the RTX 3070 (11%), it also got its biggest loss (17%) against the 3080. 4K also narrowed the gap between the 3070 Ti and the RX 6800, as AMD’s Infinity Cache starts to hit its limits at 4K.
Technically, the RTX 3070 Ti can still play all of the test games at 4K, just not always at more than 60 fps. Nearly half of the games we tested came in below that mark, with Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion being the two lowest scores — and they’re still in the mid-40s. The RTX 3070 was already basically tied with the previous generation RTX 2080 Ti, which means the RTX 3070 Ti is now clearly faster than the previous-gen halo card, at half the price.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: Ray Tracing and DLSS Gaming Performance
So far, we’ve focused on gaming performance using traditional rasterization graphics. We’ve also excluded using Nvidia’s DLSS technology in order to provide an apples-to-apples comparison. Now we’ll focus on ray tracing performance, with DLSS 2.0 enabled where applicable. We’re only using DLSS in Quality mode (2x upscaling) in the six games where it is supported. We’ll have to wait for AMD’s FSR to see if it can provide a reasonable alternative to DLSS 2.0 in the coming months, though Nvidia clearly has a lengthy head start. Note that these are the same tests we used in our recent AMD vs. Nvidia Ray Tracing Battle.
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Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti does far better — at least against the AMD competition — in ray tracing games. It’s not a complete sweep, as the RX 6800 still leads in Godfall, but the 3070 Ti ties or wins in every other game. In fact, the 3070 Ti basically ties the RX 6800 XT in our ray tracing test suite, and that’s before we enable DLSS 2.0.
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Even 1080p DXR generally ends up being GPU limited, so the rankings don’t change much from above. DLSS doesn’t help quite as much at 1080p, but otherwise, the 3070 Ti ends up right around 25% faster than the RX 6800 — the same as at 1440p. We’ve mentioned before that Fortnite is probably the best ‘neutral’ look at advanced ray tracing techniques, and the 3070 Ti is about 5–7% faster there. Turn on DLSS Quality and it’s basically double the framerate of the RX 6800.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: Power, Clocks, and Temperatures
We’ve got our Powenetics equipment working again, so we’ve added the 3080 Ti to these charts. Unfortunately, there was another slight snafu: We couldn’t get proper fan speeds this round. It’s always one thing or another, I guess. Anyway, we use Metro Exodus running at 1440p ultra (without RT or DLSS) and FurMark running at 1600×900 in stress test mode for our power testing. Each test runs for about 10 minutes, and we log the result to generate the charts. For the bar charts, we only average data where the GPU load is above 90% (to avoid skewing things in Metro when the benchmark restarts).
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Nvidia gives the RTX 3070 Ti a 290W TDP, and it mostly makes use of that power. It averaged about 282W for our Metro testing, but that’s partly due to the lull in GPU activity between benchmark iterations. FurMark showed 291W of power use, right in line with expectations.
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Core clocks were interesting, as the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti actually ended up with slightly lower clocks than the RTX 3070 in FurMark and Metro. On the other hand, both cards easily exceeded the official boost clocks by about 100 MHz. Custom third-party cards will likely hit higher clocks and performance, though also higher power consumption.
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While we don’t have fan data (or noise data — sorry, I’m still trying to get unpacked from the move), the RTX 3070 Ti did end up hitting the highest temperatures of any of the GPUs in both Metro and FurMark. As we’ve noted before, however, none of the cards are running “too hot,” and we’re more concerned with memory temperatures. The 3070 Ti thankfully didn’t get above 100C on GDDR6X junction temperatures when testing, and even that value occured while testing crypto coin mining.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: Good but With Diminishing Returns
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We have to wonder what things would have been like for the RTX 3070 Ti without the double whammy of the Covid pandemic and the cryptocurrency boom. If you look at the RTX 20-series, Nvidia started at higher prices ($599 for the RTX 2070 FE) and then dropped things $100 with the ‘Super’ updates a year later. Ampere has gone the opposite route: Initial prices were excellent, at least on paper, and every one of the cards sold out immediately. That’s still happening today, and the result is a price increase — along with improved performance — for the 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti.
Thankfully, the jump in pricing on the 3070 Ti relative to the 3070 isn’t too arduous. $100 more for the switch to GDDR6X is almost palatable. Except, while the 3070 offers about 90% of the 3070 Ti performance for 80% of the price and represents an arguably better buy, the real problem is the RTX 3080. It’s about 12–20% faster across our 13 game test suite and only costs $100 more (a 17% price increase).
Well, in theory anyway. Nobody is really selling RTX 3080 for $700, and they haven’t done so since it launched. The 3080 often costs over $1,000 even in the lottery-style Newegg Shuffle, and the typical price is still above $2,000 on eBay. It’s one of the worst cards to buy on eBay, based on how big the markup is. In comparison, the RTX 3070 Ti might only end up costing twice its MSRP on eBay, but that’s still $1,200. And it could very well end up costing more than that.
We’ll have to see what happens in the coming months. Hopefully, the arrival of two more desktop graphics cards in the form of the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3070 Ti will alleviate the shortages a bit. The hashrate limiter can’t hurt either, at least if you’re only interested in gaming performance, and the drop in mining profitability might help. But we’re far from being out of the shortage woods.
If you can actually find the RTX 3070 Ti for close to its $600 MSRP, and you’re in the market for a new graphics card, it’s a good option. Finding it will be the difficult part. This is bound to be a repeat of every AMD and Nvidia GPU launch of the past year. If you haven’t managed to procure a new card yet, you can try again (and again, and again…). But for those who already have a reasonable graphics card, there’s nothing really new to see here: slightly better performance and higher power consumption at a higher price. Let’s hope supply and prices improve by the time fall blows in.
The Cooler Master MM720 is a unique gaming mouse that improves on its predecessor, the Spawn, with a case, sensor and cable that compete with other high-end mice.
For
+ Unique design with ring finger support
+ Pure PTFE feet
+ Very lightweight, flexible cord
Against
– Side buttons can be hard to reach
– Cable already suffers from light kinking
It took nearly a decade, but Cooler Master finally announced a followup to its Spawn gaming mouse at CES 2020. The vendor has followed up its cult classic with the Cooler Master MM720. Available for $40–$50 as of writing, the MM720 is ready for the new millennium with a honeycomb-style chassis, upgraded sensor and a cable with both pros and cons. Ultimately, it’s a winning package that not only competes favorably against modern rivals but also its predecessor, which some consider the best gaming mouse of yesteryear.
Cooler Master MM720 Specs
Sensor Model
PixArt PMW-3389
Sensitivity
Up to 16,000 CPI native or 32,000 via software
Polling Rates
125, 250, 500, or 1,000 Hz
Programmable Buttons
6
LED Zones and Colors
2x RGB
Cable
6 foot (1.8m) USB Type-A
Connectivity
USB Type-A
Measurements (LxWxH)
4.15 x 3.01 x 1.47 inches (105.42 x 76.5 x 37.4mm)
Weight (without cable)
1.72 ounces (49g)
Extra
Replacement PTFE feet
Design and Comfort
Modern gaming mice often seem like they were made from the same mold. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing because manufacturers have mostly settled on shapes that can appeal to a broad audience, and breaking that mold can result in a truly awful mouse. But that didn’t stop Cooler Master from eschewing the staid designs of modern mice in favor of the unique, seemingly hand-molded case that inspired the original Spawn gaming mouse.
The Cooler Master MM720 is short, wide and defined by its curves. It almost seems like the company handed someone a ball of Silly Putty, told them to pretend it was a mouse and then used the resulting shape as inspiration. There is nary a flat surface on the mouse; every point of contact has been contoured in some way to better accommodate the natural shape of most people’s hands. This looks weird, yes, but it feels great during use.
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But all of those things were true of the Spawn when it debuted a decade ago. The Cooler Master MM720 complements that ergonomic design with an ABS plastic honeycomb shell that weighs roughly half as much as its predecessor, a PixArt PMW-3389 optical sensor that’s been moved to a more sensible location under the mouse and a braided cable that should offer a better experience than the rubber cable Cooler Master had to use in the Spawn.
Cooler Master has also welcomed modern design trends with the MM720 in the form of two color options, white and black, with either a glossy or a matte finish. There’s a subdued Cooler Master logo on the palm rest that—along with the scroll wheel—provides the new mouse’s obligatory RGB lighting. And, of course, the honeycomb shell makes the MM720 look much different from the Spawn’s solid plastic construction.
The result is a mouse that is familiar in many ways, thanks to its similarity to mice like the similarly priced Cooler Master MM710 and Glorious Model D, yet still novel because of its shape. The Cooler Master MM720 measures 4.15 inches long, 3.01 inches wide and 1.5 inches tall and weighs 1.72 ounces. For comparison, the MM710 is 4.59 x 2.46 x 1.51 inches and about 1.87 ounces, and the Model D- is 4.72 x 2.40-2.64 x 1.30-1.57 inches and 2.4 ounces.
Unfortunately, the matte black option of the Cooler Master MM720 we tested is also a fingerprint magnet, which gives the already odd-looking mouse an even less appealing aesthetic. This problem might not be as noticeable on other versions of the mouse though, especially the white ones. And it’s merely a cosmetic issue. Cooler Master says the MM720’s case offers IP58 dust and water resistance, thanks to its special coating. The company also claims “you can dunk this bad boy in water to clean it off,” but I wasn’t brave enough to test that claim.
I also noticed some light kinking on the cable after just a little over a week of use. At this point it’s more of a visual distraction than anything else, but it does raise concerns about the cable’s long-term durability.
Gaming Performance
The Cooler Master MM720 is surprisingly comfortable to use for extended periods, and that’s mostly because it offers a place to rest your ring finger while you’re playing. Most gaming mice tend to ignore the existence of our ring fingers entirely—companies typically account for our thumbs, index fingers and middle fingers before calling it quits. But the Cooler Master MM720’s design accounts for one of those neglected appendages (sorry, pinky), and this seemingly inconsequential change makes a noticeable difference over the course of a long play session.
It’s also surprisingly easy to fling the Cooler Master MM720 around a mousepad. Many of the changes Cooler Master made to this mouse contribute to that ease of movement: the 100% pure PTFE feet are smoother than Rob Thomas, and the braided cable offers minimal drag, although it was still somewhat distracting coming off the wireless mice I’ve reviewed lately. I’m firmly in the wireless camp at this point, (see our Best Wireless Mouse page for recommendations), but if you insist on having a cable you could do worse than the Cooler Master MM720 when it comes to actual gameplay. Of course, your final views will depend on how founded or unfounded those concerns about durability prove to be.
The Cooler Master MM720’s light weight, smooth feet and braided cable are complemented by the PMW-3389 optical sensor, specced for up to 16,000 counts per inch (CPI) sensitivity, a max velocity of 400 inches per second (IPS) and max acceleration of 50g. Many other mice, including the excellent Razer Naga Pro, use the same sensor to great effect.
The sensor’s also in a sensible position on the MM720: smack-dab in the middle of the mouse, as opposed to the offset sensor found in the original Spawn. I didn’t have any trouble popping heads in Valorant with the Cooler Master MM720, and the PMW-3389’s reliability is a big contributor to that.
Another contributor: The LK optical micro switches used in the primary mouse buttons. They are certainly responsive, and I only found myself shouting “but I clicked!” because of network problems, not because of a missed input. Cooler Master markets the switches as offering “nearly instant actuation” and reducing debounce time to “practically zero.”
In fact, the only problems I had in-game with the Cooler Master MM720 involved the side buttons. They appear to be well-made, as I didn’t notice any pre or post-travel during everyday use, but their placement just doesn’t work for me. Practically every aspect of the mouse lends itself to a relaxed grip, so I want to rest my thumb in the dedicated groove along the side of the case, but the side buttons are located above that groove. This placement wouldn’t be a problem with my normal fingertip grip, but because of the Cooler Master MM720’s design, I would end up using something closer to a palm grip that forced me to stretch my thumb every time I wanted to press a side button. Cooler Master says the MM720 is fit for palm and claw grippers, but I can’t comfortably use a claw grip and take advantage of the ring finger rest, so it ended up being a matter of which trade-off I was most willing to live with.
Whether or not that’s a problem for you will depend on the grip you use, the size of your hand and how much importance you put on the side buttons. But it did seem a bit strange that this one aspect of the Cooler Master MM720’s design was at odds with the rest of the mouse. Maybe there’s a technical limitation preventing a lower placement for the side buttons or perhaps the grip I settled on wasn’t actually what Cooler Master had in mind. Hopefully others fare better in that regard.
Features and Software
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The Cooler Master MM720 is configured using the comically named Cooler Master MasterPlus+ software. The utility offers information about your system, like the temperature, usage percentage, and voltage of your CPU and GPU by default. You can also use it to manage your other Cooler Master hardware. It checks for any new firmware on first launch, offers to install it and then gets out of the way so you can configure the Cooler Master MM720 using its many distinct settings.
The six programmable buttons can all be configured under the appropriately titled Buttons page. Because of the software’s Mouse Combo feature, there are actually just five programmable buttons—the side buttons, right mouse button and the scroll wheel directional inputs—by default. That setting allows each of the mouse’s buttons to perform a secondary function when the scroll wheel button is held down. Luckily that setting, which is enabled by default, can be disabled right on this page.
The MasterPlus+ software offers a variety of actions. Each button can be disabled, set to behave like another mouse button, keyboard key, or DPI switch, used to control multimedia playback or tasked with executing a macro, switching between profiles or performing a Rapid Fire action that repeats a given input up to 99 times as quickly as possible. There’s also an option to disable the sensor, which could prove useful if you want to stop someone from clicking around your system or if you want to watch a video without the controls popping up because you happened to jostle your desk, and the DPI switch on the bottom of the mouse can be assigned any of these functions as well.
The Cooler Master MM720 also offers a surprising amount of control over its performance. The usual settings are all here: You can enable angle snapping, toggle lift-off distance, or set the polling rate to 125, 250, 500, or 1,000 Hz. There are also sensitivity controls between 200 and 32,000 CPI; just be warned that setting the CPI any higher than 16,000 uses software and also causes problems because of the PMW-3389’s limitations. And by “causing problems” I mean the cursor is nigh impossible to control, skips around the screen, and is essentially unusable. Cooler Master provides seven CPI stages for toggling with the CPI switch that all offer separate values for their horizontal and vertical sensitivity; although, the two are linked by default.
MasterPlus+ also offers sliders for angle tunability, button response time and the operating system’s settings for double-click speed and pointer sensitivity. But the premier feature is Surface Tuning, which is supposed to optimize the sensor for your particular mousepad. I didn’t notice any improvement, but I’m also used to adapting to a variety of sensors in numerous mice, so maybe someone who spends months on end with the same mouse and/or sensor would better appreciate the setting.
The software’s RGB settings are similar to those found in most other utilities. Cooler Master offers seven preset colors, as well as slots for seven custom colors that you can set by using a color wheel or providing RGB values and adjusting the brightness slider. There are four built-in effects—Static, Breathing, Color Cycle and Indicator—that mostly perform as expected. I say mostly because Indicator is a bit of an odd duck. It’s not clear what exactly it’s indicating, and it’s the only built-in effect that uses different colors for the two RGB zones—blue in the palm rest and pink under the scroll wheel— but those colors don’t appear to be customizable and they remain static even if I move the mouse or click around the app.
There’s also the option to create a custom lighting effect, but this seems to be limited to solid colors because the LED speed and LED direction settings are grayed out. Aside from using the Indicator setting, this appears to be the only way to set different colors for the two RGB zones, but the process isn’t particularly intuitive. You have to select a color and then, entirely without prompting, click on the zone you want to assign that color in the preview window.
Macros, meanwhile, are surprisingly limited. All you’re able to do is tell MasterPlus+ to start recording your keyboard or mouse inputs, tell it when to stop recording and then set the input delay for the individual actions you performed. The only other option is to run a macro once, have it loop for as long as the designated execution key is held down or have it loop until that key is pressed again. That isn’t to say the macros can’t prove useful, but they are more limited than they are in other utilities.
Finally, there are profiles. Cooler Master offers five by default, and they can each be reset, renamed, overridden by an imported profile, exported, or viewed as a .exe file in your file system. Otherwise, they simply store the settings managed by the other sections in the app to the mouse’s 512KB of onboard storage. You can change the mouse’s current profile without having to open (or download) the app again by using the profile switch button.
Bottom Line
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I said in my review of the MSI Clutch GM41 Lightweight Wireless that it featured the “prototypical gaming mouse look.” Nobody could say that about the Cooler Master MM720. It’s a unique mouse that breaks the mold with purpose—providing a more comfortable gaming experience—instead of a misguided attempt to simply look different from the other mice on the market. Sure, the groundwork for this design was laid over a decade ago, but it’ll still be novel to most of its potential customers.
The Cooler Master MM720 is also a surprisingly good value, with a honeycomb shell, modern-day sensor, braided cable, large 100% pure PTFE feet and two RGB lighting zones, starting at $40 as of writing. Many companies would either charge more for mice with those components or choose different parts. The HK-Gaming Mira-M (currently $40), for example, relies on a PMW-3360 sensor and smaller feet.
The primary drawbacks to the Cooler Master MM720 are the placement of its side buttons and the questionable durability of its cable. But of far greater concern is the mouse’s shape and if it fits your style. I preferred palm gripping with the MM720, and people who’ve been waiting for a followup to the Spawn or a more ergonomic gaming mouse should be excited by the MM720. If you prefer an ambidextrous mouse or a claw grip, the Glorious Model D- and Mira-M may be better options.
There isn’t necessarily a clear winner between the Mira-M, Model D- and MM720, which all earned our Editor’s Choice Award. But that might actually be a good thing: Having options with quite different shapes but similar pricing, specs and performance is a sign that this ultralight segment is maturing. Now you can opt for the mouse that best suits your hand size, grip and play style.
For gamers seeking a unique, ergonomic-minded option, the Cooler Master MM720 is a solid product. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take Cooler Master another decade to release a followup, eh?
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is the company’s attempt at bolstering its sub-$700 lineup targeting a segment of the gaming market that predominantly games at 1440p, but needs an upgrade path toward 4K UHD. Cards from this segment are very much capable of 4K gaming, but require a tiny bit of tweaking. There are also handy features like DLSS to fall back on. NVIDIA already has such a product in the RTX 3070, so why did it need the new RTX 3070 Ti? The answer lies in AMD’s unexpected return to the high-end graphics market with its Radeon RX 6800 series “Big Navi” graphics cards. The RX 6800 was found to outclass the RTX 3070 in most games that don’t use raytracing, and the more recently released RX 6700 XT only adds to the pressure as it trades blows with the RTX 3070 at a slightly lower price.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is among a two-part refresh by NVIDIA for the higher-end of its GeForce RTX 30-series “Ampere” product stack, with the other being the RTX 3080 Ti we reviewed last week. NVIDIA attempted to set the RTX 3070 Ti apart from the RTX 3070 without significantly increasing manufacturing costs (i.e., without having to tap into the larger GA102 silicon). It did this with two changes. First, the RTX 3070 Ti maxes out the GA104 chip, enabling all 6,144 CUDA cores physically present as opposed to the 5,888 on the RTX 3070—a 4% increase. Next, NVIDIA gave the memory sub-system a major boost by giving this card 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory instead of the 14 Gbps GDDR6 on the RTX 3070. This in itself is a 35% increase in memory bandwidth even if the memory size remains the same at 8 GB. Slightly higher GPU clock speeds wrap things up. The idea is to outclass the RX 6700 XT and make up ground lost to the RX 6800.
The “Ampere” graphics architecture debuts the second generation of NVIDIA’s ambitious RTX real-time raytracing technology that combines raytraced elements with conventional raster 3D to significantly improve realism. It combines second-generation RT cores, fixed-function hardware that accelerate raytracing, now even even more raytraced effects, third-generation Tensor cores, which accelerate AI deep-learning and leverage the sparsity phenomenon to significantly increase AI inference performance, and the new Ampere CUDA core that doubles compute performance over the previous generation, leveraging concurrent INT32+FP32 math.
The new GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition graphics card comes with an all-new design that looks like a cross between the RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3070 FE. It implements the same dual-axial flow-through concept as the RTX 3080 FE, but with styling elements that remind more of the RTX 3070 FE. The design involves two fans, one on either side of the card, and the PCB being shorter than the card itself, so fresh air drawn in by one fan is exhausted from the other side for better heat dissipation. NVIDIA is pricing the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition at $599, a $100 premium over the RTX 3070. We expect that current market conditions will have the card end up at around $1300, matching the RTX 3070 and slightly below the $1400 RX 6800 non-XT.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Suprim X is the company’s top custom-design graphics card based on the swanky new RTX 3070 Ti high-end graphics card by NVIDIA. The Suprim series represents MSI’s best efforts in the areas of product design, factory-overclocked speeds, cooling performance, and more. NVIDIA debuted the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 3080 Ti to augment its RTX 30-series “Ampere” graphics card family, particularly as it faced unexpected competition from rival AMD in the high-end with the Radeon RX 6000 series “Big Navi” graphics cards. The RTX 3070 Ti is designed to fill a performance gap between the the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, letting NVIDIA better compete with the RX 6700 XT and RX 6800, which posed stiff competition to the RTX 3070. Cards from this segment are expected to offer maxed-out gaming at 1440p with raytracing enabled, and also retain the ability to play at 4K UHD with reasonably good settings.
The GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is based on the same GA104 silicon as the RTX 3070, but NVIDIA made two major design changes—first, it has maxed out the GA104, enabling all 6,144 CUDA cores as opposed to 5,888 on the RTX 3070; and second, it is using faster 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory in place of 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory. The memory sub-system alone sees a significant 35% uplift in bandwidth. The memory size is still 8 GB.
The GeForce “Ampere” graphics architecture debuts the second-generation of NVIDIA’s path-breaking RTX real-time raytracing technology that combines raytraced effects, such as reflections, shadows, lighting, and global-illumination, with conventional raster 3D graphics to increase realism. “Ampere” combines second-generation RT cores with third-generation Tensor cores that accelerate AI, and faster “Ampere” CUDA cores.
The MSI RTX 3070 Ti Suprim X is an attempt by MSI to match NVIDIA’s Founders Edition cards in terms of aesthetics. A premium-looking, brushed metal cooler shroud greets you, with its trio of TorX 4.0 fans, and a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink. MSI has given the RTX 3070 Ti its top factory-overclock at 1860 MHz compared to the 1770 MHz reference. In this review, we take the card out for a spin to show you whether MSI has aced a better-looking and better-performing card than the NVIDIA Founders Edition.
Palit GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GameRock OC is the company’s most premium custom-design implementation of NVIDIA’s latest high-end graphics card launch. The RTX 3070 Ti along with last week’s RTX 3080 Ti launch, form part of an attempt to refresh the high-end segment in the face of competition from AMD and its “Big Navi” Radeon RX 6800 series. This segment of graphics cards are targeted at those wanting maxed out gaming at 1440p with raytracing, but also the ability to play at 4K UHD with reasonably good details. NVIDIA already has such a SKU in the RTX 3070, but this was embattled by the RX 6700 XT and RX 6800, which is possibly what the RTX 3070 Ti launch is all about.
NVIDIA created the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti out of the same GA104 silicon as the RTX 3070, by maxing it out. You hence get all 6,144 CUDA cores physically present on the chip, compared to just 5,888 on the RTX 3070. Another major change is memory, with NVIDIA opting for fast 19 Gbps GDDR6X memory over 14 Gbps GDDR6. This results in a significant 35% increase in memory bandwidth over the RTX 3070. The memory size remains 8 GB, though. Wrapping things up are the slightly higher GPU clock speeds. The resulting product, NVIDIA believes, should be competitive against the RX 6800, restoring competition to the sub-$600 market segment.
Palit bolstered the RTX 3070 Ti with its highest factory overclock, at 1845 MHz boost frequency, compared to 1770 MHz reference. The GameRock OC series from Palit always represented over-the-top designs, and this card is no exception. A neatly executed “icebox” pattern tops the cooler shroud, which isn’t unlike the G.SKILL Trident Royal memory modules. This element is illuminated with addressable-RGB.
At this time Palit is unable to provide any MSRP for the GameRock OC. I’d estimate that it’ll end up around $1350 in the free market, so $50 higher than the RTX 3070 Ti Founders Edition.
GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Market Segment Analysis
Price
Cores
ROPs
Core Clock
Boost Clock
Memory Clock
GPU
Transistors
Memory
RX 5700 XT
$370
2560
64
1605 MHz
1755 MHz
1750 MHz
Navi 10
10300M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070
$340
2304
64
1410 MHz
1620 MHz
1750 MHz
TU106
10800M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060
$900
3584
48
1320 MHz
1777 MHz
1875 MHz
GA106
13250M
12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2070 Super
$450
2560
64
1605 MHz
1770 MHz
1750 MHz
TU104
13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII
$680
3840
64
1400 MHz
1800 MHz
1000 MHz
Vega 20
13230M
16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080
$600
2944
64
1515 MHz
1710 MHz
1750 MHz
TU104
13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super
$690
3072
64
1650 MHz
1815 MHz
1940 MHz
TU104
13600M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti
$1300
4864
80
1410 MHz
1665 MHz
1750 MHz
GA104
17400M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6700 XT
$1000
2560
64
2424 MHz
2581 MHz
2000 MHz
Navi 22
17200M
12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2080 Ti
$1400
4352
88
1350 MHz
1545 MHz
1750 MHz
TU102
18600M
11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070
$1300
5888
96
1500 MHz
1725 MHz
1750 MHz
GA104
17400M
8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3070 Ti
$1300 MSRP: $600
6144
96
1575 MHz
1770 MHz
1188 MHz
GA104
17400M
8 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
Palit RTX 3070 Ti GameRock OC
$1350
6144
96
1575 MHz
1845 MHz
1188 MHz
GA104
17400M
8 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 6800
$1400
3840
96
1815 MHz
2105 MHz
2000 MHz
Navi 21
26800M
16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT
$1700
4608
128
2015 MHz
2250 MHz
2000 MHz
Navi 21
26800M
16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080
$1500
8704
96
1440 MHz
1710 MHz
1188 MHz
GA102
28000M
10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 3080 Ti
$2200
10240
112
1365 MHz
1665 MHz
1188 MHz
GA102
28000M
12 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
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