Sound

Sonos Move review: Should you buy it over Roam?

(Pocket-lint) – Sonos offers multiple speakers within its portfolio, but as great as they are, none had been portable, none had been water-resistant, and none had offered Bluetooth audio support. The Sonos Move, however, changed all of that.

While Sonos previously focused on offering speakers designed for the home that require mains power and use a mesh Wi-Fi network to talk to each other, the Sonos Move was the first portable Bluetooth smart speaker marking the beginning of Sonos outside of the home.

Move was first, but since its release, there is also now the smaller, and more portable Sonos Roam to consider if you’re in the market for a Bluetooth Sonos speaker. You can read our full Sonos Roam review separately, but here we are focusing on the larger, more powerful, Sonos Move.

Sonos Move vs Sonos Roam: What’s the difference?

Design

IP56 water- and dust-resistant design
Capacitive touch controls
Integrated handle
Measures: 240 x 160 x 126mm
Weighs: 3kg

Sonos plays close attention to design and all its latest speakers – from the 2015 Play:5 to the Sonos Arc – share similar design features, like capacitive touch controls, black and white colour options and plastic detailing.

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The Sonos Move has the same design ethos as these newer Sonos speakers, with rounded edges, capacitive controls and an almost identical top to the Sonos One – albeit oval shaped and with repositioned controls – but it raises the stakes when it comes to durability.

While the design of the Sonos Move clearly resembles the Sonos portfolio, it offers an IP56 water and dust resistance and it is one tough little cookie – although it’s not actually that little. Sonos says the Move can withstand pretty much every obstacle life might throw at it, whether that be sand, water or a drop on concrete, and while we didn’t fancy testing the last of those, it’s clear this speaker is able to hold its own.

To achieve this, the bottom of the device is silicone with a clear coat of paint over the top to deter dust. Everything inside has been considered, too, from a custom-made polycarbonate basket case reinforced with glass for the mid-woofer, to the colour of the Move itself – it is Shadow Black and not just plain, absorbant black to take UV exposure into account. We had it outside in 25C with the sun shining directly on it for several hours but it didn’t feel too hot as a result. There’s a Lunar White model too, which are the same colour offerings as the Sonos Roam.

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As we say, though, this portable speaker is not small. It’s wider and taller than the Sonos One and it weighs a hefty 3kg – so you’ll need a pretty decent-sized backpack to lug it around. The point is that you can bring it wherever you want, whether that’s your garden, the beach or a camping trip. At this scale we suspect it’ll be nearer to the home, for a garden party, while the smaller Sonos Roam is more suited to the park or beach.

On the rear of the Move is a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth toggle switch, a power button and a pairing button – the last of which all Sonos speakers except the Roam offer. The buttons are all positioned on an inward slant that allows for the convenient integrated handle – which is built into the design, rather than a separate strap or handle – to exist within this design format.

When the Sonos Move is on its Loop Dock charging cradle it looks like any other Sonos speaker and blends into the home. You’d never know it was portable from the front, giving it an element of surprise about it. If you’re thinking about buying a permanent in-home Sonos speaker but might want to occasionally take it out and about then we can see why this design makes perfect sense, though the same can definitely be said for the Roam too.

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A USB Type-C port sits below the integrated handle and the buttons, as well as two charging pins below that for the Loop Dock – which the Sonos Move snaps into place on.

Hardware & Specs

Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy
AirPlay 2 support
45W power

The Sonos Move delivers 45W of power, coupled with Bluetooth for audio streaming capabilities rather than needing a mesh-connected device. The Sonos One, by comparison, doesn’t offer Bluetooth for audio streaming (only for quick setup), making the Move the first Sonos speaker to offer the technology, followed by the Roam.

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The Sonos Move also supports Apple’s AirPlay 2 – as per the Roam, Arc, Beam, One, Play:5, and the Sonos One SL (the voiceless version of the Sonos One) – which allows for easy streaming from an Apple device without the need to open the Sonos app. It’s quick, convenient and it offers Apple users integration with Siri for voice control too.

The Wi-Fi/Bluetooth toggle switch on the rear of the Sonos Move allows users to switch the speaker between modes – something the Roam does automatically. When the Move is ready to pair, the LED light on the top flashes blue then goes solid blue when pairing is successful. We paired our Apple iPhone 11 at the time of review with it in a matter of seconds and switching between the two modes is virtually instant, making it pain-free, even if the Roam does make this element more seamless.

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The power button, meanwhile, allows users to switch the Sonos Move off entirely, otherwise it will stay in a low power mode when not being used – useful for quick wake-up if it’s grouped with another Sonos speaker or an alarm is set, for example.

Features

Automatic Trueplay
Alexa and Google voice control

The Sonos Move functions as a typical Bluetooth speaker when in Bluetooth mode, allowing users to send music to it via a paired device, as you would the Ultimate Ears UE Megaboom 3, for example. In Bluetooth mode, the Move isn’t controlled via the Sonos app, with the control shifted to your device and the streaming service you are using instead.

When not in Bluetooth mode, the Move functions as a traditional Sonos speaker, but it appears with a battery indicator in the Sonos app. Functioning as a traditional Sonos speaker means you can group it with other Sonos speakers, control it through the Sonos app and access all the features that come with that app, including compatibility with over 100 music streaming services, stereo pairing and customisation of equalisation levels (EQ).

Sadly, you can’t use two Sonos Move speakers in a surround setup, as you can with all other Sonos speakers except the Sonos Roam, which also doesn’t offer the feature. Read our Sonos tips and tricks to learn more about the features offered by the Sonos system as a whole.

The Sonos Move also offers a feature called Automatic Trueplay. Trueplay is a software feature Sonos introduced with the Play:5 in 2015 and it allows users to tune their Sonos speakers according to its surroundings using an Apple iOS device. You can read all about it in our seperate feature.

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Automatic Trueplay uses the four built-in microphones on the Sonos Move to listen to the sound produced by the speaker and tune it automatically according to its surroundings, making for a much simpler process than the original (where you had to walk around the room waving your iOS device up and down slowly, yep, really).

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The Automatic Trueplay feature was introduced on the Move to combat the issues of moving a speaker from outside to inside and still ensuring it sounds good. An accelerometer helps the Sonos Move detect when it has been moved, allowing it to adjust itself within around 30 seconds to what it deems as the best for its new surroundings. You can turn it off in the Sonos app if you don’t want it though.

Additionally, the Sonos Move supports Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa voice control. As with the One, Beam, Arc and Roam, which offer the same control, you can’t have both assistants setup at the same time – but you will be able to switch between them as you please, as well as turn the microphone off (an LED light on the top of the Move indicates when the microphones are on). You can also choose to have Alexa on one compatible Sonos speaker and Google Assistant on another if you want.

When the voice assistants are setup, you get almost all the same features you would an Amazon Echo or Google Home or Nest speaker device, bar a couple, meaning you’ll be able to ask Alexa or Google anything you like, such as set a timer or alarm, control compatible smart home devices, or find out about your day or commute.

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Voice control is only available when in Wi-Fi mode (AKA standard Sonos mode), but don’t mistake this for only when docked on the Loop Dock. For us, we get Wi-Fi in our garden at home and therefore we could use Google Assistant on the Move in the garden during a BBQ with friends, which was great.

Sound and performance

Two Class-D digital amplifiers, tweeter and mid-woofer
10 hours battery life
Replaceable battery

The Sonos Move has a downward-firing tweeter at the top of the speaker, coupled with a mid-range woofer inside. For those wondering why the company has used a downward-facing tweeter, Sonos told us it was to achieve evenly dispersed sound; there’s what the company calls a Wave Guide inside to enable this to happen.

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Based on our experience at review and continued experience, the Sonos Move offers a great sound quality for its size and the sound is evenly dispersed. It’s on the bassy side, which is typical of Sonos speakers, but we see that as a good thing compared to other portables that can’t deliver in this regard.

There’s plenty of volume too – which you definitely need when outdoors – and the Move copes well with mid-range, treble and vocals. You don’t get as wide a soundscape as per the Play:5, but the Move sounds better than the Sonos One to our ears. That gives you an idea of its positioning in the range. It’s also more powerful than the Roam, which you would expect.

Sonos claims the battery will deliver 10 hours of music playback. We had the Sonos Move outside on Wi-Fi, on mid-volume for four hours and we only managed to drain the battery to 80 per cent, so we suspect this figure is based on use at louder volumes, thus you might get more out of it.

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The battery can be replaced too – it will last around 900 charging cycles, which is around three years on average – after which it is recommended to replace it to continue to get longevity out of the device. Sonos offers a battery replacement kit that allows you to do this yourself.

Verdict

We waited a long time to see Sonos launch a portable speaker with Bluetooth streaming before Move was finally revealed. In fact, we asked co-founder Tom Cullen about a portable speaker back in 2015, so it’s something we’ve been pining after for a while and now we have two choices.

The Move is bigger and heavier than we expected, and certainly not cheap, but with its price and size comes durability, toughness and performance – and that’s no bad thing, especially if you actually plan to make use of the Move’s portability. We also suspect many will use it as a sometime portable, not as a constant cart-around speaker.

There are other great portable Bluetooth speakers out there – including Sonos’ own Roam that is far smaller and better designed for constant portability – but there are none quite like the Sonos Move in terms of sound output and features, especially not for those already invested in the Sonos system. It’s the Bluetooth speaker Sonos fans were waiting for.

^{This article was first published on 5 September 2019 and has been republished to represent its full review status.}

Also consider

Pocket-lint

Sonos Roam

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The Sonos Roam is the second portable, Bluetooth speaker from Sonos. It’s much smaller than the Move and while it isn’t as powerful, it offers some great features like automatic switching between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as well as a feature called Sound Swap.

Sonos Roam review

Pocket-lint

Sonos One

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The Sonos One isn’t portable like the Move, nor does it offer Bluetooth audio capabilities, but it is cheaper, it has built-in Google Assistant and Alexa capabilities, and it offers a good sound for its size. Two Sonos One speakers can also be used in a surround setup with a Sonos Arc, Sonos Beam and Sonos Sub.

Sonos One review

Pocket-lint

Ultimate Ears Megaboom 3

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The Megaboom 3 is quite a bit smaller and cheaper than the Sonos Move and it doesn’t offer the soundscape as a result of this, but it is completely waterproof, it offers decent bass for its size, and it is more portable than the Move. It’s that last point that’s a big sell here.

Ultimate Ears Megaboom 3 review

Pocket-lint

JBL Link Portable

Smaller and more compact than the Move, the Link Portable doesn’t deliver the same sound experience as a result, but there are plenty of features, including Google Assistant, AirPlay 2, Chromecast support and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

JBL Link Portable review

Writing by Britta O’Boyle.

Cambridge Audio’s Evo system: “I can accept ‘lifestyle’, but this is a proper hi-fi product”

(Image credit: Cambridge Audio)

As much as we love it, hi-fi isn’t traditionally synonymous with convenience – those stacks of components and tangles of cables, the rigamarole around turntable assembly, the nuisance caused by being repeatedly bitten by the hi-fi upgrade bug.

Aiming to bring the two closer is a new era of just-add-speakers streaming systems. In recent years, electronics brands have combined music streamers and amplifiers into do-all boxes to make the prospect of ‘hi-fi sound’ less daunting and more domestically attractive, to both the hi-fi and wider community. With such versatile streaming boxes, you could say the microsystem has come of age.

Having established itself in both areas of audio expertise, Cambridge Audio has now entered the market – with its Evo 75 and more aspirational Evo 150. We sat down with the firm’s managing director, Stuart George, to talk about its approach to creating something that straddles hi-fi and lifestyle design; something that by its very nature should be relevant to a bigger audience than its dedicated separates.

Read our Cambridge Audio Evo 75 review

It all started with Edge, Cambridge’s flagship hi-fi series introduced in 2018. “When we launched Edge, one of the biggest requests was ‘why didn’t you put a streaming module in the Edge A amplifier?’ And that was part of the inspiration for the Evo. Before then, our thoughts were that an all-in-one product had to include a CD player. Evo was never intended to be a ‘mini Edge’, but our concept was to try to get all the qualities of Edge into a small form factor.”

George doesn’t claim that Edge’s sonic qualities are matched by Evo. After all, Cambridge’s Edge NQ streaming preamp and Edge W power amp are a £6000-odd combination, while the Evo costs around a third of that – and even less comparable footprint-wise.

Cambridge’s midrange CX series streamer and amplifier, a similarly-priced combination to the Evo, is a fairer comparison – and the benchmark for the Evo. “I’m not going to tell you it sounds as good as a CXN and CX81 together,” says George. “But it sounds pretty comparable; we aren’t talking about night and day differences, we’re talking shades. I can accept the word ‘lifestyle’, but this is a proper hi-fi product.”

(Image credit: Cambridge Audio)

These one-box concepts shouldn’t be expected to perform better than, or even as well as, separate components of similar combined value. After all, there’s only so many electronics you can fit inside a box of this size. They tend to be smaller than traditional full-width chassis so they can be easily housed.

“How these things fit in with people’s lives is very important. And it doesn’t present a problem having that in your living room compared to having multiple Edge boxes,” says George. He admits that the original size Cambridge was aiming for had to expand to fit everything inside. “Getting all that stuff in the 150 was a challenge – the back panel is covered.”

These products have to be more efficient because of this modest real estate and so, like all hi-fi in one aspect or another, they are a compromise.

That’s why Cambridge ventured outside of its own Class XA and Class AB amplification designs, which lie at the core of its dedicated amplifiers. It arrived at Class D amplification and, having realised it was an area it was not experienced in, eventually arrived at Hypex’s NCore solution.

“The objective with Evo was to use a much smaller footprint, so we knew we had to go somewhere with Class D,” George explains. “The technology has been around for a while, of varying quality, but over the last few years, it has reached a level where our engineers were saying we had to use it. And Evo was the perfect way for us to do that, with its small form factor and energy efficiency.

“Hypex is a smart solution, it’s a versatile solution. It’s good at delivering performance and output in a way that it can handle the varying resistance and impedance in different speaker types.”

Our pick of the best hi-fi systems 2021

(Image credit: Cambridge Audio)

Cambridge’s senior electronics engineer, Francesco Bettucci, says that Hypex’s proprietary development of the feedback loop, in particular, is what distinguishes it from other solutions: “This means that they achieved low output impedance, no resonance at high frequencies, like many other Class D amps – this means there are no artefacts in the high-frequency range. It also achieves extremely low distortion, comparable with the best Class AB amps.”

So how does Cambridge take a third-party amplification design and make it a Cambridge-sounding product? “Our element of tuning comes in at the preamp,” says George. “That’s where our engineers have spent an enormous amount of time designing the componentry that goes around the power aspect of the product. How we go about that is a fastidious exercise of sitting down and tweaking different components and listening – endless hours of listening. When designing it on paper, it’s a relatively quick exercise. What takes time is tweaking it. The listening performance is more interesting to us than the measured performance.”

(Image credit: Cambridge Audio)

Of course, arguably as important as the amplification electronics in a multi-faceted product like this is its streaming abilities. Cambridge’s own StreamMagic platform debuted a decade ago in its NP30 streamer and has been at the foundation of more than 10 Cambridge products since.

The StreamMagic module in the Evo is a brand-new fourth-generation variant [internally called ‘Salefish’; Cambridge engineers name each new version after a faster fish than the last], which brings improvements over the previous (Black Marlin) by having a quad-core (compared to a single) processor for better handling higher audio quality and the large display, plus built-in wi-fi (as opposed to relying on a wi-fi dongle).

To its credit, the platform ticks a lot of boxes as far as music service and file compatibility goes. But the streaming world is far from static – new service tiers, codecs and protocols are always just around the corner – so products like this must be ready. Realising the need for future-proofing, manufacturers are increasingly adopting modular designs so that connectivity and streaming hardware can be upgraded down the line if the market demands it.

For Cambridge, the traction of MQA (the technology behind hi-res Tidal Masters) proved problematic in that it required hardware its existing music streamers, such as the CXN, did not have. The new Evo has the internals to support MQA, and though Cambridge has pledged to offer new features to existing users via updates when it can, the Evo isn’t physically modular. If another MQA-like barrier comes along down the line, that could be potentially troublesome.

“Back when we launched the Zandor (iteration of StreamMagic), which predated Black Marlin, what we specified was beyond the requirements at that time,” says George. “As far as we could see, there would be nothing to hold us back from doing what we were doing. What came along and changed things at that time was Chromecast. Google’s requirements were so enormous and not audio-focused, and it made it difficult to meet them in the space we’d allocated to that aspect of the processing, so we outgrew that platform version and had to keep going. We’re beholden to these guys. It’s a tough gig. But at the moment, we don’t foresee any changes that mean this Evo won’t stand the test of time.”

We ask the industry: is there such thing as ‘British hi-fi sound’?

(Image credit: Cambridge Audio)

So, is there scope for a higher-end flagship Edge streaming system, or is such a product relevant at this more modest level? If people are willing to spend huge money on a system, wouldn’t they be more inclined to go down the hi-fi separates route in search of maximum performance?

“I do think there’s room to go further with these designs and one-box solutions,” George says. “But if we’re going to make a more expensive, bigger design – which it would have to be – I can’t see us using Class D. With Edge, it was about taking Class XA on a journey to the extremities at that point in time. It proved what Cambridge Audio is capable of. This one has been about getting as much of the functionality and technology that we command at this moment in time into the smallest form possible while retaining the qualities around performance and sound quality.”

Wherever the streaming system goes for Cambridge Audio and other players, Evo and its finest rivals, such as the Naim Uniti Atom, Arcam SA30 and Linn Majik DSM, are successfully bringing broader relevance to the hi-fi market. Just connect it to a network, add a pair of speakers and you’re ready to go. How convenient is that?

MORE:

Read our Cambridge Audio Evo 75 review

Behind the scenes: The making of: ATC SCM50

The making of: Rega Naiad

If you’re more into hi-fi than music, that’s a problem

Voxx and Sharp in talks to buy struggling Onkyo

(Image credit: Onkyo)

Sharp and Voxx are in talks to take over Onkyo. The struggling Japanese audio brand is reported to be on the verge of financial collapse, so this could be the Osaka-based firm’s last roll of the dice.

“VOXX International Corporation today announced that it has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire the Home Audio/Video business of Onkyo Home Entertainment Corporation, along with Sharp Corporation as its partner,” reads the official investor note on on Voxx’s website.

Voxx owns a number of audio brands, including premium loudspeaker outfit Klipsch. Voxx and Onkyo already have close ties – last August, Onkyo reached an agreement with Voxx International Corp to replace Onkyo USA as its US distributor.

Sharp also already works hand-in-hand with Onkyo, having produced Onkyo-branded products at its Malaysian manufacturing plant since 2017. The same plant also turns out Pioneer AV equipment, which Voxx distributes across North America. So the three firms aren’t exactly strangers.

Founded in 1946, Onkyo has been a household name in the speaker, turntable and stereo amplifier markets for decades. The first indication that all was not rosy came in 2019 when Onkyo tried and failed to sell its audio business to Sound United – owner of Denon and Marantz – for a reported $73m (approx £53m, AU$95m).

Despite Onkyo’s core AV division bringing in over half the company’s revenue in 2020, the firm faces delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange for breaching the market’s rules on negative net worth (via NikkeiAsia).

So, will Voxx and Sharp ride to Onkyo’s rescue? “It is our hope that we can reach an agreement shortly,” says Voxx CEO and president Pat Lavelle.

MORE:

Our pick of the best stereo amplifiers

These are the best surround sound systems money can buy

Short on space? A soundbar is the next best thing

Corsair K70 RGB TKL mechanical keyboard review: great gaming, good typing

Corsair’s K70 RGB TKL is an unashamedly gaming-focused keyboard. For one thing, it’s only available with the kinds of switches people normally recommend for playing games, while other features like low input latency and a dedicated “tournament switch” for esports clearly have gamers in mind.

At a price of $139.99 (£139.99), these features are coming at a premium, and they’re overkill for anyone not planning on competing at the next Dota 2 International. But the K70 RGB TKL is a complete package with lots of quality-of-life features for non-gamers. It attaches to your PC with a detachable USB-C cable (a first for Corsair) and features customizable per-key RGB backlighting, dedicated media keys, and a roller wheel for volume control.

At this price, the result is a great gaming-focused keyboard but only a good general purpose keyboard.

In case the specs didn’t tip you off beforehand, just looking at the Corsair K70 RGB TKL should tell you everything you need to know about its target audience. The bold, squared-off font on its keycaps is peak gamer, and the case itself has a minimalist, angular design. The only branding you get is a small Corsair logo on the keyboard’s forehead, which illuminates along with the rest of the keyboard’s lighting.

Its design might not be for everyone, but construction quality is good here. The K70’s keycaps are made of hard-wearing PBT plastic, and their legends are double-shot, meaning they let each switch’s lighting shine through and will never rub off. Corsair uses a standard keyboard layout, so you shouldn’t have any problems finding replacement keycaps in the right sizes.

As its name implies, the K70 RGB TKL is a tenkeyless board (hence the “TKL” in its name), meaning you don’t get a numpad to the right of the arrow keys. This makes perfect sense on a gaming keyboard, where you’ll typically spend most of your time with your left hand on the WASD keys and your right hand on a mouse. Unless you really need it for data entry, a numpad just gets in the way. Available layouts include US ANSI, UK ISO (which I’m using), and other European layouts, but there are no Mac-specific keys available.

Although it’s not particularly wide, Corsair’s keyboard has a bit of a forehead to house its media keys and volume roller. I generally prefer this simple approach, rather than having to access media controls through a combination of keypresses, even if it adds a little more bulk to the board. Build quality is otherwise solid; the keyboard wouldn’t flex, no matter how much I tried to bend it.

The keyboard’s configuration options are aimed squarely at gamers. There’s no option for tactile Cherry MX Browns or clicky Cherry MX Blue switches here. Instead, your options are classic gamer Cherry MX Reds, competitive gamer Cherry MX Speed Silvers, or, if you’re in Korea, considerate gamer Cherry MX Silent Reds. My review board came equipped with standard Red switches. The switches aren’t hot-swappable, so you’re going to have to use desoldering tools and then a soldering iron if you want to try out any other switch types.

The nice thing about buying from an established company like Corsair is that its companion software for configuring the keyboard’s layout and lighting effects is slick and polished. iCue is available for Mac and Windows and offers a truly dizzying amount of control over the K70 RGB TKL. You can remap the keyboard’s keys however you like and get access to a plethora of additional lighting effects. The controls are granular and get complicated fast, so I ended up ignoring them and just controlled the keyboard’s lighting from the board itself.

You can control its lighting directly from the keyboard itself or via companion software.

As well as handling lighting controls, iCue can also handle key remapping if you want to swap the layout of your keyboard around. It’s not as necessary a feature on a TKL board as on a smaller board with a more limited selection of keys, but it’s a useful inclusion if you want to tinker.

All of these are useful features regardless of what you want to use the Corsair K70 RGB TKL for. But its more unique features are gaming-focused. First up is a “tournament switch” on the top of the board, which disables any custom macros you’ve set up and switches the backlighting to a single less-distracting color. (You can customize which color using iCue.) It’s the kind of feature I could see being helpful if you’re simultaneously big into online gaming and also use a ton of macros. That’s a pretty slim Venn diagram of users, but thankfully, the switch is completely out of the way otherwise.

The other gaming feature here is an advertised polling rate of 8,000Hz, which is eight times higher than the 1,000Hz rate used by most keyboards. In theory, this means the keyboard’s input lag or the time between you pressing a key and the signal being transmitted to your PC, is as minimal as possible, presumably making all the difference in a high-speed gaming situation. Corsair tells me this brings down median latency to under a quarter of a millisecond, compared to 2 milliseconds and up with a 1,000Hz keyboard. You enable the 8,000Hz polling rate from within Corsair’s software. It’ll warn you that the higher polling rate uses more system resources, but I didn’t notice any impact on performance on my Ryzen 5 3600-equipped gaming PC, and Corsair tells me this should be the same for anyone using a gaming machine built in the last three years.

We’ve seen a similar trend with gaming mice, and Linus Tech Tips did a great analysis of what that actually means for performance. But the real-world difference it makes is minor, and I struggled to feel any difference in responsiveness when switching between playing Overwatch on the Corsair K70 RGB TKL and a regular 1,000Hz Filco office keyboard when playing on a 100Hz monitor. I have no reason to doubt Corsair’s low latency claims, but I think it’s the kind of improvement that only a small number of players will actually be able to notice.

The Corsair K70 RGB TKL is being sold by a gaming-oriented brand as a gaming-oriented keyboard with gaming-oriented switches, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it doesn’t offer the best typing experience. The typing feel just doesn’t match the crispness of a board like the similarly priced Filco Majestouch 2. Instead, bottoming out each keypress feels slightly dulled or softened, and since this keyboard is only available with linear switches, you’re all but guaranteed to bottom out each keypress while you’re typing.

I’ll give credit to Corsair for the K70’s spacebar stabilizer (the mechanism installed under the larger keycap to stop it from wobbling). While this can sometimes sound rattly on other keyboards, there’s no such problem here. But if you listen to the typing sample above, you’ll hear that other stabilized keys like Backspace and Enter have more rattle. Ultimately, the overall typing experience on the K70 RGB TKL is only good, never great.

No numpads here.

At this point, Corsair knows what it’s doing when it comes to mechanical keyboards for gaming. The K70 RGB TKL comes equipped with all of the quality-of-life features that are expected out of a mainstream keyboard at this point: nice durable keycaps, media keys and volume dial, and a detachable USB-C cable. Some of its more gaming-focused features are borderline overkill, but they don’t get in the way.

At its core, though, the K70 RGB TKL is a keyboard designed for gamers, and there are better keyboards out there if you’re only an occasional gamer. You can get a better range of switches elsewhere, as well as a more satisfying typing experience overall. That makes the Corsair K70 RGB TKL a great option for a gaming keyboard, but only a good keyboard overall.

Photography by Jon Porter / The Verge

Google prematurely announces ‘Pixel Buds A-Series’ with now-deleted tweet

Google seems to be getting a little ahead of itself. This afternoon, as noticed by 9to5Google and others, the official Android account on Twitter tweeted a photo of the “Pixel Buds A-Series” and said the earbuds “have arrived.” Except… they definitely haven’t. Google has yet to properly announce the Pixel Buds A-Series, which are expected to be sold at a lower price than the standard $179 model.

The tweet, which also mentioned the “quality sound and quick Bluetooth pairing” of Google’s latest buds, has since been deleted. Google has a history of, well, just tweeting out future products, but this does seem to have been an error.

Google I/O 2021 is scheduled to start in two weeks on May 18th. But based on the mistaken scheduled tweet, it looks like the Pixel Buds A-Series are very much ready to go. Maybe they’ll end up being introduced before the developer conference gets underway.

The earbuds have already appeared in a marketing email to customers. They look largely identical to the 2020 Pixel Buds, so we’ll have to see where the company has possibly cut corners to bring the cost down.

Pixel Buds A-Series. Pixel Buds A-Series. It really just rolls right off the tongue, huh?

Chia Coin’s Initially High Prices Could Cause a Storage Shortage

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

After about a month of preparation, following the initial mainnet launch, cryptocurrency Chia coin (XCH) has officially started trading — which means it’s possibly preparing to suck up all of the best SSDs like Ethereum (see how to mine Ethereum) has been gobbling up the best graphics cards. Early Chia calculators suggested an estimated starting price of $20 per XCH. That was way off, but with the initial fervor and hype subsiding, we’re ready to look at where things stand and where they might stabilize.

To recap, Chia is a novel approach to cryptocurrencies, ditching the Proof of Work hashing used by most coins (i.e., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and others) and instead opting for a new Proof of Time and Space algorithm. Using storage capacity helps reduce the potential power footprint, obviously at the cost of storage. And let’s be clear: The amount of storage space (aka netspace) already used by the Chia network is astonishing. It passed 1 EiB (Exbibyte, or 2^60 bytes) of storage on April 28, and just a few days later it’s approaching the 2 EiB mark. Where will it stop? That’s the $21 billion dollar question.

All of that space goes to storing plots of Chia, which are basically massive 101.4GiB Bingo cards. Each online plot has an equal chance, based on the total netspace, of ‘winning’ the block solution. This occurs at a rate of approximately 32 blocks per 10 minutes, with 2 XCH as the reward per block. Right now, assuming every Chia plot was stored on a 10TB HDD (which obviously isn’t accurate, but roll with it for a moment), that would require about 200,000 HDDs worth of Chia farms.

Assuming 5W per HDD, since they’re just sitting idle for the most part, that’s potentially 1 MW of power use. That might sound like a lot, and it is — about 8.8 GWh per year — but it pales in comparison to the amount of power going into Bitcoin and Ethereum. Ethereum, as an example, currently uses an estimated 41.3 TWh per year of power because it relies primarily on the best mining GPUs, while Bitcoin uses 109.7 TWh per year. That’s around 4,700 and 12,500 times more power than Chia at present, respectively. Of course, Ethereum and Bitcoin are also far more valuable than Chia at current exchange rates, and Chia has a long way to go to prove itself a viable cryptocoin.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Back to the launch, though. Only a few cryptocurrency exchanges have picked up XCH trading so far, and none of them are what we would call major exchanges. Considering how many things have gone wrong in the past (like the Turkish exchange where the founder appears to have walked off with $2 billion in Bitcoins), discretion is definitely the best approach. Initially, according to Coinmarketcap, Gate.io accounted for around 65% of transactions, MXC.com was around 34.5%, and Bibox made up the remaining 0.5%. Since then, MSC and Gate.io swapped places, with MXC now sitting at 64% of all transactions.

By way of reference, Gate.io only accounts for around 0.21% of all Bitcoin transactions, and MXC doesn’t even show up on Coinmarketcap’s list of the top 500 BTC exchange pairs. So, we’re talking about small-time trading right now, on riskier platforms, with a total trading volume of around $27 million in the first day. That might sound like a lot, but it’s only a fraction of Bitcoin’s $60 billion or so in daily trade volume.

Chia started at an initial trading price of nearly $1,600 per XCH, peaked in early trading to peak at around $1,800, and has been on a steady downward slope since then. At present, the price seems to mostly have flattened out (at least temporarily) at around $700. It could certainly end up going a lot lower, however, so we wouldn’t recommend betting the farm on Chia, but even at $100 per XCH a lot of miners/crypto-farmers are likely to jump on the bandwagon.

As with many cryptocoins, Chia is searching for equilibrium right now. 10TB of storage dedicated to Chia plots would be enough for a farm of 100 plots and should in theory account for 0.0005% of the netspace. That would mean about 0.046 XCH per day of potential farming, except you’re flying solo (proper Chia pools don’t exist yet), so it would take on average 43 days to farm a block — and that’s assuming netspace doesn’t continue to increase, which it will. But if you could bring in a steady stream of 0.04 XCH per day, even if we lowball things with a value of $100, that’s $4-$5 per day, from a 10TB HDD that only costs about $250. Scale that up to ten drives and you’d be looking at $45 per day, albeit with returns trending downward over time.

GPU miners have paid a lot more than that for similar returns, and the power and complexity of running lots of GPUs (or ASICs) ends up being far higher than running a Chia farm. In fact, the recommended approach to Chia farming is to get the plots set up using a high-end PC, and then connect all the storage to a Raspberry Pi afterwards for low-power farming. You could run around 50 10TB HDDs for the same amount of power as a single RTX 3080 mining Ethereum.

Seed size not to scale. ☺ (Image credit: Shutterstock)

It’s important to note that it takes a decent amount of time to get a Chia farm up and running. If you have a server with a 64-core EPYC processor, 256GB of RAM, and at least 16TB of fast SSD storage, you could potentially create up to 64 plots at a time, at a rate of around six (give or take) hours per group of plots. That’s enough to create 256 plots per day, filling over 2.5 10TB HDDs with data. For a more typical PC, with an 8-core CPU (e.g, Ryzen 7 5800X or Core i9-11900K), 32GB of RAM, and an enterprise SSD with at least 2.4TB of storage, doing eight concurrent plots should be feasible. The higher clocks on consumer CPUs probably mean you could do a group of plots in four hours, which means 48 plots per day occupying about half of a 10TB HDD. That’s still a relatively fast ramp to a bunch of drives running a Chia farm, though.

In either case, the potential returns even with a price of $100 per XCH amount to hundreds of dollars per month. Obviously, that’s way too high of a return rate, so things will continue to change. Keep in mind that where a GPU can cost $15-$20 in power per month (depending on the price of electricity), a hard drive running 24/7 will only cost $0.35. So what’s a reasonable rate of return for filling up a hard drive or SSD and letting it sit, farming Chia? If we target $20 per month for a $250 10TB HDD, then either Chia’s netspace needs to balloon to around 60EiB, or the price needs to drop to around $16 per XCH — or more likely some combination of more netspace and lower prices.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if prices on storage shoots up. It was already starting to happen, but like the GPU and other component shortages, it might be set to get a lot worse.

The Royal Navy is testing using jet suits to fight high-seas piracy

The British Royal Navy has apparently been testing using jet suits to board ships like a scene out of some scrapped Christopher Nolan film, according to a new video released by UK-based Gravity Industries. Business Insider writes that the tests were conducted over three days on the HMS Tamar, a Royal Navy Batch 2 River-class offshore patrol ship.

Royal Marines used Gravity Industries’ Jet Suit to conduct a “visit, board, search, and seizure” operation or VBSS. Basically a marine launched from a fast boat tailing the HMS Tamar, flew through the air like a slightly askew Iron Man, and landed on the larger ship, dropping a rope below so their fast boat buddies could climb up and “visit” the simulated enemy vessel.

The whole thing is very cool, to the point of almost seeming like a wire-assisted fake, and likely as much an ad for the Royal Navy and Gravity Industries as it is an actual test of the Gravity Jet Suit’s utility in a naval exercise.

If the suit or its creators sound familiar, it’s because the company has been demonstrating its Iron Man tech for a while now, though in the past, Gravity Industries CEO Richard Browning has been in the pilot seat (or suit, in this case). This also isn’t the first time the Royal Navy has helped demo the tech. In 2019, Browning flew an earlier version of the Jet Suit through the Royal Navy’s assault course. Gravity Industries has also collaborated with the Dutch Maritime Special Operations Force (SOF) to put the suit through its paces.

The suit seems to have been streamlined since these earlier demonstrations, featuring smaller arm rockets and a sleeker backpack jet more fitting for whatever sci-fi movie vibe Gravity Industries seems to be cultivating. What is sort of disappointing is mostly finding military applications of this technology when there are clearly plenty of other uses. Luckily, Gravity Industries has us covered there, too: the company has tested using the Jet Suit with the Great North Air Ambulance, a UK charity that rescues people from mountain ranges and a variety of other emergency scenarios in Northern England.

Active vs passive speakers: what’s the difference? Which is better?

In their simplest form, traditional stereo hi-fi systems consist of a source component, an integrated amplifier and a pair of passive speakers. Pretty straightforward, right?

But if you break down the signal path it can be split into a greater number of distinct sections, most of which are lumped together in this simple set-up.

What are passive speakers?

Here, the crossover network doesn’t need a power source, so it is considered passive

First, there’s a source component, which is the piece of kit that plays the music. This can be a CD player, music streamer, record player or even a computer or phone. Next we have a preamplifier section, this switches between sources and controls the volume level.

If you have a record player, you’ll also need a phono stage to increase the output from your cartridge to line level and equalise the signal before feeding it to the preamp circuit (we’ve omitted the phono stage from our diagram to keep things simple).

Now you need muscle, something that can take the line-level signal from the preamp and increase it enough to drive a pair of speakers – say hello to the power amplifier. However, this isn’t directly connected to your speaker’s drive units.

Its output has to pass through a crossover filter network that in a two-way speaker splits the signal into just high frequencies (to go to the tweeter) and everything else for the larger mid/bass unit.

If you have a three-way speaker, then the crossover splits the sound up into three parts – treble, midrange and bass. This crossover network doesn’t need a power source to work, and in that sense it is considered passive. That’s more or less the signal path in a conventional passive set-up.

Best speakers 2021: budget to premium stereo speakers

What are active speakers?

A more accurate filter network delivers a better integrated sound

In an active system things are the same until after the preamp stage. The signal from the preamp goes into an active crossover network. While this performs the same job as the crossover in the passive set-up it works at line level (around 2v) rather than speaker level (typically 15-35v).

Working at lower signal levels means the components used can be optimised for precision rather than power handling. Such a design would normally use active components, and on more sophisticated products, some form of signal processing (whether digital or not) to get the best out of the drive units.

The result is a filter network that is (potentially) way more accurate in its operation, and delivers a better integrated and optimised sound.

Each separated frequency band of this line-level signal is then sent to a dedicated power amp that feeds as many drive units as are responsible for delivering those frequencies.

Best active speakers 2021

Active vs passive speakers: which is better?

The active crossover design is less prone to distortion

On paper, active speakers have a whole host of advantages. Their crossover design gives the designer much greater control over the signal and is far less prone to losses and distortion when compared to a passive filter alternative.

As the power amplification is integrated into the design, it can be optimised for a specific drive unit. Because it’s normally built into the box, there’s no need for long lengths of speaker cable between the two, avoiding any distortion or loss caused by the wires. Simply put, there’s more grip and better control.

These benefits would seem to give active speakers a generous edge, but there are also downsides. There aren’t many speaker manufacturers that can make amplification, so the usual path is to buy in modules from an OEM supplier. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but things often fall short when it comes to implementation. The result is that the sound performance of the final active speaker is rarely as good as it could be.

Active speakers suffer in terms of perceived value on the shop floor too. Their electronics tend to be hidden, yet there will be an obvious price premium over similar-looking passive alternatives. Break down the respective costs and it usually turns out that the active option is the better value route, as it consists of multiple power amplifiers – a simple two-way speaker still needs four mono power amps – whereas a passive set makes do with a single stereo amp to work its four drive units.

Active designs also limit the amount of upgrading possible. You can’t just change the power amps, for example, the whole lot has to go. That leaves less scope for enthusiasts to mix and match. You either accept the power amplifier/speaker combination as a whole or you don’t.

And what about ‘powered’ speakers?

The ATC SCM40s are both powered and active speakers

Whereas all active speakers are considered powered, not all powered speakers should be called active.

The difference is that a powered speaker has the same signal path as a passive set-up, but the amplification (often both pre and power amp) is hidden in one of the speaker enclosures. There will also be a speaker cable link between the master speaker (that has the amplification) and the slave (passive) partner.

Most affordable powered models tend to use such a configuration. Such an approach has some of the neatness of truly active operation but few of the technical benefits.

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How about active speakers with streaming?

While active speakers have clear performance benefits, their conciseness also means they are attractive to users looking for a more discreet and compact way to listen to music.

Increasingly we are seeing active speakers that aim to pack in even more functionality into their cabinets – not just amplification but also streaming modules and physical connections – creating a complete ‘all-in-one’ system that minimises the need for extra boxes or cabling. With features like preamp capabilities, digital and analogue inputs, Bluetooth and wi-fi streaming compatibility combined directly into active speakers (or a small accompanying box that then communicates with them), they offer a neat, compact, minimal fuss alternative to a system of separates. The cost can work out more favourably than buying everything separately, too (although you shouldn’t necessarily expect the same performance from them as you would a similarly priced collection of class-leading separates).

Some active speakers with streaming like the KEF LSX, KEF LS50 II and B&W Formation Duo are fine examples of such all-in-one stereo speaker systems, whereas others like the Dali Rubicon 2 C or the new Beolab 28 come with replaceable connectivity modules (or ‘hubs’) that handle the source side of things, meaning they can be easily upgraded. After all, unlike speaker technology, streaming technology is anything but timeless.

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DJI Mavic Air 2 vs Mavic Air: What’s the difference?

(Pocket-lint) – It seems an age since DJI first introduced the Mavic Air to the world. Since launching it released the Mavic Air and the Air 2S, ‘Mavic’ moniker is no more. The aim has always been the same: to bring powerful capabilities to users in a smaller, more affordable drone than its more premium Mavic series.

The Mavic Air 2 is the follow up to the awesome, portable Air and saught to bring even more performance to a compact device at an affordable price point. So, what’s the difference between this and the first Air?

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Design

Mavic Air – 168 x 83 x 49 mm (folded)
Mavic Air 2 – 180 x 97 x 84 mm (folded)
Mavic Air – 430 grams
Mavic Air 2 – 570 grams
Both foldable
Mavic Air available in multiple colours, Air 2 is grey

There seems to have been a bit of an ethos change with the Mavic Air 2. While the first was about a small, fun drone available in bright colours, the second is seemingly about offering a serious, performance consumer drone that’s as good as some of the bigger models (if not better in some instances).

To that end, the new model is currently only being shown in a similar grey colour to the rest of the current Mavic lineup, where the first came in red, black and white.

That’s not the only design change though. The small, almost bulbous shape has been replaced with a more angular shark-like appearance, to match the Mavic 2 and Mavic Mini. It’s also noticeably bigger and heavier than the original Mavic Air.

That’s not to say it’s big and heavy. At 570 grams, it’s still really easy to fold up and carry around in a backpack. It’s only 140 grams heavier than the first Mavic Air, but that extra weight and little extra bulk is primarily from the larger battery.

Camera

Mavic Air – 12MP 1/2.3″ CMOS sensor
Mavic Air 2 – 48MP 1/2″ CMOS sensor
Air – 4K at 30fps, 1080p up to 120fps
Air 2 – 4K at 60fps, 1080p up to 240fps
Three axis gimbal on both
New SmartPhoto mode on Air 2

Another of the big differences between the Air and the Air 2 is in the camera department. The second generation’s sensor is bigger, and packs more pixels. It’s 48-megapixels over 12-megapixels. You can choose to use all 48 million pixels if you want to, but by default, DJI uses a similar pixel binding technology to most modern smartphones which converts 4 pixels into one larger picel, creating a 12-megapixel image.

There’s a difference in video recording capabilities too. The Mavic Air 2 can record 4K video at 60 frames per second, where the first Mavic Air captures a maximum 30 frames per second at that resolution.

Its slow motion capture is better too. Both can record slow-mo at 1080p resolution, but the Mavic Air can only shoot 120fps, where the Mavic Air 2 can go up to 240 frames per second mode.

As far as smoothness goes, both drones have a three axis gimbal for stabilising footage while it’s being captured.

DJI also introduced a new SmartPhoto alogorithm with the Mavic Air 2. It has three automatic modes: one for better low light capture, one for advanced HDR and another for automatic scene detection and adjustment.

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Obstacle avoidance

Both drones – Front and back sensors
Air 2 – APAS 3.0

If there’s one area these smaller drones don’t quite match up to the pro models, it’s in obstacle avoidance, but by the sound of things the Air 2 will still be very capable.

Both the first gen and second generation Mavic Air have front and rear sensors, which help ensure the drone won’t fly into anything in front or behind the machine. They also have sensors on the underside.

While the Air has pattern recognition for finding where it took off from, the Air 2 has depth sensors and can more accurately detect how far it is from the ground. It also has more advanced obstacle avoidance in flight.

The Mavic Air 2 has the APAS 3.0 system, which means that as you’re flying the drone forwards through potential obstacles, it can adjust its path to fly around them instead of just stopping dead. It’s particularly useful if you’re flying low over rocks, or perhaps through trees low to the ground.

Battery, speed and performance

Mavic Air – 2,375mAh battery
Mavic Air 2 – 3,500mAh battery
Mavic Air – up to 21 minutes flight time
Mavic Air 2 – up to 34 minutes flight time
Max speed on both – 68.4kph (42.5mph)

When it comes to outright performance, there’s one significant difference between the old and new Mavic Air: battery. The first generation Mavic Air has a 2,375mAh battery, where the Mavic Air 2 has a much more capacious 3,500mAh battery. And that results in far superior flight time.

It’s so superior in fact, that the Mavic Air 2 is DJI’s best performing consumer drone when it comes to flight time. The manufacturer claims it can go up to 34 minutes of flight time on a full charge, improving drastically on the paltry 21 minutes on offer from the first Mavic Air.

Both can flight up to 42.5mph in ‘Sport’ mode, and both are controlled using a physical control pad with built in antenna, removable joysticks and a grip for a smartphone. Saying that, the size and shape of the control pad is massively different. It’s no longer a small palm-sized controller. It’s much larger, with a sturdier phone grip built into the top edge.

Price

Both $799 at launch for the basic kit

Despite the increased performance and higher spec camera, the new Mavic Air 2 launched at a similar price to the first one, and is still considerably cheaper than the ‘Pro’ and ‘Zoom’ versions of the Mavic 2.

However, now – of course – we have the Air 2S which might just be the best consumer drone DJI has ever launched. So be sure to check that out before deciding on either of these two.

Writing by Cam Bunton.

Samsung HW-Q800A soundbar review: Sonically powerful all-rounder

(Pocket-lint) – The Samsung HW-Q800A soundbar replaces the previous HW-Q800T, but offers an almost identical set of features. That includes a 3.1.2-channel speaker layout, a powerful subwoofer, Dolby Atmos and DTS:X object-based decoding, eARC, and built-in Amazon Alexa for voice control.

New this generation is the inclusion of Apple AirPlay 2, and optional wireless rear speakers with upward-firing drivers, allowing expansion to a 5.1.4-channel system. Owners of supporting Samsung TVs not only benefit from Q Symphony integration – which can use the TV’s speakers in addition to the soundbar for added immersion and height – but also SpaceFit Sound for optimised setup that automatically tunes sound profiles wherever your TV is setup in the room.

Are these small additional benefits reason enough to buy the HW-Q800A or would it make more sense to look at the HW-Q800T instead to save a few quid?

Design & Setup

Ports: 1x HDMI input; 1x HDMI (eARC) output; 1x optical input
Controls: included remote; SmartThings app; four-button top-of-‘bar panel
Connectivity: Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; AirPlay 2; Alexa voice control integrated
Dimensions (soundbar): 980mm (W) x 60mm (H) x 115mm (D); 3.6kg
Dimensions (sub): 205mm (W) x 403mm (H) x 403mm (D); 9.8kg

The Samsung HW-Q800A uses exactly the same cabinet as the earlier Q800T, retaining a sleek form-factor designed to fit under your TV without blocking the screen. It’s a sensible width, but can still handle larger screen sizes up to 65 inches. The overall look is stylish, with solid construction and a matte black finish.

There’s a metal wrap-around grille, behind which you’ll find three speakers at the front, and the Acoustic Beam holes along the top front edge – these are used to output sound so it appears to come from where the action is happening on screen, made possible by clever processing.

There’s a display located at the front right, which provides basic information, and a choice of stand- or wall-mounting, with brackets provided for the latter included in the box.

The included wireless active subwoofer uses a rear-ported enclosure and a side-firing 8-inch driver that Samsung claims can go down to 35Hz. It’s well made, with similar styling and a matte black finish. The sub should pair automatically with the soundbar, but if not there are buttons on both units for manual setup.

Pocket-lint

The Samsung HW-Q800A sports an HDMI input and an HDMI output that supports eARC, allowing lossless audio to be sent back from a compatible TV. The HDMI connections also pass resolutions up to 4K/60p and every version of high dynamic range (HDR10, HLG, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision).

What is HDMI eARC? Why is it different to HDMI ARC?

The only other physical connection is an optical digital input, but there’s also Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and the newly added AirPlay 2, allowing for agnostic music streaming from your network or third-party services. Bluetooth is paired using the dedicated button on the remote, while the Wi-Fi setup uses the Samsung SmartThings app via your phone/tablet.

There are basic controls centrally located on the top of the soundbar for on/off, source select, volume up/down, and far-field mic on/off. The included remote is the same zapper from previous years, but remains well-designed, comfortable to hold, and easy to use, with all the necessary buttons laid out in a sensible fashion.

Pocket-lint

The SmartThings app isn’t just for setup, but also offers a degree of control. The slick and intuitive interface allows for changing inputs, adjusting the volume, choosing between sound modes, optimising the equaliser (EQ) and woofer, and selecting the advanced settings (voice enhancement, bass enhancement, and night mode).

Setup is straightforward, but a degree of tweaking is required when it comes to getting the centre and front height channels adjusted so the overall soundstage is balanced. The HW-Q800A doesn’t generate its own test tones, meaning you’ll need to find those yourself, and the levels work on the left and right channels simultaneously, which can be an issue in asymmetric rooms.

It would be better if you could set the left and right front heights independently, along with the surrounds and rear heights if you add the wireless rear speakers, and it would also be useful if you could set them using the SmartThings app rather than the remote and front display.

Pocket-lint

The sub is a powerful beast so you’ll need to dial the woofer setting back to ensure it doesn’t swamp the mid-range. As the driver fires sideways, avoid putting it in the right-hand corner of a room, or it’ll get boomy. Positioning towards the front, halfway between the ‘bar and wall works best, with this boom box generating more than enough low-end juice to handle sizeable rooms.

A built-in automated setup feature would be welcome at this price point, but if you own a compatible Samsung TV you can at least benefit from SoundFit. This uses the TV’s microphone and processor to analyse the sound reverberations in the room and adjust them accordingly to optimise the overall sonic performance of the soundbar.

The inclusion of Amazon Alexa makes this soundbar a fully-functioning smart assistant, allowing users to ask questions, listen to music or podcasts, and enjoy hands-free voice control. There’s a far-field microphone built into the soundbar itself, which can be muted for privacy, and thankfully Alexa interacts at a sensible volume (unlike in the Polk React, for example, where she’s very shouty).

Sound Quality

Soundbar: 3x wide-range tweeters, 2x mid-range drivers / Sub: 1x 8-inch woofer
Samsung-specific features: Q Symphony and Active Voice Amplifier
Expansion: Optional wireless rear speakers
Amplification: 330W of Class D
Hi-Res Audio: Up to 24-bit/192kHz
Decoding: Dolby Atmos and DTS:X
Sound Modes: Standard, Surround, Game Pro, Adaptive Sound, Night

The Samsung HW-Q800A decodes the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X object-based audio formats, and delivers both with an actual 3.1.2-channel speaker layout. This means it doesn’t need to rely on psychoacoustic trickery to create a sense of immersion, and if you take the time to setup the system properly, the results are often spectacular.

Samsung

The effectiveness of the Acoustic Beam tech, which literally fires sound waves upwards to create the illusion of overhead channels, will depend on your type of ceiling – but the more reflective it is, the better the effect. Watching a dynamic object-based mix like the 4K disc of Midway reveals an expansive front soundstage, with precise placement of effects and plenty up top.

The subwoofer handles the low frequency effects with great skill, producing a foundation of bass on which the rest of the system is built. If you like plenty of subsonic impact in your movies, you’ll enjoy this particular woofer, which enthusiastically digs deep. It’s also well integrated with the ‘bar, smoothly crossing over with the mid-range drivers, and creating a cohesive overall soundstage.

The performance is energetic, with clear dialogue and a pleasing width to the delivery. The only limitation is that the soundstage is very front-heavy, due to the lack of actual surround speakers. However this can be addressed by buying the optional SWA-9500S wireless rear speakers that now include upward-firing drivers, allowing expansion to a full 5.1.4-channel configuration.

Samsung’s Q Symphony feature integrates the soundbar with compatible Samsung TVs, synchronising sound from both devices and utilising the additional speakers in the TV to create a more expansive and immersive front soundstage.

There’s also the Active Voice Amplifier which detects ambient noise, analyses the audio signal, and adjusts and amplifies the dialogue with respect to the other channels to improve intelligibility. So if you’re trying to watch TV while someone else is hoovering, for example, this could come in handy.

Best Bluetooth speakers 2021: Top portable speakers to buy today

By Dan Grabham
·
25 March 2021

Our guide to the best Bluetooth wireless speakers available to buy today, including B&O, Denon, JBL, Marshall, Sonos and Ultimate Ears

There are five dedicated sound modes, with the default Standard making no changes to the incoming signal. The Surround mode up-mixes the audio to take advantage of the additional channels, while the Game Pro enhances effects to create a more immersive gaming experience. For general TV viewing the Adaptive Sound is a great choice, analysing the incoming signal and automatically optimising it. Finally, Night mode compresses the dynamic range, so you won’t disturb the rest of the household during a late-night bingeing session.

Samsung

There’s a pleasing musicality to this system’s delivery, with the width producing some excellent stereo imaging, and the sub giving drums a driving beat. You can stream from a number of services too, including Amazon Music, Spotify, Deezer, TuneIn and Samsung Music, plus Apple Music via AirPlay.

Verdict

The Samsung HW-Q800A is well-specified ‘bar-and-sub combo that has all the object-based decoding bells and whistles. It renders Dolby Atmos and DTS:X using sound waves rather than psychoacoustic trickery, resulting in a genuinely immersive experience, while the powerful woofer produces plenty of low-end slam.

There’s a pleasing musicality to the delivery, dialogue remains clear, and effects are placed with precision, creating an enjoyable if front-heavy soundstage. Thankfully this can be addressed by picking up the optional wireless rear speakers, which turn the soundbar into a full 5.1.4-channel system.

There’s a host of other features – including HDMI eARC, AirPlay 2 and integrated Amazon Alexa – meaning, as a result, the Samsung HW-Q800A is a comprehensive and capable all-rounder that’s sure to please no matter what your viewing or listening habits.

Also consider

Samsung

Samsung HW-Q800T

It’s more or less the same soundbar, with the same sound quality. Buy if you want to save a few quid and don’t care about AirPlay 2. Don’t buy if you want future expandability – as it’s the Q800A’s optional speaker add-ons that help to set it apart from this older model.

Read our full review

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Sonos

Sonos Arc

This highly-accomplished soundbar is worth considering not only because it brings the Sonos ecosystem to the party, but because it has Dolby Atmos, eARC, and AirPlay 2 as well. Like the Samsung there’s integrated Alexa, plus Google Assistant for completists. It’s not cheap, doesn’t support DTS:X, and has no HDMI inputs or a separate subwoofer, but if you’re already invested in Sonos this compelling ‘bar can elevate your sonic experience.

Read our full review

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JBL

JBL BAR 9.1

This awesome 5.1.4-channel ‘bar-and-sub combo includes detachable and rechargeable rear speakers, resulting in a genuinely immersive Dolby Atmos and DTS:X experience with the minimum of fuss. There’s an automated audio calibration feature, eARC support, Chromecast, AirPlay 2 and Dolby Vision passthrough. There’s no dedicated remote app, nor can it pass HDR10+, but in most other respects this impressive soundbar system is hard to fault.

Read our full review

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Writing by Steve Withers. Editing by Mike Lowe.

Ducky Mecha SF Radiant Keyboard Review: Custom and Mainstream Collide

Our Verdict

A production keyboard that feels like a custom build, the Ducky Mecha SF Radiant offers an excellent experience for both typing and gaming. It features sterling build quality and a gorgeous aesthetic you won’t find anywhere else, but the lack of software and hot-swappable switches are disappointing.

For

+ Unique aesthetic
+ Sturdy aluminum case
+ High-quality PBT keycaps
+ Compact design for portability and desk space

Against

– Lack of software can be limiting
– No hot-swappable key switches

With its beautifully iridescent aluminum case, custom-themed PBT keycaps and excellent typing experience, the Ducky Mecha SF Radiant combines the worlds of custom and production keyboards in a unique marriage of style and substance. At $159, it’s on the expensive side but is one of the top compact keyboards available today, competing nicely with the best gaming keyboards and offering a strong productivity experience. Assuming, that is, that you jive with the two available color ways and lack of software.

Ducky has been popular among enthusiasts for a number of years, but it wasn’t until the launch of the One 2 Mini back in 2018 that it really made it to the mainstream. Since then, it’s released a number of revisions and collaborations with major gaming brands like Razer and HyperX, but the 60% form factor can be difficult to adjust to with its lack of arrows, function keys and navigation buttons.

The One 2 SF, released in 2019, answered these challenges, adding back the arrow keys and a miniaturized nav-cluster, but was quickly overshadowed by the Mecha Mini, Ducky’s widely acclaimed aluminum-chassis take on the One 2 Mini. I was lucky enough to review each of those boards, but the Mecha Mini reigned supreme with its heavy aluminum build that made typing feel so much more satisfying.

The wait for an SF version is finally over with the Mecha SF Radiant. This new keyboard one-ups the Mini version with a brand new finish and themed keycap set for a package that is unlike anything else in the mainstream market today. It isn’t without its limitations compared to the competition, but may just be the best compact keyboard Ducky has produced yet. You’ll have to move fast if you want one for yourself, though, as only 2021 will be made of this limited edition item.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Ducky Mecha SF Radiant Specs

Switches	Cherry MX Red, Cherry MX Brown, Cherry MX Blue, Cherry MX Black, Cherry MX Silver, Cherry MX Silent Red
Lighting	Per-key RGB
Onboard Storage	6 profiles
Media Keys	With Fn
Connectivity	USB Type-A
Cable	5 feet, (1.5m) rubberized
Additional Ports	None
Keycaps	Doubleshot PBT plastic
Software	None
Dimensions (LxWxH)	12.8 x 4.1 x 1.6 inches (325 x 105 x 40mm)
Weight	1.9 pounds (874g)

Design of Ducky Mecha SF Radiant

The Ducky Mecha SF Radiant is a compact keyboard that aims to achieve the size benefits of a 60% keyboard while adding functionality closer to a tenkeyless. In fact, the “SF” in the name stands for “sixty-five” alluding to its 65% layout. This is a bit of a misnomer in actual size but signifies the overall design.

The Mecha SF Radiant follows the Mini by doing away with the numpad and function row, but instead of removing the nav cluster entirely, it shrinks it to a column of three keys on the right side of the board. The buttons to the right of the spacebar and the right shift have also been shrunk to make room for dedicated arrow keys, which is a boon to gamers.

The result is a keyboard that is only slightly wider than a 60% but feels much more usable. It measures 12.8 x 4.1 x 1.6 inches and looks downright small on a full-size desk. The design is ergonomically sound and allows your hands to be spaced at a much natural distance versus spread out with a full-size keyboard. It’s also helpful in first-person shooters where big mouse movements can leave you craving more space. For my part, I most enjoy the clean, minimalist aesthetic of a compact keyboard on my desk.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The layout here is slightly different than many 65% keyboards, however. Rather than featuring four buttons on the right side like the much more traditional Drop ALT, Ducky only includes three and replaces last with an embossed case badge below the bottom key. The amount of keys follows the Ducky One 2 SF, but the addition of a case badge is a direct nod to the custom keyboard community where they have become a staple. The included keys are Delete, Page Up, and Page Down. Like most other keys on the keyboard, Page Up and Page Down also carry secondary functions, in this case Home and End.

Through clever use of function commands, the Mecha SF Radiant manages to pack most of the functionality of a tenkeyless keyboard into its tiny frame. By holding the Fn button, you can access a second layer that provides access to most of the absent keys. With Fn held, the number row will send function commands. Likewise, Print Screen, Insert, and Scroll Lock all have their own dedicated combo buttons, in addition to volume control and even buttons to control the mouse pointer. Holding Fn+Alt opens up the third layer to choose lighting presets, set custom color schemes, and program macros. It’s an impressive array that adds more software-free customization than even programmable gaming keyboards from Razer and Logitech can provide, but since there are no side legends on the keycaps, it may take a while to memorize every keymap.

All of this was true of the original One 2 SF, so what really sets Mecha apart is its metal case and PBT keycaps. The case is solid aluminum and lends the keyboard weight and density which both enhance the typing experience. It’s not the heaviest keyboard I’ve used, even compared to some sixty-percents I’ve tried, but at 1.9 pounds, it’s heavier than it looks. The most striking aspect of it is the iridescent finish which shifts from teal to blue to purple depending on the angle. Ducky has dubbed this version “Ocean” but the Radiant is also available in a green “Emerald” colorway.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The shifting, transforming quality of the keyboard is striking but a bit of a double-edged sword. The keycaps have been carefully curated with three shades of blue and white, but they don’t always match the case perfectly depending on the angle you’re viewing it from. From a normal seated or standing position, it looks great. Viewed from another angle where it appears purple, it can look mismatched against the blue.

The keycaps themselves are excellent. Ducky used its usual PBT plastic, which is more durable and resistant to shine than ABS plastic. The legends are double-shot, which means they’re made of a second piece of plastic that’s bonded to the outer shell, preventing fading or chipping over time.

The walls of the caps are also delightfully thick which lends typing a solidity that’s often lacking from the thin-walled keycaps we see on most gaming keyboards. The legends aren’t shine-through, so the RGB backlight is relegated to an underglow effect that’s more for style than helping you type in the dark. As usual, Ducky includes a selection of alternate keycaps, this time all white. I was surprised to find that the alternate arrow keys actually are backlit, if only slightly. The shape of the arrow has been carved out of the second shot of plastic, allowing them to glow a dull blue in the dark.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Despite the occasional angle-based mismatch, the keycaps ultimately work to tie the look of the keyboard together. The mix of shades of blue definitely brings sea waves to mind. When installed, the injection of white along the right-hand side is reminiscent of a rolling wave. This focus on aesthetics is another quality borrowed from the enthusiast community where look and sound often rival the feel of typing itself.

Pulling back a touch, the Mecha SF Radiant features per-key RGB backlighting. As you might expect from an RGB-enabled board, it features the usual suspects in terms of lighting presets: rainbow wave mode, color cycling, breathing, reactive typing, and more totaling ten preset modes. Five can be color customized using a built-in RGB mixer on the Z, X and C keys or by activating a built-in color palette and tapping your color of choice. This is already fairly impressive, but you can also use the lighting to play a pair of games based on Minesweeper and roulette.

The lighting looks great. The Mecha SF Radiant uses a floating key design that exposes the switch housings. This creates a common but still appealing aesthetic that highlights the illumination from the sides. The LEDs are bright and the switches are mounted on a white plate which allows the colors to blend together into a seamless pool of light. Given the highly-themed keycaps and case, matching lighting is inherently more limited but I found white, tinged blue thanks to the reflection from the keycaps, to look best.

Despite the keyboard clearly targeting the middle ground between custom and production keyboards, it doesn’t offer hot-swap support to quickly change switches. This isn’t unusual for Ducky (it just released its first hot-swappable keyboard last year) but is still disappointing. One of the most fun parts of the hobby is trying out new switches and being able to quickly change the whole feel of your keyboard but that won’t be possible here.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Typing Experience on Ducky Mecha SF Radiant

The Ducky Mecha SF Radiant is available with a wide selection of Cherry MX RGB key switches. Clicky MX Blue, tactile MX Brown, and linear MX Red are all present and accounted for, but you’ll also have the choice of Cherry MX Black, MX Silver, or MX Silent Red. Each of these switches are the updated models from Cherry and are rated for 100 million actuations instead of the 50 million they were previously.

My unit was sent with Cherry MX Silent Red switches. Silent Reds are similar to standard MX Red switches in their linear travel but feature internal dampers to reduce typing noise and cushion bottom-outs. They also have a slightly reduced actuation distance of 1.9 mm and a total travel of 3.7 mm but this isn’t really perceptible in normal use. The actuation force is the same at 45 grams. Silent Reds are not my first choice of switch for this reason but are audibly quieter and a much better fit for typing or gaming at work or with a roommate nearby.

Typing on the Mecha SF Radiant is satisfying on multiple levels. The keycaps are lightly textured and felt nice against my fingers and their thick walls lent the experience a more solid, substantial feel. The pillowy bottom-outs were also very nice and allowed me to use the keyboard at work without disturbing my co-workers.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

The aluminum case itself plays an important role in the typing experience. Typing on it feels solid and dense, without much empty space inside the shell. Spring ping, which can sometimes be an issue in reverberant alloy cases, was barely audible and disappeared entirely after I lubed the switches (see our article on how to lube switches, but note that I could not remove these so only lubed them through the top). The density of the case enhanced the switch’s silencing effects.

I only wish I could have tried other kinds of switches, but if experience is any indicator, the case should lend typing a higher pitch with other switch types, though I wasn’t able to test this due to the lack of hot-swap support.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Another high-point was the stabilizers. Like most production keyboards, Ducky used plate-mount stabilizers but they came factory lubed out with absolutely minimal rattle. Gaming companies are catching up in this regard (Corsair and Razer now factory lube their stabs), so it’s good to see Ducky keeping its game strong. Stabilizers can make or break the sound of a mechanical keyboard and the Mecha SF Radiant was very good without the need for additional mods.

Transitioning to the Radiant was easy, and I didn’t lose typing speed making the jump. I went through several rounds of tests at 10fastfingers and averaged 103 words per minute. With my Drop Carina keyboard outfitted with tactile Holy Panda switches, ostensibly better for typing due to their pronounced tactile feedback, I averaged 104 words per minute.

Gaming Experience on Ducky Mecha SF Radiant

While the Ducky Mecha SF Radiant isn’t marketed as a gaming keyboard, it offered a solid gaming experience nonetheless. The form factor seems best suited to high-sensitivity shooters like CS:GO but even playing more relaxed games like Valheim, it was just as responsive and reliable as the Corsair K100 RGB Optical Gaming Keyboard I had on hand to test against.

If you prefer to have the entire keyset available to press at once, the keyboard supports n-key rollover or can be limited to only six simultaneous inputs using a DIP switch on the back. You can also permanently disable the Windows key using a second DIP switch or just while in-game using an Fn+Alt combination. The keyboard also supports customizable debounce delay from 5 – 25 ms to balance key chattering with responsiveness.

My go-to genre is first-person shooters where responsiveness reigns supreme. Even though the Mecha SF Radiant doesn’t boast an 4,000 Hz response rate like the Corsair K100, — it’s a more standard 1,000 Hz — I was hard-pressed to feel any difference in responsiveness when comparing the two keyboards0. Playing Doom Eternal, I was able to double-dash through the air, glory kill, and generally rip and tear just as if I were using a keyboard marketed explicitly for gaming.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Competitive gamers may really appreciate the condensed nature of theMecha SF Radiant. I’m used to gaming on a compact keyboard, so I spent some time “resetting” with the Corsair K100 before this review. Swapping back to the Mecha SF Radiant made playing Battlefield 5 more comfortable. Having my arms closer together felt immediately more natural. The smaller size also made it easier to manage repositioning the keyboard at a comfortable angle. The Mecha SF Radiant is small enough to move with one hand and doing the same with the K100 was cumbersome at best.

The biggest limitation I found came with World of Warcraft. MMO players and macro fans may find the compact size doesn’t lend itself well to storing lots of macros. The lack of dedicated macro keys is expected on a keyboard designed to save space, but their absence is mitigated by the column of additional keys along the right side. For gaming, these can easily be set to macro commands and thanks to built-in memory support for up to six profiles, it’s possible to maintain different key sets for different games and productivity tasks.

Programming Ducky Mecha SF Radiant

One of the greatest strengths of the Ducky Mecha SF Radiant is also its greatest Achilles heel: the lack of dedicated software. It’s an asset to the keyboard because it can be programmed on any machine, regardless of security limitations, and function the same between devices. That means you won’t be missing features because you can’t install the software. At the same time, it means programming requires multiple steps, more time, and is more limited than competing keyboards with full software suites.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

With a few different key combinations, you’re able to record macros and remap keys and even set custom lighting schemes. The keyboard supports five programmable profiles in addition to another that’s locked to default settings, so there’s plenty of latitude to create unique layouts and color schemes to match your different use cases.

In the case of macros, holding Fn+Alt+Tab for three seconds puts the keyboard into recording mode. You press the key you want to remap, enter your string, and press Fn+Alt+Tab a second time to end recording. This can also be used to change the position of different keys, though the keyboard also supports swapping the location of popular remaps like Fn, Ctrl, and Alt using another Fn+Alt+K combination.

For lighting, presets can be selected using Fn+Alt+T. The first five are color locked but the second half all allow you to customize the hue using the built-in palette or RGB mixer. The mixer allows for greater control by tapping Red, Green, and Blue values up to 10 times but takes much longer to dial in. Alternatively, Fn+Alt+Spacebar illuminates all of the keys in a rainbow and you can simply tap the color you want. Creating a custom color scheme is also possible following this same process after holding Fn+Alt+Caps Lock and tapping each key you want to illuminate a given color.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

If that sounds like a lot, it is. In comparison to opening a simple app and hitting a “record” for macros or “painting” the keys your color of choice, it’s just not as simple or intuitive. I love that it’s possible to completely customize the board without installing anything, but it demands a level of memorization that is initially frustrating.

(Image credit: Tom’s Hardware)

Bottom Line

The Ducky Mecha SF Radiant isn’t the perfect compact keyboard but it is a very good one. The combination of unique looks, excellent build quality, and sterling typing experience make this an excellent choice for users not ready to take the plunge into custom mechanical keyboards. At the same time, the lack of hot-swap support or optional software really are disappointing for flexibility and ease of use. Still, the pros far outweigh the cons here and this is an incredibly solid buy if you enjoy the look.

At $159, the Radiant doesn’t come cheap. If you’re looking for an aluminum keyboard and don’t mind it coming in a larger size, the HyperX Alloy FPS Origins might be a good fit. Alternatively, if you want something compact but that still has all the bells and whistles of a high-end gaming keyboard, the Corsair K70 RGB TKL is definitely worth a look.

If you want the best of both worlds and don’t mind sticking with the switches you start with, the Ducky Mecha SF Radiant is definitely worth considering.

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