PIXEL FOLD MEET THE WORLD’S BEST FOLDABLE

GREENPCs

MISSION
possible?
im

Easy repair Easy recycling
New materials Net-zero goals

REVIEWS

4 phones
from £219

Why pay more?

Google
Pixel Tablet
The iPad won't
be scared
HEAD TO HEAD

Rugged
laptops

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Panasonic
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Creative
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Ten stunningly powerful PCs from £4K to £10K

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Summer2023 Issue348

HIGHLIGHTS THIS MONTH

Full contents overleaf

REVIEW
OF THE MONTH

p44

Google Pixel Fold

Whatever you think about foldable phones,
they show no signs of going away. Now Google
is joining the action with its first bendable device,
backed by the promise of “the most durable hinge
on a foldable” and “the best camera on a foldable
phone”. It turns out these brags are backed up by
reality, with the Pixel Fold so good that it made
our tester declare it the best foldable he’d
ever used. So now to the real question:
can you be persuaded to spend
£1,749 on such a device?

QUESTION
OF THE MONTH

Is it game over for traditional gaming PCs?
After all, cloud gaming is here, consoles
continue to impress, and mini PCs and even
laptops now come with an extra 3D punch.

ICON OF THE MONTH

p123
Remember the Compaq Portable? The
carryable computer that busted IBM’s PC
monopoly wide open? David Crookes speaks to
one of Compaq’s co-founders to get the inside
story on how it all happened.

p32

p40

p26

UNIVERSE
OF THE MONTH

Join the federation, Luke. Even if you aren’t
called Luke, you may just find the social
network you’re looking for via open-source
alternatives to Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.

GREEN AMBITION
OF THE MONTH

Barry Collins raised the irony bar to 11 by
flying over to Lenovo’s HQ in North Carolina
to discover how the world’s biggest computer
manufacturer is turning its PCs green.

THE LABS IN
ONE NUMBER

p76

This month’s group test of
creative workstations will
bring joy to anyone who
loves big numbers, but let’s
start with 128 – the number
of threads packed by the
Threadripper Pro 5975WX
in two of this month’s
machines. Turn to p76 for
many, many more.

3

p44

PIXEL FOLD MEET THE WORLD’S BEST FOLDABLE

REGULARS

GREENPCs

p32

MISSION
possible?
im

Easy repair Easy recycling
New materials Net-zero goals

REVIEWS

p70 4 phones
from £219

108 Subscriptions
129 Next month
130 One last thing…

BRIEFING

10 Hackers attack live satellite

Competition tasks participants with
hacking a satellite in Low Earth Orbit.

11 A clearer vision

SDK reveal lets slip further details on
Apple Vision Pro philosophy.

12 App-ocalypse now

As Twitter and Reddit price out
third-party apps, we investigate our
precarious relationship with big tech.

Why pay more?

VIEWPOINTS

Google
p48 Pixel Tablet
p54

7 Editor’s letter
14 The A-List
24 Readers’ letters

20 Dick Pountain

The iPad won't
be scared

The new research that’s making waves
in the world of cosmology.

HEAD TO HEAD

Fixing a broadband problem shouldn’t
require so much specialist knowledge.

21 Nicole Kobie

Rugged
laptops

22 Barry Collins

Panasonic
vs Getac

Boris Johnson’s phone saga has exposed
the government’s appalling IT security.
FEATURES

ISSUE 348 OCTOBER 2023 £5.99

26 Game over for gaming PCs?

p76

Creative
workstations
Ten stunningly powerful PCs from £4K to £10K

Real World Computing
110 Jon Honeyball

Jon explains the drastic
steps he’s had to take in
order to clean up his
Twitter feed.

113 Lee Grant

Lee goes back to school
and gets his knickers in
a twist over some
hidden underwear.

116 Rois Ni Thuama

Picking the right tool
for the job is as vital in
life as it is in Far Cry.

4

Cybercriminals like to
move it, move it – but
should we be worried?

Why now is the perfect
time to consider your
network architecture.

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118 Davey Winder

120 Steve Cassidy

Looking for the ultimate gaming
experience? We examine the
alternatives to a hulking great gaming
PC, from cloud streaming to consoles.

BELOW Davey
delves into the
latest cyber
threat on p118

Subscribe to PC Pro
today and you can
benefit from our three
issues for £1 offer – visit
subscribe.pcpro.co.uk

32 Green PCs:
mission impossible?

The world’s largest PC maker is aiming
to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by
2050. We investigate at its HQ.

36 Ditch the filing cabinet
Nik Rawlinson explains how to
digitise, organise and manage all
your household documents.

40 Welcome to the Fediverse

Darien Graham-Smith looks at the free,
community-run apps that could usurp
the tech billionaires’ social networks.
THE NETWORK

104 The big cloud question

3 THE PC PRO
PODCAST

Listen live to the PC Pro
podcast every Thursday
at 1pm. Join us at
pcpro.link/discord

Are you in control of your cloud data?
Steve Cassidy explains how to protect
your assets on someone else’s servers.
FUTURES

126 Robobutlers

Could robot butlers finally be ready to
help us all out with our household
chores? Nicole Kobie investigates.

@PCPRO

Summer2023 Issue348

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

REVIEWS THIS MONTH

LABS

SMARTPHONES

WORKSTATIONS

44 Google Pixel Fold
64 Motorola Razr 40 Ultra
68 Asus Zenfone 10
69 Honor 90
73 Motorola Edge 30 Neo
74 Motorola Moto G73 5G
75 Samsung Galaxy A14 5G
75 Xiaomi Poco X5 5G

84 Armari Magnetar MC16R7

TABLETS

85 Chillblast Apex AMD
Threadripper Pro RTX A6000
Quadro Workstation
86 PCSpecialist Onyx Pro
87 Scan 3XS GWP-ME A164T
88 Armari Magnetar MC64TP
88 Chillblast Apex Intel Core i9 RTX
A5000 Quadro Workstation

48 Google Pixel Tablet
51 Amazon Fire Max 11

89 Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Tower

LAPTOPS&CONVERTIBLES

90 Workstation Specialists

54 Panasonic Toughbook 40
56 Getac X600
57 Dell Latitude 7230 Rugged
Extreme Tablet
58 Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304)
59 Honor MagicBook X 16 (2023)

MINI PC
60 Apple Mac Studio M2

GRAPHICS CARD
62 Asus Dual GeForce RTX 4060
OC Edition

89 PCSpecialist Onyx Ultra
90 Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132C
WS AR-X6700

ALL-IN-ONE BUSINESS
PROTECTION
96 Firewalla Gold
97 Sophos XGS 126w
98 WatchGuard Firebox T45-W-PoE
99 Zyxel ZyWALL ATP500

VIDEOCONFERENCING
BAR

p76

CRE ATIVE
WORKSTATIONS
If you need to do serious work, you need a serious creative workstation.
Thanks to Intel and AMD’s compelling CPU choices, we test ten
machines with the widest variety of specifications we’ve seen for years.

100 Epos Expand Vision 5

SMART SPEAKER

NAS

63 Amazon Echo Pop

103 Qnap TS-855eU-RP

p51
We put
Amazon’s
biggest, most
expensive
tablet yet to
the test

Labs

p70

ANDROIDPHONESFROM£219
Buyer’s guide
94 All-in-one business protection

SMBs should switch to all-in-one business
protection devices to stay safe, argues Dave
Mitchell, who puts four devices to the test.

123 Compaq’s portable clone

Compaq co-founder Rod Canion tells
David Crookes how the firm’s revolutionary
portable computer broke IBM’s dominance.

5

@PCPRO

Editor’sletter

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Theoriginof
thecomputer
species

P

art of me is in 1943, another
part in 2023. Perhaps I should
explain. I’m writing a book
about the computers that laid
the foundations of the modern world,
so for much of the time (although not
as much as I’d like) you’ll find me in
the British Library poring over old
books, journals and newspapers. It’s
time travel, without a glamorous
assistant or robot dog.
One of my chapters is dedicated to
the ABC, which many consider to be
the first electronic digital computer.
In researching it, I’ve been reading all
about the amazing physicist John
Vincent Atanasoff and how he came
up with the idea for “jogging” to make
memory work. “Jogging is
reminiscent of the little boy going to
the grocery store and reciting, ‘a
dozen eggs, a pound of butter etc’,”
Atanasoff once explained. “Over and
over, hoping to arrive at the store
before his memory has failed.”
Atanasoff dreamt up that concept
in 1939, sitting in an Illinois bar, and it
remains the foundation of every
computer we use today. The RAM we
rely on looks somewhat different to

the arrangement of condensers and
vacuum tubes that Atanasoff and
his assistant Clifford Berry (the “B”
of the ABC) came up with, but the
principle remains the same.
The ABC provided at least part of
the inspiration behind what most
contestants on Jeopardy would still
call the first computer: ENIAC. (This is
a rabbit hole, but technically it’s
considered to be the first
programmable, general-purpose
electronic digital computer.) It can
surely be no coincidence that John
Mauchly, who helped create the
ENIAC between 1943 and 1945, had
spent several days in the company of
Atanasoff, Berry and their prototype
just a few years before.
For those howling at the magazine
“what about Colossus!” and muttering
under their breath that I seem to have
forgotten about the role of Alan
Turing, fear not: that will all be
covered in the book. Likewise the
brilliant work of British pioneers in
creating the Manchester Baby, EDSAC
and LEO (would you believe that the
UK was once ahead of the US in terms
of computing power?).

Still, there’s no disputing that the
arrow of modern computing originates
from ENIAC and, aside from a few
wobbles in the 1950s, the direction of
travel has been decided by Americans.
Stop in 1983, for example, and you’d
find yourself in the Texas headquarters
of Compaq as it battled to create a
portable computer that was 100%
compatible with IBM PC software.
Today, portable computers
look rather different. It’s a nice
coincidence that we tell the story of
Compaq’s first portable computing
device (see p123) in the same month
that we review Google’s first foldable
phone, the Pixel Fold (see p54).
Could these folding devices be
the forerunners of a new type of
computing device, in the same way
the 13kg Compaq Portable evolved
into the laptops we all use today?
Could they even replace it?
I have my doubts, but that’s the joy
of technology: we really haven’t got a
clue what computers will look like in
2063. But won’t it be fun finding out?

Tim Danton
Editor-in-chief

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7

Summer2023Issue348

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

w
EDITORIAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Tim Danton: editor@pcpro.co.uk
EDITORIAL FELLOW
Dick Pountain
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Darien Graham-Smith
FEATURES EDITOR
Barry Collins
FUTURES EDITOR
Nicole Kobie
NEWS WRITER
James O’Malley
BONUS SOFTWARE EDITOR
Nik Rawlinson
ART & PRODUCTION
ART DIRECTOR
Paul Duggan
FREELANCE DESIGN
Bill Bagnall
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Steve Haines
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Steve Cassidy
Lee Grant
Dave Mitchell
Jon Honeyball
Rois Ni Thuama
Olivia Whitcroft
Davey Winder
CONTRIBUTORS
Stuart Andrews
David Crookes
James Morris
Mark Pickavance
Richard Priday
Mike Prospero
Mark Spoonauer
John Velasco
Jarred Walton
Alex Wawro
ADVERTISING
GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER
BenTopp:ben.topp@futurenet.com
ADVERTISING MANAGER
Alexandra Thomas:
alexandra.thomas@futurenet.com
PRODUCTION
SENIOR PRODUCTION MANAGER
Lawrence Brookes
CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS
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Emma Read
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Juber Ahmed
DIRECT MARKETING EXECUTIVE
Lewis Smythe
LOGOS & REPRINTS
ENDORSEMENT LICENSING MANAGER
Ryan Chambers:
ryan.chambers@futurenet.com

8

We review three rugged devices
this month (starting with the
Panasonic Toughbook 40 on p54),
so wanted to know the toughest
conditions our team had ever
worked in.

“Navigating on my tablet in Google
Maps on the back seat of a Land
Rover trying to get home from the
Moto2 final in San Marino. 150,000+
people were trying to get onto the
autostrada, so Italian police blocked
all entry ramps to limit flow.
Following the little blue arrow we
went cross-country, via back streets,
football pitches, school playgrounds
and grass tracks to find an
open ramp.”

“Glastonbury 2014 – it was pouring
with rain, the mobile signal was
overwhelmed, and I was huddled in a
tent trying to use a remote desktop
tool on my phone to connect back to
the office and hunt down some files
that had gone astray…”

“The Daily Mail newsroom, where any
laptop would need to be shielded
from the vibrations generated by
excessive shouting.”

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“I had to troubleshoot a popular
Twitter bot I was managing, that had
started spewing out inaccurate
information… from atop the Great
Wall of China, connected with just my
phone over a 4G portable Wi-Fi
hotspot, using a VPN to get around
the Great Firewall. Not the best
conditions to provide tech support!”

LIABILITY
While every care has been taken in the preparation of
this magazine, the publishers cannot be held responsible
for the accuracy of the information herein, or any
consequence arising from it. Please note that all
judgements have been made in the context of equipment
available to PC Pro at time of review, and that “value for
money” comments are based on UK prices at the time of
review, which are subject to fluctuation and are only
applicable to the UK market.

“I used to work with Mr Monkey in
the Fungle Jungle when I worked at a
theme park years and years ago. I
quite miss it, actually.”

SYNDICATION & INTERNATIONAL LICENSING
PC Pro is available for licensing overseas. Contact
Phoebe Griffin-Beale, phoebe.castledine@futurenet.com

The Professional
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Member

“Filming on ‘The Big One’ roller
coaster at Blackpool. I did six laps,
sitting in the front seat, clutching the
safety tether to prevent the badly
mounted Sony Beta-SX camera
making a break for freedom.”
“I have been in -28°C and +40°C, but
not by choice. And not for long.
Working in bright sunlight really
hammers a screen, but unexpected
rain is probably a bigger issue – and a
reason to buy a rugged laptop.”

CERTIFIED DISTRIBUTION
18,977 (Jan-Dec 2022)

Briefıng
Background and analysis on all the important news stories

Space Jam:

hackers
attack live
satellite
Competition tasks hackers
with compromising satellite
in Low Earth Orbit

A

n American space launch is
a very high-security affair.
Systems are locked down,
many of the staff hold
national security clearance, and the
rocket and its payload are carefully
protected, for obvious reasons.
So, it was a little unusual when
SpaceX launched its CRS-28 resupply
mission to the International Space
Station back in June, because it
contained a special satellite that
the US military was actually
encouraging people to hack.
Named Moonlighter, the
diminutive 34 x 11 x 11cm “cube”
satellite was deployed into Low
Earth Orbit after about a month
aboard the ISS, and was the target in
this year’s Hack-A-Sat competition.
Run by the US Space Force, it was
essentially a game of Capture the
Flag, with hackers tasked with
flexing their skills to break into the
satellite and discover the special
code, in a race against four other
competing teams.
“They started to go and ask all the
different organisations within the
10

government and military saying,
‘Hey, can you let these hackers, these
top cybersecurity enthusiasts, go and
hack into your systems?’, and their
first response was, ‘Absolutely not.
No way’,” said Captain Kevin Bernert,
the Space Force’s Hack-A-Sat
programme manager.
But Captain Bernert’s team
persisted. In the first few years, the
competition was run on virtual
machines down on Earth, or actual
space hardware planted firmly on the
ground. This year, Moonlighter is
literally in orbit above our heads,
waiting to be hacked.
It promises to be a real test for
hackers, as there are difficulties
that we don’t need to deal with
down on Earth. “With space vehicles
orbiting the Earth at high speeds,
you only have a certain amount of
opportunities to make contact with
that vehicle,” said Bernert.

ABOVE The
Hack-A-Sat contest
was run by the US
Space Force

Hackers trying to send a command
package, for example, might not
know if it was successfully executed
until the next time they can make
contact. Other challenges include
limited bandwidth and tricky power
management – hackers must be
careful about how much energy their
code uses on a device powered by
only a solar panel. Oh, and then
there’s the astrophysics and orbital
mechanics that you’ll need to master
to understand the target.
There are, however, aspects of
the competition that will be more
familiar. “It’s still
essentially a
computer,” said
Bernert. “You still
have to apply all the
cybersecurity
principles. Now,
it’s just in a more
rigorous domain.”

It was essentially a
game of Capture the
Flag, with hackers
tasked with breaking
into the satellite

Briefing News
GroundcontroltoMajorROM

To communicate with the satellite in
orbit, teams use the same ground
stations that are used for ordinary
satellites. Moonlighter has been
sandboxed so that even though the
satellite is in space, nothing too
dramatic can be compromised. “It
works just like any other satellite
would work in Low Earth Orbit,” said
Bernert. “We don’t have a propulsion
system on it, so they won’t be able to
just send it off into deep space or into
the Earth’s atmosphere.” The satellite
also has a built in “reset” button that
the military can use to restore the
sandbox to a blank slate.
The competition will be as realistic
as possible, however, and the
organisers urge teams to pick
members who have skills in the
different disciplines such a complex
hacking task requires, including
radio communications, exploit
development, satellite operations
and astrophysics.
“We’re tapping into that
untraditional talent pool so they
might have a unique way about
solving a challenge that we set up,”
said Bernert.
Even with the right people,
winning the competition will require
an effective strategy. “We let the
competitors get creative with how
they want to go about denying or
degrading their
competitors’
satellites, but we
also give them
the opportunity to
have game theory
get involved,”
said Bernert,
describing how
teams will have to
choose between playing aggressively,
to capture their opponents’ flags, or
as in a real cyber-conflict, choosing
to play more defensively to protect
their own.
Even after the winners have been
crowned and the Moonlight satellite
has been successfully “owned”, it
won’t all have just been for fun – the
reason the Space Force is running the
competition is to raise awareness of
the risk of cyber threats to space
hardware. “People are realising
that it’s not just limited to specific
nations with large military budgets
– it’s becoming a lot more
proliferated and more accessible to
everybody,” said Bernert.
“With that obviously comes the
need to make sure that systems that
are now being procured and launched
in rapid quantities are cyber secure,
because so much of our lives for
pretty much everybody across the
globe is tied directly to safe satellite
vehicle operations.”

Aclearervision

Apple’s SDKletsslipfurtherdetailsonitsVisionProphilosophy
It won’t be until next year when early
adopters will get their hands and faces
on Apple’s Vision Pro (see issue 347, p46),
but more details about what we can
expect the headset to do have emerged
following the release of its software
development kit (SDK).
The SDK is essentially all of the tools
that developers will need to build apps for
VisionOS, the operating system at the
heart of the device. Intriguingly, it
includes a full OS simulator, enabling
coders to pretend they’re using the
Vision Pro on their Mac, by awkwardly
clicking and dragging with a mouse.
This unveils several new features
that Apple didn’t mention at its launch
event. For example, we now know that
the Vision Pro will offer similar “visual
search” functionality to the iPhone, and
it should be possible to look at an object
of interest and have your Vision Pro
figure out what it is you’re looking at.
For example, if you’ve ever wondered
what the washing machine symbols on
clothing labels mean, soon your Vision
Pro could tell you.
Developers have also managed to
confirm that contrary to almost
everything we saw in the launch
presentation, the Vision Pro will be able to

place virtual objects into your real-world
space in front of you, in real-time.
We also now know some clever new
features that will be found in the Vision
Pro’s control centre.
For example, “guest mode” will lock
your personal data away and make it safe
to hand your headset to a friend to try –
with no risk of them stumbling upon your
personal photos or bookmarks. (Not that
you have anything to hide, right?)
Similarly, we now know more about
how the Vision Pro will stop you bashing
your head on the ceiling. The software
throws a bounding box of three metres
around the wearer if you’re in full,
immersive virtual reality, and it alerts
you if you’re about to step outside,
which could put a dampener on fitness
workouts in confined spaces.
And as an additional added safety
measure, the device will intervene if its
sensors figure out that you’re moving too
fast – so no Vision Pro allowed while
driving, mercifully. However, there will
be a “travel mode” for using the device on
trains or planes. Developers speculate
that this could fix the interface to the
centre of your vision, to avoid unwieldy
movements when squashed into an
economy seat on a flight.

It’s still essentially
a computer. You still
have to apply all the
cybersecurity
principles

11

PCProbe
Exclusive investigations into technology practices. Email probe@pcpro.co.uk if you have a story

App-ocalypse now
As Twitter and Reddit price out third-party apps, James O’Malley
investigates our precarious relationship with big tech

I

t’s stressful to think about it, but so much of our
digital lives exist precariously. With a few taps of
the keyboard, Microsoft could stop us from
accessing our documents, Google could deny us
access to our emails, and Facebook could disconnect us
from our friends.
If you’re thinking “they’d never do that”, recent events
suggests it’s far from a remote possibility – just ask power
users of Twitter and the social news site Reddit.
In January, just weeks after Elon Musk’s acquisition of
Twitter was finalised, users of a number of third-party
Twitter clients including Tweetbot, Echofon, Birdie and
Twitterific, suddenly found themselves unable to log in.
And it wasn’t a bug in the system.
After several days of uncertainty, it emerged that the
new proprietor had decided to restrict access to the
Twitter API, the technical means by which apps made by
outsiders talk to the company’s servers. In an instant,
Tweetbot et al were dead.
Then in March, the screws tightened further. Twitter
announced a new regime for other third-party apps that
use Twitter data – think scientists who use it for academic
research, or have Twitter hooked into specialist software;
or the users of useful tools such as Thread Reader, which
makes long Twitter threads easier to read; or Tweet
Deleter, a tool that you can use to purge your posts.
Not much changed on a technical level, but the most
important thing did: the price. Under the new API rules,
hobbyist coders are expected to pay $100 (£76) a month to
read up to 10,000 tweets – and “enterprise plan” access
starts at $42,000 (£32,000) per month.
Twitter is not alone in hiking its API prices. In April,
Reddit followed suit. CEO Steve Huffman gave developers
only 30 days to pull out their cheque books and sign up to

the pricey new regime. It was a decision that quickly led
to the shuttering of Apollo, one of the most popular
third-party Reddit clients, especially among the site’s
more hardcore consumers.
In both cases users could continue to use these services
via their official apps, but it meant dramatic changes in
how users of these apps used the two platforms, with
reduced functionality and fewer
options to tailor the sites’ output to
their particular needs.
Big tech suddenly turned the
screws on the third-party apps and
their users, and now it’s raising
deeper questions about our reliance
on a handful of tech firms and their
capricious owners.

Big tech suddenly
turned the screws, and it’s
raising deeper questions
about our reliance on a
handful of tech firms

“There are sharks above you”

“If you multiply my API requests by the price, you get $20
million a year – that’s what it would cost me to keep
running Apollo,” Christian Selig, the one-man band
behind Apollo, told PC Pro.
Faced with crippling API access costs, Selig was forced
to pull the plug on the app, which he had been developing
since he graduated in 2014, after a short internship at
Apple. “It’s sad for me, but I’m at the stage now where in a
real way, I just feel really fortunate,” he said, reflecting on
how over the past decade the app has paid his wages, and
earned him cachet among developers as “The Apollo Guy”.
He may be sanguine about the app’s demise, but it’s
indicative of the nature of an internet dominated by
global corporations. “It’s just kind of the nature of
modern businesses,” said Selig. “Everybody is dependent
on someone higher up in the food chain to a certain

How Reddit relations soured
Relations between Reddit and third-party
developers were not always so frosty, and until
recently Selig was regularly talking to the
company about Apollo. “I’ve been building it for
nine years, I think it’s been on the App Store for
about seven, and Reddit’s been great throughout
the whole process,” he said. “They kind of offered
me a job at the beginning of it. They’ve always had
a really great line of communication with me.”
And he was even optimistic when the API
changes were first announced in April. “At that
stage it was still very warm,” said Selig. “They

12

called me the day of [the announcement] and
they said, look, we’re looking to make changes
to the API.”
He describes how Reddit staffers explained
that, historically, the company had supported
third-party clients, despite the significant cost
to the company, because it made for a mutually
beneficial relationship. But going forward,
third-party apps would have to pay their way.
Once the company confirmed the fees were
non-negotiable, the relationship reached a
breaking point. “$20 million a year isn’t something

I can feasibly pay,
or if I could, it’s not
something that
could happen
within 30 days,”
said Selig. “Both
of those factors
are incredibly
restrictive and
killer, for lack of a
better term.
“If Reddit had just made an effort to keep
developers at the table and engage with them
in good faith, I think there are 800 ways this
could have gone better.”

@PCPRO

Briefing PCProbe

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

extent, and so I don’t really have any regrets in that sense
just because I don’t think you can escape that. It’s a food
chain. There are sharks above you.”
Selig is far from alone in facing the dilemma about what
to do when faced with a sudden increase in costs. AltMetric
is a firm that tracks social media discussion of academic
papers and scientific research, and relies heavily on
Twitter data to function. During the pandemic, the
company’s tools were used extensively to track expert
discussion of Covid pre-prints (scientific papers that
haven’t yet been peer reviewed), which fed directly into
the life and death decisions being made by policymakers.
Faced with a hike in fees, the company had to make a
choice. It decided to carry on, managing director Catherine
Williams told us, but the decision wasn’t easy. “Obviously
we don’t particularly like it and it’s challenging for us,
and especially for even smaller companies,” said
Williams. “And I think the biggest detriment is the
stifling effect that it will likely have on innovation.”

Why put up prices?

Why are both Twitter and Reddit making such dramatic
price increases now? We reached out to Twitter, which,
following a Musk diktat, responded to our email with an
automated poop emoji.
Reddit meanwhile, declined our request for an
interview, but did point us towards a statement
explaining that “supporting these apps is not free for
Reddit; they incur both infrastructure and significant
opportunity costs”.
And similarly that “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining
business and to do that, we can no longer subsidise
commercial entities that require large-scale data use
from our API”. The company said that 98% of developers
that build apps on its platform are unaffected, and that it
retains a free tier of API access for non-commercial and
academic research.
However, something many commentators are reading
between the lines is a shared anxiety over how their data
is being used to train the large language models used by AI
companies such as ChatGPT owners OpenAI. It’s an
ongoing concern for platforms we covered in last month’s
Probe into scrapers (see issue 347, p12). “The Reddit corpus
of data is really valuable,” Huffman told the New York
Times in June. “But we don’t need to give all of that value
to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
Despite being on the receiving end of this thinking,
both Selig and Williams can see the arguments from
Musk’s and Huffman’s perspective. “It’s understandable,
particularly as the need or the want for large language

ABOVE Twitter and
Reddit are both
trying to cash in on
their APIs

models, and [because] this
widespread scraping is growing,”
said Williams.
And she expects AI to continue
making what used to be simple
slightly more complicated.
“There’s a lot in flux at the moment
and our relationship with things
that are freely available on the
internet is evolving,” she said.
“That needs to be considered in the
context of the pace at which AI and
tools around it are now developing.”

The consumer backlash

The changes have had a profound impact on the little
guys such as Apollo and AltMetric, but it isn’t only the
developers who are frustrated – users are, too. Selig said
that once he saw Reddit effectively demanding $20
million a year to keep his app alive, users wouldn’t
sympathise with the site. “That is just comically, like
almost absurdly high,” said Selig. “That is like Batman
villain money.”
And Selig was right. When news of Apollo’s demise
emerged, volunteer moderators suspended or shut down
many of the site’s “subreddits” (thematic sections of the
Reddit site) in protest. “I think people very quickly saw
how unreasonable that was, given Reddit’s own revenue
numbers, given Reddit’s attitude and their promises,”
said Selig. “I think it just soured from there, based on
Reddit’s own failures to plan this properly.
“It would be so easy to carve out
an exception,” said Selig, arguing
that there is a qualitative difference
between API users that are using
Reddit data to, for example, train
an AI model, and those that are
offering a way for users to interact
with the core Reddit service.
“You’re giving a value back to
Redditors through tools or just
creating a different experience. If you’re providing value
to Reddit, you [could] get a different pricing than the
people who are just vacuuming data.”
He believes that the affair could have long-term
negative consequences for the platform. “With the more
power users, and with the more dedicated users, who
have maybe been there for a long time, I think they’ve
almost created a disease in the community,” said Selig.
“They might not feel the effects of it immediately, but
I’ve been on Reddit for 12 years, if not longer, and I’ve
never seen relations between management and a subset of
the users be so combative and antagonistic.”
As things stand at the time of writing, both Reddit and
Twitter have continued to stand by their API changes, and
AltMetric is taking the hit to its bottom line. But what
about Selig, now he has earned the status of a minor folk
hero among Reddit’s power users? He’s got another
virtual pet app called Pixel Pals, but for a while at least, it
sounds as though he could be planning to take it a little
easier for the first time in nine years.
“There’s a little less to do during the day,” he said. “I do
have a nice video game queue to catch up on.”

I’ve never seen
relations between
management and a subset
of users be so combative
and antagonistic

13

The A-List

The best products on the market, as picked by our editors

PREMIUM LAPTOPS

BUSINESS LAPTOPS

Apple MacBook Pro 16in

Dell Latitude 9330 2-in-1

M2 Pro power from £2,699

Flexible brilliance, from £1,399 exc VAT

from apple.com/uk

from dell.co.uk

All the upgrades to this 2023 model
are within, as Apple’s M2 Pro and M2
Max processors take charge. Combine
this power with the 16.2in mini-LED
screen, superb sound system and
phenomenal battery life, and you
have the world’s premier workstation laptop.
REVIEW Issue 342, p48

This is a brilliantly made 2-in-1
that’s flexible both in design and
configuration. Everything screams
quality, from the wide-gamut 13.3in
matte screen to the enhanced features
matte
for Zoom calls – including a superb
1080p webcam, mics and speakers.
REVIEW Issue 342, p77

ALTERNATIVES
NEW ENTRY

Asus
Zenbook S 13
OLED (UX5304)

The perfect 13in laptop?
At 1kg, it packs power
along with 1TB of storage,
a top-quality OLED panel
and superb battery life.
£1,600 from
uk.store.asus.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p58

ALTERNATIVES

Samsung Galaxy
Book3 Ultra
Samsung packs everything
into this 16in laptop, from a
superb AMOLED panel and
a slim 1.8kg chassis to a
Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070
graphics. Expensive but
top quality. From £2,449
from samsung.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p46

Apple MacBook
Air 15in

It’s no MacBook Pro, but
with an 8-core M2 chip
the 15in MacBook Air
offers solid performance
and a spacious, goodlooking display for a great
price. From £1,399 from
apple.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p60

DynabookPortégé AcerTravelMate Lenovo ThinkPad
P6 (TMP614-52) T14s Gen 3 (Intel)
X40L-K-101

A simply brilliant 1kg 14in
laptop that excels in all
areas, including superb
battery life. Buy the K-105
for £1,250 if you can live
with a Core i5 processor.
£1,517 exc VAT from
box.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 342, p77

Not the most powerful due
its 11th gen Core chip, but
a great 14in screen and
keyboard, superb battery
life and competitive price
lift it above rivals. £892
exc VAT from business.
currys.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 342, p74

EVERYDAY LAPTOPS

GAMING LAPTOPS

Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (2023)
Core i9/4090 for £4,100
from rog.asus.com/uk

An awesome keyboard,
slim design, customisable
spec (choose the 400 nits
screen) and fine selection
of ports make this a great
business laptop. From
£1,260 exc VAT from
lenovo.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 342, p80

NEW ENTRY

Honor MagicBook 16 X (2023)

Full metal jacket for £700
from hihonor.com
A high-quality all-metal
chassis marks the MagicBook
16 X 2023 out from the budget
laptop crowd, and it’s packed
with good-quality (albeit not
top-quality) components,
from a 12th gen Core i5
chip to a 1,920 x 1,200
16in IPS panel.
REVIEW Issue 348, p59

Asus includes everything in this
gaming laptop, including a
personalisable lid via a matrix of
lights. And a 16in AMOLED
screen, 2TB SSD and cuttingedge components. If the £4.1K
price puts you off, Overclockers
UK sells an RTX 4080 version
with a plain lid for £3,300.
REVIEW Issue 343, p50

ALTERNATIVES

Lenovo Legion
5i Pro (16in)
A great-value gaming
laptop that’s extracts the
most from its powerful
components. We love the
keyboard, too. Part code
82RF002LUK, £2,000
from lenovo.com/gb
REVIEW Issue 337, p61
14

Asus ROG Strix
Scar 18

It’s expensive, but if you
want an 18in laptop that
delivers all-out power this
is the no-compromise
3.1kg beast to buy – it
packs quality everywhere.
£3,999 from scan.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p54

Razer Blade 18

A great advert for 18in
gaming laptops, the
Blade 18 partners a Core
i9-13950HX with RTX
40-series graphics in a
stunning, slim design.
From £2,900 from
razer.com/gb-en
REVIEW Issue 343, p52

Asus Vivobook S Microsoft
MSI Prestige 15
15 OLED
SurfaceLaptopGo2 Not the most cultured

The Core i5 version of
this 1.7kg laptop offers
amazing quality for under
a grand, including a
high-quality 15.6in OLED
display. From £949 from
pcpro.link/347asus2
REVIEW Issue 347, p85

The Laptop Go 2 won
our recent group test of
affordable laptops thanks
to its high-quality 12.5in
screen, 1.1kg weight and
sleek design. £555 from
microsoft.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p89

laptop, but great
value considering the
connectivity, 15in screen,
fast specs and a GeForce
RTX 3050 GPU (part code
A12UC-034UK). £849 from
laptopoutlet.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p93

@
@P
PC
CP
PR
RO
O

The A-List

FAC
FACEEB
BO
OO
OK
K..C
CO
OM
M//P
PC
CP
PR
RO
O

CHROMEBOOKS

Acer Chromebook Vero 514

Asus Chromebook Flip CX5

The best big-screen Chromebook
we’ve tried, with a bright 15.6in Full
HD display with decent black levels
and surprisingly rich colours to enjoy.
And it’s a good specification for the
price, with a Core i3 processor, 8GB of
LPDDR4 RAM and a 128GB SSD in tow.
Part code 90NX0361-M00010, £600
from johnlewis.com.
REVIEW Issue 337, p84

Ethical choice for £599
from currys.co.uk

Acer combines its eco-conscious
brand with Chrome OS to great
effect. With a 12th gen Core i5, 8GB of
effect.
RAM and a 256GB SSD, plus updates to
2030, it’s a fine long-term investment.
REVIEW Issue 340, p54

HP Elite Dragonfly
Chromebook

This is quite simply the best
business Chromebook around,
although at the time of writing
we’re waiting for units to
hit the market. Build quality
is stunning, as is this 13.5in
convertible’s 1.3kg weight.
From £1,000 from hp.co.uk.
REVIEW Issue 337, p86

EVERYDAY PCs

Apple Mac mini (2023)

Intel NUC Pro 13

M2 masterpiece from £649
from apple.com/uk

The outside remains the same, but this simple yet effective update to the Mac
mini introduces the M2 and M2 Pro processors with predictable effect. The
entry-level price quickly rises once you start upgrading – moving from 8GB to
16GB costs £200, as does doubling the base storage from 256GB to 512GB – but
there’s enough power here to last you for years.
REVIEW Issue 343, p60

If you don’t need discrete graphics
then Intel’s mini PCs are a fantastic
choice, being easy to upgrade, low
on energy consumption and more
than powerful enough to cope with
Windows applications – despite being
little larger than a coffee coaster.
Barebones, from £350; full PCs,
from £600, from scan.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 345, p48

PCSpecialist Topaz
Supreme

This is an all-AMD system, with a
Ryzen 5 7600 partnered with Radeon
RX 6600 graphics. That’s enough for
smooth 1080p gaming, and the Topaz
also has 16GB of Corsair DDR5 RAM
and a speedy 1TB SSD. At this price,
it’s simply fantastic value. £899 from
pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
REVIEW Issue 347, p54

ENTHUSIAST PCs

Chillblast Apex Ryzen 9 RTX
4090 Gaming PC

HP Omen 45L (2023)

We tested the top-end 45L with a Core
i9-13900K, GeForce RTX 4090
graphics and 64GB of RAM, and it
doesn’t come cheap. Switch to the
Core i7/RTX 4070 Ti version, however,
and the price almost halves without
losing any of the superb design and
build quality. £4,800 from hp.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 347, p50

7950X3D and RTX 4090 for £4,400

from chillblast.com
A brilliant choice if you’re looking for easy expansion
tomorrow coupled with cutting-edge gaming with
high-quality components today.
REVIEW Issue 347, p52

Wired2Fire Predator X7
Gaming PC

Intel may dominate the high-end, but
the Ryzen 7600X inside the Predator
X7 – combined with a GeForce RTX
3060 Ti – hits the sweet spot for
value, gaming performance and
day-to-day speed. £1,499 inc VAT
from pcpro.link/340wired2fire
REVIEW Issue 340, p58

ALL-IN-ONE PCs

Huawei MateStation X

HP Envy 34 All-in-One
Built around a high-quality 34in
widescreen – which is perfect for
viewing two windows side by side
thanks to its 21:9 aspect ratio – this is
a great alternative to the MateStation
X and comes with Nvidia RTX 3060
graphics. We’re big fans of the
magnetic 16-megapixel camera, too.
£2,300 from hp.com
REVIEW Issue 335, p46

Stunning design for £1,800

from consumer.huawei.com
Huawei shows all the other PC manufacturers how to
create an all-in-one that runs Windows. If you want
speed, gorgeous design and a stunning 28.2in 4K+
screen, the MateStation X is the machine to buy.
At this price, it simply has no rivals.
REVIEW Issue 334, p46

CREATIVE WORKSTATIONS

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A164T

Threadripper Pro for £8,333 exc VAT

from scan.co.uk
Scan matches the 32-core Ryzen Threadripper
Pro 5975WX with 128GB of ECC RAM and RTX
A6000 graphics to create a stormingly fast
all-rounder. As expected, it’s finished in a top
chassis (the Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL) with
Scan’s usual attention to detail for build quality.
REVIEW Issue 348, p87

NEW ENTRY

NEW ENTRY

Armari Magnetar
MC16R7
A strikingly fast workstation for the
money, with Armari’s customised
liquid cooling extracting the most
from an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. With
64GB of DDR5 RAM and AMD’s
Radeon Pro W7800 in support, this
is a fantastic value machine.
£3,758 exc VAT from armari.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p84

Apple iMac 24in

Apple’s M1 processor is the star
of this show, delivering all the
power we would expect with
minimal power draw. Apple wraps
it up in a sharp new look, with a
4.5K Retina display and top-quality
1080p camera. Let’s hope a bigger
version arrives soon. From £1,249
from apple.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 322, p48

NEW ENTRY

PCSpecialist Onyx Pro
Even in a creative workstation,
it makes a lot of sense to include
Nvidia’s consumer graphics due
to its core-per-buck. Here, an
Nvidia RTX 4090 partners with a
Core i9-13900K and an incredible
192GB of RAM to tremendous
effect. £3,750 exc VAT from
pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews
REVIEW Issue 348, p86
15

TABLETS

Apple iPad Air (5th generation)
M1 power for less, from £669
from apple.com/uk
A convincing alternative to the iPad Pro at a
price that’s much easier to swallow. Apple’s
M1 chip remains a stellar performer, you get
the Magic Keyboard and Pencil 2, and the 11in
screen is still one of the best panels around.
REVIEW Issue 340, p83

Apple iPad Pro 12.9

OnePlus Pad

Don’t get us started on the price – it’s
becoming ludicrous – but if you want
the ultimate big-screen tablet then
this is it. With an M2 chip, gorgeous
12.9in screen and all the frills you’d
expect, there’s no better choice for
professionals. From £1,249 from
apple.com/uk
REVIEW Issue 340, p84

This is quite simply superb hardware
for the price, severely undercutting
rival Android offerings from
Google and Samsung. The bright
and colour-accurate 11.6in screen,
speedy performance and great battery
life are just three of the highlights.
128GB, £374 (£449 inc VAT) from
oneplus.com/uk.
REVIEW Issue 346, p46

(5th generation)

EVERYDAY PHONES

Motorola Moto G13

Amazing quality for £150
from johnlewis.com

If you only have £150 to spend on a phone then this is a
simply brilliant choice. The camera produces superb
results, the design is first class, and while it isn’t the fastest
performer it’s fast enough – and the battery life is great.
REVIEW Issue 346, p73

NEW ENTRY

Google Pixel 7a

A phone that begs the question: why
spend £150 more for the Pixel 7? With
few compromises on the Pixel 7 – it uses
the same processor and cameras and
the only notable change is a smaller
screen – this is the new mainstream
pick for Google phone fans.
128GB, £449 from store.google.com
REVIEW Issue 346, p68

Motorola Edge 30 Neo

This stylish and compact
smartphone – reflected by a
small-ish 4,200mAh battery –
includes a gorgeous 6.3in OLED
screen, nippy Snapdragon
processor and a decent pair of
cameras for a great price.
£300 from motorola.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 348, p73

PREMIUM PHONES

Google Pixel 7 Pro

Flagship experience for £849 (128GB)
from store.google.com
In stark contrast to Apple’s inflated prices, Google stays
ultra-competitive with its flagship phone. Yet it delivers
a truly premium experience, from the excellent camera
to the way Android 13 runs so fluidly on the 6.7in 120Hz
screen. And its siblings are equally brilliant.
REVIEW Issue 339, p72

NEW ENTRY

Google Pixel 7

Google Pixel Fold

AOC Q27P3CW

Iiyama ProLite
XCB3494WQSN

If you can’t justify spending £849 on
the Pixel 7 Pro, then its 6.3in sister
makes a whole lot of sense. You lose
out on optical zoom, and the screen
is 90Hz compared to 120Hz on the
Pro, but the camera is still great and
it’s remarkably quick as it’s based on
the same processor as its sibling.
128GB, £599 from store.google.com
REVIEW Issue 339, p74

Google has come out guns blazing
with its first foldable phone. Its hinge
and all-round build quality is superb,
as is the camera setup (the best yet
on a foldable) and the selection of
screens. The only question is whether
it can fend off the forthcoming
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip5. 256GB,
£1,749 from store.google.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p44

EVERYDAY MONITORS

Lenovo ThinkVision P27u-20

4K Thunderbolt, £470
from lenovo.com

This is a steal at £470, and we only
hope the price sticks and availability
lasts. It’s a top-quality 27in panel
with a 4K resolution, and it packs
superb connectivity, including Thunderbolt 4.
REVIEW Issue 344, p89

If you can’t afford the ThinkVision
P27u-20 then this 27in USB-C docking
monitor, complete with solid image
quality and a 1440p resolution, offers
unmatched value at a shade over
£300. It even includes a webcam
that supports Windows Hello.
£310 from box.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p83

Curved 34in monitors proved a popular
choice in our Labs, and although it had
tough competition from the HP E34m
G4 this Iiyama steals a spot on our A
List due to Iiyama’s twin focus on value
and high-quality panels. There’s even
gaming potential. £400 from box.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 344, p88

PROFESSIONAL MONITORS

Eizo ColorEdge CG319X

Creative masterclass, £3,960
from wexphotovideo.com
As the price indicates, this monitor is for
heavyweight creatives who demand the
best in every discipline: HDR video editing, print layouts,
professional photography and more besides. With superb coverage and
accuracy across all spaces, plus a built-in calibrator, it justifies the investment.
REVIEW Issue 327, p81
16

BenQ PD2725U

By no means a cheap 4K 27in monitor
– unless you compare it to the Eizos
– but it marries all-round quality with
ease of use thanks to a puck that
allows you to quickly move between
settings. You can even daisy chain
a second Thunderbolt 3 monitor
for a monster setup. £859 from
photospecialist.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 327, p80

Eizo ColorEdge CG279X

Designers who need to work
across different disciplines will
love how easy it is to switch between
the Adobe RGB, DCI-P3 and sRGB
colour spaces using the Eizo’s
fantastic OSD. It’s certainly not
cheap for a 27in 1440p monitor, but
it’s packed with quality. £1,726 from
wexphotovideo.com
REVIEW Issue 327, p84

@PCPRO

The A-List

FAC E B O O K . C O M / P C P R O

WEBCAMS

Epos Expand Vision 1

Top-quality 4K video from £144
from uk.insight.com
Videoconferencing expert Epos claims the
top spot with its first
first personal webcam. It
delivers on all fronts: audio quality, colour
accuracy and low-light performance, and all while
undercutt
ing the 4K Logitech opposition by £100.
undercutting
REVIEW Issue 340, p74

Aukey PC-W3 1080p
Webcam

Obsbot Tiny 4K

If the thought of spending £144 on
ering into
a webcam has you splutt
spluttering
your microphone then you should
consider this far cheaper but highquality alternative. Its colours are
low-key in comparison to the best, but
it still produces a sharp and detailed
image. £30 from aukey.com
REVIEW Issue 321, p72

We love this dinky and oh-so-clever
webcam. With a pan, tilt and zoom
camera, plus a dash of AI, it can keep
you at the centre of the image if you
wish, crop to your head and shoulders
or slip into presenter mode. But most
crucially it delivers a high-quality and
crisp 4K image, with excellent colours.
£247 from store.obsbot.com
REVIEW Issue 332, p73

HOME OFFICE PRINTERS

HP OfficeJet Pro 9010e
Fast inkjet for £160
from ebuyer.com
This is a superb multifunction printer for home
offices or very small businesses. It hit almost 19
pages per minute for black text but still produced excellent quality, then backs it up
with a great set of features – including an ADF. Even running costs are competitive.
REVIEW Issue 341, p81

Epson EcoTank ET-4850

HP Smart Tank 5150

Twice as expensive as the HP
OfficeJet Pro 9010e, and there’s no
ADF, but the EcoTank wins for running
costs: that price includes enough ink
to print 5,200 black or 14,000 colour
pages. Photos look great on glossy
paper, and scans are superb. A great
buy. £373 from amazon.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 341, p80

HP makes a late entrance to the
bottle-fed party, but this an affordable
all-in-one that delivers high-quality
mono prints at around 10ppm. And it
comes with enough ink for 6,000
pages. Photos aren’t a strength, and
you don’t get duplex printing, but it’s
superb value. £180 from hp.com
REVIEW Issue 346, p64

Epson EcoTank ET-5880

Xerox B315DN

WORKGROUP PRINTERS

Brother X-Series MFC-J6957DW
Versatile inkjet for £471 exc VAT
from printerbase.co.uk
Ideally suited to SMBs on a tight budget, this
affordable large-format inkjet delivers low
running costs, good output quality and the
best cloud and mobile support around, as
well as an A3 scanner with 50-page ADF.
REVIEW Issue 337, p98

This is a great office all-in-one with
plenty of useful features, excellent
output quality and top-notch
cloud support. It’s expensive, but
phenomenally low running costs
thanks to Epson’s EcoTank system
mean that SMBs will recoup the
initial outlay in no time at all.
£1,077 exc VAT from epson.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 323, p97

A fine alternative to the Brother and
Epson, this mono laser multifunction
printer produces superb results at
great speed – 27.5 pages per minute
in our 50-page test, which includes
the spool time. It’s similarly quick for
scans, with a dual-CIS ADF to speed
up double-sided copies. £238 exc VAT
from printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 341, p87

WIRELESS ROUTERS

Netgear Nighthawk RAXE300

Fast Wi-Fi 6E router, £400
from amazon.co.uk

The RAXE500 (see right) is faster than the RAXE300, but
in practice we doubt you would notice – this tri-band router still delivered speeds
between 50MB/sec and 150MB/sec in our tests. And it’s packed with features, too.
At £150 cheaper than its bigger brother, we think it hits the Wi-Fi 6E sweet spot.
REVIEW Issue 341, p68

Netgear Nighthawk
RAXE500

If you want the fastest Wi-Fi then 6E
is the obvious choice, and this router
delivers. The Armor protection service
costs £38 in the first year, but then
rockets up to £85, so you’re buying top
quality and performance, but you pay
for it. £550 from netgear.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 332, p64

Honor Router 3

This affordable Wi-Fi 6 router
delivers consistently fast wireless
speeds, broad coverage and a modest
speed boost for newer hardware –
and the Router 3 has a cute design
too. If you need more range, you can
pick up a second unit to use as an
extender. £55 from amazon.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 318, p51

MESH WI-FI

TP-Link Deco XE75

Speedy Wi-Fi 6E for £359
from box.co.uk
If you want fast, wide-area Wi-Fi 6E coverage
then the Deco XE75 is a far more affordable
choice than the Netgear Orbi RBKE963. Most
homes will be fine with the two-pack for £359,
but £465 buys three units for bigger footprints.
REVIEW Issue 340, p64

Mercusys Halo H80X

A new subsidiary of TP-Link, Mercusys
offers its parent brand’s XE75 router
some excellent value-for-money
competition. Not as fast due to Wi-Fi 6
rather than Wi-Fi 6E, but it has all the
bandwidth you need for everyday use
and should deliver it stably throughout
your house. There are plenty of features
too. 2-pack, £162 from cclonline.com
REVIEW Issue 341, p71

Netgear Orbi Quad-band
Wi-Fi 6E RBKE963

The RBKE963 is a phenomenal
piece of hardware that sets the gold
standard for 6E meshes, but since
few internet connections are fast
enough to take advantage of the extra
bandwidth, you should only buy it if
you need the fastest Wi-Fi 6E network
around. £1,700 from netgear.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 331, p68
17

BUSINESS WI-FI

TP-Link Omada EAP690E HD
Wi-Fi 6E access point, £515 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com
The Omada has what it takes to satisfy businesses
planning on serving up high-density wireless networks.
This AXE11000 AP delivers impeccable wireless
performance and plenty of enterprise-class features.
REVIEW Issue 347, p103

Netgear WAX630E

The tri-band WAX630E – a Wi-Fi 6E
access point – delivers strong
performance across the 5GHz and
6GHz bands. Netgear’s Insight
cloud service provides classy
remote management and it can’t be
beaten for value. £232 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com

REVIEW Issue 341, p95

Zyxel WAX630S

Not the cheapest Wi-Fi 6 AP, but the
Zyxel WAX630S delivers a lot of
features for the price. Performance
is impeccable, it can be easily
cloud-managed and the CNP+ threat
prevention service could save you the
cost of a firewall. £374 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 340, p101

NAS SERVERS

Synology DiskStation DS1823xs+
10GbE NAS, £1,494 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com
This powerful eight-bay NAS is a great
choice for SMBs that want plenty of
capacity, features and performance at a
reasonable price. The new DSM 7.2 software has security high on its agenda, and
the icing on the cake is Synology’s generous five-year warranty.
REVIEW Issue 346, p101

Qnap TS-h987XU-RP

Synology DiskStation
DS1522+

The TS-h987XU-RP is a ready-made
hybrid storage solution for SMBs.
This rack-friendly package offers
a great specification for the price,
and Qnap’s QuTS hero software
scores highly for its wealth of dataprotection features and business
apps. Diskless, £3,293 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 344, p96

Small businesses that want a highcapacity desktop NAS at a good price
will find Synology’s DS1522+ a great
choice. Performance over 10GbE is
impeccable and the DSM software
offers a fantastic range of storage
features. 5-bay NAS, diskless £613 exc
VAT from broadbandbuyer.com

Logitech Rally Bar Mini

Poly Studio R30

Offers everything SMBs need for
professional meeting room VC
services. The three operational
modes make it versatile and it
delivers excellent video and audio
quality, with Logitech’s Sync cloud
service providing valuable remote
management features. £1,913 exc
VAT from meetingstore.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 340, p97

An affordable and easy-to-use
4K solution for small buinesses.
Video and audio quality are very
good and its clever peopletracking and framing features
add that all-important
professional touch to your
meetings. £549 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 340, p99

REVIEW Issue 344, p98

VIDEOCONFERENCING

Biamp Parlé VBC 2500

4K meeting room star, £1,737 exc VAT
from midwich.com
Not as versatile as
Logitech’s Rally Bar, which offers standalone modes courtesy of Android OS,
but Biamp can’t be beaten for the quality of its video and audio. Digital
auto-framing is fast, and the smart launch mode makes meeting room setup a
piece of cake.
REVIEW Issue 347, p102

SCANNERS

Xerox D70n Scanner

Fast and furious, £765 exc VAT
from ballicom.co.uk
The D70n delivers a mighty scan speed together with a
wealth of scan management tools and apps. Businesses
that want a high-volume networked desktop scanner at an
affordable
aff
ordable price should put the Xerox at the top of their list.
REVIEW Issue 346, p99

Brother ADS-4700W

Epson WorkForce DS-870

A fine choice for small businesses,
with an impressive range of scanning
features at a price that can’t be
faulted. Output quality is top notch and
the versatile LCD touchscreen
menus provide great walk-up
scan services. £368 exc VAT from
printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 346, p96

For a 65ppm desktop scanner, the
WorkForce DS-870 is good value and
offers top output quality and solid scan
management apps. If you don’t need
network support (Epson’s add-on unit is
expensive), this scanner has what it
takes to handle heavy workloads. £457
exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 346, p98

Dell EMC PowerEdge
R250

Broadberry CyberServe
Xeon E-RS100-E10

SERVERS

Dell EMC PowerEdge T350

Xeon E-2300 power, from £1,273 exc VAT
from dell.co.uk
Perfect for SMBs and branch offices looking for an
affordable and powerful single-socket tower server.
Along with support for Xeon E-2300 CPUs and lots of
memory, it has a high storage capacity, plenty of
expansion space and is sturdily built.
REVIEW Issue 335, p98
18

With prices starting at around
£800 exc VAT for a Pentium Gold
CPU, and the option of Xeon E-2300
series chips from £1,741 exc VAT, this
is a slim, rack-mounted alternative
to the more high-powered T350
that’s ideal for SMBs. From £801
exc VAT from dell.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 332, p98

This represents a powerful hardware
package at a price that will please
small businesses. We love its
low-profile chassis and the fine
selection of remote-management
tools. It’s a great alternative to the Dell
EMC servers also listed here. £983 exc
VAT from broadberry.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 318, p96

@PCPRO

The A-List

FAC E B O O K . C O M / P C P R O

SECURITY SOFTWARE
G Data Total Security

NordVPN

Avast One
Essential

ProtonVPN

A suite for power users with a host of useful
features that offers formidable protection
against viruses. 5 devices, $82 per year (first
year and renewals) from gdatasoftware.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 343, p83

The only product in our
tests to score a 100%
protection rating for
blocking all malicious files,
this reliable choice is our
pick of the free AV tools
available and includes a
free if limited VPN service.
Free from avast.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p82

McAfee+
Advanced

A high-end choice with
high-end features and
support for an unlimited
number of devices. Good
value for the first year, but
watch out for renewals.
Unlimited devices, £75
first year, £150 renewals
from mcafee.com/en-gb
REVIEW Issue 343, p84

CLOUD SHARING

NordVPN provides consistent and fast speeds,
serious security, great support for video-streaming
services and some cost-effective subscription rates.
£44 per year from nordvpn.com
REVIEW Issue 329, p84

ProtonVPN provided one
of the best free offerings
of all the VPNs in our
recent group test (see
issue 329, p78), including
unlimited data, but
upgrade to benefit from
even faster speeds and
many more options. Free
from protonvpn.com
REVIEW Issue 329, p85

Surfshark

A strong rival to NordVPN,
especially if you’re willing
to commit to its two-year
contract. It’s fast, cheap
and a fine choice for
people who like to switch
to US streaming services:
they actually work!
£44 for two years from
surfshark.com
REVIEW Issue 329, p86

CLOUD BACKUP

ShareFile Premium

IDrive Business

exc VAT per month
billed yearly from
sharefile.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p96

exc VAT per year
from idrive.com
REVIEW Issue 347, p99

A great-value choice for SMBs that want secure
cloud collaboration with all the storage they can eat.
It’s easy to use, supports massive file sizes, and the
Premium plan adds a wealth of app integrations
(including e-signature
services). From £99

PASSWORD MANAGERS

VPNs

SMBs that want affordable cloud backup and
data recovery features need look no further
than IDrive Business. It’s easy to manage, its
platform and app support is extensive and
client deployment
doesn’t get any
easier. 2.5TB, £479

Egnyte Business

Barracuda Backup Vx

excVATperuserpermonthbilledyearlyfromegnyte.com
REVIEW Issue 343, p97

per year from barracuda.com
REVIEW Issue 347, p98

Not our pick for value, but Egnyte provides a wealth of
easily managed file-sharing services. App integrations
and anti-malware add to its appeal. Business plan, £16

NETWORK MONITORING

A natural choice for businesses running Hyper-V
or VMware virtualisation hosts. Hybrid backup
really doesn’t get any easier. From £708 exc VAT

ENDPOINT PROTECTION

Bitwarden

Bitwarden has a huge advantage: it’s
free. It isn’t as slick as some paid-for
rivals, but it can sync passwords across all devices
for no extra charge. Free from bitwarden.com
REVIEW Issue 320, p61

Dashlane

A manager that’s ideal
for beginners, and it even
builds in an unlimited (if
basic) VPN service. Note
you may prefer to buy
the Family plan ($60 per
year) as this extends the
service to six people.
$40 per year (Premium)
from dashlane.com
REVIEW Issue 320, p62

1Password

1Password is targeted at
technically minded users
who are looking for the
last word in security. It
even offers a Travel Mode
that may ease your mind if
surrendering your phone
to customs officials. $24
per year (individual)
from 1password.com
REVIEW Issue 320, p60

VOIP SERVICES
3CX StartUP

SMEs worried about the cost and complexity of
hosting an IP PBX will love 3CX’s free StartUP. It’s
easy to use and provides all the call-handling services
you need. Free for 1-10 users from 3cx.com
REVIEW Issue 345, p96

Gradwell Wave

Ideal for SMEs that want the smoothest possible path
to VoIP, this cloud-hosted service is easy to manage
and packed with features. Wave 100, from £7.50 exc
VAT per user per month from gradwell.com
REVIEW Issue 345, p98

UTM APPLIANCES
NEW ENTRY

Progress WhatsUp Gold 2022

WatchGuard EPDR

WatchGuard Firebox T45-W-PoE

Easy to deploy, and with flexible device-based
licensing plans, WhatsUp Gold is an affordable
choice for SMBs. It presents an impressive set of
network-monitoring tools in a well-designed
console and tight integration with the LoadMaster
and Flowmon apps.
50 devices, Premium,
yearly licence,
£1,309 exc VAT from
whatsupgold.com
REVIEW Issue 342, p90

Not the cheapest option, but that reflects an
incredible range of security measures. Smart
detection and response services harden threat
protection even further and seamless integration
with the cloud portal allows all WatchGuard
security products to be managed from one
place. 25 seats,
1yr subscription,
£1,693 exc VAT from
watchguard.com
REVIEW Issue 339, p100

Offering enterprise-class gateway security measures
at an affordable price, this is a great choice for small
to medium-sized business and remote offices.
Integral Wi-Fi 6 services add extra value and it can be
easily managed and monitored from WatchGuard’s
slick cloud portal. Appliance with 3yr Total Security
Suite, £3,148 exc VAT from guardsite.co.uk
REVIEW Issue 348, p98

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor22.4

Avast Premium Business Security

Zyxel ZyWALL ATP500

NEW ENTRY

The ability to assign sensors to any device brings
versatility, and everything is included in the price so
there’s no need for optional modules. 1,000 sensors,
1yr maintenance, €2,499 exc VAT from paessler.com
REVIEW Issue 342, p89

SMBs that want endpoint protection with an
emphasis on simplicity will find Avast’s cloudmanaged business security solutions fits the bill.
25 devices, £841 per year exc VAT from avast.com
REVIEW Issue 339, p98

This desktop appliance gives sophisticated protection
against zero-day threats, is easily managed and
very good value. Appliance with 1yr Gold Security
licence, £1,191 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com
REVIEW Issue 348, p99
19

ForgetBritannia:
wavessimply
rule,okay?

Dick Pountain
is the editorial
fellow of PC Pro.
He would rather
waive the rules
than rule the
waves.
Email dick@
dickpountain.co.uk

New observations suggest a low-level background hum of gravitational
waves across the universe, which wouldn’t have surprised Alan Turing

T

here appears to be a widespread
opinion that biology and maths
don’t mix. Perhaps it’s behind
the current panic over AI, and the
depiction of robots as villains in
superhero movies. It was already
prevalent in the 1960s when I was
choosing which A-levels to take: to do
chemistry I was told firmly I must take
maths and physics rather than biology
or art, both of which I loved.
In those days, the only connection
between maths and biology was via
statistics, which were necessary for
experiments and stuff like population
studies. My interest in biology didn’t
go away (I ended up in biochemistry),
but it combined with interests in
philosophy and computation to lead
me down eccentric paths.
I discovered D’Arcy Thompson’s
magnificent On Growth and Form,
which showed how geometry was
expressed in the shapes of living
things. I encountered the Belousov–
Zhabotinsky reaction, where a certain
chemical mixture oscillates between
different states rather than proceeding
smoothly to a final product. The
Belgian chemist Ilya Prigogine
received the 1977 Nobel prize for
extending this insight to explain what
he called “dissipative systems”, which
can organise themselves to exhibit
complex moving structures.
Last week in the Imperial College
alumni magazine I read an article
about Robert Endres and Mark Isalan,
whose work with synthetic embryos is
revisiting the patterns described by
Alan Turing in his seminal 1951 paper
The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis.
Turing had suggested that biological
shapes and structures might arise when
two different chemical compounds
diffuse into one another. He proposed a
mathematical description using partial
differential equations, whereby waves
of chemical composition flow through
the growing organism, catalysing
reactions that create structures and
20

control their placement in space.
Though Turing pioneered modern
computing, he didn’t yet possess one
powerful enough to solve these
equations, which he did by hand.

T

uring was also working before
Watson and Crick discovered
the structure of DNA, and the
revolution in molecular biology and
genetics they triggered now lets us
understand the chemical systems that
support his proposal. The embryos of
multicellular creatures like ourselves
start out as sheets of undifferentiated
cells, but genes within some of them
exude proteins called transcription
factors; these travel across the sheet in
synchronised waves, turning other
genes in far cells on or off and causing
them to divide, die or migrate, and to
release further waves. This fantastically
choreographed cellular ballet must
happen very precisely in time and space
to sculpt the shape of each creature:
similar small sets of “homeobox”
genes generate the wings of a fly, the
leaves of a tree, the segments of a
worm or your arms and legs. All via
waves of proteins intersecting and
interfering at the right places and times.
If waves intersecting and interfering
to make stuff happen sounds familiar,
it might be because particle physics,
which underlies the whole of modern
chemistry, is based on waves, too. The
Standard Model, which has so far
survived all attempts at replacement,
proposes that the universe consists of
nothing but a set of “quantum fields”,
one for each kind of particle, currently
17. All matter and energy and things
and people, everything that happens
(except for gravity at the moment,

It could have been interference
between waves that caused particles
to clump together into the first stars
and then the first galaxies

Turing suggested that biological
shapes and structures might arise
when two different chemical
compounds diffuse into one another

to the great chagrin of physicists)
happens via so-called perturbations of
these fields, which spread like waves
through space and time.

A

nd now for the punchline. Last
week, NANOGrav – of course
you know it better as the North
American Nanohertz Observatory for
Gravitational Waves – and various
international collaborating
observatories released results that
suggest there’s a very low frequency
background hum of gravitational
waves permeating the whole universe.
This hum might be the result of
supermassive black holes merging, or
it might be leftover ripples in spacetime from shortly after the Big Bang.
It’s only become detectable thanks to
the new Laser Interferometer
Gravitational-Wave Observatory
(LIGO) arrays that exploit ultra-tiny
changes in the frequency of pulsars.
Already there’s speculation that at
some time shortly after the Big Bang,
before there was light, just a soup of
newly forming particles, it could have
been interference between waves in
this all-permeating gravity wave
background that caused them to
clump together into the first stars
and then the first galaxies.
There’s an apocryphal story about
Bertrand Russell giving an astronomy
lecture where a woman in the
audience challenged him by saying
the Earth is actually supported on the
back of a giant turtle. When Russell
asked what that turtle was standing
on, she replied that it’s “turtles all the
way down”. Perhaps she was right,
except it’s waves rather than turtles.
dick@dickpountain.co.uk

@PCPRO

Viewpoints

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Broadband
shouldn’tbe
thishard

Nicole is PC Pro’s
Futures editor. She
admits she missed
Bluey as much as
her daughter did.
@njkobie

Internet access has become a crucial part of daily life, so why does getting
connections fixed require a level of knowledge far beyond most people?

O

ur broadband speeds had been
noticeably slower. We were
supposed to be getting around
80Mbits/sec, but every now and then it
slowed to crawl or cut out. So when
our contract came up for renewal, we
switched providers. Not because we
thought that would fix the problem,
but to get better customer service.
The only reason we signed up for
the first ISP was its price. When it
worked, it was one heck of a deal. But
when things go wrong, you want the
helpline to be answered by someone
who actually knows what they’re
talking about. So we flipped our
contract to Zen, frequent winners of
PC Pro’s annual awards – the survey
for which is running right now, so
head to pcpro.link/techies23 to share
your thoughts on the best in tech.
One of the benefits of opting for an
ISP like Zen – who hasn’t sponsored
me, I swear – is that its customer
service is staffed by people with real
knowledge. That’s a boon when you
too understand broadband, as it means
you can quickly escalate to them calling
out Openreach to check on the gubbins
in the cabinet when necessary.
We knew the problem would need a
visit from Openreach for a few reasons.
First, my husband poked and prodded
our home setup, so we knew it wasn’t
our router or Wi-Fi causing the
issues. Second, our neighbourhood
WhatsApp group stopped complaining
about litter and goose poop for long
enough to have a discussion that
revealed multiple homes on our estate
had seen their speeds drop off or
broadband completely cut out, with
Openreach sent out several times in
the preceding few weeks.

So when we called Zen to sort out
our service, we didn’t have to jump
through all the hoops. “Can you turn
your router off and on again?” “Can
you plug your laptop into your router
or sit closer to the Wi-Fi?” “Is the
microwave running?” Instead, we
skipped straight to line tests, revealing
the problem was at the cabinet.

H

ow do people without IT skills
deal with this conversation?
Imagine having to wade through
speed tests and settings and Openreach
when you’ve never even heard of BT’s
sort-of-independent infrastructure
arm. Most people think a cabinet is a
piece of furniture and remain unsure
of the difference between mobile
broadband and Wi-Fi. Few will have a
laptop with an Ethernet port.
ISPs need to be so much simpler to
deal with. Because our neighbours
lacked knowledge on this specialist
subject, and because the line test to the
cabinet would show no issues, many of
them couldn’t get their own providers
to arrange an Openreach callout – they
didn’t even know that could be done.
When your water stops running,
Thames Water doesn’t expect you
to understand its corporate structure
or advanced hydraulics. If your
electricity suddenly stops working, it’s
handy to know where the fuse box is,
but if everyone else in the building has
gone dark, too, no-one asks you to
start meddling with wires.
Since so many of us in one place had
the same fault, it was no surprise that
the problem was inside the cabinet.
The Openreach engineer explained
to me that the fibre ports were old
and busted and needed replacing;
annoyingly, ours was
now entirely out of
service, and because
there were no working
ones left to plug us into,
we went from poor
service to none at all.

When things go wrong, you
want the helpline to be answered
by someone who knows what
they’re talking about

While we waited a week or so for a
replacement part to be fitted, we were
left without broadband – a problem for
people who work from home and have
a Bluey-addicted toddler who doesn’t
understand why we can’t just stream
Disney on demand any more. To check

While we waited, we were left
without broadband – a problem for
people who work from home and
have a Bluey-addicted toddler
emails and do our work, we used our
iPhones as hotspots, burning through
our data plans; one of our neighbours
(and longtime PC Pro reader) shared
his BT Wi-Fi login so we could
piggy-back off another neighbour’s
functioning connection – thanks Mus,
we owe you a pint.

A

longside the password to our
neighbour’s Wi-Fi, here’s
something I learned through
the whole irritating experience: pick
an ISP that’s signed up to Ofcom’s
automatic compensation scheme.
Even though the outage wasn’t Zen’s
fault, and it helped us get it sorted as
quickly as Openreach would allow,
the company is still knocking £90 off
our bill. Choosing your ISP carefully
can really pay in the long run.
Most people choose their broadband
by budget, and given the current cost
of living crisis, that’s likely more true
than ever. But that doesn’t justify
ISPs leaving customers hanging, or
using stall tactics such as bewildering
people with technical terms and
confusing tasks, when their lines slow
or fail. Broadband is necessary for
everything from messaging family
to paying bills and working from
home – it’s now a utility. ISPs need
to make customer service as simple
as water and electricity.
work@nicolekobie.com
21

Viewpoints

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Anapp-solute
security
scandal

Barry Collins is
a former PC Pro
editor. He’s never
forgotten his
phone’s passcode.
What idiot could
forget their own
date of birth?
@bazzacollins

Never mind the politics, the Covid inquiry has exposed shocking
flaws in government IT security

I

t seems that for the three years
that Boris Johnson was ensconced
in Number 10, he wasn’t only
Prime Minister, First Lord of the
Treasury and Minister for the Civil
Service, he was also Chief Security
Officer. That can be the only rational
explanation for the truly insane case
of what happened with his iPhone.
For those who’ve missed this
extraordinary saga, a quick recap.
Back in May, the Covid-19 public
inquiry demanded to see Johnson’s
WhatsApp and other messages that
were sent from his phone during the
pandemic. But there was a problem:
due to a security breach in 2021,
Johnson had been told to turn the
phone off and never turn it on again.
When he subsequently decided to
comply with the public inquiry’s
request, the former PM went to turn
the old phone on again to retrieve the
messages, only to discover he’d
forgotten the passcode that secured
the device in the first place. Fluffing
the passcode could lead to the phone’s
data being wiped, and only after the
government unearthed his passcode
was the thing finally unlocked.
At this point, it behoves me to
remind you that Boris Johnson was
running the country, not a corner
shop in Torquay. Whether you think
Johnson was the best thing since
sliced Hovis or the most shambolic
bag of atoms that has ever ascended
to high office, whether or not you
believe he suffered from passcode
amnesia, you must surely agree that
this episode exposes monumental
flaws in government IT security.
Set aside for now the questionable
practice of conducting government

business via WhatsApp. This topic is
worthy of a book in itself, not least
because the government’s favourite
communications app is the same one
that it’s trying to kneecap with the
Online Safety Bill, which effectively
outlaws the end-to-end encryption
the secretive ministers cherish.
Instead, let’s focus on the iPhone.
It isn’t clear whether it was a
government-issued handset or a
personal device, but it doesn’t matter.
As far as the PM is concerned, there
should be no such thing as a personal
communications device. Whether it’s
a laptop, tablet, iPhone or whatever,
any device is a potential national
security risk and should fall under the
purview of the security services.

T

he Prime Minister doesn’t like
it? Wants a device that’s not
potentially being monitored by
MI5? Tough. Being PM means you’re
not in charge of your own security,
because you’ll inevitably make bad
decisions. At the risk of making a glib
comparison, when the 9/11 attacks
took place George W Bush wanted to
go straight back to the White House,
but the security forces overruled him.
You don’t let a president return to a
live terrorist target, and you don’t let
prime ministers run their own IT,
with all the inherent national security
risks that brings.
We know there was a specific risk
with Johnson’s iPhone, because he
was told to turn it off. It hasn’t been
revealed what the risk was, but it was
around the same time reports emerged
that his phone number had been
published online for years. As security
experts told The Guardian at the time,
that not only left
him exposed to
prank calls from
comedians, it
left him open
to phishing,
malware and

The government’s favourite
communications app is the same one
that it’s trying to kneecap with the
Online Safety Bill
22

No Prime Minister, nor cabinet
minister for that matter, should
ever be using personal devices for
government communication
SIM-jacking attacks, any of which
could have resulted in all those
sensitive WhatsApp conversations
and Lord knows what other data
falling into the wrong hands.

A

nd here lies the most glaring
security blunder of this whole
dismal saga – it seems Johnson
was allowed to keep the phone! This
ticking timebomb of a handset, which
is so compromised the security chiefs
didn’t want it to be connected to the
network again, is left with Johnson
and eventually winds up in the hands
of his solicitors. Was it stored securely
all that time? Where was it stored when
he left office? How could anyone be
sure he wouldn’t just turn it on again
at some point and compromise his
own and national security? Johnson
isn’t exactly renowned for making
security his top priority: this is the
same man who reportedly ignored
security service advice to travel to
Italy for a party with a former KGB
officer while he was Foreign Secretary.
But, again, let’s focus on the office,
not the personality. No Prime Minister,
nor cabinet minister for that matter,
should ever be using personal devices
for government communication.
Compromised devices should be
confiscated and secured. And no
government device should be reliant
on the user remembering its
passcode. It’s staggering that this
even needs to be stated.
Once the Covid inquiry has run
its course, the next one should be
examining the appalling state of
government IT security.
barry@mediabc.co.uk

Readers’comments
Your views and feedback from email and the web

Worth a tiny look?

Having retired some years ago, I
was not overly pleased when
Microsoft announced that Windows
11 would not run on older PCs,
rendering my well-specified
desktop PC and laptop obsolete.
I recently came across tiny11, a
“lite” version of Windows 11 available
via GitHub, which comes without
extras such as Edge, Teams and
Cortana, and with the TPM
requirement removed. You still need
a valid Windows licence key, and
interestingly the standard Windows
Update works normally. I installed it
on an aged 2007 HP laptop. It runs
reasonably quickly and seems stable.
How about an assessment of tiny11
from PC Pro?
David Molana-Allen

ABOVE A tripod
for your phone is
essential for smooth
snaps and videos

Lee Grant, contributing editor, replies:
“Tiny11 has been discussed on various
forms that I lurk on – basically, what to
install on your working hardware when
Microsoft kills Windows 10.
It demonstrates that Windows could be
far more optimised and responsive than it
currently is. But while it holds great
potential for a second/third machine, you
can’t rely on it. As it’s basically a hack
version, it’s not unusual for Windows
updates – if the update module accidentally
fires up – to kill it.
It also has a reputation of being a little
unpredictable about the hardware it runs
on. Then there’s the argument about
whether it’s legal to do it and, of course,
security – a lot of trust is being placed in
the people that are supplying the ISO.
But yes, you’re right that it would make
a great feature… look out for more in a
future issue.

Starletter
Check your bank statements!

Thank you for your article on online payment fraud
(see issue 347, p34). I recently discovered several
fraudulent charges to my credit card, all for Amazon.
On investigation with my bank we discovered periodic
and sporadic charges going back to 2021; almost
£700 had been stolen in total. I’m assuming my card
details came from a data breach as we were in
lockdown when the details were stolen, meaning
anybody can suffer from this fraud no matter how
careful they are.

Is that a video camera
in your pocket?

I have to agree with Jon Honeyball’s
comments (see issue 347, p110) about
the best camera being the one in your
pocket. For most people, that’s their
smartphone. They are blindingly
easy to get very good results from,
especially when you use HDR and
features such as 4K.
The only real downside is that most
people only use phones handheld, and
try as you might you won’t be able to
hold it perfectly still. If you want
better-quality results, you should be
using at least a simple tripod or
monopod, just as you would if using a
proper camera or video camera.
A couple of years ago I started a
hobby of filming heritage steam and
diesel trains using nothing more than
my daily driver smartphone. I soon
started to get good results (30,000
views on YouTube for some of the
videos) just using a cheap mini tripod.
I found out that the basic smartphone

It transpired that the criminals had been using
my card with their own Amazon accounts to buy
non-existent goods from their own fake seller
accounts, effectively using Amazon to launder
the money. The weak point is that Amazon only
authorises a card in your banking app the first time
it’s used, automatically authorising it every time after.
A flaw in its system, however, then
allows that authorised card to be used
with any Amazon account.
I’m still in the process of trying to
recover the money, but I dread to think
how much has already been stolen and
from how many people.
Mike Halsey

Our star letter writer wins the Cherry UM 9.0 Pro RGB, a microphone that won a PC Pro
Recommended award (see issue 347, p70). Email letters@pcpro.co.uk

24

clamp that came with
the mini tripod could
screw into my old (28
years) aluminium
full-size tripod, and
now panning shots
are silky smooth.
The ability to
actually edit fully the
videos on the phone
and upload is a great
benefit and is quicker
and easier than
downloading the
video files to a
computer and
editing on that
before uploading to
YouTube. The resulting videos come
out with a quality finish to them and
are judged by other videographers to
be as good or better than theirs using
much more expensive equipment.
Michael Ashworth

Phone addiction

After suffering the loss of a mobile
phone and the subsequent
disentanglement of my online
world, I’ve got to wondering why
UK banks still only offer 2FA
authentication by mobile phone?
Mobile phones must be one of the
most mislaid or stolen personal
possessions these days. Shouldn’t the
banks at least offer the option of using
software or hardware authentication,
such as Authy, YubiKey,
Authenticator and Keychain?
At least the use of an authentication
app is an option on Wise.
Nick Rogers
Contributing editor Davey Winder replies:
UK banks have a regulatory requirement to
provide “strong customer authentication”
(SCA) for online banking. This has been
implemented by either using SMS
codes or in-app measures including
biometric authentication.
Some banks, such as Barclays with
its PinSentry card reader, offer an
alternative to smartphone 2FA. Others,
such as Halifax, can send a PIN to a
landline. Metro Bank provides a standalone
authentication app for business and
commercial customers. Third-party
authentication apps, however, are likely
not offered as they fall outside of the
control of the banks themselves.

Test, test, test

Why is it so hard for online ticket
vendors to do adequate load testing
on their apps? Having paid to see Billy

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Readers’
poll

I’m pretty much tied to Apple
these days so until it develops a
flip/folding phone I’ll be sticking
to its ‘normal’ phones.

Richard Kenyon

The quarter Yorkshire in me
says if they’re less than £200 I
might think about it. Ian Powell

Jointhedebate
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Reading Darien’s article on the seven
layer OSI model reminded me of
working in network support. It was
not uncommon for networking issues
to be ultimately identified as layer
eight problems. That is, the plonker at
the keyboard.
Alan Griffiths

As work buys my phone, I
can’t see them paying extra for
something which may be more
fragile. Andy Brown

Already rocking an MS Duo!

Stuart Hughes

ISSUE 347
SEPTEMBER

Layer eight problems

I would quite like a foldable
phone – I miss the compact little
phones I used to have before I
ventured into the smartphone
market. Graham Steel

2023 £5.99

A worthy item that might have been
mentioned in your feature on the
OSI model (see issue 347, p42): the
MAC address. In particular, its
uniqueness (there should never be
two the same) and how it can be
referenced by a DHCP server to
always provide the same IP address.
It is, of course, related to layer 2 of
the OSI model, ensuring that data
frames at layer 1 addressed only
to that MAC are picked up and
forwarded to layer 3.
I recall that live networking
examples (on a switch/router sat in
front of you) was one of the first
modules on the Cisco networking
course... but that was a long time
ago, when so much depended on
a proper understanding of
remedial networking.
Chris Hobson

Let’s call this month’s results a landslide! Of the 200+ people who voted in our survey, only 8%
expect to buy a bendy phone next. We wonder if the Pixel Fold (see p44) will change anyone’s
mind. Perhaps Iain Clarke: “I am intrigued by a foldable, and I can see some appeal – but the
premium is higher than my interest, and the extra utility,” he wrote on Twitter. “Not to mention
I am like Nicole – small hands!”
There’s no doubt that the expense is putting people off. Hardly surprising when a foldable phone
costs over £1,500. “Not a flip phone because it’s not the 1990s,” wrote Thomas Kenyon. “Not a
foldable because they cost a large fortune and aren’t as durable.”
But we do have converts in our midst. “I have had the Galaxy Z Flip3 for two years and the battery
is starting to not hold as much charge so I’m hoping the new Flip5 will be better [we will have a review
next month]. I like the way I can fold it and it then fits comfortably in my trouser pockets and doesn’t
give me a hernia when I sit down, or it is its own camera stand.”
Paul Christopher Peacock has something else on his mind. “The ‘innovation’ I’d like to see is a
device that’s maintainable. Replaceable batteries. Screens that aren’t glued and attached such that
they can’t be easily replaced.” We’re with you, Paul.

346 AUGUST

Don’t forget the MAC

With Google the latest
company to produce a
foldable phone, we asked
our followers on Facebook
and Twitter what they
would be
buying next.

ISSUE

Joel at BST at Hyde Park, the BST app
proceeded to hang on the splash
screen when I got to the gate. I had a
good Wi-Fi connection and got rapid
response on web pages. Rebooting
didn’t help. I had seen the ticket on
the app before I left home.
I ended up getting my ticket
printed at the box office. It’s a large
venue and this wasn’t a short walk.
There, I was told that redownloading
the app often fixed the problem. Also,
I could try the AXS app, which has
probably been around the block a lot
more often with large concerts.
On top of the technical problems,
the BST app was badly designed.
When the main thing I wanted to
do was see my ticket, this wasn’t
among the options on the main
screen. I had to realise the three
horizontal lines were a drop-down
menu and precision select from
too-small text.
I don’t know the exact nature of
the technical fault, but if capacity was
the issue then an app designed for
multiple concerts needs a way of
walling off people who have tickets
for the current day’s event.
Chris Jack

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25

FOR GAMING PCs?

If you’re looking for the ultimate gaming experience, does it still make
sense to invest heavily in hardware? We look at the alternatives

CONTRIBUTORS
Stuart Andrews, Barry Collins, Tim Danton

H

old on! Before you spend hundreds if not thousands

encourage you to think carefully, to read about all your

of pounds on a gaming PC, it’s important to think

options before you jump in.

about what you really need. Gamers have never

That’s why, over the next six pages, we analyse what

had more options, be that traditional games consoles,

each sector has to offer. Whether it’s Chromebooks or

Nintendo’s Switch (and rivals) or cloud-gaming services.

Windows laptops, mini PCs or towering desktop monsters,

This article isn’t here to dissuade you from buying a
£4,000 gaming PC if that’s what you want. But we would
26

consoles or the cloud, by the end you should know exactly
where to invest your money.

INDEX
27 Cloud gaming
27 Consoles
28 Non-gaming Windows laptops
29 Chromebooks
30 Mini PCs
30 Gaming PCs
31 Gaming laptops

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Cloud gaming
PLUSES

Low cost of entry
Older computers can be fine
Works on Xbox

NEGATIVES

Costs mount up
PCs can be too old
Strong broadband required

You can largely brush aside concerns
about how gutsy your hardware is if
you opt for cloud gaming. Largely,
but not entirely.
The current pinnacle of cloud
gaming performance comes from
Nvidia GeForce Now’s Ultimate tier.
On that plan, you can stream games in
4K at 120fps on either PC or Mac, with
the graphics settings maxed out on
over a thousand games, including
Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Destiny 2,
Rocket League and many more.
However, don’t be lulled into
thinking you can run GeForce Now
Ultimate on literally any old
computer. Although most of the
heavy lifting is done by the RTX 4080
SuperPods in Nvidia’s EU data
centres, some local processing is still
required. On a Windows PC, you’ll
need a GPU that supports DirectX 11,
a dual-core 64-bit processor running
at 2GHz or faster, and 4GB of RAM. On
Mac, Nvidia recommends a MacBook
Pro from 2016 onwards, an iMac from
2017 onwards or a MacBook Air or Mac
mini from 2018 onwards. We’ve tried
running it on a 10-year-old iMac and
it didn’t end well.
Your broadband connection needs
to be up to snuff, too. For 3,840 x 2,160
or 3,456 x 2,160 streaming at 120fps,
GeForce Now demands 45Mbits/sec.
That’s not a 45Mbits/sec connection,
that’s 45Mbits/sec of dedicated
bandwidth for this application alone.
At Full HD, GeForce Now can even
crank up to 240fps, but that needs at
least 35Mbits/sec.
Nvidia also recommends a wired
Ethernet connection to keep things as
smooth as possible, and we’d say
that’s pretty much a requirement if

you want to avoid dropped frames
and stutter warnings. Even using
Wi-Fi 6 at close range, we’ve found it
a struggle to keep GeForce Now
Ultimate streams as spotlessly smooth
as it is on Ethernet. So if your device is
not within wired reach of your router,
that could be a problem.
The good news is that with a
relatively modern computer, with
decent wired broadband and a wired
controller, the gaming performance is
outrageously strong. In Fortnite, with
the graphics set to Epic settings on a
4K display, the frame rate barely ever
dipped below 120fps. In games such
as Cyberpunk, you can have RTX
switched on and lap up all of that
ray-tracing loveliness. Crucially,
latency stayed below 20ms in our
tests, meaning you’re not noticeably
punished in online games.
GeForce Now Ultimate is
expensive (£18 per month before
games) and it does have particular
hardware requirements, especially
when it comes to the broadband
connection. But it’s the best gaming
PC you’ve ever owned, without the
hassle, noise and upfront expense of
actually buying one.
If you don’t need the absolute
apogee of gaming performance,
Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming is
worthy of consideration. Streaming
tops out at 60fps at Full HD resolution
on Microsoft’s service, and you’ll
need to be a Game Pass Ultimate
member to benefit from streaming.
Game Pass Ultimate covers both
Xbox and PC games, but don’t be
fooled. Only Xbox games (and not
even all of them) are currently
available for streaming at the time of
writing, although Microsoft has
strongly hinted that PC games
streaming is coming to the service.
As with GeForce Now, the service
works much more smoothly on
Ethernet than Wi-Fi, even with the
more limited resolution. Likewise,
very old PCs might struggle to run the
streams smoothly. Any half-decent
laptop or PC bought in the past five or
so years should be fine, though.
Indeed, we frequently stream
games on Xbox Cloud Gaming to a

Gamingalternatives
mid-range Android phone. It works
best on phones with mobile-friendly
games such as Peggle 2, Coffee Talk or
As Dusk Falls. In the interests of
completeness, GeForce Now also
offers mobile apps, although it seems
to have fewer of these mobile-friendly
titles in its library, being very much
focused on the performance end of
the market.
We’ve made
frequent use of Xbox
Cloud Gaming on PCs,
Mac and the Xbox
Series X console (it
saves you from having
to install games). Even
allowing for the
reduced resolution,
performance isn’t
as strong as it is
with GeForce Now
Ultimate, with latency
occasionally becoming an issue. But if
you pick your games wisely, it still
offers a very decent gaming
experience. And, of course, the Game
Pass Ultimate service provides the
option to download and install games
on the Xbox or PC locally, too.

Don’t be lulled into
thinking you can
run GeForce Now
Ultimate on literally
any old computer

Consoles
PLUSES

Amazing value
Slick gaming
Great game selection

NEGATIVES

No real upgrade option
No keyboard or mouse
Platform tie-ins

BELOW GeForce
Now Ultimate lets
you stream games
in 4K at 120fps

On one level, it makes zero sense
to splash out on a gaming PC when
today’s consoles offer unbeatable
performance at a lower price. Take
the Xbox Series X. It has an 8-core,
16-thread Ryzen CPU running at up to
3.8GHz, plus a custom RDNA 2 GPU
with 52 CUs running at 1.825GHz for
approximately 12 teraFLOPs of
number-crunching power. The
nearest AMD desktop GPU – the RX
6750XT – runs faster, but would cost
you north of £300 on its own, without
the Xbox’s CPU, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM
or the 1TB SSD. Even if you could grab
that stuff within the budget, you
wouldn’t have the cooling, the
controller or the case. The Xbox Series
X is by far the best gaming PC you can
buy for £480, even if it doesn’t run
Windows 11 in any form you know it.
True, Sony’s PS5 doesn’t have
quite the same raw processing power,
but it makes up for it with higher
clock speeds and some ingenious
power management. The Digital
Edition without the 4K Blu-ray drive
will set you back under £400. And if
27

you’re happy with gaming at 1080p,
the Xbox Series S gives you Full HD
and sometimes 1440p gaming for
under £250. You simply won’t find
anything comparable in the PC
gaming space for that kind of money.
Maybe you prefer your gaming
on the move. The hardware in
Nintendo’s switch is now ancient by
gaming PC standards, yet The Legend
of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
remains one of the most visionary and
critically acclaimed games of 2023.
Even the premium OLED model with
its stunning 7in screen could be yours
for under £300. And while Valve’s
Steam Deck is effectively a handheld
gaming PC, it’s arguably better value
than the big guys with prices starting
at £360. You’ll find yourself gaming
in more places, more frequently, and
you’ll be amazed how many recent
blockbuster titles it can still run.
The Asus ROG Ally has even more
power on tap, though that’s reflected
in the £699 price tag.
Unless you spend a small fortune
on components, you won’t be able to
tell the difference between a game
running on the Series X or PS5 from
one running on a high-end gaming
PC. What’s more, console gaming
just works. There’s no fiddling with
drivers or settings; games are tuned to
run at a specific resolution at 60fps,
or with higher settings at 30fps where
there’s a Quality mode. If a game
glitches or performs badly, that’s the
developer’s problem, not yours.
The other key reason to get a
console is that the hardware
manufacturers invest heavily in
exclusive games. Because these are
designed to showcase the technology
and drive gamers to their platform,
these tend to be some of the most
spectacular and satisfying games
around. In recent years the concept of
exclusivity has changed slightly.
Microsoft has embraced PC gaming
within the Xbox ecosystem, and

releases its Xbox exclusives, day one
on PC. Sony has started doing the
same thing, but with a substantial gap
to make sure that, if you want to play
Horizon Forbidden West or God of War
Ragnarök, you’ll have an 18-month
to two-year wait to do so on PC.
Finally, consoles offer an easy,
subscription-based approach to
playing games. Microsoft’s Xbox
Games Pass offers a huge and
ever-growing library of recent and
classic Xbox hits for a monthly fee,
with its big exclusives appearing on
day one. Sony’s PS Plus Extra and
Premium services do something
similar, albeit with a longer sixmonth to one-year wait for the big
exclusives to appear. You can enjoy
Xbox Games Pass on a PC, and it’s
cheaper with an excellent selection of
PC-only games. But why splash out
on a hulking, RGB-lit desktop when a
console will give you what you want,
with no fuss, for less?
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
You can’t upgrade a console beyond
storage. This is a
strength in
that it
gives

ABOVE Some
consoles allow you
to play games
wherever you are

Why splash out on
a hulking desktop
when a console
will give you what
you want for less?

Non-gaming laptops
PLUSES

Capable in undemanding games
Affordable choices

NEGATIVES

Demanding games unplayable
Very limited expansion

LEFT The PS5
Digital Edition will
set you back
under £400
28

developers one fixed target for an
eight-year cycle, and they can really
focus on wringing the absolute best
out of the machines, but it also means
that, by the end of that cycle, the
hardware often holds development
back. Some late games on the
last-gen PS4 and Xbox One were
clearly struggling to do what they
were meant to do on a dated spec.
Even now there are advanced
games such as the upcoming
Starfield or A Plague Tale: Requiem
that run at 30fps on console in their
quality mode, but need a PC to run at
60fps with the same stunning visuals.
Second, the console controller
brings its own limitations. Complex
RPGs and strategy games still thrive
with a mouse and keyboard, where
console controls and interfaces slow
things down. There are also good
reasons why most pro
gamers still prefer a
mouse and keyboard
setup when accuracy
and split-second timing
count. There’s an
argument, then, that
the PC delivers the
ultimate gaming
experience. But ask
yourself this: is it really
worth the cost?

Cast aside your prejudices: you
may be surprised at how capable
modern Windows laptops are when
it comes to gaming. Intel’s Iris Xe
graphics can run Counter-Strike:
GO and GTA V at rates well above
the 60Hz refresh of their typical
screens, and there’s even enough
power in there to run PUBG and
Fortnite if you’re happy to dial
down the settings. The same is true
for any modern AMD-powered
laptop with Radeon graphics.
There are some gotchas. Just
because a laptop includes a Core i3,
i5 or i7 processor doesn’t mean that
it will automatically produce
playable frame rates in CS: GO.
One particular quirk is that Iris Xe
requires two sticks of RAM; if you
only have one SODIMM inside, or
more likely embedded onto the
motherboard, then it’s plain old
Intel UHD Graphics for you. The

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Chromebooks
PLUSES

Cheap options
Solid choice for cloud gaming
Includes a keyboard

NEGATIVES

Limited game options
Limited performance
Limited upgrades

Even in the era when it had its own
Stadia cloud gaming service, Google
struggled to position Chromebooks
as gaming devices. Perhaps that’s
unsurprising: with their low specs
and frequently lacklustre screens,
the average Chromebook was
nobody’s idea of a games machine.
Yet, curiously, post-Stadia,
Chromebooks have bucked up their
gaming credentials. Mid-range and
high-end Chromebooks now have the
high-resolution screens and audio to
make blockbuster games look and
sound great. Chromebooks will
work with those obsolete Stadia
controllers, not to mention Xbox
controllers and gaming mice.
Acer, Asus and Lenovo have even
produced gaming-focused
Chromebooks, complete with
programmable RGB keyboards,

silicon is the same, but in our
experience it means that games play
at around 70% of the speed.
This brings us to another problem
with non-gaming Windows laptops,
and that’s expansion. You’ll be stuck
with the graphics built into the
processor for a start – the only
exception being if your laptop
includes a Thunderbolt 4 port.
In that case, you can upgrade
your graphics via an external
graphics case. AKiTio, Cooler
Master and Razer all make such
units, but they’re expensive
options at around £300 even
without the graphics card.
That’s not the only pressure
point. While many Windows
laptops offer a way to upgrade
the internal storage, few
people will go to this trouble –
and you may find that the
supplied 256GB or 512GB SSD
is rapidly filled after installing
a game or three. External
storage is a workable option
but clumsy and, unless you
have a fast interface (USB 3.2
Gen 2 at 10Gbits/sec as a
minimum), you may find it
annoyingly slow.

144Hz 16in QHD screens, Wi-Fi 6E
networking and improved specs.
The two big issues remain
compatibility and performance.
While Valve and its Steam Deck have
blazed a trail for Windows gaming on
Linux, little of that has translated
into the Chrome OS world. As for
performance, it’s not hard to find a
Chromebook these days with an
Intel Core i5 CPU and 16GB of RAM,
but it’s impossible to find one with a
dedicated GPU. You’re stuck with
integrated graphics.
The answer to
both problems
is cloud
gaming. Google even
offers a three-month membership
to the Ultimate tier of GeForce Now
with certain models, while Xbox
Games Pass Ultimate and Amazon
Luna are also supported. With
GeForce Now’s Ultimate or Priority
tiers, a Chromebook makes a
convincing gaming laptop to the
extent that, if you have a half-decent
fibre connection and you don’t notice
the minuscule input lag, playing
Cyberpunk 2077 or Destiny 2 on a
Chromebook feels much the same as
on a Windows gaming laptop. Xbox
Games Pass Ultimate also runs well.
Chromebooks also have another
strength – a standard mouse and

If your needs are undemanding,
then, you should be happy with a
non-gaming Windows laptop. But if
you want to play the latest games,
you need to upgrade to a proper
gaming machine or give cloud
gaming a go.

Gamingalternatives

ABOVE The Asus
Chromebook Vibe is
designed for gaming

BELOW Microsoft’s
Surface Laptop will
play undemanding
games, but it has
plenty of limitations

keyboard
interface. You can
still use a controller for
action games, shooters and racers,
but you have the option of switching
back to mouse and keyboard for
strategy games and RPGs that simply
play better that way. This actually
makes a Chromebook a great
companion device for, say, a Steam
Deck or a console if you’re happy to
stream games through GeForce Now.
Meanwhile, native Steam gaming
is coming to Chromebooks. Right
now, only certain models are
supported and only through the Beta
update channel. The recommended
games list is depressingly short,
partly thanks to the lack of GPU
hardware. Yet the list is growing,
and there’s evidence that upcoming
Chrome OS development boards may
come packing Nvidia GPUs for the
first time. Gaming Chromebooks with
dedicated GPUs running Windows
titles through Steam and the same
Proton layer used by the Steam Deck
could be a very enticing prospect.

29

Mini PCs
PLUSES

Compact chassis
Energy efficient
Usually affordable

NEGATIVES

Struggle with top-end titles
Can be underpowered
Limited upgrades

The NUC-sized mini PC might not be
the first thing you think of when
mentally speccing out a gaming PC,
but don’t write them off too quickly.
These compact devices definitely
won’t have enough space to
accommodate a desktop graphics
card. It would be like trying to park a
double-decker bus in a beach hut. But
the power now available from even
integrated mobile graphics means
you can get a decent level of gaming
performance, especially if you’re
prepared to play at 1080p.
Take the Geekom AS 6. This
compact box is small enough to fit
on a monitor stand or even attach
to the back of a screen with the
supplied VESA mount. Yet it’s
powerful enough to play some
modern games at 4K.
The AS 6 is well specced for a
device of this type. It contains an
AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX processor,
capable of bursting at up to 4.9GHz.
That has Radeon 680M graphics,
which is a chip with 12 graphics
cores, and which AMD claims will
outperform entry-level dedicated
mobile GPUs such as the Nvidia
GeForce MX450. In the AS 6, it’s
complemented by 32GB of DDR5-4800
RAM and a 1TB M.2 SSD, which helps
to keep things nimble.
It’s a surprisingly capable games
machine. Even at 4K resolution and
with graphics on high quality, it’s
capable of playing Fortnite at around
40fps. There was certainly the odd
stutter and it’s not exactly flawlessly
smooth when chaos erupts and there
are bullets flying everywhere, but it
is playable. Dropping to Full HD
resolution pushes the frame rate to
60fps+, which gives you more than a
fighting chance against the teenagers.

30

It’s a similar story in Rocket
League. The action judders a little at
4K high quality settings, once again
delivering an average of around
40fps. Dropping to “performance”
graphics settings increases the frame
rate to a smoother 50fps, while
climbing down to Full HD with
performance settings delivers a
smooth road ahead at 60fps+.
Top-end titles such as Cyberpunk
are a stretch for this little box of
tricks, but more sedate games such as
Death Stranding and Cities: Skyline
run smoothly, even at 4K. In short,
if you’re not bothered about the
bleeding edge of gaming, and can
generally live with playing games at
Full HD, a compact PC such as the
Geekom AS 6 holds an unexpected
level of appeal. Not least because it’s
not going to chug electricity like a
student chugs cheap lager. Even
when it’s being pushed hard, the
total system power consumption
barely peaks above 80W. Fan noise
isn’t a big problem, either.
It must be said that the Geekom
AS 6 is well specced
for a mini PC,
particularly at its
price of £699. You
won’t typically get
this level of gaming
performance from
these NUC-style
boxes, most of

ABOVE The Mac
mini’s 10-core GPU
provides modest
gaming capabilities

which are designed for light office
duties, so pore over the specs if
you’re considering rivals.
The best known mini PC of all is, of
course, Apple’s Mac mini. Gaming on
the Mac is hard to
compare directly with
Windows, because of
the lack of crossover
titles, but there’s no
reason why you can’t
expect to do some modest gaming on
the latest Mac minis.
The base Mac mini has a 10-core
GPU, although the 256GB of storage
and 8GB of unified memory could
prove bigger barriers here. The
top-end model comes with a 16-core
GPU and 16GB of memory, which
should smooth things over. Our
colleagues at Tom’s Guide tested an
M2 Pro configuration with a 12-core
GPU and 16GB of RAM, and they
benchmarked Rise of the Tomb
Raider at 53fps at 1080p. Sid Meier’s
Civilization VI: Gathering Storm
graphical benchmark hit 50fps at
1080p and 44fps at 4K. Again,
these aren’t bleeding-edge titles,
but the Mac mini delivers better
gaming performance than many
might expect.

Gaming PCs
PLUSES

Easy to upgrade
No upper limit to speed
100% compatible

NEGATIVES

BELOW The tiny
Geekom AS 6 can
play some modern
games at 4K

Big upfront investment
Power hungry
Can be noisy

Although this feature celebrates the
many forms of gaming PC available
now, there remains one clear choice if
you need the last word in performance:
a true gaming PC. Think chunky
chassis with space inside for the latest
graphics cards, with cards based on
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 typically
measuring over a foot long.
Few people will benefit enough
from such a card to make it worth
the £1,500 investment (and that’s for
a basic, non-overclocked version).
You can get smooth frame rates at 4K
of above 60fps in even challenging
games such as Cyberpunk 2077 with
much lesser cards. And if you’re
happy with 1080p or 1440p and less
demanding games, then a mid-ranger
such as the new GeForce RTX 4060
(see p60) will do you proud for many
years to come.
Which card should you choose?
One of the benefits of choosing a
gaming PC is that you can keep one
eye on the future. If you only intend to

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Gaming laptops come in many sizes,
but there is one simple rule: the bigger
they are, the more powerful a card can
be squeezed into the chassis and the
faster your laptop will be. And they can
be chunky, often weighing over 2kg.
Unlike gaming PCs, there will be a
hard limit on the amount of power the
tight confines of a chassis can contain:
the current generation of mobile
GeForce RTX cards peak at 175W
compared to the 450W of the desktop
RTX 4090. That has an inevitable
impact on performance. The Asus
ROG Strix Scar 18 (see issue 344, p54)
is one of the most powerful gaming
laptops in the world, and in its RTX
4090 incarnation it averaged 86fps in
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition at

1600p (its native
resolution) and
Extreme settings. The
HP Omen 40L (see
issue 347, p50)) with
the desktop card
scored 120fps at 1440p
and 75fps at 4K. Or
compare their 3DMark
Time Spy Extreme scores:
9,513 for the laptop,
17,322 for the desktop.
However, there’s an
element of “so what?”
about this. Despite many
gaming laptops now
including lush OLED screens
with 240Hz refresh rates,
there’s only so much
competitive edge and
smoothness a frame rate of
above 60fps can give you. Sure,
people who play multiplayer
games competitively will benefit, as
every millisecond of lag matters here,
but most people will struggle to spot
the difference between 60fps and
120fps when gaming.
The other big issue is expense.
High-end gaming laptops don’t come
cheap, with the top-end ROG Strix
Scar 18 costing £4,000. Admittedly

play games on a 1080p monitor for the
next year or two then you would be
wasting your money on one of
Nvidia’s or AMD’s latest-generation
cards. Hunt on second-hand auction
sites and you can pick up a still
speedy RTX 2060 card for under
£100. Or buy one of the low-end cards
from AMD or Nvidia based on the
previous-generation technology.
Doing so means you can
concentrate your budget on the
processor and motherboard at the
start, as both components are tricky
to upgrade compared to the graphics
card. Nor do they date as quickly,
from a gaming point of view.
The other fantastic thing about
gaming PCs is down to the modular
design introduced by IBM way back in
1981. A great gaming chassis from a
decade ago remains a great gaming
chassis today; and likewise looking
ten years into the future. Invest
wisely and you’ll have a Trigger’s
Broom of a PC, swapping out
components as you go through its
lifetime while still enjoying the
external design you decided upon.
And make no mistake, custom
gaming PCs can make a statement in a
way that laptops never will. No matter
how many decals you slap on them.
With space for sophisticated
addressable RGB setups and an almost
infinite number of chassis to choose

from, what you build or buy will
quickly become your own.
It’s this level of customisability
that gives gaming PCs one last element
that nothing else here can: this is your
personal system. Based on your likes,
your research. That doesn’t mean you
have to build it and support it yourself.
We’re extremely fortunate in the UK to
have numerous specialist PC makers
who will take the risk out of builds by
doing it for you, and often at prices that
you’ll struggle to match if you buy
components off the shelf. If you’re a
regular reader of PC Pro, these names
won’t be new to you: Chillblast,
Cyberpower, PCSpecialist and Scan
are all extremely experienced in
taking a dream spec and turning it
into a tested, functioning PC.
Or perhaps you prefer to buy an
“off-the-shelf” gaming PC, where the
parts have been chosen
by companies. Not just
the likes of Acer,
Alienware, HP and
Lenovo – who all offer
their own chassis
designs that may
appeal to your aesthetic
– but again the British
manufacturers.
The international
brands have become
better at building
gaming PCs with

Gaming laptops
PLUSES

Superb, fast screens
Slim, stylish options
Can be surprisingly cheap

NEGATIVES

Limited power vs desktops
Usually beefy machines
Expensive at cutting edge

Gamingalternatives
Gaming
alternatives

ABOVE A gaming
laptop will provide
playable frame
rates but at a price

the HP Omen 40L is even
more expensive at £4,400,
but you’re buying much
more power – and a
machine that can be easily
upgraded over several
years. With a gaming
laptop, there’s sometimes
the option to add an extra
M.2 SSD and perhaps to
replace the memory,
but that’s it.
Still, don’t write
gaming laptops off.
You can buy
inexpensive options
with last year’s
graphic cards for
under £1,000,
such as the £849
MSI Prestige 15 (see issue 347,
p93) we reviewed last month. This
includes an RTX 3050 and averaged
59fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider
at 1080p and High settings.
And there’s another way of looking
at gaming laptops. Buy a sleek
machine such as a Razer Blade or Asus
ROG Zephyrus and you’re buying a
highly portable productivity machine
that transforms into a gaming system
on demand. A two in one, if you will.

If you really love
gaming, nothing
will match the
experience of a
well-built gaming PC

BELOW Light
fantastic: a true
gaming PC offers
many advantages

expansion in mind, but
you must still do your
research when it comes
to upgrades. The best
way to add storage is via
M.2 slots, and you won’t
be able to go into detail
about motherboard
layouts, which version
of PCI Express is
supported and exactly
how many 2.5in SSD
drives are available as you will if you
know exactly which motherboard and
chassis you’re buying.
Of course, some people may see
this level of detailed research as a
downside of a gaming PC (weirdos).
And it’s true there are more variables
with a gaming system, with decisions
you make at the point of purchase
echoing through the years. Then
there’s the sheer bulk of
the things, their greed
when it comes to power
consumption and the
amount you have to pay for
a high-quality system.
But, if you really love
gaming, nothing will
match the experience of a
well-built gaming PC.
We may have entitled this
feature “Game over”, but as
ardent gamers will know the
fun has only just begun.
31

GREENPCs

MISSION
impossible?
The world’s biggest PC maker says it can achieve
net-zero by 2050. Barry Collins visits Lenovo’s US
headquarters to get his hands on plant-based PCs,
bamboo packaging and vegan leather covers

I

t’s not easy being green, as
a wise young frog once
sang. It’s definitely not
easy if you’re a global PC
manufacturer in an
industry where the trend
has emphatically swung towards
sealed, largely unrepairable devices
over the past decade.
How far can a company such as
Lenovo swing the pendulum back
in the other direction? That’s what I
was invited to the company’s US
headquarters in Raleigh, North
Carolina to find out. (No, the irony
of flying thousands of miles to
find out how a company plans to
become much greener wasn’t lost
on any of the participants.)
There I saw how Lenovo
was making greater use of recycled
materials, laptop cases from flax,
packaging from bamboo, computers
that are designed to last longer – and
servers that are cooled with water
instead of energy-hungry air
conditioning. They’re all part of
Lenovo’s goal to become net-zero by
2050, with some stiff targets to meet
in the much shorter term, too.
Can a top-tier PC maker shifting
tens of millions of PCs every year
really make zero contribution to
global greenhouse gas emissions
within 30 years? Nobody can know
for sure, but there’s zero doubt that
the company is at least taking steps
in the right direction. Let’s explore
what they are.

RECYCLED PC CASES

Lenovo sells an awful lot of PCs –
almost 69 million of them in 2022,
according to research firm Gartner,
making it the biggest box-shifter in
the world by quite a margin. It
accounts for just under a quarter of
global PC shipments, so can have a
sizeable impact on the Earth’s
resources if it can make better use of
recycled materials and create less
waste. Not least because, as market
leader, it can set an example for other
manufacturers to follow.

ABOVE Lenovo’s headquarters in
Raleigh, North Carolina
32

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Net-zeroLenovo

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

There’s upward pressure on the
company to do less damage to the
environment, too. “Every customer I
speak to says ‘do you have a target for
driving zero carbon emissions?’” says
Tom Butler, the company’s executive
director of commercial portfolio and
product management (Lenovo could
make serious environmental savings
on business card printing by cutting
the length of its job titles).
One of the ways in which Lenovo is
reducing waste is with the increased
use of natural or recycled materials
for PC and laptop cases. We’re taken
up to Lenovo’s design lab, where
we’re surrounded by laptop case
designs, stretching back to the
beige IBM-branded primitive
laptops of the 1980s, right through
to prototypes of unreleased devices
that are annoyingly hidden beneath
a thick black sheet.
Also in the lab are prototypes of
various materials that Lenovo is
developing for use in its forthcoming
laptop ranges. There are samples of
“vegan leather”, made from cactus,
that could be used to cover laptops or
for cases. There’s carbon fibre,
reclaimed from the fuselage of Boeing
aeroplane bodies before being forged
into plates that each have a unique
pattern, giving them an interesting
design aesthetic. And there are the
laptop lids for the recently launched
ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2, which are made
from harvested flax plant fibres.
They’re woven together with tree sap
and, again, each case has a unique
texture due to those woven flax fibres.
Butler wants to demonstrate that
the flax covers are no less durable
than their plastic or metal equivalents
and he does so emphatically, by
dropping the laptop from waist
height and then standing on it.
“Now turn it on,” shouts one of the
journalists in the room, and there’s
an awkward moment where he
presses the power button and
nothing appears on the screen. He
hands the ThinkPad to a colleague
who, having not left the room with
the eyes of a dozen journalists fixed
on him, brings the working laptop
back to Butler a minute or two later.
“Unexpected Windows update,” the
colleague explains.
Vegan leather and flax covers are
all well and good, but the vast
majority of the product range will
still be made from plastic or metal for
the foreseeable future. Here, too, the
company claims to be making good
use of recycled materials. Every laptop
in the ThinkPad range contains some
Post-Consumer Content [PCC]
materials, Butler claims. For
example, the covers used for the top
and bottom covers on some ThinkPads
use 75% recycled aluminium.

“EVERYCUSTOMERISPEAKTOSAYS
‘DOYOUHAVEATARGETFORDRIVING
ZEROCARBONEMISSIONS?’”
ABOVE ThinkPad
packaging will be
100% plastic-free
by the end of 2023

Why not 100% recycled materials
across the board? “As you use recycled
material, it loses some of its strength
and durability properties,” Butler
explains, potentially harming the
lifespan of the laptop, which would be
counterproductive. “Plastic PCC
breaks down – I can use it for five
generations and then it degrades.”
The firm tests recycled material to
find out how many generations of
recycling it’s been through – the
properties of the plastic change with
every generation of reuse. However,
new life can be breathed into old plastic
by mixing it with fresh materials. “We
have to use a blend of
recycled content as
well as some new
content,” says Butler.
“That’s why you
don’t see 100%
recycled content.”

PLASTIC FREE PACKAGING

It’s not only the computers
themselves that potentially create
plastic waste, but the packaging, too.
Although not for much longer. All
ThinkPad packaging will be 100%
plastic-free by the end of the year,
according to Butler. “Even down to
security label that goes over the
package,” Butler adds.
Up in the design lab, we’re shown
how Styrofoam packaging designed
to protect the laptop from shocks and
bumps in transit has been replaced
by bamboo inserts. Why bamboo?
It grows exceptionally quickly,
requires relatively little water to
grow, and it’s compostable. To prove
it, Butler holds up a bamboo
packaging insert that he laid on the
soil in his own garden a year ago. I
say holds up, but what’s left of the
bamboo is actually contained within
a clear plastic folder, because it has
largely disintegrated.
Lenovo’s commitment to
environmentally friendly
materials stretches to the ink used
to print the company’s logos on
packaging, where it’s experimenting
with algae-based ink. The big
problem with the algae inks at the
moment? They’re struggling to find
a pigment that matches the
trademark IBM/Lenovo red that
you see on the keyboard
TrackPoint, for example.

PCs LAST LONGER
MAKING PC
ABOVE Bamboo has replaced
Styrofoam for packaging as
it’s biodegradable

Lenovo’s laptops already have
a strong reputation for
durability, even in the Collins
household. A ThinkPad that
33

fell out of my rucksack and skidded
across the Tarmac of a London road
remains in active use as my daughter’s
day-to-day laptop five years later.
However, the company admits it’s got
more to do to make its products longer
lasting and more repairable.
From the moment Steve Jobs slid
the very first MacBook Air out of a
manilla envelope, the laptop industry
has been obsessed with slender,
sealed units that are often difficult, if
not impossible, for professionals to
repair, let alone individuals. “The
primary constraint is what the
market demands in terms of form
factors and functionality, weight,
battery life, all those sorts of things,”
admits Lenovo’s senior technologist,
Kevin Beck, when I push him on why
laptops in general have become less
repairable over the past decade or so.
But he pushes back on areas where
Lenovo has resisted some of the
industry’s least environmentally
friendly practices. “We do not use any
soldered-on SSDs,” he says, at least in
the company’s business-oriented
products. “That is primarily because
there are a large number of different
regulations and company policies
around data retention. If they have
personally identifiable customer or
patient data on it, they can’t allow
that data, even if encrypted, to leave
their premises. So, when they have to
send something off to be repaired or
replaced, they want to be able to take
that [SSD] out.”
Likewise, Beck insists components
such as screens aren’t glued down.
“There has been adhesive tape,” he
concedes, “but they were removable
and were included in the repair kit
for the technicians,” although you
couldn’t necessarily buy that tape on
the open market.
What about soldering down
RAM? “Soldering of RAM is driven
primarily by form-factor concerns,”
Beck responds. “We have a mix.
Some of it is onboard and part of the
motherboard, but part of that is that
the connectors are industry standard,
and they are of a certain thickness.
We can’t go off, and nor do we want to
go off, and design some brand new,
proprietary memory interface. So that

“THECONCEPTOFMODULARITY
ISSOMETHINGWE’REACTIVELY
LOOKINGATANDEXPLORING”
is a constraint, but I know we are
looking at ways of making it better.”
Beck insists that repairability
remains a key priority for the
company. Indeed, by 2025, Lenovo set
a very specific target that 84% of PC
repairs should be eligible for on-site
customer service rather than having
to be shipped back to a depot, with all
the inconvenience, cost and transport
emissions that creates.
To that end, the company makes
the hardware maintenance manual of
every ThinkPad available online – it
has done since day one – and also
produces YouTube videos to help
customers repair or upgrade its
machines themselves. ThinkPads only
use standard screws and tools, so
there’s no artificial barrier to repairs.
He gives an example of how the
company evolves products to ensure
they’re more repairable. For example,

ABOVE Modular
laptops are popular
with customers,
but barriers persist

BELOW Lenovo is
reducing waste by
using recycled
materials in cases

the first foldable ThinkPad, the X1
Fold, “did not pass our own criteria for
onsite repair. It was repairable to an
extent, but it had to be sent back to
us.” For the second generation, the
company changed the cover design,
made it detachable by removing a
screw and then popping a thin
screwdriver into a hole on the side
of the case to pop it off.
The company has also been doing
work on the beep codes that indicate a
serious hardware fault. Instead of
relying on customers to work out
whether it was, for example, one long
and two short beeps or three short
beeps when diagnosing faults, the
company created a smartphone app,
so that customers could place their
phone by a faulty PC and have it
diagnose the problem by listening for
the beeps. However, the company
soon realised that asking already
harassed customers to download a
separate app was making a bad
situation worse, so now customers are
asked to hold their phone near the
faulty laptop when talking to a service
centre, with the phone system able to
do the same job the app did.
Developing these things comes at a
cost, but as Beck explains: “When we
look at how much it costs to make a
product, we look at the lifespan of the
product, including the warranty.
There are places where we’ve decided
to spend a few cents up front... to
make it cost-neutral, to reduce the
amount we spend to repair it over
the course of its life.”

MAKING MODULAR LAPTOPS

Up in the labs, one of the ideas Lenovo
is kicking around is making laptops
more modular. Granted, this is hardly
34

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radical thinking. Framework has
garnered a lot of attention and praise
for its modular laptops, which
provide toolless access to the
internals, letting you easily replace
or upgrade components such as the
battery, storage or keyboard.
Lenovo knows the concept is
attractive to consumers. It shares the
results of a survey with us, which
polled 2,000 consumers in various
geographies. Just under threequarters felt repairability was very
important, 59% wanted devices to be
repairable by the manufacturer, and
22% wanted to be able to perform
repairs themselves.
Kevin Beck says Lenovo is not
about to take the exact same approach
as Framework, but it is interested in
the idea. “The concept of modularity
is something we’re actively looking at
and exploring,” he says, although he
quickly caveats that with some of the
difficulties of shipping laptops with
replaceable parts. He says that if you
mapped all the interconnections
between different components and
assemblies “it would look like a galaxy
between all the considerations of the
parts, the lifecycle, the stocking costs,
moving it around the world, the
minimum order quantities for certain
things. It just has to be balanced.”
Then there’s the fact that Lenovo
can’t do this alone – it needs
component manufacturers to get
behind the idea of modularity to really
make it a success. “It is definitely
something that the entire industry is
going to have to row in the same
direction on, to some extent,” he adds.
Beck senses my doubt that Lenovo
is ever going to get round to delivering
a modular laptop with so many
barriers being put in its path, but
he ends on a more confident note.
“It’s hard to see the end of the road
because it’s so complex to know
where we’ll end up,” he says. “I’m not
equivocating, for that reason. It could
just go so many ways, but the upside
of that is there’s a lot of talk, there’s a
lot of good possibilities.”

RECYCLING COMPONENTS

A lot of the focus so far has been on
creating new products. But finding
better ways to deal with old
equipment is also high on
Lenovo’s priority list, not least
because its environmental targets
stretch up to the supply chain and
down to what customers are doing
with Lenovo equipment.
Lenovo provides several examples
of how materials reclaimed from old
equipment are being reused,
including in high-end jewellery.
But there are only so
many people who

want a ring made out of old
motherboards, so Lenovo is putting
serious effort into reusing
components that haven’t reached
the end of their useful lives. “A
specific, stated part of the strategy
that we’re adopting around the
circular economy is to find ways to
reuse parts from old systems in the
right way, or to extract value from
them in some other way,” says Beck.
Beck insists old components
won’t be reused in “new” PCs, but
components or whole systems can
be harvested and resold as used
equipment. Around 60% of the PCs
brought in through the company’s
corporate asset recovery programme
are reused, an executive claims in a
subsequent presentation. However,
Beck says the company is also making
efforts to reuse perfectly good
returned parts.
“There’s a surprising amount of
what we call NDFs – no defect
found,” says Beck. “The customer
thought it went wrong, it didn’t work
for some reason, but when they get it
back in, the brand new part [was
fine]. So that’s what we mean by
parts reutilisation in the active
servicing programme, and that is
something that we have metrics on
for all of our business partners and
authorised servicers. It’s the degree
to which they’re doing the right
thing with the parts.”

MEETING THE CHALLENGE

We’re in an industry with too much
greenwashing. Too many spurious
claims of environmental benefits,
too many companies where the
green commitments extend little
further than the press release. Part
of the reason I accepted Lenovo’s
invite to Raleigh was to see if that
was the case here.
It clearly wasn’t. Of course,
we were only shown what the
company wanted us to see, and
I’ve no doubt that Lenovo’s
commitment to profitability trumps

Net-zeroLenovo

SERVERS THAT HEAT
A SWIMMING POOL

There are few things more power hungry than data centres,
and their power consumption is set to quadruple by 2030,
according to Lenovo.
More than 30% of a regular server’s energy is devoted
to the cooling fans, which is why Lenovo is continuing to
develop its Neptune water-cooling technology, which is a far
more energy-efficient way to keep servers from cooking.
There are two types of water-cooled server in Lenovo’s
lineup. There are fixed-loop systems, where the same water
is cycled around the server and passed through a radiator,
cooling the server much like a liquid-cooled PC.
Then there are open systems, where the water is pumped
around the entire rack, where cold water enters the system
and warm water comes out. It’s what happens to that
expelled warm water that’s helping to keep the system more
energy efficient. In some instances, it’s being used to heat
facilities, or provide warm running water for taps and
showers. One company is currently experimenting with
using the hot water from its server stack to heat a swimming
pool, according to Patrick Moakley, director of marketing
for HPC and AI at Lenovo.
Water-cooled servers come with some drawbacks. They
are typically around 10% more expensive than fan-cooled
systems, according to Moakley, though he claims companies
will recoup that upfront investment with savings on their
energy bills within 12-18 months. The water cooling is often
more effective than fans, too, meaning processors can be
clocked to higher speeds. Both Intel and AMD now have
water-cooled-only SKUs, according to Moakley, because
fans aren’t capable of keeping the chips cool enough.

BELOW Lenovo is
now making laptop
cases from flax

its commitment to the environment.
It’s a hugely successful business, not
a charity. But what I saw was strong
evidence of a company that was
trying to do the right thing, with
executives who seemed genuinely
enthused at the idea of making the
business less resource-hungry, less
wasteful. Not least because it’s often
as good for the bottom line as it is for
the environment.
It’s doubtful whether any of the
executives I spoke to in Raleigh will
be there in 30 years’ time to be held to
account for hitting those net-zero
targets. Most of them had as many
grey hairs as me. But if they
manage to imbue the same
enthusiasm and dedication
into the next generation of
managers, there’s at least a
fighting chance those
targets will be met.
35

Ditch the
filing cabinet
It’s not just big businesses that have to
manage paperwork – Nik Rawlinson finds
it’s easy to digitise and manage documents
in all sizes of company (and households)

36

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

W

e may live in a
digital age,
but the typical
household
and small
business still
has to deal with stacks of paper. While
many services now offer online bills
and statements, there are plenty of
important manuals, receipts, medical
records, legal documents and so forth
that come in physical form.
There’s no reason they need to stay
in that form. Bigger businesses reap
the rewards of digital document
management, and we can take
advantage in both smaller businesses
and at home. Converting your papers
into a digital archive can save space,
and when you need to refer back to a
crucial document you can instantly
find the information you need.

Going digital

If you already own a scanner then
you can start digitising your paper
documents right away. If you don’t,
you don’t necessarily need to buy one:
the free Microsoft Lens app lets you
snap page images in seconds using
your phone camera – including
multi-page documents – and export
them as PDFs. You can find it on
Google Play or the iOS App Store.
Another mobile option is Adobe
Scan; this also lets you scan and

save single pages for free, although its
full PDF management and editing
capabilities require a monthly
subscription to fully unlock it.
Whichever tool you use, PDF is the
best format for document storage.
PDFs are highly space-efficient,
and unlike JPEGs and TIFFs they
can be made searchable, so you
can instantly locate keywords in
whatever document you’re reading.
To achieve this, you simply need
the software that creates the PDF
to support optical character
recognition (OCR), so it can “read”
your scanned document and store its
contents as text. This is automatically
carried out by Microsoft Lens and
Adobe Scan, and if you’re using a
dedicated scanner then suitable
software may well have come
bundled with the hardware.
If you need a standalone app then
Abbyy FineReader (pcpro.link/
348abbyy) is one well-known option
for both Windows and macOS. It goes
beyond simple text extraction to offer
a unified workflow, with an in-app
editing environment that supports
font formatting and styles. It can
work with recognised text from
scanned documents, and if you’re
editing existing PDFs with a text
layer, you can switch between that
and recognised text from the layout.
There’s a powerful redaction tool,

If you own a scanner you can start
digitising right away. If you don’t,
you don’t need to buy one

Digitaldocuments

Capturing text from screen
What if you need to capture and store text that appears
within an application? Here it’s a case of PowerToys to the
rescue; a “toy” called Microsoft Text Extractor does exactly
what its name suggests, recognising and copying text from
any image open on your screen. It’s not installed by default,
but you can download the PowerToys suite for free from
GitHub (at pcpro.link/348powertoys), or install it at the
command prompt by typing:
winget install Microsoft.PowerToys --source winget

ABOVE PowerToys’ text extraction tool can be installed from
the command prompt
This command will download, unpack and install the latest
build; once it’s finished, launch PowerToys from the Start
menu and scroll through the various tools in the sidebar.
Click Text Extractor, make sure it’s enabled, and take a note
of the keyboard shortcut. By default it’s Windows+Shift+T,
but you can change this by clicking the pencil icon and
choosing an alternative.
Once Text Extractor is active, you can capture text from
anywhere on your screen (even if it’s an image) by pressing
the keyboard shortcut and dragging a marquee with the
mouse pointer to select the text you want to capture. The
content will be copied to the clipboard as editable text, which
you can paste into your application of choice, and export from
there as a PDF.
We’ve found Text Extractor to be very effective when
capturing text from screenshots, but since it’s limited to
working with what’s visible on your screen, it’s not ideal for
lengthy documents. And naturally, since it only copies text, it
won’t preserve layouts or formatting.

LEFT FineReader
lets you capture,
correct and export
in a single workflow
37

Think of the future
Paper records are remarkably durable.
You can read a bill from 50 years ago just as
easily as one that arrived this morning. The same
can’t be said of computer files, even if they’re just
a few years old: many are stored in obsolete file
formats, designed to be readable by software
that has long since been discontinued. When
converting paper to pixel, it’s important to think
about keeping your files accessible in the future.
One option is to store everything as plain text;
if you want to preserve the layout of a document,
PDF is the industry go-to, as it’s an open standard
that’s widely supported. To give digital documents
the best chance of long-term survival, consider
using PDF/A – a version of the PDF standard that’s
maintained by Adobe, as well as representatives
from industry, academia and the US government
for long-term archival storage. PDF/A-1, published
in 2005, is the simplest (and therefore arguably
the most robust), while the later PDF/A-2,
PDF/A-3 and PDF/A-4 standards allow for a range
of attachments and more versatile content.
The one thing PDF isn’t great for is editing.
For editable text, OpenDocument (.odt) and

Microsoft’s Open Office XML format (.docx) are
both capable of handling complex layouts, and
have each been adopted as International
Standards (pcpro.link/348iso1 and pcpro.link/
348iso2 respectively), which should make them
safe for long-term use.
A final issue to consider is media
obsolescence. For example, while Zip disks
were once ubiquitous, you might have trouble
reading one today. In the future, today’s physical
media are bound to have similar problems.
Fortunately, that’s not such a pressing
problem when cloud storage is increasingly
affordable. If you subscribe to Microsoft 365,
you already have 1TB of OneDrive storage to call
on, which is enough for a vast collection of
digitised documents. Google One is a low-cost
alternative, with options starting at 100GB of
storage for £16 a year, and going up to 2TB for
£80 a year. If you can afford a higher up-front
cost, pCloud (pcloud.com) offers lifetime plans:
at the time of writing, a lifetime 2TB account is
reduced to £399 (from £1,140) and a 10TB plan
is down from £6,000 to £1,190.

LEFT Microsoft’s
Lens app can
capture text and
send it to Word

BELOW Word
prioritises text
over layout when
importing PDFs

38

too, which can block out sensitive
text in a way that can’t be recovered.
We found FineReader did an
excellent job of recognising text from
printed documents, while faithfully
capturing the original layout. Where
it wasn’t sure it had correctly
identified a word or phrase (in our
case it questioned “en masse”), the
software highlighted it and suggested
replacements. You can make changes
as necessary before saving your
document in a variety of formats.
FineReader Standard costs £84 a
year or £13 a month; you can
download a seven-day trial that will
output up to 100 pages before you
commit at pcpro.link/348trial.

Working with existing
page images

If you have graphical page images
that haven’t been through OCR,
there’s a free and easy way to
convert them to searchable PDFs. All
you need to do is upload the files to
Google Drive (in JPEG, GIF or PNG
format), then right-click on each
one in the web interface and select
Open with | Google Docs. After a little
processing a digitised, editable
version of your document will appear
in the familiar Docs interface. You’ll
see that Google makes little attempt
to preserve the original layout, but
the accuracy of text is very good.
Indeed, we were impressed to find
that it even makes a decent fist of
interpreting handwriting. The two
images on the opposite page show a
sample of original handwritten text
and the resulting recognition; while
the results aren’t perfect, they’re as
good as you could reasonably ask for.
Once you’ve captured your text,
you can export it as a searchable PDF
by opening the File menu and
selecting Download | PDF document.
Alternatively, you can simply hit
Print and choose the virtual “Print to
PDF” printer – this can be used to
create archive-ready PDFs from any
application in Windows.
If you need to update existing
PDF files, that’s possible, too.
You can open PDFs in Google Docs

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FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Digitaldocuments
Document management
Once you’ve scanned in all those pesky papers, you can
securely dispose of them and rejoice in your newly
reclaimed space. But you still need to store your digital
copies in a way that makes it easy to access them when you
need them. Windows and macOS can use metadata to
make searching for documents more intuitive, but a
dedicated document management system can give you
more powerful options at little or no cost.

ABOVE & BELOW Despite the scrawl it was working with, Google Drive did a good job of
recognising our handwritten text

There’s a free, easy way to convert
graphical page images that haven’t
been through OCR to PDFs
in just the same way as page images;
if you’re a user of Microsoft Office,
you can also open them directly in
Word. You’ll see a warning that, like
Google Docs, Word won’t preserve
the document layout with perfect
accuracy, but it’s probably good
enough for archival. You can also
send text directly to Word from the
Microsoft Lens app.

OCR for accounting

Google Drive isn’t the only cloud
platform that supports OCR. It’s a
common feature of services that
involve storing documentation –
especially cloud-based accounting
suites, as HMRC encourages digital
record keeping. For example, since
the introduction of the MTD (Making
Tax Digital) legislation in 2017,
organisations with an annual
turnover in excess of £85,000 have
been required to keep digital records

and submit digital returns. See pcpro.
link/348tax for the official guidance.
PaperLess (paperlesseurope.com) is
an OCR tool that integrates with Sage
50 Accounts, Sage 50cloud, Sage 200
Professional, Sage 200 Standard and
Sage 200 Extra Online to recognise
names and amounts on invoices so
they can be automatically brought
into an organisation’s accounts.
FreeAgent (freeagent.com) is
another option that’s popular among
freelancers. It likewise has an OCR
feature called Auto Extract in its
mobile apps for iOS and Android,
which allows users to photograph
receipts and bills; these are analysed
to extract payee, product or service,
and amount, for automatic entry
into the user’s books. If a matching
transaction appears in the business’s
bank feed, the two will be reconciled
to reduce the time users have to spend
working on their accounts.

OpenKM (openkm.com) is available as
both an enterprise (paid-for) and
community (free) product, and allows
for full document management
through a web interface. The core
product runs on Java, making it largely
platform-neutral, with common database
technologies such as PostgreSQL and MySQL for
indexing. OpenKM can also integrate with open-source
and commercial OCR engines to centralise the task of
making imported documents searchable.
For those with more complex document management
needs, OpenKM offers version control, so you can track
when a document was last amended. It can even be
used to build an audit trail, allowing administrators in
multi-user installations to track back actions to identify
who did what, and when.
The open-source Papermerge
(papermerge.com) is another free
option that can handle your OCR
requirements while organising and
indexing documents. It supports
various image formats in addition to
PDF, and can be set to automatically
extract text as soon as a new document is uploaded.
Once you’ve created your PDFs, you can remove, paste,
delete and reorder pages directly within Papermerge.
If you’re willing to pay for a commercial documentmanagement system, FolderIt (folderit.com) goes well
beyond simply organising your files, with collaborative
working in Office apps, Active Directory-based user
management and folder sharing with permissions. Every
folder in the system gets a unique email address to which
documents can be sent for easy import, and if you upload a
new version of an existing document its predecessor is
retained for reference and restoration. It’s a cloud-based
solution that starts at £22 a month for 150GB of storage and
up to five users, discounted by 10% if you sign up for a year.
FileCenter (filecenter.com) likewise
includes OCR and search of resulting
files, and integrates with both
SharePoint and third-party cloud
storage services such as Google Drive,
OneDrive and Dropbox. Documents
can be automatically named based on
their contents, and PDFs can be edited in
place. Its flexible pricing model allows for one-time
purchase of the current edition, for $100, $200 or $300
per user – depending on the version – or a monthly
subscription at $5, $10 or $15 per seat.

39

Welcome
to the
Fediverse
Have commercial social networks had their day?
Darien Graham-Smith looks at the free, community-run
apps that could usurp Twitter, Reddit and the Meta empire

O

nline
communities
start out exciting
and fun, but
they have a sad
tendency to go downhill over
time. Popular platforms become
plagued with misinformation,
trolling and straightforward
abuse – and the operator
turns a blind eye, because it
all drives engagement and
pushes up ad views. The app
itself may even degrade over
time, as the management pushes
through decisions and policies
that prioritise profits at the expense
of the user experience.
If that sounds familiar, it could be
time to ditch the big-name social
networks and dive into the Fediverse.

40

ABOVE The tech
billionaires’ social
networks could
be usurped by
the Fediverse

What the heck is a
Fediverse?

The Fediverse is a social networking
model that’s designed to avoid the
problems that afflict the major
platforms. It does this by taking a
decentralised approach: in the

Fediverse there’s no management
team, no CEO like Elon Musk or Mark
Zuckerberg calling the shots. Anyone
who wants can set up their own social
networking server, host it wherever
they like, and run it in whatever way
they consider appropriate.
That’s all well and good, you might
be thinking, but social networking
works best when your friends and
follows are all in one place. Fear not
– as hinted by the name, all of the
separate social network servers in the
Fediverse are federated together. Even
if you and your friends are all using
different social networking services,
you’ll still be able to follow and
comment on one another’s posts.
This decentralised model gives
users more control over their own
experience. If you don’t like the way

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TheFediverse

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

your server is being run, you can
migrate your identity and posts to a
different app or server, while
continuing to follow the same people
and enjoy the same content.
And if you encounter harassment
or abuse, you’re not limited to
blocking vexatious individuals. The
administrator of your Fediverse server
can choose to defederate from specific
servers that host troublesome users.
This enables the creation of “safe
space” communities that connect only
to trusted outsiders – something that’s
impossible with monolithic platforms
such as Twitter. Or, of course, you can
run your own server and choose for
yourself precisely who is allowed to
say and do what.

Where did the Fediverse
come from?

The Fediverse has its origins in a social
networking platform called GNU
Social, created back in 2008 by a
software developer and entrepreneur
from Cincinnati named Evan
Prodromou. A supporter of freesoftware principles, Prodromou made
the code open source, so that anyone
could run it on their own servers, and
created a content-sharing protocol
called OStatus that allowed these
personal installations to connect and
interoperate with one another.
Before long, other open platforms
arose. In 2010, the Diaspora project
set out to offer a decentralised
alternative to Facebook, using its
own protocol and promising greater
user control and privacy. In 2016,
German developer Eugen Rochko
unveiled Mastodon, a distributed
equivalent to Twitter. These noncommercial services appeared
with little fanfare, but quietly and
slowly they built up a stable core
of users. Prodromou kept working
on OStatus, eventually developing
it into a more advanced protocol
called ActivityPub.

If you don’t like the way your
server is being run, you can
migrate your identity and posts
to a different app or server
Then a few things happened
that brought the Fediverse into
the spotlight. In 2018, ActivityPub
gained official recognition from the
W3C as a recommended standard for
online content sharing. This meant
there was now a formal framework
for Fediverse-type applications,
helping to encourage development
and adoption.
Mainstream interest in the
Fediverse has recently been stoked
by growing dissatisfaction with
the established social networks.
Since Elon Musk acquired Twitter
in October 2022, his mercurial
management decisions – such as
banning third-party clients and
encouraging “free speech” in all

ABOVE Mastodon
has benefited from
millions of users
fleeing Twitter

its forms – have reportedly driven
more than a million users to give
Mastodon a try.
Similarly, in June 2023 Reddit CEO
Steve Huffman sparked a rebellion
when he announced unilateral
restrictions on third-party apps,
responding with contempt to users’
protests and appeals. Again, a
sizeable contingent of Redditors
chose to jump ship in search of a
platform that wasn’t subject to one
man’s whims, and ended up on the
Fediverse-based Lemmy platform.

What forms does the
Fediverse take?

The Fediverse works for any sort of
distributed content. We’ve mentioned
that Mastodon offers a similar service
to Twitter, while Lemmy hosts shared
links and discussions similar to
Reddit. Another service called Kbin
combines Lemmy threads with
Mastodon-type microblog entries in
one interface; Pixelfed focuses on
sharing photos, similar to Instagram,

41

Mastodon isn’t Twitter

Mastodon looks very similar to Twitter, but it’s not identical.
Some differences arise from its federated design; others are
intended to prevent abusive behaviours. If you’re considering
making the switch, here are some key points you need to know.

1. No algorithm

The Fediverse is largely algorithmfree: Mastodon shows you all posts
from people you follow, and nothing
more. This makes for a clean and
serene experience, but it also
means interesting content won’t
be automatically shoved in front of
your eyeballs – you have to seek it
out. You can do this by clicking the
Explore tab to see popular posts
across the Fediverse; alternatively,
use the Local and Federated tabs to
browse the latest posts on your
Mastodon instance, and those to
which it’s connected.

2. Hashtag searching

To protect users’ privacy,
Mastodon doesn’t allow full-text
searching of other people’s posts.
However, you can search for good
old-fashioned hashtags – so if you
want to find out about (say) the
war in Ukraine, a search for
“#ukraine” will turn up any
posts that include that specific tag.
If you want your own posts to be

findable, you’ll need to remember
to add relevant tags.
While this makes Mastodon
a safer place, it does limit your
ability to track unfolding news
events, and to follow what people
are talking about in real-time. If
you really need a full-text search
tool, tootfinder.ch lets you
search the content of “toots” on
Mastodon instances that have
explicitly opted in to indexing
– another thing to consider when
choosing your own instance.

3. No “quote tweets”

Mastodon’s “boost” feature does
the same as Twitter’s “retweet”
button, but unlike Musk’s platform
there’s no option to tack your own
comment onto a boosted post.
Creator Eugen Rochko has
defended this design decision,
arguing that quote tweeting
encourages arguments and
pile-ons – but without it,
Mastodon offers no convenient
way to add context or an

while PeerTube is designed for sharing
videos, like a community-owned
version of YouTube.
And while the main focus of the
Fediverse is social networking, it’s
gradually broadening its reach.
WordPress blog posts can now be
published via ActivityPub, so writers
of all kinds can make their content
available via the Fediverse; the
Nextcloud file-hosting service
supports ActivityPub for notifications
and calendaring.
For an overview of the whole
Fediverse, visit fedidb.org in your
browser and click on the Software tab
on the left-hand side. This will bring
up statistics for all the Fediverse
platforms currently operating around
the world, sorted by number of users.
At the right-hand side of the list,
you’ll find a helpful link for checking
out each one, and signing up for any
that take your fancy.

How do I sign up?

The sign-up process for Fediverse
platforms can be confusing for new

42

ABOVE The website
fedidb.org tracks
the growth of the
Fediverse

ABOVE Mastodon differs from Twitter in a number of significant ways
explanation as to why you’re
promoting a particular item.
It’s one of Mastodon’s mostrequested features, and Rochko
has hinted that an equivalent to
quote tweets might be trialled in
future Mastodon releases, but for
now it’s something you’ll need to
live without.

4. No secure messaging

Mastodon doesn’t support direct
messaging at all. You can have
private conversations, via a
visibility option that lets you set
certain posts as only visible to
users who are named in the text.
However, there’s no separate

arrivals. When you join a centralised
service such as Twitter, your account
is with Twitter and that’s that – but
in the Fediverse there’s no global
sign-up for (say) Mastodon or
Lemmy. Either you need to install and
run your own server, or you need to
request an account on a server that
someone else is already hosting.
It goes without saying that the
latter option makes sense for most
people. And such servers aren’t hard
to find: at the time of writing, FediDB
lists more than 12,000 Mastodon
servers and over 1,000 Lemmy

inbox for these posts – they just go
into the general stream, so it can
be a pain to find and refer back to
them at a later date.
Note, too, that this setting
applies to all users who are
mentioned in your posts, so if you
refer to a third party in your
message, they’ll be able to read and
respond to your post. Mastodon
doesn’t encrypt posts either, so
even if you’re careful with your
mentions, your supposedly
private messages could still be
leaked. In all, if you want to chat
with someone on a secure,
one-to-one basis, Mastodon isn’t
the right place to do it.

instances, most of which are
open to new sign-ups.
How do you know which
one to choose? Since users on
different instances can
normally all read and reply to
each other’s posts, you might
assume it makes no difference
– but not all servers are alike.
For example, different
servers might have different
moderation policies, so one
would ban posts on “adult”
themes while another welcomes
them. They may have different rules
about which other servers they’re
willing to federate with, so one may
present a walled-off corner of the
Fediverse while another allows
anyone to connect, share and
comment on posts.
While the whole point of the
Fediverse is that you can access
content from any server, the fastest
and easiest way to find good content
and new people to follow is to browse
the “all posts” feed on your own home
server. So if you choose a server that’s

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FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

already full of like-minded people,
you’ve got a great head start on
building up your new network.
No matter which server you pick,
Fediverse services are almost always
offered on a philanthropic, free-touse basis. If you want to support your
home server, there’s often a link
where you can voluntarily contribute
to the running costs.

Finding your new home

By far the biggest Fediverse app is
Mastodon, and it’s one of the easiest
to join. At joinmastodon.org/servers
you’ll find a list of hundreds of
suggested servers, all of which
welcome new signups. Clearly this
represents just a fraction of the
total number of active Mastodon
instances, but these servers are
helpfully organised by locale and
topic, they all welcome new users,
and all have signed up to the
Mastodon Server Covenant, a
general code of conduct covering
moderation, backups and reliability
(see joinmastodon.org/covenant).
You’ll find similar curated signup
pages for Lemmy, Pixelfed, PeerTube
and other Fediverse services. You’re
naturally free to use a server that isn’t
on these lists – that’s the whole point
of the Fediverse – but sticking to
officially accredited instances gives
you some assurance that your server
won’t be shut down without warning,
or get defederated from other servers
for having a poor reputation.
Once you’ve signed up, you can
start using your Fediverse service via
its web interface. For Mastodon
there’s also an official mobile app,
plus numerous mature third-party
alternatives – popular choices
include Tusky for Android and Ivory
for iOS. Unlike with Twitter and

Reddit, you can use whichever app
you like, and never need to worry
about it being shut down.
The younger Lemmy platform has
fewer app options, but Android users
can download Jerboa – a semi-official
mobile client created by Lemmy
developers – from Google Play. And
while there’s nothing on the iOS App
Store yet, Mlem and Memmy are
works in progress that you can try out
on your iPhone or iPad using Apple’s
TestFlight beta-testing service. The
recent influx of users migrating from
Reddit has driven interest in Lemmy
development, so by the time you read
this there may well be multiple native
Lemmy readers available for both the
big mobile platforms.

ABOVE PeerTube is
like a communityowned version
of YouTube
RIGHT Pixelfed,
meanwhile, focuses
on sharing photos

Trouble ahead?

Having enjoyed substantial growth
in the past few years, the Fediverse
could be about to get its biggest boost
yet – or it might face an existential

Once you’ve signed up, you can
start using your Fediverse
service via its web interface
challenge. The reason is a new app
called Threads, published last month
by Meta, the parent company of
Facebook and Instagram.
On the face of it, Threads looks like
just another Twitter rival, similar to
Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky site. However,
rather than competing with Mastodon
and other Fediverse-based platforms,
Threads is designed to be Fediversecompatible. The network is built on
ActivityPub, and while the initial
release is limited to Meta’s own
network, it’s planned that a future
update will allow users to follow and

interact with posts from Mastodon,
Kbin and other such platforms, and
share their own content with users
on non-Meta servers.
Meta’s plans have sparked huge
debate among Fediverse advocates.
Some warn that, as a commercial
product, Threads is fundamentally
incompatible with the spirit of the
Fediverse. There are concerns that
it could split the community, by
implementing proprietary features
that only Threads users can access.
And questions over user privacy have
been spurred by Meta’s decision not
to launch Threads in the EU for the
time being. More than 400 Fediverse
administrators have declared at
fedipact.online that they’ll resist
Meta’s plans and refuse to federate
with its servers.
Not everyone agrees, however.
Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko has
given Threads a cautious welcome,
writing on the official Mastodon
website that “the fact that large
platforms are adopting ActivityPub is
not only validation of the movement
towards decentralised social media,
but a path forward for people locked
into these platforms to switch to
better providers. Which in turn puts
pressure on such platforms to provide
better, less exploitative services. This
is a clear victory for our cause,
hopefully one of many to come.”
One thing is certain: when a
company the size of Meta chooses to
embrace the Fediverse, the technology
has already proven its value.

43

Reviews
The biggest, best, most exciting products in technology – reviewed and rated

Looking
for a particular
past review?
Visit
ourindex
pcpro.link/indeatx

Google
PixelFold
The Pixel Fold delivers with a thin and
durable design, a wide front display,
smart software and great cameras

RECOMMENDED

SCORE
PRICE 256GB, £1,458 (£1,749 inc VAT)
from store.google.com

I

t’s about flippin’ time. At last,
another mainstream foldable
phone is here to compete with
Samsung’s Galaxy Fold handsets.
And this is no me-too device: the Pixel
Fold makes its own mark with a wide
front display that’s easy to use, the
thinnest design we’ve seen on a
foldable, and top-grade cameras.
One thing Google hasn’t managed
to achieve is undercutting Samsung
on price. The just-announced
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 can be
bought from the Samsung Store with
256GB for £1,749. And Google lists the
256GB Pixel Fold at... £1,749.
Samsung’s offering is a whole £20
cheaper if you choose the 512GB
version – £1,849 versus £1,869.
However, Google is offering more
generous trade-in deals to sweeten the
pill, and we’re already seeing
aggressive operator deals that bundle
RIGHT The dual OLED displays measure 7.6in
across when opened up, ideal for watching films

44

in a year of 5G service for little more
than the cost of the bare phone.

Winning design

The Pixel Fold is available in two
colours: porcelain and obsidian. I
prefer the porcelain model as it “pops”
more, but the black model has a sleek
executive vibe.
The design feels impressively
mature for a first attempt. It all starts
with a front 5.8in display, which

ABOVE The 5.8in front
display has a wide
aspect ratio that
makes it easy to use

works better than the narrower cover
panel on the Galaxy Z Fold4 (see issue
337, p74). The wider aspect ratio
makes it easier to use apps and type on
the front panel: this is not a preview
display, but a true second display.
There’s also no gap for debris to get
in when the phone is closed, and
Google claims its fluid-friction hinge
is the most durable available on a
foldable. Time will tell on that, but I
can say right now that it’s super
smooth in operation.
Once opened up, the phone
measures 6.2mm thick, and while
that’s officially only 0.1mm thinner
than the Fold4, it somehow feels
palpably slimmer. The Pixel Fold’s
dual OLED displays both offer plenty
of colour, wide viewing angles and
perfectly smooth 120Hz refresh rates.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching films
across the combined 7.6in screen.
However, while it looks great indoors,
it struggles when in direct sunlight.
We measured a maximum brightness
of 900cd/m2 on one occasion, but
typically it kept at 435cd/m2 – the
Galaxy Z Fold4 proved more
predictable, peaking at 905cd/m2.
There are other negatives about the
Pixel Fold. At 283g it’s a touch heavier

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

GEEKBENCH 5 (SINGLE CORE)
5,469

Apple A15 Bionic

4,134

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

4,015

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

3,831

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
Google Tensor G2

Apple A15 Bionic

46secs

Google Pixel Fold

Apple iPhone 14 Pro

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

772cd/m2

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Google Pixel Fold**
Google Tensor G2

435cd/m2

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

8,819

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

6,755

Google Pixel Fold

10hrs 21mins

Apple iPhone 14 Pro

10hrs 13mins

Apple A15 Bionic

Moto Razr 40 Ultra

9hrs 48mins

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

HIGHER IS BETTER

848cd/m2

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

11,138

Google Tensor G2

HIGHER IS BETTER

905cd/m2

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

BATTERY LIFE (WEB RUNDOWN)

993cd/m2

Apple A15 Bionic

11,155

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Google Tensor G2

MAIN DISPLAY PEAK BRIGHTNESS (SDR)

Moto Razr 40 Ultra

12,413

Moto Razr 40 Ultra

Google Pixel Fold

1min 1sec

Google Tensor G2

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

747

HIGHER IS BETTER

44secs

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

1,291

Apple A15 Bionic

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

Samsung G’y Z Flip4

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

3DMARK WILD LIFE UNLIMITED

44secs

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

1,320

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Apple iPhone 14 Pro

Moto Razr 40 Ultra

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Moto Razr 40 Ultra*

Google Tensor G2

26secs

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

1,328

Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Google Pixel Fold*

1,909

ADOBE PREMIERE RUSH
Apple iPhone 14 Pro

1,891

Apple A15 Bionic

Samsung G’y Z Fold4

HIGHER IS BETTER

Moto Razr 40 Ultra*

Google Pixel Fold*

Apple iPhone 14 Pro

LOWER IS BETTER

Promising software

The Pixel Fold makes multitasking a
breeze. There’s a dock you can pull up
with a quick swipe, and you can easily
run apps side by side by just dragging
an app to either side of the screen. As
with the Pixel Tablet, content can be
dragged from one side of the display to
the other, such as dropping photos
into outgoing messages or emails. It
all feels clean and intuitive.
And there’s a good selection of
apps optimised for the Pixel Fold’s big
screen. Gmail is great on this device; I
loved being able to see my inbox
on the left and the content of my
messages on the right. I also
appreciate that TikTok lets you view
videos and comments side by side, and
Spotify has similarly nice dual-pane
action. Half-unfold the phone and you
can use it like a laptop, with
compatible apps showing content at
the top and controls on the bottom; I
tried this while following along with a
workout in the Peloton app and found
it worked well.
Other supported configurations
include tent mode – great for
watching videos hands-free while
you’re doing other stuff – and
tabletop camera mode, which lets
you stand the phone up without
needing a tripod. It’s ideal for
time-lapse photos and video capture,
plus of course ad hoc video calls.
If there’s one improvement I’d like
to see in this area it’s more control
over which apps can run on the front

GEEKBENCH 5 (MULTICORE)
Apple iPhone 14 Pro

HIGHER IS BETTER

than the Z Fold4’s 263g: you can pop it
in your shirt pocket, but expect it to
sag. And while it folds out mostly flat,
I wouldn’t say perfectly so. That’s just
irritating for a premium device.
The bezels around the internal
display are also a little thick,
although once you’re immersed in
content you don’t notice it so much.
And while the crease in the middle of
the screen isn’t conspicuous,
especially under indoor lighting,
you’ll feel it when you drag your
finger across the display.
Finally, we’ve heard some early
accounts of Pixel Fold units suffering
screen damage, including debris
getting caught between the bezel
and screen protector. It’s perhaps
telling that Google makes no claims
about dust-resistance, although
an IPX8 rating guarantees that the
Pixel Fold will withstand the
occasional dunk in water. It’s not that
sturdily assembled, either –
reportedly the phone can be easily
broken by bending it backwards.
The good news: Google is teaming
up with iFixit to offer genuine spare
parts and repair guides, so if
something does go wrong you may be
able to fix it yourself.

9hrs 17mins
8hrs 34mins

*RazrandPixelphoneswerebothtestedusingGeekbench5.5ratherthanGeekbench5.**Duringtesting,thePixelFoldbrieflyhitaround900cd/m2 butwewereunabletoreplicatethisresult.

screen when the Pixel Fold is closed.
Right now only certain apps continue
on the cover display, such as Google
Maps and YouTube. I also noticed
occasional bugs: at one point, the
camera app got stuck in a vertical
aspect ratio and I had to open and
close the app. Other times the Pixel
Fold was confused when I tried to
change modes and the screen would
briefly stutter. I’m assuming software
updates will iron out these kinks.

Fast enough... just

The Pixel Fold packs the same Tensor
G2 chip as the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.
It’s a fine chip, but don’t
expect best-in-class
horsepower. In the
Geekbench 6
benchmark, which
measures overall
performance, the Pixel
Fold turned in a
single-core score of
1,390 and a multicore
score of 3,291.
That’s only a little
behind the Galaxy Z
Fold4, but then that
phone is using a year-old
Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
CPU. By the time you
read this, the first results
from the new Galaxy Z
Fold5 should have
emerged, using the
faster Snapdragon 8
Gen 2. For context, that

same chip inside the Galaxy S23
achieved around 2,000 in the
single-core test, and over 5,000 for
multicore. The iPhone
“The Pixel Fold makes
14 Pro Max is even faster
multitasking a breeze. There’s at over 2,500 and 6,300.
The Pixel Fold trails
a dock you can pull up with a
competing flagships in
quick swipe, and you can
graphics performance
easily run apps side by side” as well, as you’ll see in
our 3DMark test results
above. When it comes to transcoding
video, it lagged behind the Galaxy Z
Fold 4 by 15 seconds and the iPhone 14
BELOW The Pixel Fold
Pro Max by 30 seconds.
is available in porcelain
Let’s not get too hung up on
and obsidian colours
comparisons, though. In daily use I
found the Pixel Fold perfectly
responsive and snappy, whether I
was surfing the web and flipping
between tabs or racing around in
Asphalt 9. The Call of Duty Mobile
experience was fairly fluid as well:
even with multiple enemies trying to
mow me down, the action remained
smooth. Very few people will need
more power than this.

Solid battery life

The Pixel Fold’s 4,821mAh battery
should satisfy most people. On one
day of testing I began using the Pixel
Fold at 7am, and spent the rest of the
day sporadically taking photos,
surfing the web and playing games.
When I set it down at around 10pm I
had 28% battery capacity left.
In our web-surfing battery test,
the Pixel Fold lasted 10hrs 21mins in
45

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Photosamples

ABOVE If you love to snap photos of food (we won’t judge)
then you’ll be extremely happy with the Pixel Fold’s
close-up capture of colours and textures

60Hz display mode. That’s pretty
good, considering that the Galaxy
Fold4 averaged 9hrs 17mins with the
same display settings. The best phones
can manage more than 11hrs 30mins,
but foldables have twice as many
panels to power. And when your
battery does get low, the Pixel Fold
supports 30W wired charging as well
as Qi wireless charging.

Flexible cameras

We’ve come to expect great photo
quality from Pixel-branded phones,
and the Pixel Fold doesn’t disappoint.
It comes with a trio of rear cameras,
comprising a 48MP main sensor, a
10.8MP ultrawide shooter and a
10.8MP telephoto lens with a 5x
optical zoom. Up front, there’s a
9.5MP camera, and the inside of the
Fold houses another 8MP lens.
Together these cameras deliver
plenty of flexibility, allowing you to
capture excellent images of all kinds.
I took some stunning shots, including
a close-up of a daisy fleabane flower,
a sharp photo of a fountain and a

ABOVE There isn’t a dedicated macro lens, but in
practice the 48MP main sensor does an excellent
job when it comes to close-up focus and details

majestic view of twin buildings
with a rippling reflection in
a nearby pond.
I also tested out the
optical zoom by shooting
the top of a skyscraper
at 5x zoom, and found
the Pixel Fold did a very
good job capturing the
striations in the stone
part of the spire and
details in the building.
And Google’s Night Sight
processing makes this
phone a champion in low
light, as I found when shooting a
solar-powered lantern. The Pixel
delivered a lovely bright image, with
light reflecting off the concrete below;
the same shot taken on a Samsung
Galaxy S23 was dimmer and lacking in
background detail.
As for video, the Pixel Fold can
capture colourful 4K 10-bit HDR
footage at up to 60fps. In all, I’d rank
this handset among the best camera
phones on the market – I preferred
many of its images to those shot on

ABOVE This is a sharp-shooting camera, as shown by
how well it captures the falling water from the fountain
(arguably better than an iPhone 14 Pro Max)

the iPhone 14 Pro Max or the
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

Almost there

ABOVE There’s a trio
of high-quality
cameras on the rear

BELOW Half-unfold
the phone and you can
use it like a mini laptop

The Pixel Fold is a very
expensive smartphone,
but there’s a lot to like
about it. In fact, it’s the
first foldable phone I
could see myself using
on a daily basis. I love
how easy it is to run two
apps side by side, the
elegant dock, and the
multiple usage modes such
as tabletop and tent. You really
feel like you’re getting a tablet
experience in a pocket-sized phone.
You’re also buying a durable,
polished piece of hardware for the
money, with a great set of cameras.
The wider cover display makes a big
difference, too.
The potential spoiler is the
imminent arrival of Samsung’s Galaxy
Z Fold5, which we expect to review in
next month’s PC Pro. The Fold5
promises faster performance, a lighter
design and stylus input. But it also
keeps the narrower exterior display,
and it won’t benefit from all of
Google’s own OS enhancements.
While the Pixel Fold isn’t quite
perfect, it’s a stellar phone that
deserves serious consideration from
anyone interested in a foldable
handset: Samsung has strong
opposition at last. MARK SPOONAUER
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core Google Tensor G2 processor 12GB
RAM Mali-G710 graphics 7.6in foldable
120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,840 x 2,208
resolution 5.8in cover 120Hz AMOLED
screen, 1,080 x 2,092 resolution 5G
256GB/512GB storage IPX8 rating 48MP
rear camera 9.5MP front camera 8MP
inner camera Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.2
NFC 4,821mAh battery USB-C 3.2 Gen 2
Android 13 with 5yr Pixel updates folded, 80 x
12.1 x 140mm (WDH) unfolded, 159 x 6.3 x
140mm (WDH) 283g 2yr warranty

46

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Reviews

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How we test
LaptopsandPCs

Whatourawardsmean

We run a selection of benchmarks on all the
PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we
use a cross-platform test so we can compare
Windows and macOS machines, which is
where both Geekbench and Cinebench R23
come into play. Both push the CPU to its
limit, exposing how well cooled a system is.
We run extra tests for Windows systems.
We use our own benchmarks to test photoediting, video-encoding and multitasking
speeds. We then switch to PCMark 10 to
benchmark systems in office tasks,
content creation and basic tasks such as
web browsing and video calls. We also run 3DMark Time Spy and a selection of
benchmarks in games such as Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
For laptops, we test battery life with Wi-Fi on and the screen brightness set to
150cd/m2. We fully charge the laptops and drain them until they reach 5%. For
Windows laptops, we will use a mix of PCMark 10’s light-use and video-based
tests, or a web surfing benchmark where a laptop automatically visits sites
until the battery dies. We also use this test for MacBooks.

Screenquality

Phones and tablets
We run a selection of publicly
available benchmarks on all the
phones and tablets we review. First,
we run Geekbench 5 and 6. These are a

This, quite simply,
is a product we
recommend
RECOMMENDED

ABOVE We put PCs
and laptops through
our intensive set of
benchmarks

LEFT We use a Display
i1 colorimeter to
measure sRGB gamut
coverage and Delta E

BELOW We play a
video with the screen
set to 150cd/m² to
test battery life

This product has

Throughout the magazine you’ll see
pcpro.link shortcuts. Enter these into
the address bar of your browser and it
will take you to a particular page, which

precise shop from which to buy. If it’s
Amazon, note that we have an affiliate
deal in place so we will receive a
commission from each sale. This will
never affect our verdict of a product,
and if another reputable vendor is
selling the product cheaper then we
will use that instead.

Prices will vary

5,333

Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max

4,549
3,859
3,476
2,696

group test, or Labs.

us to publish or will take you to the

Apple A15 Bionic

Google Tensor

Labs Winner
Each month we run a

will either be too long or awkward for

4,553

Google Pixel 6

starting on p14. It’s

The pcpro.link

Apple iPhone 14

OnePlus 10T

feature on our A-List,

others to top position.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

The product will also

managed to beat all

Apple A16 Bionic

Apple iPhone 12

category right now.

updated each month.

GEEKBENCH 5 (MULTICORE)

Apple A14 Bionic

your needs.

The best buy in its

good test of the
processor and memory
in particular, and
include both a
test for single-core
and multicore
performance. See
below for a
selection of scores to
provide a reference of
what’s good... and
what’s not so good.
We also run 3DMark Wild
Life test to give a measure of gaming
performance.
As with laptops, we test
phone and tablet battery
life by playing a fullscreen video until the
battery runs out with the
device. To simplify the
test, we use Airplane
mode. We set the
brightness to as close to
150cd/m2 as we can get in the
device’s settings.

Apple A15 Bionic

you buy – if it meets

A-List

Prices we publish are correct on the day
HIGHER IS BETTER

In each laptop,
phone, tablet and
monitor review,
you’ll see our
conclusions about
the screen quality.
Some of this will be
subjective, but we also
test each screen using a
Display i1 colorimeter. We
measure maximum brightness,
colour accuracy and (for monitors)
consistency – there may be a
difference in, say,
brightness from the
middle and the edges
of the panel.
We also measure
Delta E, which is a
guide to how
accurately panels
display colours.
Anything under 1 is
excellent and likely to
be difficult for the human
eye to distinguish; between one and
two is still strong; above this suggests
a panel that you shouldn’t trust for
colour-accurate photo editing.

Recommended

we publish, but we often see prices
change, especially on sites such as
Amazon. However, we do work with
British PC retailers to ensure the prices
we quote for their systems are correct.
If the price isn’t being honoured, contact
us via letters@pcpro.co.uk.
47

Google Pixel Tablet

A great tablet to have
around the house thanks
to its speaker dock, but
it’s nolaptopreplacement
SCORE
PRICE 128GB, £499 (£599 inc VAT)
from store.google.com

W

hen Apple so
thoroughly dominates
the tablet market, how
can other manufacturers make
their devices stand out? In the
case of the Pixel Tablet, it’s by
literally including a stand.
Google’s charging dock boosts the
tablet’s audio capabilities and
turns the display into a smart
home hub of sorts. This sets the Pixel
Tablet apart not only from the iPad,
but also from its closest Androidbased rivals: the OnePlus Pad (see
issue 346, p46) and the Samsung
Galaxy Tab S8 (see issue 334, p71).
Inevitably, this drags up the price.
At £599 the Pixel Tablet is much more
expensive than the £369 you’ll pay for
the basic ninth-generation iPad (see
issue 328, p83), and higher even than
the £499 of the latest tenthgeneration model (see issue 340, p82).
On the plus side, that price includes
not only the dock but also 128GB of
storage, twice as much as you get with
the entry-level iPad. You can pay an
extra £100 to go up to 256GB, but
there’s no memory card slot, so the
storage you choose is the storage
you’re stuck with. Note too that while
you can buy optional case and stand
accessories, Google doesn’t offer a
matching keyboard or stylus for the
Pixel Tablet – a shortcoming by
comparison to competing tablets.

Touch of class

The Pixel Tablet comes in tasteful
porcelain and hazel finishes; aside
from the colour, it looks very similar
to the Google Nest Hub Max when
mounted on the fabric-covered dock.
It sits at a slight angle, so it’s easy to
view from the sofa – the screen’s wide
viewing angles also help in this regard
– and is held in place by magnets.
In your hand, the Pixel Tablet’s
half-inch bezels are comfortable to
hold. The casing has a slightly rough
texture that keeps the tablet secure in
sweaty hands, and doesn’t show
fingerprints at all. Speaking of which,
the power button doubles as a
fingerprint reader for easy unlocking.
A volume rocker and power button sit
at the top on the right (in landscape
mode); along each of the narrow sides
are two speakers, and on the left side
in the middle is a USB-C port. There’s
no headphone jack.
An 8MP f/2.0 front camera sits in
the centre of the top bezel. I like

having the webcam on the long edge,
as I find video calls more natural in
landscape mode, but that’s a matter of
taste. The rear camera is identical, and
image quality from both directions is
very good: medium-range photos
taken with the rear camera were sharp
enough for me to read my dog’s name
on his name tag. Using the frontfacing camera, I could easily make out
the individual whiskers
“Google’s charging dock
on my own face.
Both cameras can also
boosts the tablet’s audio
capabilities and turns the record video at up to 1080p
at 30fps. There’s no option
display into a smart home to shoot in 4K, as with
hub of sorts”
most tablets in this price
range, but the Pixel Tablet
impresses with software tricks.
Continuous Framing is similar to the
iPad’s Centre Stage feature, panning
and zooming automatically to keep
you in the middle of the frame while
BELOW The case has a
you’re on a video call. The tablet can
slightly rough texture
also project 360° backgrounds, so you
that helps keep it
can move the tablet around freely and
secure in your hands
your colleagues will see a tropical
paradise (or some other setting)
behind you. Aside from a little
silhouetting around my face, I found
this worked remarkably well.
ABOVE The 11in screen
has a sharp 2,560 x
1,600 resolution and
bright, bold colours

Sharp but not special

The 11in screen is a pleasure to look at,
with a sharp resolution of 2,560 x
1,600 (equivalent to 276ppi) and
bright, bold colours. Technically,
though, it’s nothing special: I measured
a maximum brightness of 433cd/m2,
which is 30cd/m2 below the Galaxy
Tab 8. And while DCI-P3 coverage of
85% is wide enough to make films look
impactful, it’s less than its rival
Android tablets (albeit better than the
10th-generation iPad with its 72%
coverage). The Pixel Tablet aced the
48

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GEEKBENCH 5 (MULTICORE)

Smart sharing

As well as physically resembling the
Nest Hub Max, the Pixel Tablet
can play a similar role as a
smart home hub. It provides
one-touch control of
smart devices even when
the screen is locked, via a
small Home icon in the
lower left corner that
brings up a selection of
quick-access widgets.
There are limitations
here. Only devices can
be controlled in this way,
not things such as

4,400

Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3070

Apple iPad (9th gen)
Apple A13 Bionic

OnePlus Pad

MediaTek Dimensity 9000

Samsung G’axy Tab 8

QualcommSnapdragon8Gen1

Google Pixel Tablet
Google Tensor G2

3,387
3,275
3,228
3,004

Automations. And that doesn’t
include Thread or Matter devices
– the Nest Hub Max supports
these, but the Pixel Tablet
doesn’t. Even on compatible
devices, you can’t always
access the full set of
controls; for example, I
could view a feed from my
Nest Cam and use its
speaker to communicate
with a person on the
other end, but I had to
open the Google
Home app to turn the
camera on or off. Similarly, I
could control my connected smart
speakers, but only if something was
already playing. I was, however, able
to change the temperature settings on
my Ecobee 5th-gen thermostat, and
turn my smart lights on and off.
The Pixel Tablet has other features
that help make it a more connected
part of your home. If you have other
Google Assistant-enabled smart
speakers, you can group the Pixel
Tablet with them to have the same
music playing throughout your
house, or have music follow you from
room to room. You can also cast video
to it while it’s sitting in the dock – a
neat feature no other tablet offers.

Speed where it counts

3DMARK WILD LIFE UNLIMITED
Samsung G’axy Tab 8

Google’s Tensor G2 chip is a tricky
one: it’s great for specific tasks, but
it doesn’t take the top place in
general-performance benchmark
tests. In Geekbench 5 the Pixel
Tablet’s multicore score of 3,004 was
about 200 points below the Samsung
Galaxy Tab 8 and the OnePlus Pad,
and 1,400 points behind the iPad. Yet
in our Adobe Rush transcoding test
the Pixel Tablet’s time of 49 seconds

9,549

QualcommSnapdragon8Gen1

OnePlus Pad

8,793

MediaTek Dimensity 9000

Apple iPad (10th gen)

8,579

Ryzen 7 5800H, RTX 3070

Apple iPad (9th gen)

8,001

Apple A13 Bionic

Google Pixel Tablet
Google Tensor G2

ABOVE The tablet sits
at a slight angle on the
dock, making it easy to
watch films

HIGHER IS BETTER

Five years of updates

The Pixel Tablet comes with the latest
Android 13 OS, and Google promises
at least five years of updates, so it
won’t get left behind any time soon.
Android hasn’t always translated
brilliantly to a tablet-sized screen, but
this version makes accommodations,
including the ability to add active
widgets to each screen, and to run two
apps side by side. You can even drag
items from one app to another, such
as adding photos to an email.
As a parent, I also like that the Pixel
Tablet lets you create child profiles, for
which you can apply time restrictions,
configure the types of apps that are
allowed and more. You can block
explicit websites, or even curate an
allow-list of individual URLs.
As part of the setup process your
child can create their own avatar,
and select from a dozen subjects
they’re interested in, ranging from
science to princesses. They’re then
brought to a custom home screen
with shortcuts for games, books,
videos, and Make (which requires a
YouTube Kids account). It’s not as
comprehensive as Amazon’s Fire for
Kids interface, but it’s the best family
experience I’ve seen within the
Google Play ecosystem.

Apple iPad (10th gen)

HIGHER IS BETTER

colour accuracy test, with a spectacular
Delta E of 0.05 – it’s barely possible for
a display to be more accurate.
I was pleased with the surprisingly
powerful speakers. There are two on
each of the tablet’s shorter sides; they
sound great as long as you’re not
gripping the tablet tightly by those
sides, as this mutes the sound.
Things get even better when you
plop the Tablet onto its dock. This
contains a 43.5mm full-range speaker
that adds full-throated bass into the
mix, for a much more solid audio
experience. It must be said, though,
while gaining a chunk of low end, you
sacrifice treble in docked mode. It
doesn’t sound as clean and clear as the
Nest Hub Max, which has a bigger,
more powerful multi-speaker array.

6,568

was on a par with the
Samsung Galaxy Tab 8,
and faster than the
OnePlus Pad. Only the
iPad’s time of 29 seconds
was significantly faster.
In practice, it’s unlikely
you’ll ever see much lag from
the Pixel Tablet. I tried several
demanding games, including
EA Real Racing and World of
Tanks, and never noticed the tablet
stutter or pause.
As for endurance, the Pixel
Tablet sits in the middle of the
pack. It gave us 11hrs 56mins of
web surfing via Wi-Fi with the
screen set to 150cd/m2 – a strong
showing that’s one hour longer than
the iPad, but about an hour less than
the Galaxy Tab 8, and 90 minutes
behind the OnePlus Pad.

Final word

With its speaker dock, Chromecast
capabilities and smart home controls,
the Pixel Tablet is unlike any other
tablet on the market. It’s more of an
all-round home companion than a
personal productivity device, and it
might be the best argument we’ve
seen for buying an Android tablet
rather than an iPad.
“With its speaker dock,
That’s not to say you
can’t use it as a regular
Chromecast capabilities
and smart home controls, tablet. It fulfils that role
very satisfactorily, as long
the Pixel Tablet is unlike any as you’re not looking for a
other tablet on the market” laptop-type experience
with a keyboard and
stylus. Child profiles could be a big
plus point, too, and even if you have
little use for the passive display or
BELOW The dock
speaker functions, the dock provides
packs a 43.5mm
an effortless way to keep the thing
speaker and can also
charging when you’re not using it, to
be used for charging
help ensure that the battery isn’t dead
the next time you pick it up.
MIKE PROSPERO
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core Google Tensor G2 processor
Mali-G710 graphics 8GB RAM 11in 60Hz
touchscreen IPS display, 2,560 x 1,600
resolution 128GB/256GB storage 8MP
rear camera 8MP front camera Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5.2 USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 27Wh
battery Android 13 with 5yr Pixel updates
258 x 8.1 x 169mm (WDH) 493g 15W
charging speaker dock with 43.5mm
speaker 2yr warranty
49

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Amazon Fire Max 11

With its 2K screen and sleek
design, this is Amazon’s
best tablet yet – but FireOS
remains a hindrance
SCORE
PRICE 64GB with ads, £208 (£250 inc VAT)
from amazon.co.uk

T

he Fire Max 11 is Amazon’s
biggest, most expensive tablet
yet – but it’s still much
see
cheaper than the Pixel Tablet (see
). The entry-level model costs
p48).
£250 inc VAT with 64GB of storage,
or you can go up to 128GB for £40
extra. Unlike most premium tablets,
the Fire Max 11 can also be expanded
via a microSD slot.
Physically, the Fire Max 11 has
much in common with the Fire HD 10
). The brushed
Plus (see issue 328, p88).
aluminium rear looks great, aside
from its penchant for fingerprints.
The power button and volume rocker
are on the short side, which can be
disorientating unless you’re used to
Fire tablets, but it doesn’t take long to
get used to.
The screen is the largest,
highest-resolution display
we’ve seen on an
Amazon Fire tablet.
While its 212ppi
pixel density isn’t
as sharp as an
iPad, websites,
games and movies
all look clean and
clear. Colour
performance is
solid: it covered 75%
of the DCI-P3 gamut
with an average Delta E of
0.2, so nigh-on perfect for
accuracy. Brightness is another
high point, peaking at 544cd/m2 –
brighter than the 10th-generation
iPad (504cd/m2) and the Pixel Tablet
(433cd/m2). My only gripe is that the
coating is shiny and reflective.
Audio is more mixed. The stereo
speakers are loud enough to watch
films and TV shows, but the tinny
sound and lack of bass will leave
you wanting something with more
oomph for music.
Inside the Fire Max 11, an eightcore MediaTek MTK8188J processor
and 4GB of RAM take care of everyday
tasks. I didn’t hit any issues browsing
the web or working with documents,
and enjoyed playing casual games
such as Stardew Valley.. However,
you’ll see stuttering in more

demanding apps. Trying to play
Fortnite via Amazon’s Luna gamestreaming service was such a sluggish
experience I gave up. The Geekbench
5 CPU benchmark backs up this
impression: the Fire Max 11’s anaemic
multicore score of 1,084 falls far
behind the Google Pixel
Tablet (6,558) and the
Apple iPad (8,579).
On the plus side,
battery life isn’t
bad at all. In our
rundown test the
Fire Max 11 chugged
along for 13hrs
45mins, comfortably
outlasting the iPad
(10hrs 57mins) and
the Pixel Tablet (11hrs
56mins). It’s slow to
recharge, though, going from
zero to only 11% after 30 minutes.
The 8MP cameras mounted on the
front and rear of the Fire Max 11 do a
decent job of capturing colour and
fine detail. You can record video at up
to 1080p, or participate happily in

Reviews
videoconferencing. Bear in mind,
though, that you’re limited to services
on the Amazon Appstore – Teams and
Zoom are on hand, but don’t expect to
fire up Google Meet.
It’s worth restating that, as with all
Amazon tablets, the Fire Max 11 is
completely locked out of the Google
app ecosystem. That means no Gmail,
YouTube, Google Photos or Google
Docs, which puts a dent in the tablet’s
productivity credentials. Microsoft
365 is available, so you’re not without
options, but it’s still irritating.
Even the non-Google app selection
is limited. If there are any gems buried
in the Games section of the Amazon
Appstore, I failed to find them beneath
the piles of free-to-play titles with
poor user reviews. It makes the whole
platform feel cheap, an impression
reinforced by Amazon’s familiar
practice of showing ads on the
lockscreen when the device isn’t
in use – although these can be
removed for an extra tenner.
Unusually, the Fire Max 11 comes
with optional stylus and keyboard
accessories, costing £35 and £90 inc
VAT respectively. The stylus works
ABOVE The optional
well, never missing or misreading a
stylus costs £35 and
stroke, and it conveniently attaches
works very well
magnetically to the side of the Fire
Max 11 when not in use. The keyboard
also snaps on magnetically, and
partners with a rear cover that folds
back into a stand. Using the Fire Max
11 in this mode is certainly
“There’s no doubt that the easier than typing on the
Fire Max 11 is the best, most screen, but the compact
is cramped, and
versatile tablet Amazon’s keyboard
feels flimsy if you don’t
ever produced – but it’s still have a desk to rest it on.
There’s no doubt that
no match for the iPad”
the Fire Max 11 is the best,
most versatile tablet Amazon has ever
produced – but it’s still no match for
LEFT The high-res
an iPad, or for Google’s own tablet.
screen makes films,
It struggles to run heavyweight apps
games and websites
and games, while its restricted
look clean and clear
software library holds it back as a
productivity partner, and indeed as
a general-purpose tablet.
Still, if you just want to watch
Prime Video on a decently sized
BELOW The rear
screen, read your Kindle library
cover folds back to
and browse the web for hours on
make a stand
end, the Fire Max 11 does everything
you need for much less than the
competition. ALEX WAWRO
SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 2.2GHz MediaTek MT8188J processor
4GB RAM Mali-G57 MC2 graphics 11in IPS
touchscreen, 2,000 x 1,200 resolution
64GB/128GB storage microSDXC card slot
stereo speakers 8MP rear camera 8MP
front camera Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.3
lithium-ion battery (capacity not stated)
USB-C 2 connector Fire OS 8 (Android 11)
259 x 164 x 7.5mm (WDH) 490g 1yr
limited warranty
51

Panasonic
Toughbook40
The toughest Toughbook
yet is the obvious choice if
you need a laptop that will
survive in the harshest
environments

Modular design

SCORE
PRICE Core i5/16GB/512GB, £3,533
(£4,240 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk

Y

ou know how the saying goes:
you wait years for a review of
rugged devices in PC Pro, and
then three come at once. This month
we don’t merely review the
Toughbook 40, but also the Getac
X600 (see p56) and Dell’s Latitude
7230 Rugged Extreme tablet (see p57).
New Toughbooks don’t come along
very often, and when they do it can
take months before we get our hands
on it for review; the Toughbook 40
was announced back in May 2022. The
delay is because Panasonic prioritises
its highly demanding customers, with
the primary sector being defence
(army, police, border control). It’s also
aimed at utilities companies, whose
workers must battle all conditions.
BENCHMARKS
PCMark 10

4,622
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,125
0

5,000

BATTERY LIFE*

Video
Idle
Idle rundown
Video rundown

15hrs 28mins
10hrs 49mins
15hrs 28mins
0

5

*Tested with single battery.

54

10

15

20

One size is never going to fit all, so
Panasonic adopts a modular approach.
In my introduction to the Toughbook, I
was given a suitcase-sized container
filled with all the components that
can be swapped via the four expansion
areas: DVD and Blu-ray drives, second
batteries and SSDs, multi-user
fingerprint sensors, not to mention all
the port choices you can think of.
Most modules are designed to be
swapped out without tools, but the
priority is always weatherproofing.
Each expansion area is covered with a
latch that requires some force to open
– trim your fingernails – and there’s
an element of The Krypton Factor
about accessing a couple of them.
Still, once you understand the system
it all makes sense. The real downside
to such modularity is
that it adds to the girth:
start typing while the
Toughbook is on a desk
and you’ll immediately
notice that your hands
are raised higher than
normal, as this machine
is over two inches thick.
I was surprised by
two things. One is how
light it feels, especially
compared to a 15in
rugged laptop such as
the Getac. The second
is that I could use it
on my lap. I’d even
call it comfortable.

If you’re upgrading from a previous
Toughbook, you’ll also be delighted
with the quality of the panel. It shines
its brightest, metaphorically and
truly, when outside in bright sun. I
placed the Toughbook next to the
RECOMMENDED
Getac X600 and the Panasonic’s panel
was head and shoulders above its rival
in terms of readability and
“I placed the Toughbook
vividness. To the point
that you won’t even think
next to the Getac X600
it if you ever need to
and the Panasonic’s panel about
use this machine outside:
was head and shoulders
stick on adaptive
above its rival”
brightness and let the
screen adjust itself.
I measured brightness at a peak of
1,184cd/m2, which is ridiculously
BELOW The display
high. But just as vital for the defence
goes up to an
eye-searingly bright
sector, the screen can drop right down
1,184cd/m2
to 2cd/m2 – after all, you don’t want
the backlight of your
laptop to give away your
location on a mission.
On paper, colour
coverage and accuracy
isn’t a great strength of
this 14in IPS panel. In my
tests, it covered 54% of
the sRGB gamut with an
average Delta E of 4.55.
And it’s true that this
machine wouldn’t be my
first choice to watch
films on or edit photos.
However, colours look
strong when compared
to the Getac, aided by
a strong contrast

@PCPRO

ratio of 1,781:1, and they’re more than
good enough for its intended usage.

Navigation aids

The final screen factor to consider is
its sophisticated touch technology.
You have support for three main
modes here: ten-finger multitouch,
capacitive pen and gloves. Panasonic
actually claims a further two modes of
“multitouch in wet conditions” and
“capacitive pen in wet conditions”,
bringing the total to five, but perhaps
most notable is that you don’t need to
manually select which mode you’re
using as you did with previous models.
This flexibility helps to make up for
a tiny trackpad, measuring 94 x 53mm.
Nor is it the most responsive I’ve used,
but at least Panasonic separates out
the left and right mouse buttons.
You might struggle to type
accurately on the keyboard when
wearing gloves, as the keys are
compact – if you look at the photos
you’ll see that the board doesn’t
stretch the full width of the chassis.
Panasonic aims to minimise typos by
rounding the key edges and leaving a
good amount of space between them.
While the key action is soft,
almost spongy, I prefer it to the lifeless
keys found on the Getac X600. And
there are nice design touches
elsewhere, too: the cursor keys
are well separated from the
main area, the F11
key (to activate
full-screen mode)
is separately
recessed and red,
to make it easy to
hit in a rush, and
as with the Getac
there are four
programmable
keys above the
main deck.

Fast but not
blazing fast

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Now we come to a potential weak spot
of the Toughbook 40: speed. It uses
11th generation Intel Core processors,
which are significantly slower in tests
than their 12th and 13th generation
counterparts (which moved to a
mixed P-core and E-core approach).
It comes with a choice of either a
Core i5-1145G7 vPro or Core i7-1185G7
vPro, which you can support with up
to 64GB of DDR4 memory. Naturally,
RAM upgrades are something you
can do yourself: the two SODIMM
sockets sit beneath a cover secured
by four crosshead screws.
Our test unit included a 1TB
Samsung PM981A M.2 SSD, which
technically is replaceable but that
certainly isn’t designed for end users.
Instead, anyone who needs to store
sensitive data should use the

expansion bay designed for removable
SSDs; this means you can also swap
the Toughbook 40 between users on
different assignments, and safely send
it back for repair without your data.
So, with a relatively old processor
in place, is speed this laptop’s Achilles
heel? Certainly it will never top the
tables for performance: my system,
with a Core i5 and 32GB of RAM,
scored 4,622 in PCMark 10 (although
that includes a commendable 8,808 in
the Essentials component and 6,058
for Productivity), 5,118 in Geekbench
6’s multicore component and 5,273
in the Cinebench R23 multicore test.
The Getac is significantly faster.
But – and this is a huge but – for the
kind of tasks this laptop will perform,
you will rarely find yourself sitting
around waiting. It ships with
Windows 10 (although it’s fully
compatible with Windows 11) and I
never experienced a stall throughout
my time using the Toughbook 40.
Buyers who know they will push the
laptop with demanding custom apps
should switch to a Core i7, but for
everyone else the Core i5 is just fine.
In most scenarios, battery life is far
more important. If you choose to buy
the Toughbook with one battery then
you should squeeze ten hours out of
it; in light use, with the screen set at
150cd/m2, it kept going for
around 11 hours in PCMark’s
video rundown test
(and a similar time
in its light-use
productivity
benchmark). When
I fitted a second
hot-swap battery
this laptop lasted for
23hrs 37mins, an
agonising 23
minutes shy of the
magic 24 hours.
Recharging was
respectable if not lightning quick.
After 30 minutes, a single battery had
reached 40%, rising to 68% after an
hour and full in a little over two hours.

Rugged by design

And what of ruggedness itself? The
Toughbook 40 has an IPX6 waterproof
rating, which means it can happily
survive rain but can’t be submerged
in water. That’s matched by an
IP6X dust-proof rating, which
is as high as it goes: it means
it’s fully protected against
dust ingress, so you can
take this machine to
deserts and beaches
without fear.
We often see laptop
manufacturers quoting
military grade toughness,
but read the small print and
you’ll discover that multiple

caveats apply. Not so the Toughbook
40. This laptop is drop resistant up to
1.8m (six feet), can operate in
temperatures from -29°C to 63°C, and
will keep working at high altitude
and terrible levels of humidity.
Of particular importance to its
military audience, Panasonic also
tests (and can custom build) extras
such as a platform to bolt the
Toughbook into a tank, say, and
know that it will still work despite
the bone-rattling vibrations and
bumpy terrains such a vehicle is
designed to negotiate.
“It’sdropresistantup
If something does go
wrong, you can send the
to1.8m,canoperatein
broken laptop back to
temperaturesfrom-29°C
the Cardiff-based service
to63°C,andwillkeep
centre, where the laptop
can be stripped down to its
workingathighaltitude”
bare essentials and the
damaged part replaced. The aim is to
return all warrantied machines within
five working days, and Panasonic
claims a success rate of over 99%.
This modularity and repairability
also means this is a highly recyclable
product. And reusable: Panasonic has
launched a “Revive” programme,
where it either revives or recycles
Toughbooks that have reached the
end of their useful life at an
organisation. The devices are then
donated to charities or resold
second-hand to non-commercial
organisations “at an affordable price”.

Tough to criticise

LEFT Despite its
thickness, the
Toughbook is
surprisingly light

BELOW The compact
keyboard is well
designed and easy to
type on

Price is, of course, the final thing to
cover. If you’re buying one or two
Toughbook 40 laptops then you can
expect to pay between £4,000 and
£5,000, depending on the
specification and extras you opt for.
Companies ordering in bigger batches
may be able to get that price under the
£4K mark. Either way, this is not a
cheap laptop; you can buy semirugged machines from Dell for half
that price. And they’ll be faster, too.
However, it’s extremely obvious
where your money is going if you do
buy a Toughbook 40. Over the course
of its life, if you need its rugged
features, it will more than pay back
the investment. TIM DANTON
SPECIFICATIONS (as tested)
4-core/8-thread Intel Core i5-1145G7 vPro
Intel Iris Xe graphics 32GB
DDR4-3200 RAM 14in 60Hz IPS
touchscreen, 1,920 x 1,080
resolution 1TB M.2 Gen3 SSD
IP66 rating Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth
5.1 5MP IR webcam
Thunderbolt 4 2 x USB-A 3.2
Gen 2 HDMI 2 microSDXC
card reader gigabit Ethernet
3.5mm jack 2 x 74Wh batteries
Windows 11 Pro 354 x 301 x 54.4mm
(WDH) 3.4kg 3yr limited warranty
55

Getac X600

A powerful alternative to the
Panasonic Toughbook 40,
with the bonus of optional
Nvidia graphics
SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £8,279 (£9,935 inc
VAT) from Getac resellers

T

o the untrained eye, the X600
might look identical to the
Panasonic Toughbook 40
on the previous pages. They’re
both fully rugged, so you get
an IP66 rating against rain and
dust, and you can drop the X600
from four feet with impunity.
But where the Toughbook is built as
an all-rounder, the Getac X600 has
demanding applications in mind.
The first sign of this is the powerful
Core i7-11850H vPro inside. It’s an
11th generation Core chip, but with 16
threads and more wattage on tap, the
X600 was 67% faster in the multicore
section of Geekbench 6 than the
Toughbook (8,533 versus 5,118) and
77% quicker in Cinebench R23 (9,354
versus 5,273). If you need a
rugged laptop for
core-intensive tasks
the X600 is the
obvious choice.
There’s also a Core
i9-11950H option.
Our review
system has Intel
UHD graphics, but
again there are
options: either
Nvidia’s GTX 1650 card
or a Quadro RTX 3000.
And where the Panasonic
tops out at 64GB of RAM, the
Getac goes all the way up to 128GB.
The other big difference is screen
size, with a 15.6in panel in place here.
It’s as bright as you could hope for,
hitting a peak of 1,256cd/m2 (and
going down to just over 1cd/m2 at
the other extreme), while colour
BENCHMARKS
PCMark 10

5,091
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

783
0

5,000

BATTERY LIFE*

Idle

Video rundown

7hrs 41mins
5hrs 50mins
0

5

*Tested with single battery.

56

10

15

20

coverage proved better than the
Toughbook 40 at 62% of the sRGB
gamut. Both screens have similarly
awful accuracy, with the X600’s
average Delta E at 4.93. That’s a long
way from our ideal target of less than
one. The high brightness meant I had
no trouble reading it outdoors in the
bright sun, but a measured contrast
ratio of 269:1 is poor and gives the
screen a washed-out appearance.
Getac could also learn from
Panasonic’s attention to
detail when it comes to
the keyboard.
Obviously the
priority must be
ruggedness, but I
hoped for a more
cushioned feel
than the X600
offers. If anything,
it feels rattly and
cheap. It doesn’t help
that Getac makes no
effort to separate out the
cursor keys and that both the
spacebar and Enter key are so small.
The upside for any number crunchers:
a separate number pad.
The touchpad is a decent size and
includes dedicated mouse buttons.
Getac would benefit from improving
its palm rejection software, but aside
from this there’s nothing to
criticise – or praise. Opt for
the capacitive touchscreen
and you can navigate by
touch, with support for
gloves and a stylus. The
latter slots neatly into a
recess built into the base,
complete with a tether so
you won’t lose it.
Where Getac does a
much better job than
Panasonic is labelling its
ports. There’s a great

selection here, starting
with a pair of 2.5GbE
ports. You also get a serial
port (plus an optional
second serial port or
VGA output), plus four
USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports,
Thunderbolt 4 and video
outputs for HDMI and
DisplayPort. Not to
mention three useraccessible bays for M.2
SSDs, giving you a total
potential capacity of 6TB.
There’s even Wi-Fi 6E
along with Bluetooth 5.3,
while dedicated GPS or
4G LTE broadband
are both options.
You can fit
two batteries for
a total capacity
of 149Wh
(74.5Wh each),
ABOVE The15.6in
and with both in place battery life is
displayisbiggerand
okay: 12 hours in our video-rundown
brighterthanthe
test. But a single battery only kept the
PanasonicToughbook’s X600 going for 6hrs 26mins in
PCMark’s light-use test and 7hrs
41mins when idling. Theoretically,
though, it could run forever on battery
power, with a twin battery charger
one of Getac’s many accessories.
There’s a lot of clever
“There’s a lot of clever
thinking going on here,
and I also admire Getac’s
thinking going on here,
three-year bumper-toand I also admire Getac’s
bumper warranty.
three-year bumper-toCrucially, that includes
accidental damage (but
bumper warranty”
not acts of God or war),
and comes with the promise that it
will be returned to you “within days”.
Naturally, all this doesn’t come
cheap. The unit as reviewed costs
LEFT The Getac
£8,279 exc VAT, but that’s with a
X600 is designed
bunch of extras (the touchscreen,
with demanding
three 1TB SSDs, two batteries, an extra
applications in mind
serial port) and a Core i7 plus 64GB of
memory. I’ve seen basic Core i5
models on sale for around £4,200, and
that price will decrease if you order in
bulk. The low-contrast screen and
uninspiring keyboard could both be
BELOW The X600
improved, but you can’t argue with its
offers a fine selection
mix of power, ruggedness
of ports, and they’re
and connectivity. TIM DANTON
well labelled, too

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core/16-thread Intel Core i7-11850H vPro
Intel UHD graphics 64GB DDR4-3200 RAM
15.6in 60Hz IPS touchscreen, 1,920 x 1,080
resolution 3 x 1TB M.2 Gen3 SSDs IP66
rating Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.2 Full HD
webcam Thunderbolt 4 4 x USB-A 3.2 Gen
2 HDMI 2 DisplayPort 2 x 2.5Gb Ethernet
3.5mm jack serial port 2 x 74.5Wh
batteries Windows 11 Pro
412 x 322 x 52.5mm
(WDH) 4.4kg
3yr bumper-tobumper warranty

@PCPRO

Dell Latitude 7230
Rugged Extreme Tablet
You’ll need to buy spare
batteries, but this is a
speedy, flexible and
suitably rugged tablet
SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £2,125 (£2,550 inc
VAT) from dell.co.uk

T

he Latitude 7230 is built for
places that would kill other
tablets. It’s been drop-tested to
four feet, at temperatures up to 63°C,
and is IP65 rated against ingress from
dust and water. Designed to be
operated either as a tablet or a laptop
via an attachable keyboard, the screen
hits 1,425cd/m2 to ensure its 12in
display can be seen in direct sunlight.
And what a screen it is. While the
Panasonic’s and Getac’s panels cover
between 50% and 60% of the sRGB
gamut, the Dell’s panel covers 95%.
With superb colour accuracy, too,
coupling an average Delta E of 0.36
with a contrast ratio of 1,770:1. That’s
remarkable for a rugged device.
Less remarkable is its
weight. Dell quotes 1.4kg
for the tablet alone, but
that assumes both
batteries are
installed; our
single-battery
review model
weighed 1.3kg.
That’s still a
substantial heft,
and even though
2.4kg with the
keyboard attached
doesn’t sound like much, it
becomes decidedly top-heavy
in this mode as all the computing
power is located behind the screen.
To combat that uneven weight
distribution, the stiff keyboard hinge
requires brute force to move. Separating
the keyboard and tablet isn’t easy,
BENCHMARKS
PCMark 10

4,846
0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,137
0

5,000

BATTERY LIFE*

Idle

Video rundown

10hrs 6mins
6hrs 26mins
0

5

*Tested with single battery.

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

10

15

20

either, as it requires two sprung sliders
to be pressed together. In many of my
attempts, one side would unlock, but
not the other. While the keyboard
provides useful extra USB-A ports on
both sides, this accessory is neither
well engineered nor well designed.
Another area for improvement is the
tablet’s port protection. Getac uses
neat, rigid covers, but Dell opts for
rubberised plugs that are difficult to
extract. They also get in the way when
inserting cables. That’s a shame
because this machine has a decent
selection of ports – two Thunderbolt/
USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 on the left (one is
needed to supply power), two USB-A
3.2 Gen 2 on the right. Or, at the
time of purchase, you can
choose for the latter to
be replaced by an
HDMI connector.
There are other
neat design choices
too. Texture on the
screen provides
good fingertip
control, while
Dell’s optional
passive stylus fits
neatly into a receptacle
in the unit. Both cameras
– one 5MP IR camera on the
front, an 11MP unit at the rear –
feature sliding privacy covers and
produce good results. But the standout
feature is the trio of access panels at the
rear: one allows you to remove the
storage, two are for batteries.
This makes it easy to keep the
Latitude 7230 running so long as you
buy two batteries – which you
should, as we only got 6hrs
26mins from a
single

36Wh unit in our
video-rundown test.
That’s with brightness
set to 150cd/m2, but if
you’re pushing this
tablet you’ll be lucky to
get five hours. Buying a
second battery also
allows you to hot-swap
as you go, so that’s a
£40 investment well
worth making. Dell
sells a separate mobile
battery charger for
£186 (all quoted prices
exclude VAT).
Our test system
shipped with a Core
i5-1240U processor and
ABOVE The Latitude
8GB of RAM for £2,125, but upgrading
to the Core i7-1260U for £185 also
7230 is IP65 rated
against ingress from
doubles the RAM, which is integrated
dust and water
onto the motherboard. Our test
machine proved speedy compared
to the Toughbook, with its 11th
generation U series chip, with a return
of 7,163 in Geekbench 6’s multicore
test and 7,083 in Cinebench R23.
As standard, the 7230 ships with a
256GB SSD. Oddly considering the size
of the tablet, it’s an M.2 2230 design,
so is 30mm long compared to 80mm
of more common M.2 2280 SSDs. It’s a
Gen 4 drive but performs like a Gen 3
one, with sequential
“While the Panasonic’s
reads of 3,457MB/sec and
writes of 2,776MB/sec.
and Getac’s panels cover
to a 1TB SSD
between 50% and 60% of Upgrading
drive costs a harsh £165.
the sRGB gamut, the Dell’s
There are other extras
worth considering: £189
panel covers 95%”
buys a 5G modem to
complement the Wi-Fi 6E. You can add
extra security via a choice of smart
card reader and fingerprint readers
(varying from £41 to £101). Or fill the
top expansion port with a scanner
LEFT The superb
(£124), RJ-45 port (£20), mini serial
display is bright and
port (£37) or Fischer power connector
very colour-accurate
(£118). Then there are stands, mounts,
even a rotating hand strap.
The Latitude 7230 falls short of a
recommendation due to the awkward
keyboard, small batteries and limited
storage, but compared to other rugged
tablets it’s extremely fast – and it has a
BELOW The tablet has
killer screen. MARK PICKAVANCE
a decent collection of
ports, including two
for Thunderbolt

SPECIFICATIONS
10-core (2 P-core, 8 E-core) Intel Core
i5-1240U Intel Iris Xe graphics 8GB
LPDDR5-5200 RAM 12in 60Hz IPS
touchscreen, 1,920 x 1,080
resolution 256GB M.2 Gen
3 SSD IP65 rating Wi-Fi
6E Bluetooth 5.2 5MP
webcam 11MP rear
camera 2 x Thunderbolt 4/
USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 2 x USB-A 3.2
Gen 1 microSD card slot 3.5mm jack
36Wh battery Windows 11 Pro 296 x 203 x
23.9mm (WDH) 1.3kg 3yr ProSupport
57

Reviews

Asus Zenbook S
13 OLED (UX5304)

A superb screen, striking
design and great battery
life make this the finest
13in Windows laptop yet
SCORE
PRICE £1,333 (£1,600 inc VAT)
from uk.store.asus.com

T

here’s no shortage of choice
when it comes to premium 13in
laptops. You have the Dell XPS
13 in both its standard (see issue 339,
p65) and Plus (see issue 337, p52)
forms. The MacBook Air M2 (see issue
336, p50). And, most recently, the
deliciously svelte LG gram SuperSlim
(see issue 347, p58). Asus knows it
must work hard, then, to make the
Zenbook S 13 OLED stand out.
The first sign of Asus’s industry is
in the lid. The striking ceramic finish
not only looks and feels special but
also adds – so Asus claims – durability
and sustainability. For this lid is
100% recyclable (unlike lids with
sprayed-on coatings), while also
featuring post-industrial recycled
magnesium-alloy. Together with
post-consumer-recycled plastics in
the keycaps and speakers, and
FSC-certified packaging,
Asus reckons this is its
most eco-friendly
Zenbook yet.
It’s a shame it
didn’t make the
innards more
upgradeable, though.
You will have to
struggle past
11 Torx
screws before you can
replace the supplied 1TB SSD, while
the 16GB of memory is embedded onto
the motherboard.
Open the lid and you’ll be greeted
by a whack of colour between the eyes
thanks to the OLED panel. You can
BENCHMARKS
PCMark 10

5,672
0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

3DMark Time Spy

1,789
0

5,000

10,000

BATTERY LIFE

15,000

Idle

20,000

Video rundown

15hrs 9mins
12hrs 9mins
0

58

5

10

15

20

choose between sRGB, DCI-P3 and
Display P3 profiles, all of which tune
the panel to their respective space
with astounding accuracy: 98% to 99%
coverage of the chosen gamut, with an
average Delta E of under 0.5 no matter
which space I tested in.
As is typical for laptop OLED
panels, it doesn’t shine brightly in
tests: I measured a peak of 383cd/m2.
But the impeccable contrast of OLED
meant it was still easy to read under
sunlight. It’s a glossy screen, so expect
to see reflections, and it doesn’t
support touch, but both these factors
are minor quibbles in day-to-day use.
The screen supports DisplayHDR
500, and Netflix’s Our Planet looked
spectacular. David Attenborough’s
dulcet tones and the subtle
soundtrack emerged brilliantly,
too. It was only
when pushed with
harder-hitting music
that a lack of depth
and richness
becomes apparent,
but I would still
happily listen to
music on these
speakers during a
day’s work – work that
this laptop is extremely
well suited to do.
Perhaps the biggest surprise was
the quality of the keyboard: 1.1mm of
key travel isn’t exactly luxurious, but
a gentle, quiet action makes typing
pleasant rather than a chore. And
even though the keys don’t stretch to
the edge of the chassis, the main
characters are easy to hit and the only
compromise is a half-height Enter
key (and function doubling on the
separated cursor keys). Asus has also
done a brilliant job with the touchpad,
coupling perfect palm rejection with a
huge size (130 x 81mm) and sleek,
glass-coated finish.
You shouldn’t expect ludicrous
amounts of processing power, but

Intel’s 13th generation mobile chips
continue to impress. Here, Asus
chooses a Core i7-1355U rather
than the i7-1360P in the LG gram
SuperSlim, which means two P-cores
rather than four. This showed in
core-hungry benchmarks such as
Geekbench 6, with the LG scoring
10,110 compared to the Zenbook’s
8,449. This will make a difference in
encoding tasks, but in everyday usage
I defy anyone to spot the drop in
power. The LG had the edge in
gaming tests, but only by a tiny
margin: 22fps versus 20fps in
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
at 1080p High, 1,851 versus
ABOVE The superb
1,789 in 3DMark Time Spy.
OLED screen supports
All those results were with the Asus
DisplayHDR 500
in its Performance mode, and you will
notice the fan noise if you activate this
mode. It’s far less obvious in Standard
mode, and unless you intend to push
the Zenbook to its limit that’s what I
would stick to. It’s what I used for
battery testing, where the Zenbook
proved its worth once again: around 12
hours in our light-use tests, including
looping video, and a little over 15
RECOMMENDED
hours in idle.
Those results are almost identical to
the LG, and while the Zenbook is 60g
heavier (1,050g to 990g), it narrowly
wins the battle of the 1kg laptops. And
it does so for three reasons.
“With a high-quality 1080p First, it’s £200 cheaper.
Second, it has a higherwebcam and support for
resolution screen (the LG’s
Wi-Fi 6E, I struggle to see is 1080p). And third, it
what Asus could improve
includes a still-useful
USB-A input, plus HDMI
with this laptop”
and two Thunderbolt 4/
USB-C ports. The LG, by contrast,
relies on a trio of USB-C connectors.
With a high-quality 1080p webcam
and support for Wi-Fi 6E, I struggle to
LEFT The striking
see what Asus could improve with this
ceramic lid is 100%
laptop, aside from a warranty that
recyclable
lasts more than one year. I started this
review by saying how hard Asus must
work to make its 13in laptop stand out
from the crowd, but this understated
laptop with its slim design and
striking lid manages to do exactly
that. TIM DANTON

BELOW Connections
include USB-A, HDMI
and two Thunderbolt
4/USB-C 4 ports

SPECIFICATIONS
10-core (2 P-cores, 8 E-cores) Intel Core
i7-1355U processor Intel Iris Xe graphics
16GB LPDDR5-5200 RAM 13.3in 60Hz
AMOLED non-touch panel, 2,880 x 1,800
resolution 1TB M.2 Gen4 SSD Wi-Fi 6E
Bluetooth 5.2 1080p IR webcam 2 x USB-C
(Thunderbolt 4/USB 4) USB-A 3.2 Gen 2
HDMI 3.5mm combo jack 63Wh battery
Windows 11 Home 296 x 216 x 10.9mm (WDH)
1kg 1yr RTB warranty part code
UX5304VA-NQ039W

@PCPRO

Honor MagicBook
X 16 (2023)

Everything a budget laptop
should be, this 16in machine
delivers for quality, speed
and battery life
SCORE
PRICE £583 (£700 inc VAT)
from hihonor.com

H

onor has a straightforward and
effective technique when it
comes to laptops: pile ’em
high, sell ’em cheap. But where this
approach used to mean laptops that
also felt cheap, that isn’t true here.
Instead, Honor acts like any astute
trader, finding the components that
deliver the best value and blending
them into an attractive deal.
For example, you’ll find a 12th
generation Intel processor rather than
the latest chips. The mid-range Core
i5-12450H won’t blow anyone away
with its power, but it remains a
fine all-round performer:
its 5,329 PCMark 10 score
hides a strong 10,755
score in the
benchmark’s
Essentials section,
while a result of
9,254 in Cinebench
R23 reflects the
presence of 12
threads to tackle
intensive tasks.
Honor includes only 8GB of
RAM, and it’s embedded on the
motherboard with no option to add
more. Not a problem for most people,
but power users should look
elsewhere. And the fact it’s only one
chunk of memory (rather than two)
also holds back Intel’s integrated
graphics, which is why this laptop
scores only 970 in 3DMark Time Spy
and stumbled to 14fps in Shadow of the
Tomb Raider at 1080p High settings.
Curiously, you can upgrade the
storage. Honor supplies a 512GB Gen 4
BENCHMARKS
PCMark 10

5,329
0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

3DMark Time Spy

970
0

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

5,000

10,000

BATTERY LIFE

15,000

Idle

20,000

Video rundown

12hrs 48mins

SSD, which returned sequential
speeds more in line with Gen 3 drives:
3,780MB/sec reads, 2,192MB/sec writes.
Still, that’s more than fast enough for
a laptop that won’t be throwing
around huge amounts of data. It’s an
M.2 2280 drive, so measures 80mm
long, but if you remove ten Torq
screws you’ll discover an empty M.2
2230 bay that you can fill with a 512GB
drive for around £40 or 1TB for £80.
It’s great to have the option.
At this point I should reintroduce
last year’s MagicBook
16 (see issue 331, p60),
which cost £850 and
featured a Ryzen 5
5600H processor and
16GB of RAM. I
mention it first to
avoid confusion if
you visit the Honor
website and see it
listed (although it
currently says “Notify
me”, so I suspect it will
soon go off sale). The
second is to point out that it
had a 144Hz screen, compared to the
60Hz panel here. You lose smoothness
as a result, but on a non-gaming laptop
the drop in frequency is no great loss.
And, for the price, this is a fine
panel. Whites look white, so I wasn’t
surprised to see a colour temperature
of 6616K – close to the 6500K target of
the sRGB gamut to which this panel is
tuned. It covers 96% of that colour
space, with excellent accuracy as
indicated by an average Delta of 0.53.
I would have liked it to nudge higher
than 339cd/m2 peak brightness, while
the 1,920 x 1,200 resolution means
you don’t get the sharpness of a 2,560
x 1,440 screen, but let’s remember
that this is a budget laptop.
This fact is reinforced by the 720p
webcam. It produces subdued colours
but it’s fine for work video calls
thanks to clear focus and loud (if
echoey) voice capture via the two

mics. The webcam doesn’t support
Windows Hello, but the fingerprint
reader built into the power button at
the top right of the keyboard does
– and worked almost instantly each
time I used it.
The keyboard itself has good
points and bad. I like the fact that it’s
quiet, and owing to the width of the
chassis it doesn’t feel cramped despite
the presence of a separate number
pad. I would have liked more
cushioning on the keys, and
found it tricky to hit the
slimmed-down apostrophe
and hash keys, but the
spacebar and Enter key
are both easy to locate.
ABOVE A solid screen
Honor keeps things simple with the
and wide keyboard
touchpad, which is a reasonable size
make the MagicBook
(120 x 72mm) and smooth.
X 16 a fine all-rounder
What’s most surprising for a laptop
costing £700 is the all-metal chassis,
including the base. Acer, Dell, HP and
Lenovo tend to rely on plastic chassis
at this price. As a result, the
MagicBook feels reassuringly well put
together, even if this is reflected in its
1.7kg weight. Still, you can sling this
slim laptop into a bag and know that it
will keep going all day, with superb
results in our battery tests: over nine
hours under light use, almost 13 hours
when left idling.
Honor provides a compact but
powerful 65W charger that took the
LEFT The all-metal
laptop from zero to 80% in an hour,
chassis adds heft as
although this will occupy the sole
well as class
USB-C port. It sits on the left-hand
side of the chassis along with one of
the two USB-A ports, and predictably
none of them offers cutting-edge
speeds: 10Gbits/sec over USB-C,
5Gbits/sec over USB-A.
“What’s perhaps most
You can connect two
external screens; one via
surprising for a laptop at
the HDMI output, the
this price is the all-metal
other over USB-C.
chassis.Itfeelsreassuringly Clearly, Honor has
made sacrifices to hit a
well put together”
price – evidenced by 8GB
of RAM rather than 16GB, last year’s
processor, a solid rather than a great
screen – but combine them all
together and you have a well-built
laptop for a fantastic price. And one
that will amply meet the needs of most
people for several years. TIM DANTON

BELOW There’s a
single USB-C port
that has to be used
for charging

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (4 P-cores, 4 E-cores) Intel Core
i5-12450H processor Intel UHD graphics
8GB LPDDR4-4266 RAM 16in 60Hz IPS
non-touch panel, 1,920 x 1,200 resolution
512GB M.2 Gen4 SSD Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.1
720p webcam USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 2 x USB-A
3.2 Gen 1 HDMI 3.5mm combo jack 60Wh
battery Windows 11 Home 356 x 250 x
17.9mm (WDH) 1.7kg 1yr RTB warranty

9hrs 28mins
0

5

10

15

20

59

Reviews

Apple Mac Studio M2

A sleek, quiet computer that
delivers no surprises: it’s
packed with power and has a
price to match
SCORE
PRICE As reviewed, £5,333 (£6,399 inc
VAT) from apple.com/uk

T

he original Mac Studio (see issue
332, p60) launched last year as a
showcase for Apple’s M1 Ultra
chip. Physically the Mac Studio M2 is
identical to its predecessor, but the
silicon has been updated for 2023. At
the top of Apple’s latest processor tree
we have the M2 Ultra, which in effect
is two M2 Max chips stuck together. Or
you can configure it with an M2 Max.
Apple sent in a unit with the top-end
M2 Ultra chip inside, and once again
I’m amazed by how much power
Apple crams inside these tiny cubes.
It’s pointless to even talk about
how well this squat powerhouse
handled my daily diet of
30+ Chrome tabs and
spreadsheets. Even when
I tried to max out the
machine by firing up
Adobe After Effects,
Final Cut Pro and
Logic Pro, I failed;
I flipped between
them all, editing
projects without
any issues.
To really see the
limits of the Mac Studio I
had to consult the results of
our lab testing. In our Handbrake
video-encoding test, which times
how long it takes the computer to
transcode a 4K video down to 1080p,
the Mac Studio M2 completed the
task in 2mins 31secs. That’s a big leap
compared to last year’s Mac Studio
M1, which took 3mins 55secs. For a
comparison outside the Apple
universe, a beefy desktop PC with an
Intel Core i9-13900KF, GeForce RTX
4090 and 32GB of RAM finished the
same task in 3mins 12secs.
It was a similar story in
Geekbench 5. The
M1 Ultra pushed
the Studio to
18,641 in the
multicore section,
while the M2 Ultra
system scored
25,274. That edged
out the Core i9 PC,
with its eight
P-cores and 16
60

E-cores, which returned 23,931. But
perhaps the biggest difference is that
I never noticed more than a hint of
fan noise from the Mac Studio, even
after benchmarking it for hours.
In the Blackmagic disk speed test,
which measures read and write
speeds of Macs, the Mac Studio M2’s
2TB SSD achieved an average read
speed of 5,883MB/sec and an average
write speed of 7,148MB/sec. That’s
again faster than last year’s already
nifty Mac Studio M1 with 5,352MB/sec
and 6,320MB/sec.
When I ran the Studio through
3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme graphical
benchmark in Unlimited mode, it
averaged 74,625. That’s
double the impressive
(or so I previously
thought) results of
last year’s Mac
Studio M1, which
scored 35,111.
Taking
advantage of the
Mac Studio M2 as a
gaming machine is
still frustrating,
because many of the
best PC games aren’t
optimised for Apple silicon
(although Apple’s Mac Gaming
Toolkit could be the nudge developers
need to port their titles). You can still
enjoy a smorgasbord of games via the
Mac, iOS and iPadOS App Stores since
Apple’s M2 chip can run iOS and
iPadOS apps, and from third-party
platforms such as Steam.
The Mac Studio had no trouble
running every Mac-compatible game
in my Steam library – including No
Man’s Sky, Total War: Warhammer II
and Resident Evil Village – with all

the settings
cranked up to
max, typically
at 4K with
frame rates in
the 50fps to
60fps region.
But testing in
Civilization
VI: Gathering
Storm
emphasised
how much
better a
gaming PC
remains: the
ABOVE The diminutive M2 Ultra system averaged 53fps at
Mac Studio M2 packs
1080p compared to 39fps for last
an astonishing amount year’s model, but the GeForce RTX
of power
4090 systems we’ve tested average
over 250fps. And that’s at 4K.
Now we need to talk about money.
If you’re happy with an M2 Max chip
(which we haven’t yet tested), prices
start at £2,099. That buys the
entry-level M2 Max with its 12-core
CPU, 30-core GPU and 16-core Neural
Engine. You get 32GB of unified
memory and 512GB of SSD storage.
RECOMMENDED
Costly upgrades apply if you want
more memory (up to 64GB for £400)
or storage (up to 8TB for £2,400).
Things get even more expensive if
you choose an M2 Ultra, with the
baseline 24-core CPU, 60-core GPU
and 32-core Neural Engine model
costing £4,199. That’s with 64GB of
memory and a 1TB SSD. Prices rise
LEFT The Mac Studio
with predictable steepness if you want
will breeze through
to add more memory or storage, but I
almost any task you
should mention that the memory now
care to mention
tops at 192GB (a mere £1,600 upgrade)
rather than last year’s 128GB.
In terms of ports, the only
important thing to know is that Mac
Studios with an M2 Max have a pair of
USB-C ports up front, while M2 Ultra
versions provide two Thunderbolt 4
ports instead. Every model
“Even when I tried to max packs an SDXC card reader
on the front, with four
out the machine by firing
Thunderbolt 4 ports at the
up Adobe After Effects,
rear alongside a 10GbE
Final Cut Pro and Logic
port, 3.5mm jack and
Pro, I failed”
HDMI connector.
Whichever version you
choose, the Mac Studio M2 delivers
more power than any Apple computer
on the market, save the Mac Pro.
Unless you need that machine’s
upgradability, it’s the obvious choice
for power users. ALEX WAWRO

LEFT There are four
Thunderbolt 4 ports at
the rear, plus 10GbE
and HDMI

SPECIFICATIONS
24-core (16 x 3.2GHz, 4 x 2.1GHz) Apple M2
Ultra with 76-core GPU and 32-core Neural
Engine 128GB RAM 2TB M.2 PCI-E Gen 4
SSD HDMI 2.1 6 x Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C 4)
2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 10GbE port 3.5mm
headphone jack SDXC card slot Wi-Fi 6E
Bluetooth 5.3 macOS Ventura 197 x 197 x
95mm (WDH) 3.6kg 1yr RTB warranty

Reviews

AsusDualGeForce
RTX 4060OCEdition

Disappoints in some areas,
but for mainstream 1080p
gaming at an affordable
price it’s hard to argue
SCORE

on the 8GB of GDDR6 memory, I
settled for +1,500MHz for testing.
Those represent a theoretical 8.1%
boost to GPU performance and a 17.6%
increase to memory bandwidth. That
means some games might give about
15% higher performance, but most
will be limited by the GPU compute,
yielding gains closer to 8% to 10%. You
can see the averages in the graphs
below, with the overclocked version
having its own entry.
At 1080p with “ultra” settings, the
non-overclocked RTX 4060 sits just
below AMD’s Radeon RX 6750 XT, is
22% faster than the RTX 3060 (and the
RX 7600), and beats the RTX 2060 by
58%. As can be seen, with the
overclock it leapfrogs the RX 6750 XT.
In our ray tracing (DXR) test suite,
the RTX 4060 does much better against
AMD. Hardly surprising, since Nvidia
is now on its third generation
RT hardware and has been
pushing the API more than
AMD. Compared with the
RTX 3060, the 4060 improves
overall performance by 22%
in our DXR test suite at 1080p
ultra settings. The
improvement varies, from
15% faster in Control to 30%
faster in Metro Exodus
Enhanced and the Bright
Memory Infinite Benchmark,
but it’s a pretty consistent
gain. Similarly, it’s 63%
faster than the RTX 2060.

PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT)
from scan.co.uk

T

he Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
drops the entry price for RTX
40-series cards to around £300.
There’s no official card from Nvidia,
but it has been embraced by
manufacturers – including Asus, and
here we test its OC Edition.
It occupies 2.5 slots of width, which
effectively means you can’t use the
two adjacent slots. Its single 8-pin
connector can provide 150W of power
on its own, never mind the 75W from
the PCI-E x16 slot. Even with a modest
factory overclock, the Asus 4060
won’t come anywhere near hitting
those potential power limits.
The aesthetics are subdued, with
no RGB lighting, so it would
be a perfect fit if you’re trying
to put together a “stealthbuild” PC. There’s a white
version, too.
As the OC in its name
suggests, this is a card
designed for overclocking
(although there is a “quiet
mode” switch on the card).
I maxed the power limit to
120%, then hunted for the
maximum stable GPU
overclock. In this case, I
settled on +200MHz. And
while I hit a stable +1,750MHz

LEFT The card takes
up two and a half slots,
so you can’t use the
two adjacent slots

6-GAME AVERAGE RAY TRACING AT 1080p (DXR Ultra, fps)

15-GAME AVERAGE AT 1080p (top settings, fps)
RTX 4070

Stepping up to higher
resolutions can be an
issue for the RTX 4060.
The 8GB VRAM is
certainly part of the
equation – especially
as it’s limited by a
128-bit interface,
compared to 192-bit
and 12GB for the RTX
3060 – but a big part is
simply the lack of raw
horsepower. The 24MB L2 cache also
ABOVE Nvidia RTX
isn’t large enough to effectively
40-series cards are
handle the various buffers and texture
finally available for
accesses at higher resolutions.
under £300
The RTX 4060 still beats the RTX
3060, but the margin drops to 18%,
down from 22%. Most of our test
games are playable, meaning they run
at 30fps or more, but the overall 45fps
average means there are games in our
test suite that will drop well below
that mark. For 1440p, you’re better off
with high settings and enabling DLSS
quality upscaling if available.
The RTX 4060 outperforms the
RTX 3060 and is a huge jump over
the RTX 2060. Not to
“TheRTX4060outperforms mention its improved
the RTX 3060 and is a huge power efficiency (the RTX
3060 consumes about
jump over the RTX 2060.
35W more power than the
Not to mention its improved Asus RTX 4060) and
support for DLSS 3.
power efficiency”
What stops me from being
enthusiastic is that 8GB of RAM. This
won’t be an issue in the majority of
games, but some will push beyond
that limit. And at that point you’ll
wish you had chosen an RTX 4060 Ti
or higher. JARRED WALTON

RTX 4070

106

SPECIFICATIONS
PCI-E Gen4 x16 graphics card AD107 GPU
8GB GDDR6X memory 2,505MHz default
clock, 2,535MHz OC mode 3,072 CUDA
cores 24 SMs 96 tensor cores 24 RT
cores 128-bit memory interface width 3 x
DisplayPort 1.4a HDMI 2.1a 160W 227 x
123mm (length x width) 2yr limited warranty
15-GAME AVERAGE AT 1440p (top settings, fps)

77

RTX 4070

75

58

RX 6800

58

RTX 3070

82

RTX 3070

58

RTX 3070

58

RX 6800

81

RTX4060 OC

RTX 4060 Ti

57

73

RTX4060 OC

70

RX 6750 XT

67

RTX 4060
RTX 3060
RTX 2060

55
43

Test rig: Core i9-13900K with all cards upgraded with latest drivers

62

51

RX 6800

48

RTX 4060

47

RTX4060 OC

50

RX 6750 XT

49

RX 6750 XT

40

RTX 4060

RTX 3060

39

RTX 3060

RTX 2060

29

RTX 2060

45
38
29

HIGHER IS BETTER

RTX 4060 Ti

HIGHER IS BETTER

83

HIGHER IS BETTER

RTX 4060 Ti

@PCPRO

Amazon Echo Pop

If you want a compact Alexa
smart speaker, the Pop is
now the cheapest choice
– but what does it really add?
SCORE
PRICE £38 (£45 inc VAT)
from amazon.co.uk

H

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

ow do you shave £10 from the
price of the Echo Dot (see issue
341, p64)? Apparently, by
taking a knife and slicing off the
Dot’s spherical front to create a flat
surface. Then remove the Alexa
button, but leave three at the Pop’s
top: two to adjust the volume, one
to turn off the microphone. And
finally, rather than use a
circular ring of LEDs
around the bottom,
switch to a small light
bar at the top. This
activates to indicate
when Alexa is
listening to you.

The hidden sacrifice
is to its smart home
features. While the Pop
supports the Matter
smart home protocol,
the Echo Dot includes
temperature and
motion sensors that you
can use as part of your
Alexa smart home routines.
What you don’t lose is
audio quality. I played a
variety of tracks on both speakers
and was hard-pressed to find any
difference between the two, despite
the Pop having a slightly larger
front-firing speaker. The Pop is never
going to replace larger units, but it’s
great for small spaces. For example,
“Uptown Funk” with Mark Ronson
and Bruno Mars sounded lively, but
you lose the booming bass
notes of the full-size Echo
(see issue 334, p81). And
while the guitar
strumming and
individual voices in
“Look at us Now” by
Daisy Jones and the Six
sounded wonderful,
things became more
compressed as the song
increased in volume.

ABOVE The Echo Pop
produces surprisingly
good sound for its size

LEFT Top of the Pop: a
light bar plus volume
and microphone off
buttons, but no Alexa

I have one moan, and that’s
the inclusion of a proprietary
power plug at the rear. By
now, the whole Echo series
should be moving to the
universal USB-C standard.
You may at this point be
wondering why Amazon has
released the Pop at all. Other
than new colours – lavender
and teal, alongside black and
white – it hardly seems worth the
£10 saving versus the Dot and further
confuses the Echo line. I was certainly
sceptical when I first heard about the
Pop. Even more so when you consider
that most sensible people buy Echos
during Amazon’s frequent sales.
Although I retain some of that
cynicism, the Pop is now the obvious
choice if price is your main
motivation. After all, every penny
counts. But a Dot adds more smart
home features, and the Dot with
clock (£65) makes more sense if the
speaker is going to live next to your
bedside. MIKE PROSPERO
SPECIFICATIONS
Bluetooth speaker with Alexa 49.5mm
front-firing speaker Wi-Fi Bluetooth LE
Mesh with A2DP supports Matter 99 x 83 x
91mm (WDH) 196g 1yr limited warranty

63

Motorola Razr 40
Ultra
It took Motorola three
goes, but the Razr 40 Ultra
is easily its best attempt
yet. Only one question
remains: can it beat the
imminent Galaxy Z Flip5?

SCORE
PRICE £875 (£1,050 inc VAT)
from motorola.co.uk

A

longside a growing number
of foldable phones, we’re
starting to see more
“flippable” vertical designs. Last
year’s Motorola Razr was a credible
competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Z
Flip4 (see issue 340, p70); now the
Razr 40 Ultra is a bigger, more
substantial offering, with a larger
external display.
It comes with a sister device, too:
the plain Razr 40. This has a
Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chip inside
compared to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1
found in the Ultra, but the biggest
difference is its much smaller external
screen. But that’s reflected in its £800
price, a hefty £250 cheaper than the
Ultra and the 256GB Z Flip5, which is
due to go on sale in mid-August.
The Ultra comes in three tasteful
colour options with silly names:
infinite black, glacier blue and viva
magenta. These all look gorgeous
whether open or closed. I love the
stylish contrast of the polished
metallic frame with the vegan leather
casing on the rear, though I’m unsure
how the latter will hold up over time.
As you’d expect, the phone is
terrifically pocketable. A pleasingly
solid hinge mechanism allows the
64

Razr 40 Ultra to close up completely
with no gap, then sit flush when it’s
opened up. While there is a small
crease running along the inside
display, I barely noticed this when
using the phone.
In either configuration the Razr 40
Ultra is easy to hold and operate,
measuring 6.9mm thick when opened
up and weighing 189g. Around the
right side, the dedicated power button
doubles conveniently as a fingerprint
sensor. Given the design challenges
involved, Motorola has done an
incredible job with the engineering:
there’s no better looking or feeling
foldable than this. Just note that the
Razr 40 Ultra’s IP52 rating means it

ABOVE Availablein
three tastefulcolours,
theUltralookslovely
whetheropenorclosed

BELOW The front
3.6in OLED display can
be customised with all
manner of apps

can withstand minor splashes of
water, but not submersion.

Quite some front

When folded, the front of the Razr 40
Ultra is almost entirely devoted to a
square 3.6in OLED display. There are
lots of ways to personalise what runs
here, including a variety of clocks,
animated wallpapers and much
more. But this screen isn’t just for
decoration: it has the same pixel
density as the main display, and I was
able to run many apps and games on
it. Since the panel is almost as wide as
the internal screen, I could even use
the virtual keyboard to easily type out
messages on the front panel, without
needing to open up the phone.
Not all apps work properly on the
outer display, mind you. Gmail and
Google Maps were fine, but surfing the
web with Chrome was problematic
with the limited view, and one game I
tried playing on the external display
looked squished.
When it’s time to open up, the
main 6.9in display is just as pleasing.
It’s gloriously bright, with a peak of
1,084cd/m 2. This being an OLED
panel, it offers wide viewing angles
with minimal distortion and
punchy colours. Coupled with a
fluid 165Hz refresh rate, that makes
it excellent for watching videos
and playing games.
Both internal and external
displays are covered with Corning

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Gorilla Glass Victus, which provides
robust defence against casual
scratching. I’ve been carrying it
around in my backpack and pockets,
and it has yet to pick up a mark.

Android customisations

The Razr 40 Ultra runs Motorola’s
own version of Android 13, which
deviates little from stock Android.
For example, the Razr 40 Ultra comes
with Google Photos instead of a
manufacturer-branded gallery app.
There are, however, a few
customisations that exploit the flip
format. For example, if you fold the
Razr 40 Ultra into an L-shape while
using the camera app, the controls
move onto the bottom screen,
while the top becomes a dedicated
viewfinder. And if you open the phone
while using an app on the outer
display it will seamlessly jump to the
inner display. I enjoyed being able to
launch Instagram on the external
display, then unfold the phone to
continue on the main screen – and
vice versa. It really makes the flip
format seem natural and useful.

Dual cameras

The Razr 40 Ultra has a dual-camera
system, comprising a 12-megapixel
f/1.5 main camera and a 13-megapixel
ultrawide f/2.2 module that
doubles as a macro camera.
There’s no zoom or
telephoto lens, but
that’s expected for
a flip phone – the
Z Flip5 doesn’t
have one, either.
The Razr 40
Ultra takes
photos with
natural colours.
I would have
liked bolder
contrast, as well
as sharper detail from
the ultrawide camera, but
I found its shots pleasing to
view. I was particularly taken with
the Ultra’s macro mode, even if
slower shutter speeds mean you’ll
want to shoot in bright conditions
and with a steady hand.
The camera’s biggest weakness is
low-light performance. Even in Night
Vision mode I found focusing was
unreliable and tended to produce softlooking images. When the focus did
manage to lock on, details were
muddy, with a murky colour balance.
By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Z
Flip4’s night mode produced a
brighter image with more detail.
The flip design also means you can
turn the phone around and capture
full-quality selfies using the rear
camera – brilliant for vlogging and
recording self-shots. The flip

capabilities open up other usage
options, too: you can fold the display
halfway out and hold the phone like
an old-school pocket camcorder,
and if you’re shooting someone else
you can have both displays turned on
while recording, to give them a live
view of what the camera’s seeing.
Video can be captured at up to 4K at
60fps; you’ll get the best results
when using the main camera under
bright conditions.
Overall, any shortcomings in
photo quality are made up for by
the sheer utility of the Razr 40
Ultra’s folding format. I just wish it
had a manual video mode like the
Samsung range has, to fully exploit
the possibilities.

Razr-like speeds?

As chip enthusiasts will know,
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has
been out for more than a year – it’s the
same chipset as found in the Samsung
Galaxy Z Flip4 (the Flip5 uses Gen 2).
While it’s last year’s tech, it packs
plenty of power: launching apps and
scrolling through the interface was
perfectly fluid, while graphically
intensive gaming titles such as
Modern Combat 5 ran smoothly.
Our benchmark tests confirmed
my experience. The Razr 40 Ultra
yielded strong scores of 1,320 and
4,134 in Geekbench 5’s
single-core and
multicore tests,
almost precisely on
a par with the
Samsung Galaxy
Z Flip4, which
scored 1,291
and 4,015. Each
also took an
identical 40
seconds to render
a video with Adobe
Premiere Rush.
The Z Flip5’s chip
will be faster – I would
expect it go roughly 20%
quicker in most benchmarks – but
it’s unlikely this will make a shred
of difference to the average user’s
experience: the Motorola is powerful
enough to breeze through everything
you’re likely to ask of it, now and for
many years to come.
The new chipset is meant to bring
improvements to battery life, but
what really matters is that the
3,800mAh battery in the Ultra
(100mAh larger than the battery in
the Z Flip5) got me through a day of
normal usage. Admittedly, though,
not much more than that.

ABOVE The front
screen has the same
pixel density as the
main display

The 30W charger proved effective,
however, taking it from empty to 35%
in 15 minutes, and reaching 66% after
half an hour. It also supports wireless
charging, albeit at a less dynamic 5W.

Flip, fold or straight?

The flip-phone concept still feels
experimental, but there’s plenty to
like about the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra.
It looks stylish, it feels impeccably
engineered and the large external
screen is both fun and useful, enabling
this phone to do things
“There’splentytolikeabout that normal non-folding
phones can’t.
theRazr40Ultra.Itlooks
But this phone faces a
stylish,itfeelsimpeccably
couple of big challenges.
engineeredandtheexternal First, the price. You can
screenisbothfunanduseful” buy a top-tier regular
phone for similar money,
so it’s understandable if you’re
wary of splashing out so much on
something unfamiliar. That said, keep
an eye out for operator deals – we’ve
seen bundles that give you the phone
LEFT The dual-camera
plus two years of 5G data for less
system produces
than £1,100.
sharp photos with
The second challenge is the
natural colours
imminent arrival of the Z Flip5. The
two phones are priced identically,
both have big external screens, but on
paper Samsung’s offering wins for
speed. At this point, my best advice is
to hold tight for a month. Or look out
for discount deals. JOHN VELASCO

BELOW A solid hinge
mechanism allows the
Razr 40 Ultra to close
up with no gap

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core 3.19GHz/2.75GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 8GB RAM Adreno
730 graphics 6.9in foldable 120Hz AMOLED
screen, 1,080 x 2,640 resolution 3.6in
AMOLED cover screen, 1,066 x 1,066
resolution 256GB storage IP52 dual
12MP/13MP rear cameras 32MP selfie
camera 5G Wi-Fi 6E Bluetooth 5.3
USB-C 2 connector 3,800mAh battery
Android 13 open, 74 x 7 x 171mm (WDH)
closed, 74 x 15.1 x 88mm (WDH) 185g
1yr warranty
65

Yourbonus
software

Total value
this month

£165

Wescourtheglobetonegotiatethebestsoftwaredealsforourreaders,fromextended
licencestofullprogramsyoudon’tneedtopayapennyfor.Here’sthismonth’slineup

BreachGuard
2023
Data breaches are an
One-PC, oneunfortunate fact of
year licence
online life – and the
worth £40
repercussions of having
avg.com
your personal data
REQUIRES
exposed can be terrible.
Windows 7 or later;
Your private information
50GB hard drive
is valuable to criminals
space; online
as it can be sold many
registration
times over, potentially
changing hands for large
sums on the dark web. If your passwords, IDs or
other account credentials leak, you want to know as
soon as possible. That way, you might be able to act
before it’s too late. But how do you know when a
breach had occurred? Enter AVG BreachGuard.
BreachGuard lets you know when your personal
data leaks by keeping watch for compromised
databases and hacked sites. Fire it up, and you can
check right away how much of your personal
information is already exposed on social networks.
The software can also show you how to change your
privacy settings on various big account providers,
to make sure that you’re not sharing any more than
is absolutely necessary.
That’s all good preventative action – but what
happens if the data that’s already out there leaks?

As soon as new data appears in publicly available
lists, or a database owner reports a breach,
BreachGuard will pass on the tip. If you need to
change your password, BreachGuard can help
you pick something secure; this can stop someone
from abusing your account, making purchases
in your name, or gaining further information
about you.
That’s not all it does. AVG takes things further by
preventing companies from collecting data about
you, and actively requesting that stored information
is removed from databases so it can’t be sold on to
marketers. The AVG browser extension for

Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera sends requests to
specific advertisers to stop them from using your
data, and automatically opts you out from new
advertisers as they’re added to AVG’s list.
The dashboard gives you a clear overview of the
safety of your personal information, and assigns
you a privacy score that works like a credit score,
so you can instantly see where you stand: the
higher the score, the better.
AVG BreachGuard is a subscription service that
usually costs £40 a year – but we’re giving you a
one-year subscription for free as part of this
issue’s software downloads bundle.

ABOVE Quickly identify threats to your privacy,
including weak passwords, and run manual scans
at any time for the latest updates

ABOVE The Privacy Advisor presents steps you
can take to beef up the security of your personal
data and limit who can use it

ABOVE BreachGuard can also guide you through
the steps you should take to secure your data or
limit its use with major online companies

66

@PCPRO

Bonus software

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Backup4All 9.8 Lite
This easy but
capable backup tool
has everything you
need for complete
home backup
Save files to local,
external and
network drives;
compress and
password-protect
archives
Backups are stored
as zipped folders –
simply open them in
the Windows File
Explorer to locate
and restore files

Ashampoo Snap 14

Full product worth £30 backup4all.com
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 150MB hard
drive space; online registration

CheckDrive 2023

Record your
screen, or create
timed captures in
games, then join
them together to
create a video
You can pause
recording at any
time, and compose
your screen to look
just right
Perform scrolling
captures of web
pages and long
documents, or
grab custom areas
of the screen

Secure Eraser 6

Full product worth £10 abelssoft.net
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 75MB hard
drive space; online registration
Check your hard drive for errors with this
friendly interface for Windows’ CHKDSK tool
Show SMART data on compatible drives for
in-depth statistics, including temperature,
spin-up time and more
Can run in the background to monitor drives and
warn you of problems as they develop

Full product worth £20 ascomp.de
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 50MB hard
drive space; in-application registration
Securely and completely wipe data from your
drive so it’s safe to sell, donate or hand down
Select File & Folder Deletion, then choose what
you want to delete and the security level to apply
Can also wipe entire drives, and includes
additional Registry-cleaning and systemcleaning modules

Full product worth £36 ashampoo.com
REQUIRES Windows 7 or later; 70MB hard
drive space; in-application registration

novaPDF 11.8 Lite

Full product worth £29 novapdf.com
REQUIRES Windows 8 or later; 100MB hard
drive space; online registration
Powerful commercial tool for creating PDF files
from any application via a virtual printer driver
Just open your document, select Print, then
choose novaPDF as the output device
Add bookmarks, metadata, fonts and links;
optimise text and create profiles to save
your preferences

How to claim your bonus software

1

Visit pcprodownload.co.uk.
First, enter the issue number
(348 this month). Next, enter your
email address and the coupon code
printed on the cover’s spine (or
directly on the front cover of digital
issues of the magazine). We’ll then
send an email to confirm that your
code has been registered. Follow the
instructions in the email to access
the download area.

2

Once you’re in the download
area, you can access this
month’s bonus software by
navigating to the relevant product
page and clicking the red Install
button. For trial software, freeware
and other downloads, click the
Install button below the product
description, or follow the onscreen
instructions (please make sure to
read these carefully).

3

If the software needs
registering, click the purple
Register button, or follow
the instructions on the left of the
product page (again, please read
these carefully). In some cases, you
may need to register for a PC Pro
software store account – if you don’t
already have one – and you might be
prompted to reenter the coupon
code on the spine or cover.

Remembertoclaimyoursoftwareby30September2023*

pcprodownload.co.uk
* Codes are sometimes limited, so please claim early to avoid disappointment

4

Please be sure to install and
register your bonus software
before the date that’s specified
below. After this date, we can’t
guarantee that it will still be possible
to download or register this issue’s
bonus software.

Any problems?
If you need assistance
with the coupon code or
have registration issues,
please contact us at
software@pcpro.co.uk

67

Asus Zenfone 10

Limited cameras, but this
compact Android phone is
packed with power and
offers excellent battery life
SCORE
PRICE 16GB/512GB, £625 (£750 inc VAT)
from uk.store.asus.com

A

sus’ Zenfone handsets have
always delivered plenty of
power at a convenient size,
and the new Zenfone 10 doesn’t mess
with the formula. At £749 with 8GB
of RAM and 256GB storage (or £819
with 16GB/512GB) it makes a compact
alternative to the Samsung Galaxy S23
(see issue 343, p70).
Unarguably, though, this is a
phone with a character of its own.
The 5.9in format is smaller than most
Android phones these days, and the
handset weighs only 172g. That’s
partly down to a bio-polycarbonate
back, available in a choice of finishes
as shown below. Despite the plastic
build the Zenfone doesn’t feel cheap;
indeed, its grippy texture is ideal for
one-handed operation. It’s also good
to see a 3.5mm headphone jack on the
top edge, especially as this big hole in
the bodywork doesn’t prevent the
handset from offering IP68-certified
dust and water resistance.
The Zenfone 10’s distinctive shape
gives the screen a tall 9:20 aspect
ratio, with a native resolution of 1,080
x 2,400. Although the AMOLED screen
isn’t the brightest we’ve seen, peaking
at 764cd/m2, its accuracy is strong.
The 120Hz refresh rate – rising to
144Hz in supported games – ensures
everything flows smoothly.

Asus hasn’t skimped
on the internals, either.
The Zenfone 10 uses the
same Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
chipset as the Galaxy S23,
enabling it to broadly match the
Samsung’s excellent benchmark
results. And in our 4G web-browsing
test, the Zenfone’s 4,300mAh battery
and smaller screen helped it last more
than two hours longer than the S23,
and more than five hours longer than
the Pixel 7 (see issue 339, p74).
My only quibble is that recharging
is a little slow: at the maximum 30W, I
found the phone barely got above 50%
after 30 minutes on charge. On the
plus side, you get a charger in the box,
and you can also charge the Zenfone
10 with a 15W wireless charger.
The Zenfone 10’s software feels like
stock Android, but with a few unique
Asus customisations. The power

menu, volume controls, lock screen
and quick settings all present more
options than normal Android, and
other shortcuts can be accessed by
swiping on the fingerprint-reading
power button. I like using this feature
to open and close the notification
shade; you can alternatively use it to
scroll up and down web pages or scrub
through YouTube videos.
Another clever feature is the
QuickShot shortcut: a double press of
the power button opens the camera
and instantly takes a burst of shots,
giving you the best chance of
capturing a moment. And the Edge
Tool gives quick access to apps and
shortcuts with a swipe in from the side
of the screen. Just be aware that Asus
promises only 24 months of OS
upgrades, with a further two years of
security updates. That’s poor compared
to Samsung’s four years of full updates
or Google’s three-year policy.
The other big compromise is the
camera hardware. It isn’t terrible: the
50MP main camera is joined by a 13MP
ultrawide camera, and a high-res
32MP camera on the front. However,
there’s no telephoto lens as on the
Galaxy S23, nor the sort of AI-powered
processing found on the Pixel 7.
ABOVE With a 5.9in
In my tests I found that the Zenfone
display and a weight of produced bold images with plenty of
only 172g, the Zenfone
contrast, but the results weren’t as
10 is highly pocketable
bright or vibrant as shots from the
Samsung Galaxy S23. The all-digital
zoom has a tendency to produce soft
photos, and while selfies generally
looked warm and detailed, the
Portrait shooting mode didn’t do a
perfect job of separating subjects from
the background. The one standout
feature is a six-axis hybrid gimbal
RECOMMENDED
system for optical stabilisation,
which minimised the bobbing effect
when I tried shooting video while
walking around.
Even if the Zenfone 10 can’t equal
the photographic capabilities of the
Galaxy S23, it’s a smartly
“Asus hasn’t skimped on the designed phone that’s a
pleasure to use. There’s
internals. The Zenfone 10
uses the same Snapdragon enough processing power
here for any task, and a
8 Gen 2 chipset as the
battery that’s big enough
Galaxy S23”
to ensure you won’t run
out of juice halfway
through your day. If you’re looking for
a sub-6in Android phone, you won’t
do better. RICHARD PRIDAY

LEFT Available in a
range of colours, the
phone offers IP68 dust
and water resistance
68

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (3.2GHz/2.8GHz/2GHz) Qualcomm
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC 8GB/16GB RAM
Adreno 740 graphics 5.9in 144Hz AMOLED
screen, 1,080 x 2,400 resolution 5G
256GB/512GB storage dual 50MP/13MP
rear cameras 32MP front camera Wi-Fi 7
Bluetooth 5.3 NFC 4,300mAh battery
USB-C 2 connector Android 13 68 x 9.4 x
147mm (WDH) 172g 2yr warranty

@PCPRO

Reviews

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Honor 90

Great value if you’re looking
for generous storage, a
long-lasting battery and a
big, vivid screen
SCORE
PRICE 12GB/512GB, £417 (£500 inc VAT)
from hihonor.com/uk

A

s our roundup of affordable
phones from p70 shows, you
don’t need to spend a fortune
to buy a high-quality phone. Honor,
however, hopes that an impressive
display, fast battery charging and an
attention-grabbing 200-megapixel
camera might just persuade you to
splash out.
At £500, the Honor 90 lands in the
same price range as the Google Pixel
7a (see issue 346, p68) and the
Samsung Galaxy A54. When you first
pick it up, it feels more expensive: the
quad-curved display gives it a
premium feel, and the matte-textured
back panel exudes style whether you
opt for the diamond silver, emerald
green, peacock blue or midnight black
colour scheme.
You also get a bigger screen
than you’d expect for the
money. The Honor 90’s
6.7in panel is
noticeably larger
than the Galaxy
A54’s 6.4in, and
much bigger than
the petite 6.1in of
the Pixel 7a. Nor
is size its only
distinction: it offers
a 120Hz refresh rate
and a huge maximum
brightness of 1,600cd/m2
in HDR. The native resolution
of 1,200 x 2,664 pixels is higher than
the Full HD panels on the Galaxy A54
and Pixel 7a, albeit not quite as
pin-sharp as the quad-HD panels
found on flagship phones.
Inside, Honor has chosen the
Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated
Edition to drive the device. This saw
the phone outpace the Samsung
Galaxy A54 in almost every one of our

benchmarks, with 3,254 in Geekbench
6’s multicore test versus 2,731. It fell
just short of the Tensor G2-equipped
Google Pixel 7a, however, which
scored 3,367.
Power is provided by a 5,000mAh
battery. That’s bigger than the
4,385mAh unit in the Pixel 7a, but
while playing full-screen video at 50%
brightness, it drained at almost
exactly the same rate as
Google’s phone. Still,
that counts as a win
for the Honor, as the
screen is not only
bigger than its
rival’s, it’s
considerably
brighter at the
halfway setting.
When the Honor 90
does need refilling,
you can use the
supplied 66W wired
charger to get back to 50% in
around 15 minutes, or refill it
completely in only 45 minutes. That’s
a big plus, bit it’s a shame there’s no
support for wireless charging.
The aspect of the Honor 90 I’m
most ambivalent about is the camera
hardware. The 200MP main camera is
the obvious star of the show; by default,
images are downsampled to 12.5MP,
but you can turn this off and shoot at

native resolution if you wish. There’s
also a 12MP ultrawide camera and a
2MP depth sensor, plus an unusually
high resolution 50MP selfie camera.
While my test shots from both
the main and ultrawide cameras
delivered plenty of colour and
presence, they were oversaturated
compared to more natural-looking
shots from the Pixel 7a. Portrait
mode produced softer results than
the Pixel, and a narrower depth
of field, with more pronounced
blurring in the background.
The selfie camera also uses
downsampling to produce 12MP
images; here, by contrast with the rear
cameras, I found the images slightly
on the cool side. Again, the Pixel 7a
did a better job with portraits,
producing clearer and more accurate
separation between me and the
background. Let’s not judge too
harshly, though; the Pixel is one of the
best camera phones around, and the
Honor 90 does well just to be in the
same conversation.
ABOVE The large 6.7in
Honor’s MagicOS 7.1 system
display is bright and
software is based on Android 13,
its resolution is higher
and adds familiar bespoke features
than many of its rivals
such as large folders, the ability to
temporarily summon widgets by
swiping up on apps, and cross-device
collaboration with Honor’s tablets
and laptops. There’s space for plenty
of downloads and data, as even the
256GB of storage found in the Honor
90’s cheapest version
“You can use the 66W wired (£450) is twice as generous
charger to get back to 50% as its rivals offer. The
catch is that Honor offers
in around 15 minutes, or
only two years of full OS
refill it in just 45 minutes. updates and three years of
That’s a real plus”
security updates. That’s
not as good as Google’s
three-year or Samsung’s four-year
operating system commitments.
LEFT The main camera
If photography is important to you
shoots 200MP images, then I you should buy the Google Pixel
but photos can look
7a instead, as this produces notably
oversaturated
superior results. If not, it’s definitely
worth putting the Honor 90 on your
shortlist, as it offers decent
performance, a big, bright display and
ample storage capacity for a very
reasonable outlay. And if you’re
willing to wait, that outlay could be
significantly less than £500, as Honor
has the habit of slashing its phones’
BELOW The curved
prices in flash sales. RICHARD PRIDAY
display gives the Honor
90 a real premium feel

SPECIFICATIONS
8-core (2.5GHz/2.36GHz/1/8GHz) Qualcomm
Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 SoC 8GB/12GB RAM
Adreno 644 graphics 6.7in 120Hz AMOLED
screen, 1,200 x 2,664 resolution 5G
256GB/512GB storage triple 200MP/12MP/
2MP rear cameras 50MP front camera
Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.2 NFC 5,000mAh
battery USB-C 2 connector Android 13
with MagicOS 7.1 74 x 7.8 x 162mm (WDH)
183g 2yr warranty
69

Labs

ANDROIDPHONES
FROM£219
T
Asthisroundupoffour
affordablecontenders
shows,there’snoneedto
spendafortuneonaphone

CONTRIBUTOR: Tim Danton

Contents
Feature table ......................................... 72
Motorola Edge 30 Neo.......................... 73
Motorola Moto G73 5G ......................... 74
Samsung Galaxy A14 5G ....................... 75
Xiaomi Poco X5 5G ................................ 75

70

wo months ago (see issue 346, p70) we
started on a mission: to bring you reviews
of highly affordable phones. It isn’t only
about the cost of living crisis and the
need to save money, but our belief that while
flagship phones make for interesting reading
they aren’t necessarily what people should be
buying. Indeed, as this roundup shows, you
can grab a great phone for less than £300.
One big difference between this batch of
affordable phones and the last – which ranged
from £120 to £159 – is that they support 5G. All
the previous models were stuck on 4G. If this
isn’t an issue, note that the non-5G version of
the Galaxy A14 can be snapped up for £179.
What else do you get by stepping up by £100
or so? Certainly screen quality improves. Last
time, all four phones had LCD panels, but two

here pack an OLED display. And not shoddy
OLED panels with poor colour accuracy, either.
We don’t have such great news for
photographers. None of these phones offer a
jump in quality compared to the Moto G13,
which came out top last time; think snaps
rather than portraits. And if you want optical
zoom, you’ll need to pay more than £300.
There are other missing features compared
to flagship phones. Only one model supports
wireless charging (the Motorola Edge 30 Neo),
they’re all stuck on Wi-Fi 5, and water
resistance is basic at best. But just compare the
prices of these phones to those of the Zenfone
10 (see p68) or even the Honor 90 (see p69).
We’re starting to source our next mini Labs
of phones for issue 350. If there’s a phone you’d
like us to include, email letters@pcpro.co.uk.

@PCPRO

Labs mini Androidphones

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

How we test

We use the industry-standard Geekbench 6
benchmark to measure a phone’s CPU performance.
This is split between single-core and multicore
speed. We then put the phones through two tests to
represent web-browsing performance: JetStream 2
and Basemark Web 3.
To check how well the phones will run 3D
games, we first use 3DMark’s demanding Sling Shot
Extreme test before switching to the standard
version of Wild Life. (Unfortunately, our Xiaomi

sample refused to run 3DMark.) We then run the
challenging Basemark GPU test using its Vulkan
API and medium settings. We print the results
below at the phones’ native resolutions, which are
broadly the same.
This month, we elected for simplicity when
testing the phones’ battery life. We downloaded a
Full HD trailer of Gran Turismo and then played it
on repeat in VLC. We remove variables by
switching off mobile data, putting the phones into

GEEKBENCH 6 SINGLE-CORE

GEEKBENCH 6 MULTICORE

918

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED
698

Samsung Galaxy A14

BASEMARK WEB 3

212

BASEMARK GPU 1.2* (ONSCREEN)

Motorola Moto G73

2,958
2,595

RECOMMENDED

2,439

Samsung Galaxy A14
Xiaomi Poco X5

2,944
2,753

Motorola Moto G73

Would not run

RECOMMENDED

23hrs 35mins

18hrs 47mins

Xiaomi Poco X5
Motorola Edge 30 Neo REC’ED

57

Samsung Galaxy A14

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

1,218
1,200

Samsung Galaxy A14
Motorola Moto G73

Would not run

Xiaomi Poco X5

Would not run

BATTERY RECHARGE LEVEL (AFTER 30 MINS)

23hrs 24mins

Samsung Galaxy A14

70

Xiaomi Poco X5

17hrs 44mins

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED
Motorola Moto G73
Samsung Galaxy A14

92%

59%

Xiaomi Poco X5
REC’ED

57%

28%

HIGHER IS BETTER

2,970

Samsung Galaxy A14

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

88
86

RECOMMENDED

3DMARK WILD LIFE

HIGHER IS BETTER

3,568

RECOMMENDED

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

1,872

Samsung Galaxy A14

BATTERY LIFE (VIDEO RUNDOWN)
HIGHER IS BETTER

Motorola Moto G73
Xiaomi Poco X5

2,146

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED
Motorola Moto G73

HIGHER IS BETTER

384
290

Xiaomi Poco X5

2,155

HIGHER IS BETTER

401

RECOMMENDED

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED
Samsung Galaxy A14

2,344

RECOMMENDED

Xiaomi Poco X5

3DMARK SLING SHOT EXTREME
HIGHER IS BETTER

Motorola Moto G73

Motorola Moto G73

HIGHER IS BETTER

924

JETSTREAM 2
HIGHER IS BETTER

932

RECOMMENDED

HIGHER IS BETTER

Motorola Moto G73
Xiaomi Poco X5

Do Not Disturb mode and setting the screen
brightness to as close to 150cd/m2 as we can. We
then test how quickly each phone recharges,
where possible using the supplied charger.
We also test each phone’s screen for colour
gamut coverage, brightness, contrast and colour
accuracy (measured by its average Delta E; the
closer to zero the better, but anything below 1 is
considered an excellent score). Note that OLED
panels have an effectively infinite contrast ratio.

*Vulkan, medium settings

DCI-P3 COVERAGE

AVERAGE DELTA-E

Motorola Moto G73

RECOMMENDED

Samsung Galaxy A14

86%
81%

Motorola Edge 30 Neo REC’ED

0.73
1.09

Samsung Galaxy A14

1.11

Xiaomi Poco X5
Motorola Moto G73

RECOMMENDED

1.21

Motorola Moto G73

565

RECOMMENDED

Samsung Galaxy A14

563

Xiaomi Poco X5

560

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

483

HIGHER IS BETTER

99%

LOWER IS BETTER

99%

Xiaomi Poco X5

HIGHER IS BETTER

Motorola Edge 30 Neo RECOMMENDED

PEAK BRIGHTNESS (MEASURED, CD/M2)

Comparing
cameras
If you want cameras with
optical zoom, top-quality
macro lenses and the ability
to shoot 4K videos at 60
frames per second then we
have bad news: these phones
are not for you. However, all
of our test devices proved
capable performers in a
range of situations and light
conditions (even if we were
left unimpressed by the
macro cameras).
We print photos here for a
side-by-side comparison, but
have also uploaded photos to a
shared Google Drive folder so
you can see the results across
a range of modes for yourself.
Head to pcpro.link/348photos
to view them.

Motorola Edge 30 Neo

Samsung Galaxy A14

Motorola Moto G73

Xiaomi Poco X5

71

RECOMMENDED

RECOMMENDED

Motorola Edge 30 Neo

Motorola Moto G73 5G

Samsung Galaxy A14 5G

Xiaomi Poco X5 5G

Overall rating
SIM-free price

£250 (£300 inc VAT)

£191 (£230 inc VAT)

£183 (£219 inc VAT)

£249 (£299 inc VAT)

Supplier website

motorola.co.uk

johnlewis.com

samsung.com

mi.com/uk

Manufacturer website

motorola.co.uk

motorola.co.uk

samsung.com

mi.com/uk

1yr RTB

1yr RTB

1yr RTB

2yr RTB

Dimensions (WDH)

71 x 7.8 x 153mm

74 x 8.3 x 161mm

78 x 9.1 x 168mm

76 x 8 x 166mm

Weight (measured)

155g

181g

202g

189g

CPU name

Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G

Mediatek Dimensity 930

Mediatek Dimensity 700
(SM-A146P)

Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G

CPU cores

2 x 2GHz, 6 x 1.7GHz

2 x 2.2GHz, 6 x 2GHz

2 x 2.2GHz, 6 x 2GHz

2 x 2GHz, 6 x 1.7GHz

Adreno 619

IMG BXM-8-256

Mali-G57 MC2

Adreno 619

Manufacturer warranty

Hardware tested

GPU
RAM
Storage

8GB

8GB

4GB

8GB

128GB

256GB

64GB

256GB

microSDXC (up to 1TB)

microSD (up to 1TB)

microSDXC (up to 1TB)

Storage expansion
Dual SIM
Dust/water resistance

IP52

"Water-repellent design"

Construction materials

Glass front, plastic frame, plastic
back

Glass front, plastic black, plastic
frame

Glass front, plastic back, plastic
frame

Corning Gorilla Glass 3 front,
plastic back, plastic frame

IP53

Type

OLED

IPS

LCD

OLED

Refresh rate

120Hz

120Hz

90Hz

120Hz

Size

6.3in

6.5in

6.6in

6.7in

1,080 x 2,400

1,080 x 2,400

1,080 x 2,408

1,080 x 2,400

419ppi

405ppi

400ppi

395ppi

Face unlock
Fingerprint reader

Display

Resolution
Pixel density

Camera
Primary rear camera

64MP f/1.8 (wide)

20MP f/1.8 (wide)

50MP f/1.8 (wide)

48MP f/1.8 (wide)

Second rear camera

13MP f/2.2 (ultrawide)

8MP f2/2 (ultrawide)

2MP f/2.2 (ultrawide)

8MP f/2.2 (ultrawide)

2MP f/2.4 (macro)

2MP f/2.4 (macro)

Third rear camera
Video recording, max resolution
and frame rate
Front-facing camera

1080p at 60fps

1080p at 60fps

1080p at 30fps

1080p at 30fps

32MP

16MP

13MP

13MP

Ports & connections
Wi-Fi standard
Bluetooth standard

Wi-Fi 5

Wi-Fi 5

Wi-Fi 5

Wi-Fi 5

Bluetooth 5.1

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.2

Bluetooth 5.1

USB-C 2

USB-C 2

USB-C 2

USB-C 2

5G?
NFC
3.5mm headphone jack
USB connection type

Battery and charging
4,020mAh

5,000mAh

5,000mAh

5,000mAh

Wired charging rate

Battery capacity

68W

30W

15W

33W

Wireless charging rate

5W

N/A

Charger supplied?

Software & accessories
Android version

12

13

13 (with One UI Core 5)

12 (with MIUI 13)

Android updates

13, 14

14, 15

14, 15

13, 14

Protective cover?

72

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Motorola Edge 30 Neo

A stylish, nippy phone that
feels much more expensive
than it is, with its only
downside being battery life

SCORE
PRICE £250 (£300 inc VAT)
from motorola.co.uk

T

here are areas where the
Motorola Edge 30 Neo falls
behind its rivals this month.
It includes only 128GB of storage,
with no 256GB model available
and no microSD card slot for
expansion. It’s also the most
expensive phone here, costing
a full £70 more than the Moto
G73 (see p74). And let’s not
ignore that it performed the
worst of all the phones in our
RECOMMENDED
video-rundown test, which is
no surprise considering its
to its 419ppi density – and
battery has a 4,020mAh capacity
it’s also a superb advert for
compared to 5,000mAh for its rivals.
OLED technology. The panel
Yet, after using these phones
covers 99% of the DCI-P3
during the course of our tests, the
gamut with an average Delta
Motorola Edge 30 Neo was the
E of 0.73, and the end result is a match
obvious winner. The reason boils
for any flagship. Films look great,
down to the “q” word: quality. It may
helped along by powerful speakers;
be formed from the same raw
we were happy to listen to music on
materials as the rest, with a plastic
the Edge 30 Neo. It doesn’t include a
frame and back, but the moment you
3.5mm jack, but we wonder how
pick up the Edge 30 Neo it becomes
much that matters any more.
clear that Motorola’s designers
The Edge’s screen
spent time on the finer
details. For a start,
doesn’t go as searingly
there’s a subtle
bright as the
top-end models –
grain effect on the
in fact its peak
rear that makes it
brightness is the
look like
lowest here, at
brushed
483cd/m2 – but
aluminium. And
when we
even when we
switched on
tucked it into
the bundled
adaptive
transparent
brightness we had
protective case, the
no issues in sunny
Pantone-badged
conditions. This is
“very peri” purple finish
also where the so-called
of our review sample gave it
infinite contrast ratio of
OLED technology comes to its aid, as
a visual lift compared to its rivals. If
colours of all hues are easy to view.
purple is too outré for your taste, you
Another attractive trait: a 120Hz
can buy the Edge 30 in white, black
refresh rate. Although you can drop
and “aqua foam”.
this to 60Hz to increase battery life,
Snuggled in your palm, it becomes
obvious why the Edge 30 Neo has such we left the screen in auto mode
during testing; most people will
a small battery: it’s the most compact
surely want to enjoy the smoothness
phone here by some distance. Far
this provides in conjunction with a
more so than the dimensions on the
fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G
feature table opposite might suggest.
chip. Well, fast for a phone at this
Its size is reflected in the 6.3in
price: scores of 918 and 2,146 fall some
diagonal of the screen, but Motorola
way behind the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 in
doesn’t sacrifice resolution – 1,080 x
the Honor 90 (see p69) and the
2,400 produces a sharp image thanks

Labs mini Android
Androidphones
phones
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
in the Asus Zenfone
10 (see p68). But we
think the Edge 30
Neo will have no
issues over its next
few years of life,
during which it
should see an
upgrade to Android
13 (now a little
overdue) and
Android 14. With an
IP52 rating, there’s
also limited
protection against
dust ingress and
water spray. But
don’t submerge
this phone in
water or bad things
will happen.
The one area
where phones on a
limited budget can
never match
flagships is camera
quality, but you
can still capture
attractive shots on
the Edge 30 Neo. We
judged the camera
to be equal best
(along with the
Xiaomi) for detail,
ABOVE The 1,080 x
night shots and landscapes, and due
2,400 OLED screen
to the low quality of macro lenses at
offers sharp images
this price point we don’t miss having
and accurate colours
that as a third camera. Don’t get too
excited about the 64-megapixel
headline figure, as
compression is obvious
The panel covers 99% of
the DCI-P3 gamut with an even if you choose the
camera’s “ultra-res”
average Delta E of 0.73,
mode. You may find the
and the end result is a
dual-capture video –
match for any flagship
which simultaneously
records from the front
and back – worth a play, though.
There’s one final factor that gives
the Edge its edge, and that’s the
bundled power supply. For this
LEFT The cameras
is a 68W beast that took the
are no match for a
phone from zero to 59% in 15
flagship, but still
minutes, and up to 92% in half
produce good shots
an hour. It was fully charged
after 38 minutes. That’s
exceptionally fast for a phone
of this price. It’s also cheering
to see wireless charging support
– the only phone here to have it
– albeit at a slow 5W.
Clearly, this isn’t the
perfect phone. We would have
accepted a fraction more girth
for a 5,000mAh battery, and the
128GB of storage may cause you
headaches at some point. But side
RIGHT Despite the
by side with far more expensive
plastic build, the
phones, the Edge 30 Neo feels
Edge 30 Neo
perfectly at home in terms of
exudes quality
quality. At £300, it’s a great buy.
73

Motorola Moto G73 5G

Not as exciting a phone as
the Edge 30 Neo, but the G73
ticks the boxes for storage,
battery life and speed

SCORE
PRICE £191 (£230 inc VAT)
from johnlewis.com

I

s the Motorola Moto G73 5G
a glamorous phone?
One that’s packed with
the latest features, that will
turn heads, that will send a
pulse of excited energy
through you every time you
pick it up? No, absolutely not.
But this is a solid four-out-of
RECOMMENDED
five phone in almost every
category, and one that offers
terrific value for money.
As with all of the phones here, it
has a plastic frame and back, but
unlike the Edge 30 Neo with its
stylish finish, Motorola makes no
attempt to glam up the rear of the
2,400 pixels packed
Moto G73. Only the Motorola logo
within the display’s 6.5in
and camera setup – which juts out
diagonal to give a pixel
from the frame by over a millimetre
density of 405ppi. We kept the
– break the monotony of the back.
refresh rate in Auto mode during
Even the colour, midnight blue, is
testing, but you can opt for 60Hz if
boring. However, this is a well-made
you wish to stretch battery life or
phone, and while it doesn’t have
120Hz if you want to guarantee
an IP rating Motorola does promise
smooth screen transitions.
that the “water-repellent design
And this is an exceptionally
creates a barrier to help protect
smooth phone in operation, with
against moderate exposure to water
the MediaTek Dimensity 930
such as accidental spills, splashes
processor proving a great choice
or light rain”. You receive a
for general use within
transparent protective case
Android 13. This skipped
in the box, too.
along at great speed
The 6.5in screen is big but
throughout our tests.
unexceptional, being an
There’s the promise of
IPS panel rather than
upgrades to Android 14
using OLED technology
and 15, too. The Dimensity
to match the Edge 30 Neo
930 was also a solid
and Xiaomi Poco X5. Its
performer in our suite of
viewing angles aren’t as
benchmarks, topping
strong as either of those
the table in Geekbench 5
rivals, but pump up the
even if it was narrowly
brightness to its peak of
beaten to the number
449cd/m 2 (565cd/m 2 with
one spot in the JetStream 2
adaptive brightness
test that focuses on
switched on) and its 86%
JavaScript and
coverage of the DCI-P3
WebAssembly.
gamut means that
The G73’s
images still pack a punch.
performance in
An average Delta E of 1.21
our graphical
means you can trust its
benchmarks was
colours, too, especially if
more mixed. It
you switch to Natural
couldn’t run
colour mode rather than
3DMark’s Wild
the default of Saturated.
Life due to a lack
Nor does Motorola skimp
of support for all
on resolution, with 1,080 x

74

the Vulkan features,
but it proved strong
in both 3DMark
Sling Shot Extreme
and Basemark GPU
1.2 (see the graphs
on p71).
Where this
smartphone truly
excelled was in our
video-rundown
battery test,
lasting a superb
23hrs 35mins.
And while it can’t
recharge as quickly
as the Edge 30 Neo,
after 30 minutes it
was back up to 57%
and hit 90% in an
hour. It declared
itself full 15 minutes
later. You get a neat
30W travel-friendly
USB-C adapter in
the box, too.
If that’s a
five-out-of-five
score, we can only
give the Moto G73
three for its
photographic skills.
At first glance,
results look fine,
with natural colours
ABOVE The 6.5in
that give snaps an attractive look. It’s
screen offers plenty
when you zoom into the results that
of viewing area
you’ll notice a lack of detail capture,
with smudgy results
compared to the Edge 30
This is an exceptionally
and Xiaomi.
smooth phone in operation, NeoBut
then we come to
with the MediaTek
the strong points. The
Dimensity 930 processor speaker is a match for
the Neo, with plenty
proving a great choice
of volume and good
enough reproduction that you’ll
actually enjoy listening to music on
it. And if you ever want to store a
bunch of films on the G73 to watch
LEFT The camera
offline, or you love to load up
setup juts out slightly
hundreds of apps, then the 256GB
from the frame
of storage together with expansion
via the microSDXC card slot gives
you plenty of headroom. Only note
BELOW The cameras
that if you use the card slot you can’t
produce nice snaps
add a second SIM.
but they lack detail
As we said at the start, the Moto
when you zoom in
G73 5G isn’t a phone that will garner
much attention. Instead, it’s a solid
performer with a big screen,
great battery life and support
for two more Android
updates. Compared to the
Galaxy A14 5G opposite,
which costs £11 less, it’s in
a different class. If you’re
looking for a dependable
phone that will keep
working for years, the Moto
G73 5G is a great choice.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Samsung Galaxy A14 5G
A chunky beast that feels
out of place next to its slick
counterparts, but you can
buy a 4G version for £179
SCORE
PRICE £183 (£219 inc VAT)
from samsung.com

S

amsung prefers attention to be
focused on its high-end Galaxy
phones, but it has offerings for
almost every price range. The A14 is
one off the bottom – we reviewed the
£120 Galaxy A04s two months ago –
and costs £179 for the 4G version and
£219 for 5G. But we’ll save you some
time: if you want 5G, it makes more
sense to buy the Moto G73 we review
on the opposite page for £11 more.
For a start, this is a chunky phone.
It’s wider, taller and thicker than not
only its rivals here but almost any
phone we’ve seen this year. And that
girth is obvious as soon as you hold
the Galaxy A14 in your hand. You
don’t get any obvious benefit for such
chunkiness, either, with its 6.6in IPS

Xiaomi Poco X5 5G

At this price there’s no
reason to choose the Poco
over the Edge 30 Neo, but
look out for flash sales
SCORE

PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from mi.com/uk

X

iaomi has tough competition
this month, thanks to the
sheer quality of the £300
Motorola Edge 30 Neo (see p73). But
there are reasons to choose the Poco
X5 5G, starting with its larger 6.7in
OLED screen. Both phones share
identical resolutions of 1,080 x 2,400,
and while that means the Poco’s pixel
density is a fraction lower – 395ppi
versus 419ppi – people who struggle
to read text at close range may find
they prefer having the extra space.
The screens are both excellent
quality, covering 99% of the DCI-P3
gamut with strong colour accuracy,
but the Poco’s goes a shade brighter.
People who like to watch films on
their phones will appreciate the sheer
volume of the X5, but we rated the

screen only a fraction
larger than the 6.5in of
the Moto G73 – but
where that has a
pinhole selfie camera,
the A14 includes a
notch that eats into the
top of the panel.
If we were paying
£179, we wouldn’t have
any complaints about
the screen. It’s only
90Hz, but it covers a
respectable 81% of the
DCI-P3 gamut with an
average Delta E of 1.09.
So don’t expect colours
to belt you between the
eyes, especially next to
an OLED panel, but
they will look natural.
It shines brightly, too,
hitting 563cd/m2.
Sadly the A14 has the
worst camera here, with obvious
compression spoiling what should be
great detail capture from the headline
50MP camera. The 2MP ultrawide
camera and macro cameras are a
waste of space, with the colour
capture of the latter particularly
woeful. And while we’re being
critical, the speakers are so bad that
music is out of the question. There is
at least a 3.5mm jack.

audio from the Edge 30
Neo (and the Moto G73)
higher than Xiaomi’s,
which, for example,
handled highs from
cymbals harshly.
If you’re accidentprone or have a tendency
to leave your keys in the
same pocket as your
phone, you’ll be pleased
to see Corning Gorilla
Glass 3 in place for extra
scratch-resistance.
There’s IP53 protection
against dust and water
ingress, too, and as with
the Edge the Snapdragon
695 5G chip should keep
the phone powering
through Android 13 (it’s
already received an
update from 12) and 14.
That said, Xiaomi’s
phone proved slower in our phalanx
of benchmarks, perhaps due to the
overhead from Xiaomi’s MIUI overlay.
We remain to be convinced this adds
anything to the experience of using
this phone, not least because it is
packed with extra apps of
questionable utility. You’ll probably
spend the first ten minutes trying to
work out which ones you can remove.
Thank goodness there’s 256GB of

Labs mini Androidphones

ABOVE The chunky
Galaxy A14 5G has very
few saving graces

ABOVE The excellent
screen is protected by
Corning Gorilla Glass 3

The final kicker
comes via performance,
with the MediaTek
Dimensity 700 being a
poor relation to the 930
in the G73. This didn’t
show itself in Android
13 – we noticed no
stuttering – but the A14
came bottom by some
margin in almost every
single one of our
benchmark tests.
There was one
exception: battery life.
The 5,000mAh unit here
kept the Galaxy A14
going for 23hrs 24mins
in our video-rundown
test, which is a superb
result. Less superb was
its recharging time,
reaching a mere 28%
after half an hour. You’ll
have to leave it charging for almost
two hours to go from zero to full.
Naturally, there’s no support for
wireless charging.
The big problem for the big
Samsung Galaxy A14 5G is that the
G73 beats it in almost every area while
costing a mere £11 more. And even if
you’re happy to stick with 4G, we
would save cash and buy the £150
Moto G13 (see issue 346, p73) instead.

storage – a 128GB
version of the Poco
X5 5G costs £50 less
– and a microSD slot.
The Poco also
wins for numbers
when it comes to
cameras, with three
in place. And it
backs up the
numbers with image
quality, with natural
colours and plenty
of detail. Unlike the
G73, you can zoom
into images without
compression rearing
its ugly head.
Battery life in
our video-rundown
test proved more
disappointing. It
lasted only 18hrs
47mins, despite
having a 5,000mAh battery, so almost
five hours less than the Moto G73. At
least the 33W charger ensures it tops
up reasonably fast: to 59% in half an
hour, full by 65 minutes.
Those who prefer larger phones
will like the Poco X5, but it misses out
on an award due to the quality of its
rivals. Its one potential saving grace is
Xiaomi’s occasional flash sales; with
£50 off, it’s a solid buy.
75

CRE ATIVE
WORKSTATIONS
Intel and AMD both offer compelling CPU choices for workstations, giving us
ten machines with the widest variety of specifications we’ve seen for years
76

@PCPRO

I

Labs Workstations

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

n last year’s workstation Labs (see
(
issue 336,
p74), Intel staged a comeback, at least at
the lower end of the price range. The good
news is that, 12 months later, there’s a new
generation of Intel Core i9 CPUs that are still
competitive against a new generation of AMD Ryzen
processors. But the high end is back to being
dominated by AMD, now that the Ryzen Threadripper
Pro is generally available.
This year, we stuck with the same price points of
£4,500 inc VAT for the lower end and £10,000 for the
higher end. While the lower figure is still realistic for a
very capable general workstation, the higher one was
more problematic. Inflation has meant that most
manufacturers have had to make compromises
rather than deliver the best of every component at
this price.

The result has been many different choices
and combinations, giving us the biggest variety that
we’ve seen in this category for many years. Instead
of essentially the same CPU and GPU choices for
the two different prices, with only the quality of
implementation to separate them, almost every
system this month has a different balance of these
two key components. There’s even a promising new
AMD Radeon Pro graphics card in attendance.
This has made the Labs test this month both
interesting to put together and, we hope, interesting
for you to read as well. While we still wait for Intel’s
Xeon to make a credible return, our comprehensive
testing along with this month’s variety of core
counts and GPU capabilities will give you everything
you need to choose exactly the right workstation
specification for your creative tasks.

CONTRIBUTOR: James Morris

CONTENTS

Armari Magnetar MC16R7 ............................84
Chillblast Apex AMD Threadripper Pro
RTX A6000 Quadro Workstation.............85
PCSpecialist Onyx Pro ...................................86
Scan 3XS GWP-ME A164T ............................. 87
Armari Magnetar MC64TP...........................88
Chillblast Apex Intel Core i9
RTX A5000 Quadro Workstation.............88
Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Tower ...............89
PCSpecialist Onyx Ultra.................................89
Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132C .............................90
Workstation Specialists WS AR-X6700......90
Feature table ................................................... 78
Buyer’s guide: Six things to look for
in a content creation workstation ...............80
How we test and benchmarks......................82
Where is Sapphire Rapids?...........................92
View from the Labs.........................................93
77

LABS WINNER – £4,500
Armari Magnetar MC16R7

Armari Magnetar MC64TP

Chillblast Apex AMD
Threadripper Pro RTX A6000
Quadro Workstation

Chillblast Apex Intel Core i9
RTX A5000 Quadro
Workstation

Lenovo ThinkStation P620
Tower

Overall rating
Information
Price

£3,748 (£4,497 inc VAT)

£8,331 (£9,997 inc VAT)

£8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)

£3,417 (£4,100 inc VAT)

£3,030 (£3,636 inc VAT)

Supplier

armari.com

armari.com

chillblast.com

chillblast.com

lenovo.com

Warranty

3yr RTB (parts and labour)

3yr RTB (parts and labour)

3yr on-site (parts and labour)
plus 2yr RTB labour-only

3yr on-site (parts and labour)
plus 2yr RTB labour-only

3yr on-site (parts and labour)

Manufacturer’s
reliability rating 1

N/A

N/A

96%

96%

87%

Manufacturer’s
support rating 1

N/A

N/A

94%

94%

80%

Make and model

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
5995WX

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
5975WX

Intel Core i9-13900K

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
5945WX

Cores

16

64

32

24

12

Threads

32

128

64

32

24

Base frequency

4.5GHz

2.7GHz

3.6GHz

8 P-cores: 3GHz, 16 E-cores: 2.2GHz

4.1GHz

Peak frequency

5.7GHz

4.5GHz

4.5GHz

8 P-cores: 5.8GHz, 16 E-cores: 4.3GHz

4.5GHz

Service and support

Processor

Graphics
Make and model

AMD Radeon Pro W7800

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

PNY Nvidia RTX A6000

PNY Nvidia RTX A5000

PNY Nvidia RTX A4000

RAM

32GB ECC GDDR6

32GB GDDR6

48GB GDDR6

24GB GDDR6

16GB ECC GDDR6

Outputs

3 x DisplayPort 2.1, enhanced
mini-DisplayPort 2.1

6 x mini-DisplayPort 1.4

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

Amount fitted

64GB

128GB

128GB

64GB

64GB

Speed/type

DDR5 6,000MHz

DDR4 3,600MHz

DDR4 3,200MHz

DDR5 5,600MHz

DDR4 3,200MHz

M.2 SSD make and model

Crucial T700

Samsung 990 Pro

Samsung 980 Pro

Samsung 980 Pro

Samsung PM981a

Nominal capacity

2TB

2TB

2TB

2TB

1TB

PCI Express generation

5

4

4

4

3

Hard disk make and model

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Nominal capacity

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

1

Desktop PC reliability and support rating in reader-voted PC Pro Excellence Awards 2022 (see issue 338, p29). N/A indicates not enough feedback to give a rating.

Memory

ECC registered?
Drives

Motherboard
Make and model

Asus ProArt B650-Creator

ASRock WRX80 Creator

Asus Pro WS WRX80E-Sage SE WIFI

Asus Prime Z790-A WiFi

Lenovo WRX80

RAM slots (free/total)

2/4

0/8

0/8

2/4

0/8

PCI Express

2 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (1 free), 1 x PCI-E 4.0
x4 (1 free), 1 x PCI-E 4.0 x1 (1 free)

7 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (6 free)

7 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (5 free)

1 x PCI-E 5.0 x16 (0 free), 2 x PCI-E 4.0
x4 (2 free), 2 x PCI-E 3.0 x1 (2 free)

7 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (5 free)

Storage slots

3 x M.2 (2 free), 4 x SATA 600 (6 free)

2 x M.2 (1 free), 1 x U.2 (1 free),
8 x SATA 600 (8 free)

3 x M.2 (2 free), 2 x U.2 (2 free),
8 x SATA 600 (8 free)

4 x M.2 (3 free), 4 x SATA 600 (4 free)

2 x M.2 (2 free), 1 x U.2 (1 free),
8 x SATA 600 (8 free)

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6E
Fractal Design Define 7 Compact
Black Solid

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 TWR

Wi-Fi
Case and power supply
Make and model

Fractal Design Meshify 2

Fractal Design Meshify 2

Fractal Design Define 7 XL Black Solid

Case dimensions (WDH)

240 x 542 x 474mm

240 x 542 x 474mm

240 x 604 x 566mm

310 x 536 x 521mm

165 x 455 x 441mm

PSU make and model
(power output)

Thermaltake 850Watt GF3 Gold ATX
3.0 Gen5 Fully Modular

Thermaltake 1350Watt GF3 Gold ATX
3.0 Gen5 Fully Modular

Corsair RM850x Modular 80 Plus
Gold

Corsair RM750x Modular 80 Plus
Gold

Lenovo 80 Plus Platinum

PSU power output

850W

1,350W

850W

750W

1,000W

CPU cooler

Armari SPX-A6920NBK 360mm AIO,
3xPhanteks T30 360mm AIO CPU
Cooler

Armari SPX-AT3620PT3 360mm
AIO+ T30 Threadripper Pro CPU
Cooler

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro TR4

Noctua NH-D15 air cooler

Lenovo air cooler

Ethernet

1 x 2.5GbE, 1 x GbE

2 x 10GbE

2 x 10GbE

1 x 2.5GbE

1 x GbE

USB-A

2 x USB 2, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

8 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

USB-C

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

2 x Thunderbolt 4/USB 4

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

Audio

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks,
1 x optical S/PDIF

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks,
1 x optical S/PDIF

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks,
1 x optical S/PDIF

3 x 3.5mm audio jacks

Other

1 x DisplayPort (input)

2 x mini-DisplayPort

USB-A

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

USB-C

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

Rear ports

3 x 3.5mm audio jacks
PS/2 mouse, PS/2 keyboard

Front/top ports

3.5mm headset/mic

/

/

/

/

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1
1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2
1 x combo

Software
Operating system

78

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

Windows 11 Pro

@PCPRO

Labs Workstations

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

LABS WINNER – £10,000

RECOMMENDED
PCSpecialist Onyx Pro

PCSpecialist Onyx Ultra

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132C

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A164T

Workstation Specialists WS
AR-X6700

£3,750 (£4,500 inc VAT)

£8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)

£3,750 (£4,500 inc VAT)

£8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)

£3,662 (£4,394 inc VAT)

pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

scan.co.uk/3xs

scan.co.uk/3xs

workstationspecialists.com

3yr C&R (parts and labour)

3yr C&R (parts and labour)

1yr on-site plus 2yr RTB (parts and labour)

1yr on-site plus 2yr RTB (parts and labour)

3yr RTB next business day
(parts and labour)

91%

91%

94%

94%

N/A

90%

90%

95%

95%

N/A

3GHz Intel Core i9 13900K

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX

Intel Core i9-13900KS

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5975WX

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X

24

64

24

32

16

32

128

32

64

32

8 P-cores: 3GHz, 16 E-cores: 2.2GHz

2.7GHz

8 P-cores: 3.2GHz, 16 E-cores: 2.4GHz

3.6GHz

4.5GHz

8 P-cores: 5.8GHz, 16 E-cores: 4.3GHz

4.5GHz

8 P-cores: 6GHz, 16 E-cores: 4.3GHz

4.5GHz

5.7GHz

Asus TUF GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition

AMD Radeon Pro W7800

PNY Nvidia RTX A5000

PNY Nvidia RTX A6000

PNY Nvidia RTX A5000

24GB GDDR6

32GB ECC GDDR6

24GB GDDR6

48GB GDDR6

24GB GDDR6

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

3 x DisplayPort 2.1, enhanced
mini-DisplayPort 2.1

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

4 x DisplayPort 1.4

192GB

256GB

64GB

128GB

64GB

DDR4 3,200MHz

DDR4 3,200MHz

DDR5 5,600MHz

DDR4 3,200MHz

DDR5 5,200MHz

Samsung 990 Pro

Samsung 990 Pro

Corsair MP700

Samsung 980 Pro

Samsung 990 Pro

2TB

2TB

2TB

2TB

2TB

4

4

5

4

4

Seagate IronWolf Pro

Seagate IronWolf Pro

N/A

N/A

N/A

4TB

10TB

N/A

N/A

N/A

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero

Asus Pro WS WRX80E Sage SE WiFi II

Asus RoG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi

Asus Pro WS WRX80E Sage SE WiFi II

Asus Prime X670-P WiFi

0/4

0/8

2/4

0/8

2/4

2 x PCI-E 5.0 x16 (1 free), 1 x PCI-E 4.0 x4
(1 free)

7 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (5 free)

1 x PCI-E 5.0 x16 (0 free), 2 x PCI-E 4.0 x4
(2 free)

7 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (5 free)

1 x PCI-E 4.0 x16 (0 free), 2 x PCI-E 4.0 x4
(2 free), 1 x PCI-E 3.0 x1 (1 free)

3 x M.2 (2 free), 6 x SATA 600 (5 free)

3 x M.2 (2 free), 2 x U.2 (2 free), 8 x SATA 600
(7 free)

5 x M.2 (4 free), 4 x SATA 600 (4 free)

3 x M.2 (2 free), 2 x U.2 (2 free), 8 x SATA 600
(8 free)

3 x M.2 (2 free), 6 x SATA 600 (6 free)

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6

Fractal Design Define 7 Black Solid

Fractal Design Define 7 XL Black Solid

Fractal Design Meshify 2

Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL

Fractal Design Define C Tempered Glass

240 x 547 x 475mm

240 x 604 x 566mm

240 x 542 x 474mm

240 x 600 x 566mm

212 x 399 x 440mm

Corsair RMx Series Modular 80 Plus Gold

Corsair RMx Series Modular 80 Plus Gold

Corsair RMX750 80 Plus Gold

Corsair HX1200 80 Plus Platinum

80 Plus Platinum

1,000W

1,000W

750W

1,200W

750W

Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix RGB
Hydro Series

CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360
RGB TR4

Corsair Hydro H150i

Corsair Hydro H150i Elite

240mm All-in-One liquid cooler

1 x 2.5GbE

2 x 10GbE

1 x 2.5GbE

2 x 10GbE

1 x 2.5GbE

3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1,
2 x USB 2

8 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

6 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

8 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1,
2 x USB 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks, 1 x optical S/PDIF

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks, 1 x optical S/PDIF

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks, 1 x optical S/PDIF

5 x 3.5mm audio jacks, 1 x optical S/PDIF

3 x 3.5mm audio jacks
PS/2 mouse/keyboard combo

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2

/
Windows 11 Pro

/
Windows 11 Pro

/
Windows 11 Pro

/
Windows 11 Pro

2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1

/
Windows 11 Pro

79

Sixthingstolookforina
creativeworkstation
Workstations are a hefty investment, so before you spend thousands on a machine it
makes sense to dig into the detail

I

f any computing activities will
take every processing cycle you
can throw at them, they’re 3D
animation, video production, CAD
and engineering. That means
workstations aimed at these tasks
are just about the fastest desktops
around. For a few years now, though,
even a lower-priced system could
perform both design and output
rendering extremely well.
So, why worry about the exact
specification? Because you must still
ensure you have the best balance of
components for your budget and the
kinds of tasks you generally perform.
Over these two pages, we explain
what to look out for in every key area.

1 Processor
A high-end CPU is essential for a
creative workstation. Since our last
Labs test, AMD has improved the
supply of the Ryzen Threadripper Pro,
now that the non-Pro version has
been discontinued. The consumergrade Ryzen has jumped a generation
on the desktop from 5000 to 7000
series, and Intel has moved up from
12th (Alder Lake) to the 13th (Raptor
Lake) generation for its Core CPUs.
So there are even better CPU options
to choose from compared to last year
at every price.
While the top of the AMD Ryzen 9
range remains 16-core with the 7000
series, Intel now offers 24 cores with
its Core i9. However, as with the 12th
generation Core i9, only eight of these
cores are P for performance – the
others are E for efficiency. This isn’t a
bad compromise, because it allows
applications that only need a few
threads to run on the
P-cores at high
frequency – now as much
as 6GHz. Efficiently
multithreaded software
is less clock-speedsensitive, so benefits
from having the 16 extra
E-cores for this.
However, only the
P-cores support HyperThreading; the E-cores
are single thread only.
AMD’s approach is to
offer up to 16 cores with
the Ryzen 9 but let them
run as fast as possible
80

and allow them all to process two
threads. So both the 16-core AMD
Ryzen 9 and 24-core Intel Core i9
deliver 32 threads in total. In our
rendering tests, the Ryzen 9 has the
edge (although there’s
If you run a lot of software not much in it), while
that can benefit from every the Core i9 has the upper
hand for everyday tasks,
parallel thread available,
thanks to the higher
AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper single-core clock.
Pro is the ultimate choice
However, if you really
run a lot of software that
can benefit from every parallel thread
available, AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper
BELOW AMD’s Ryzen
Pro is the ultimate choice. With the
Threadripper Pro
whizzes through tasks 5000 series, you can have up to 64
cores and 128 threads, which as our
such as 3D rendering
benchmarks demonstrate absolutely
munches through tasks
such as 3D rendering.
The wealth of cores
will also mean that you
can do things such as
encode video, edit
video and indulge in
high-res photo editing
– all at the same time.
Of course, the AMD
Ryzen Threadripper
Pro doesn’t come
cheap. The 64-core
5995X costs over
£6,000 inc VAT,
compared to a little
over £500 for the
ABOVE Intensive
tasks such as CAD
require a high-end CPU

16-core Ryzen 9 7950X. The Intel Core
i9 13900K is priced around the same,
while the faster KS variant is £100
more. Either the AMD Ryzen 9 or
Intel Core i9 make a superb platform
for a workstation that is aimed
primarily at design work but with
strong multithreaded capabilities
when you need to crunch through
rendered output.

2 Memory
With content creation workstations,
you can never have enough memory.
We recommend at least 32GB, but all
this month’s entries have a minimum
of 64GB. When you’re loading 3D
animation texture sets or editing
high-res video, having loads of system
memory will mean your workstation
never grinds to a halt. Alongside a
processor with lots of cores, it also
means you can run multiple apps,
rendering work on one while you
tweak your creations in another.
We’re currently still in the
transition period between DDR4 and
DDR5 RAM. Intel’s processors have
supported the latter since the last
generation, but AMD has only just
added the capability with the Ryzen
7000 series. It’s a significant step up
in performance, offering around
twice the bandwidth of DDR4.
However, both the Intel Core and
AMD Ryzen implementations are

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still dual channel. So even if you
populate all four DIMM slots on your
motherboard, you’re only getting
twice the throughput. When buying
a workstation with one of these
processors, even if the system has
64GB of memory, it’s worth checking
that this is two DIMMs rather than
four, so you have room to upgrade in
the future.
The AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
takes a different approach. While still
only offering DDR4 with the 5000
series, the AMD workstation
processor supports eight memory
channels. This means that if you
populate eight slots with 3,200MHz
memory, you’re still getting more
than twice the throughput of a
dual-channel DDR5 setup using
6,000MHz memory. The forthcoming
Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7000 series
will offer DDR5 memory, however,
which will take its RAM bandwidth
into a different league.

3 Graphics acceleration
If you do any live viewset work in
your creative activities – such as 3D
modelling – you need a fast
professional graphics card. Although
AMD arguably has the upper hand
over its competition in the CPU
market, it has consistently had a
tougher time for professional GPUs.
Every time AMD releases a new
generation, it tends to have a small
window of opportunity, and then the
next Nvidia RTX series arrives and
takes over again.
This month, however, three
systems have arrived with AMD
Radeon Pro graphics, and two of
them use the just-released W7800.
This is an expensive card, costing
over £2,500 inc VAT, which puts it in
the same ballpark as Nvidia’s RTX
A5000. In our testing, the AMD card
has a significant edge over the Nvidia
equivalent for 3D modelling, but not
for GPU-accelerated OpenCL
rendering. With the HIP-based
renderer now in Blender,
however, performance
is stunning.
One system this
month also came
without Pro graphics,
which is a choice we
have been told many
workstation buyers
now make. Although
the warranty and
support of pro
graphics cards
will be better, in
performance terms
they’re essential
only for some
workloads. Siemens
NX, for example,
runs very slowly on

consumer-grade hardware. But if you
use GPU acceleration for other
activities, consumer-grade graphics
could give you more processing power
for the money.
Assuming you go for pro graphics,
however, Nvidia’s RTX A4000 is a
great baseline accelerator, costing a
little over £1,000 inc VAT, and then
incrementally the model numbers
increase by 500 with
each offering more
We’re currently still in
CUDA cores and memory.
the transition period
The RTX A6000 costs
between DDR4 and DDR5
around £5,000 inc VAT.
RAM. It’s a significant
Only the most intensive
step up in performance
workloads make this
expenditure worthwhile.
Although the Intel Core processors
have supported PCI Express 5 since
the last generation, and AMD Ryzen
with the latest 7000 series, it’s up to
the motherboard manufacturers to
enable support. This month only the
BELOW Your chassis
Core i9 systems offer PCI Express 5
needs lots of room for
slots, but no current graphics card
airflow and cooling
goes beyond PCI Express 4. For now,
then, this is more about futureproofing than something your
GPU can benefit from today.
ABOVE Nvidia’s RTX
A4000 is a great
baseline accelerator
for pro graphics

4 Storage
The traditional
workstation approach
to storage has been to
combine the fastest
possible drive for the
operating system and
applications with a much
larger, slower device for
media. However, now that
2TB NVMe SSDs are
becoming the norm, you
need to take this strategy
only if you work with
huge assets, such as raw
4K or 8K video. The latest
PCI Express NVMe drives
now offer read and write
speeds over 10,000MB/sec

– more than 40 times any mainstream
mechanical hard disk, and nearly 20
times as fast as the SATA standard.
However, there’s still a considerable
premium for NVMe storage this fast,
so if you need a lot more than the boot
device offers, a SATA drive is a
worthwhile addition. Having one of
these in your system or room to add
one is useful – which brings us to the
next thing to consider.

5 Chassis
Gaming PCs come in a plethora of
formats, with myriad chassis to
choose from. But workstations are
more like the Ford Model T – you can
have any colour you like, so long as it’s
black. This month, we have also had
an almost complete conquest by
Fractal Design. Its Define and Meshify
cases were used by all systems, apart
from Lenovo, which makes its own
chassis. The reason for this choice is
that these cases offer lots of room
inside for airflow and liquid-cooling
systems, as well as ample space for
storage upgrades. They also tend to
provide tool-free access. Being able to
slip in extra drives when you need
them without too much case
deconstruction is a big plus.

6 Power supply
The power supply may seem the most
generic and least important part of
your workstation specification, but
skimping in this area can cause your
computer to behave erratically under
load or even crash. For modern
multicore processors and graphics,
a 750W PSU is the bare minimum,
and if you’re running an AMD Ryzen
Threadripper Pro then we’d
recommend at least 1,000W. Also take
note of efficiency. Gold is essential,
Platinum even better. This indicates
that very little power will be lost
converting from 240V AC to the
various DC feeds in the computer.
81

Howwetestand
benchmarks
We wanted to give the broadest possible workstation advice, so we used a wide variety
of software for testing – as the huge number of graphs on these pages shows!

T

o start, we ran our standard PC Pro
benchmark suite to assess imageprocessing and video-encoding
abilities, and then multitasking (you can
see the results on p93). Each of these
categories has an individual score, which
indicates relative speed compared to a Core
i7-4760K desktop PC with 8GB of RAM. If a
machine scores 150 in a test, it’s 50% faster
than the reference PC. All these results are
combined into an overall score, giving an
indication of ability in these contentcreation tasks as well as general activities.
We added tests specifically aimed at a
range of higher-end workstation tasks. To
test 3D modelling in all the main content
creation workloads, we used SPECviewperf
2020 v3.1, which runs OpenGL viewsets
(and in some cases Direct3D) based on
popular 3D content creation, engineering
and medical applications. These include
Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, PTC’s Creo
and Siemens NX, plus Dassault Systèmes
CATIA and SolidWorks.
Maxon Cinebench R23 contains a 3D
rendering test that is run on a single core
and then across all available threads, to
show how much multithreaded
performance the system has to offer. We
also tested CPU 3D rendering using the
popular Blender (version 3.5.1 at the time of
testing) and a frame from the Cosmos
Laundromat animated movie, codenamed
Project Gooseberry. This is a gruelling,
lengthy render that taxes cooling and can
cause core throttling if this isn’t sufficient.

Catia viewset

GPU rendering is increasingly being
used in live production, particularly since
AMD introduced its ProRender system.
We tested GPU-accelerated 3D rendering
with the OpenCL-powered Luxmark 3.1.
We also tested GPU rendering with the
same Blender frame, using CUDA
acceleration for the Nvidia cards and
HIP for the AMD ones.
To assess professional-grade video
encoding, we rendered the Blender Tears
of Steel movie from UHD (3,840 x 2,160)

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192

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Cinebench R23 multicore

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to a YouTube-optimised 4K file using
H.264 compression. For this test, we
employed Adobe Media Encoder CC 2023,
and ran the encode with GPU acceleration
both enabled and disabled. We also tested
the raw performance of workstations’ SSDs
and hard disks with the CrystalDiskMark
8.0.4 benchmark.
We ended up with a comprehensive set
of results showing which type of contentcreation software and activity each
workstation is best suited for.

156
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200

ARMARI MAGNETAR
MC16R7
Astrikinglyfastworkstation
for the money, dominating
most performance tests in
this price category
SCORE
PRICE £3,748 (£4,497 inc VAT)
from armari.com

A

rmari’s lower-cost system is
something of a technology
showcase, exhibiting the
latest options in processor, graphics
and storage. The combination is one
of the most powerful workstations
you could buy for £4,500 inc VAT.
At the centre of the Magnetar
MC16R7 is AMD’s range-topping
Ryzen 9 7950X. This potent 16-core
processor uses AMD’s latest Zen 4
architecture and is manufactured on
the 5nm process. This enables an
incredible base clock of 4.5GHz,
which is the boost clock for AMD
Ryzen Threadripper Pro processors.
The 7950X’s boost clock of 5.7GHz
is only a few hundred megahertz
behind the best Intel has to offer, and
only with the latter’s P-cores, so it’s
good to see that Armari makes the
most out of the Ryzen 9 via its own
customised CPU liquid cooling.
Armari has also taken full
advantage of the fact that the AMD
Ryzen 7000 series supports DDR5
memory by supplying 64GB of
6,000MHz RAM in two 32GB modules,
leaving two DIMM slots free for
upgrades. This is the fastest-clocked
memory of any system this month.
So the Magnetar MC16R7 has a
cutting-edge processor, some of the
fastest system memory available, and
its graphics acceleration is bleeding
edge, too. In the past, choosing AMD
professional GPUs might be a good
choice to keep within a budget, but it
rarely beat the Nvidia alternative for
performance. The AMD Radeon Pro
W7800 is a different matter. It’s in the
same price category as the Nvidia RTX
A5000 and offers 4,480 unified
shaders (which aren’t equivalent to
CUDA cores) on AMD’s latest RDNA 3
architecture. It also boasts 32GB of
GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus,
offering 576GB/sec bandwidth.
Armari is notable in the UK market
because it’s one of the few local PC
integrators that designs its own
chassis. However, these cases come at
a premium so the Magnetar MC16R7
84

has been built into a Fractal Design
Meshify 2. This is still a great basis
for a workstation, with plenty of
room inside for airflow and storage
upgrades. There are six spaces for 3.5in
or 2.5in drives included, and there
could optionally be up to 14. On top of
this there are two 2.5in-only spaces as
standard, but up to four are possible.
You may want to build upon the
single M.2 NVMe SSD Armari supplies,
but what a great foundation it
provides. It’s a 2TB Crucial T700 drive,
which supports PCI Express 5, as does
the Asus ProArt B650-Creator
motherboard. The Crucial SSD delivers
incredible throughput from a single
drive. CrystalDiskMark recorded
sustained reading at 12,373MB/sec
and writing at 11,807MB/sec, which
were close to twice as fast as some
of the PCI Express 4 NVMe SSDs in
other workstations
this month.
Considering all
the powerful
components in the
Magnetar MC16R7,
it’s no surprise that it
produced some
stunning test results.
PC Pro’s mediafocused benchmarks
are the Intel Core i9’s
forte, but the Armari
system’s overall
result of 772 is
still incredible,
significantly beating
the other system this

ABOVE The Magnetar
MC16R7 showcases the
latest CPU, graphics
andstoragetechnology

UP TO £4,500

BELOW The Fractal
Design Meshify 2 case
offers lots of room for
airflow and upgrades

month based on an AMD Ryzen 9
7950X. Its Cinebench R23 multithread
rendering result of 38,611 was the
fastest in the £4,500 category, and the
Blender rendering time of 265 seconds
was also top in this class. The
OpenCL-accelerated Adobe Media
Encoder time of 105 seconds beat
every other system this month.
The AMD Radeon Pro W7800
graphics may be around the same
price as Nvidia’s RTX A5000, but its
performance with SPECviewperf
2020 v3.1 is in a different league as
well. The results of 235 in 3dsmax-07
and an unbelievable 846 in maya-06
imply this will be a consummate
accelerator for 3D animation. Likewise,
155 in catia-06, 235 in creo-03, 622 in
snx-04 and 460 in solidworks-07
show strong abilities with product
development, CAD and engineering.
Its LuxMark 3.1
result of 14,919 is a
little behind the RTX
A5000, but GPU
rendering in Blender
took just 141 seconds,
which is ahead.
Overall, the
Armari Magnetar
MC16R7 provides
the best possible
performance for
the money in most
areas. If you need a
powerful all-round
workstation, this
system should be
top of your list.

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CHILLBLAST APEX AMD
THREADRIPPER PRO
RTX A6000 QUADRO
WORKSTATION

Awell-balancedworkstation
withcapablemultithreaded
renderingandclass-leading
GPUacceleration
SCORE

PRICE £8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)
from chillblast.com

U

nlike Armari, Chillblast opted
for a balanced approach with
its £10,000 system. While still
supplying a Ryzen Threadripper Pro,
the Chillblast Apex doesn’t use the
top-end model, and instead leaves
more in the budget for graphics.
The chosen CPU is the Threadripper
Pro 5975WX, which offers 32 cores to
the 64 inside the 5995WX. However,
the base clock is considerably higher
at 3.6GHz, even if the boost frequency
remains the same 4.5GHz. There’s still
only DDR4 memory support with the
5000 series CPUs, but this will get a
considerable increase from the eight
parallel channels available. Chillblast
provides 128GB of 3,200MHz RAM,
divided into eight modules to take
advantage of the extra bandwidth.
By saving on the CPU, Chillblast is
able to devote more of its £10,000
budget to graphics. This has allowed
the Apex to include the current king
of workstation graphics, the Nvidia
RTX A6000 (although the AMD
Radeon Pro W7900 may have
something to say about this when
we see it in a future system). This
monster accelerator sports an
incredible 10,752 CUDA cores and
48GB of GDDR6 frame buffer. The
384-bit memory interface enables
768GB/sec of bandwidth.
Like every other manufacturer this
month bar Lenovo, Chillblast has
opted for a Fractal Design chassis.
But this is one of the largest models
available, the Define 7 XL Black Solid.
This huge case has cavernous space
for airflow, large fans and enough
drive slots to make a data centre
envious. There are eight 3.5in or 2.5in
bays included, but an option for up to
18. Chillblast includes two 2.5in bays,
but three more can be added.
Chillblast hasn’t used any of them,
however, instead supplying a 2TB
Samsung Pro 980 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD.
While this is a PCI Express 4 drive, it’s

not the fastest by today’s standards: it
delivered 6,851MB/sec sustained
reading and 4,949MB/sec writing
with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4.
The media-focused applications
tested with the PC Pro benchmarks
only receive some benefit from lots
of cores, with clock speed also
important. So the Chillblast Apex was
second slowest in this month’s test
with this suite. In particular, it lost
out to CPUs with faster individual
core clocks when image editing.
Intel Core i9 processors are also better
for video encoding. However, the 32
cores delivered an excellent 47,257
in the Maxon Cinebench R23
multithread render test. This was
echoed with Blender, which rendered
its Gooseberry frame in just 203
seconds on CPU.
Unfortunately, both
Chillblast systems
seemed to be
incompatible with
the LuxMark 3.1 test,
meaning this system
was unable to
demonstrate just how
much OpenCL capability
the Nvidia RTX A6000
has to offer. However,
CUDA-accelerated GPU
rendering with Blender
was incredible. Using
the GPU compute
option, the Gooseberry
frame took just 132
seconds. If you have

ABOVE The Apex
includes the king of
workstation graphics,
the Nvidia RTX A6000

BELOW The huge case
has masses of space
for airflow, large fans
and up to 18 drive bays

GPU-enhanced workloads, the A6000
will munch through them with ease.
It’s also superb for real-time
viewport acceleration, as you might
expect. The results of 208 in
3dsmax-07 and 541 in maya-06 show
excellent 3D animation abilities
(although AMD Radeon Pro cards are
better with Maya). The scores of 158
in catia-06, 178 in creo-03, 654 in
snx-04 and precisely 400 in
solidworks-07 illustrate just how
smooth and productive engineering,
CAD and product work will be with
this GPU, although AMD’s Radeon
W7800 surpasses the A6000 with
Creo and SolidWorks.
Chillblast set out to provide a
balanced, powerful workstation with
no weaknesses, and for the most part
it’s succeeded. The
64-core AMD Ryzen
Threadripper Pro
undoubtedly offers
better brute-force,
multithreaded grunt,
but this 32-core variant
still has a lot to offer and
will be able to perform
lots of tasks at once,
improving productivity.
The Nvidia RTX A6000
means no real-time
design workload will
cause it to break a sweat.
Chillblast just misses out
on an award this month,
but this is still a great
premium workstation.
85

PCSPECIALIST
ONYX PRO
Don’tfretovertheconsumer
graphics:it’ssuperbinmany
professionalapps,andthe
restofthespecispotent
SCORE
PRICE £3,750 (£4,500 inc VAT)
from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

P

CSpecialist takes a unique
approach in this month’s
Labs by supplying its system
with consumer-grade graphics. It’s
also the only company to provide
secondary storage along with a main
drive. So this workstation has a lot in
common with a high-end gaming rig;
if you design games for a living, this
could be exactly what you want.
The CPU is unquestionably potent.
This is a 13th generation Intel Core
i9-13900K with 24 cores. Eight of
these are P-cores with a 3GHz base
clock rising to 5.8GHz on maximum
boost with Hyper-Threading, while
the other 16 are E-cores that operate
at 2.2GHz or boost to 4.3GHz, but
without Hyper-Threading. So you
still get 32 threads like the 16-core
AMD CPUs, but 24 of these are full
physical cores not virtual ones.
Since Intel Core i9 processors have
supported DDR5 memory for a couple
of generations now, PCSpecialist has
opted for this RAM type, offering
5,200MHz DIMMs. But it has gone
further than this – much further. This
system includes an incredible 192GB,
which is the maximum supported by
the Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero
motherboard. This is supplied as four
48GB modules, although this isn’t a
quad-channel system. It’s safe to say
that you won’t be needing to upgrade
the memory on this system at any
point during its useful lifetime.
Now we get to the elephant in the
room: the consumer-grade graphics.
This is cheaper than the professional
equivalent, meaning you can get
more power for your money. In fact,
PCSpecialist has opted for an Asus
TUF GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition,
which is the most powerful
consumer GPU currently available.
This provides 9,728 CUDA cores,
almost as many as the Nvidia RTX
A6000, but the 4090 has a newer
GPU core design and runs at a much
higher clock speed, so promises
significantly higher raw processing
power – of which more later.
86

The trusty Fractal Design Black
Solid chassis is supplied to house all
these components. This isn’t as big as
the XL, but still has plenty of space
inside and options for storage
upgrades. There are six 2.5in/3.5in
bays included, with up to 14 possible,
and two 2.5in trays as standard, but
four possible. PCSpecialist opts to use
an M.2 slot for NVMe SSD main
storage, but also uses one of the 3.5in
bays for a conventional hard disk.
The SSD is a Samsung 990 Pro
running at PCI Express 4 speeds.
It delivered sustained reading of
7,404MB/sec and writing speeds of
6,818MB/sec, which are good for
non-PCI Express 5 storage. The hard
disk is a 4TB Seagate IronWolf Pro
7,200rpm mechanical hard disk,
offering 260MB/sec reading and
257MB/sec writing.
This is pedestrian
throughput
compared to the
SSD but fast for a
hard disk, and
the extra storage
will be handy for
greedy media such
as 8K video.
The Intel Core i9
CPU is very much in
its element with
everyday tasks.
Its overall score of
849 in the PC Pro
benchmarks is
the joint fastest
we’ve ever seen,

ABOVE There’s space
for upgrades, but you
won’t need to add to
the 192GB of RAM

RECOMMENDED

BELOW The Onyx Pro
packs plenty of power
for many (but not all)
GPU rendering tasks

particularly aided by the multitasking
score of 1,057. However, while 35,990
with multicore Maxon Cinebench R23
rendering is superb, Armari’s AMD
Ryzen 9 7950X is just ahead, and CPU
rendering with Blender is similarly
behind AMD, with the Gooseberry
frame taking 312 seconds.
But then there’s that GPU.
CUDA-accelerated Blender rendering
took an incredible 64 seconds, and
the LuxMark 3.1 score of 31,713 is
staggering. This is also a supreme
accelerator for some – but not all –
content-creation viewsets. Running
SPECviewperf 2020 3.1, the GeForce
4090 managed 316 in 3dsmax-07 and
792 in maya-06. This is a brilliant card
for 3D animation. However, while
catia-06 saw 165 and solidworks-07
a jaw-dropping 732, snx-04 could
only reach 54.57.
If you’ll be
running engineering
workloads, in
particular Siemens
NX (represented by
snx-04), you’re best
avoiding a system
with consumergrade graphics like
the Onyx Pro. But if
you’re a game
designer or 3D
animator utilising
GPU rendering, this
is a phenomenally
powerful machine,
and comes highly
recommended.

@PCPRO

Labs Workstations

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

SCAN 3XS GWP-ME
A164T
A near-perfect combination
of components, delivering
superb modelling and
rendering performance
SCORE
PRICE £8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)
from scan.co.uk

S

can is another manufacturer
that opts for balance rather
than brute CPU power with its
£10,000 system. While the resulting
component choices aren’t surprising,
the quality of the implementation is
what singles this workstation out.
Rather than choosing the top
64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro
5995WX, Scan plumps for the 32-core
5975WX. With a higher 3.6GHz base
clock than the 5995WX but the same
4.5GHz maximum boost, the 5975WX
promises better general application
performance allied with still capable
multithreaded abilities.
While the current AMD Ryzen
Threadripper Pro only supports DDR4
memory, not the latest DDR5, it offers
eight parallel channels. Scan takes
advantage of this with eight 16GB
modules of 3,200MHz RAM. This is
ECC Registered memory as well,
guarding against system errors.
Scan also chooses tried-and-tested
dependability when it comes to graphics
acceleration, with the powerful
Nvidia RTX A6000. This remains the
king of visualisation, with 10,752 CUDA
cores and 48GB of GDDR6 memory on
a 384-bit bus, delivering 768GB/sec of
bandwidth. This monster card can
drive four DisplayPort 1.4a-attached
screens at 4K resolutions and 120Hz,
or two 8K screens at 60Hz.
These components have plenty of
space inside the Fractal Design
Meshify 2 XL chassis. This is a huge
case with a wealth of 120mm fans for
maximum airflow and loads of room
for additional storage. There are six
mounts for either 2.5in or 3.5in drives
included, but an option for up to 18.
There are also two 2.5in-only positions,
but three more can be added.
Scan has kept things simple to start
with by supplying just a 2TB Samsung
980 Pro NVMe M.2 SSD. This PCI-E 4
drive was at the pinnacle of NVMe
storage a couple of years ago, but has
been eclipsed since by PCI-E 5 drives
in particular. The only reason Scan
doesn’t choose the latter is that the

AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro doesn’t
yet support PCI-E 5 NVMe storage. The
Samsung drive delivered 6,844MB/sec
reading and 4,949MB/sec writing
when tested with CrystalDiskMark
8.0.4, which some other PCI Express 4
SSDs surpassed it this month.
Where the Scan 3XS GWP-ME
A132C particularly excels is in the
well-roundedness of its performance.
It’s not the fastest in most categories
but is close enough in all of them to take
on any task. The PC Pro benchmarks
score of 754 is the second fastest in
this price range. While the Maxon
Cinebench R23 CPU rendering result
of 47,888 can’t match the 64-core
processors this month, it is the fastest
result from a 32-core CPU. Likewise,
the Blender Gooseberry frame render
took just 198 seconds on the processor,
which was only beaten
by the 5995WX
systems. The Adobe
Media Encoder video
processing results
were also excellent.
While the AMD
Radeon Pro W7800
employed by Armari’s
£4,500 Labs winner
was a revelation this
month, the AMD RTX
A6000 provided by
Scan for the 3XS
GWP-ME A132C
delivered strong
results across all
SPECviewperf 2020
v3.1 viewsets. The

ABOVE The huge case
has a wealth of
120mm fans for
maximum airflow

UP TO £10,000

BELOW For all-round
speed, none here can
match the Scan 3CX
GWP-ME A164T

scores of 209 in 3dsmax-07 and 555 in
maya-06 show great capabilities for
3D animation, with no Nvidia RTX
professional accelerator doing better.
Likewise, 159 in catia-06 and 669 in
snx-04 were the best results this
month in these viewsets, showing
excellent CAD and engineering
performance. The creo-3 and
solidworks-07 results of 177 and 403
respectively are also excellent but
beaten by a few competitors.
Apart from the powerful Nvidia
GeForce RTX 4090 supplied with the
PCSpecialist Onyx Pro, the A6000
racked up the highest OpenCL result in
LuxMark 3.1 of 18,478. Unsurprisingly,
this translated into the second
quickest GPU-accelerated Blender
frame render time of 131 seconds. Not
only is the Nvidia RTX A6000 a
modelling monster, but
it also has class-leading
raw power for GPUaccelerated tasks.
Putting all this
together makes a
performance
workstation that ticks
all the boxes. It has the
CPU power to make
light work of any
software; the graphics
potency to smooth out
all modelling or design
tasks; and loads of GPU
capability when you
need it. The Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A132C comes
highly recommended.
87

ARMARI MAGNETAR
MC64TP
The 64-core processor
dominates multithreaded
rendering, although the GPU
isn’t top of its class
SCORE
PRICE £8,331 (£9,997 inc VAT)
from armari.com

A

rmari never likes to do things
by halves, and the company
has gone all in with the most
powerful workstation processor for its
£10,000 entry. However, this has led
to compromises elsewhere.
AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro
5995WX has 64 cores and 128 threads. If
you run heavily parallelised software,
there’s no better option. The 5995WX
has a 2.7GHz base clock, but still offers
a boost up to 4.5GHz. Although the
CPU only supports DDR4 memory, it
offers an eight-channel configuration
– and Armari takes advantage of this
by supplying 128GB as eight 3,600MHz

modules. This leaves no room for
upgrade but optimises bandwidth.
The main compromise with the
MC64TP is that Armari has had to opt
for the cheaper, previous-generation
AMD Radeon Pro W6800 for graphics
acceleration rather than the latest
W7800. It’s still a great GPU but no
Nvidia-killer. It offers 3,840 stream
processors, but its single precision
throughput is less than half that of the
new W7800. It still comes with 32GB
of GDDR6 frame buffer, but with
512GB/sec throughput.
Another compromise is the lack
of Armari’s excellent own-brand

ABOVE Fire up the
fastest workstation
CPU you can get

CHILLBLASTAPEXINTEL
COREI9RTXA5000
QUADROWORKSTATION
A great-value workstation
with lots of CPU and GPU
performance, although
primary storage is slow
SCORE
PRICE £3,417 (£4,100 inc VAT)
from chillblast.com

C

hillblast has opted for Intel with
its lower-cost Apex system this
month. This is a valid choice, as
the Core i9 became very competitive
again for workstations with last year’s
12th generation. Here, Chillblast
deploys the 13th generation i9-13900K,
which isn’t quite the flagship of the
range. It offers eight P-cores running
at a base 3GHz and boost 5.8GHz, plus
16 E-cores with a base 2.2GHz
frequency and 4.3GHz boost, with 32
threads in total. But the 13900KS
version goes ever so slightly faster.
88

At this price we can’t criticise 64GB
of RAM, and as Intel processors have
supported DDR5 since the previous
generation Chillblast takes advantage
with two DIMMs running at 5,600MHz.
This leaves two slots free for upgrade.
Graphics acceleration is taken care
of by Nvidia’s Quadro RTX A5000. This
high-end professional GPU combines
8,192 CUDA cores with 24GB of
GDDR6 frame buffer. Thanks to the
384-bit bus, the throughput from this
memory is a massive 768GB/sec.
The Fractal Design Define 7 Compact
Black Solid is a fully featured chassis,

ABOVE The Apex
offers solid CPU and
GPU performance

chassis. The Fractal Design Meshify 2
supplied instead is still a great case but
lacks the cold-swap drive bays of the
Armari chassis, for example. Armari
supplies a single 2TB Samsung 990 Pro
M.2 NVMe SSD, which is only PCI-E 4
but that makes sense: the Ryzen
Threadripper Pro doesn’t support
anything higher yet. The 990 Pro is
still fast, delivering 7,418MB/sec
sustained reading and 5,792MB/sec
writing with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4.
The MC64TP managed 753 in the PC
Pro benchmarks, which is beaten by
some of the 16-core CPUs because this
test only benefits a little from multiple
cores. In contrast, the Maxon
Cinebench R23 multithreaded
rendering test hit a gobsmacking
76,330. Similarly, CPU rendering in
Blender took just 121 seconds.
However, video processing with
Adobe Media Encoding wasn’t so
impressive since this processor has
lower individual clock speeds. The
AMD Radeon Pro W6800 was also
behind the Nvidia RTX A6000 cards in
SPECviewperf 2020 v3.1 for most
viewsets, except maya-06, where
AMD graphics has a clear advantage.
If your work is heavily multithreaded
the Armari Magnetar MC64TP’s 64-core
processor reigns supreme, but if your
applications are a little more varied,
there are more balanced alternatives.

with up to two 3.5in drive bays and up
to four 2.5in bays. However, Chillblast
supplies only a single 2TB Samsung
980 Pro NVMe drive in M.2 format.
This uses a PCI Express 4 interface but
isn’t the fastest in its class any more.
Sustained reading runs at 6,871MB/sec
and writing at 5,015MB/sec, according
to CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4. This is fast
throughput but is beaten by other
NVMe storage this month.
Thanks to the Core i9 processor,
this Chillblast system was the joint
fastest in the PC Pro benchmarks, with
a huge score of 849. The multitasking
score of 1,057 shows just how effective
Intel’s P and E core combination is for
simultaneously running multiple
apps. However, the Cinebench R23
score of 38,852 is behind the Armari
MC16R7’s AMD Ryzen 9 7850X, as is its
CPU 3D rendering in Blender, which
took 304 seconds.
The SPECviewperf 2020 results
were mostly as expected for Nvidia’s
RTX A5000, but this system refused to
run LuxMark 3.1, implying a software
conflict with OpenCL. GPU rendering
using HIP in Blender was unaffected,
with a quick time of just 151 seconds.
This is a competent, powerful
workstation, and at £4,100 inc VAT
represents excellent value. But it’s just
pipped to the top award by Armari’s
storming Magnetar MC16R7.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Labs Workstations

LENOVO THINKSTATION
P620 TOWER
Superbchassisdesignshows
thatLenovostillmaintains
themanufacturingqualityit
inheritedfromIBM
SCORE
PRICE £3,030 (£3,636 inc VAT)
from lenovo.com

W

e haven’t seen many
blue-chip brands in our
workstation Labs for some
years. This has largely been because
these manufacturers stuck with Intel
Xeons, even when AMD was in the
ascendancy, so wouldn’t have fared
well. But Lenovo has been offering the
AMD alternative for some years and
was the initial partner for the Ryzen
Threadripper Pro when it arrived last
year. Now we get our first look at what
Lenovo can do with this potent CPU.
The system is based on the AMD
Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5945WX,
which has the lowest number of cores

of any CPU this month – just 12. These
run at a base 4.1GHz and boost 4.5GHz,
with multithreading and support for
eight-channel memory. But Lenovo
only provides four 3,200MHz DDR4
DIMM modules, so the bandwidth is
quad channel with half the throughput
of eight-channel, even though the
total was a wholesome 64GB.
Lenovo offers a choice of AMD and
Nvidia graphics with the P620, and
our system came with Nvidia’s RTX
A4000. This places this configuration
as a modelling workstation rather
than more general purpose. Lenovo
was IBM’s hardware manufacturer,

ABOVE The P620 is
the cheapest system
on test this month

PCSPECIALIST ONYX
ULTRA
An incredibly powerful and
well-specified workstation
that’s a solid alternative to
the Labs-winning Scan
SCORE
PRICE £8,333 (£10,000 inc VAT)
from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews

P

CSpecialist has thrown everything
at its £10,000 workstation. Not
only does it incorporate AMD’s
range-topping 64-core Threadripper
Pro 5995WX, but it also includes
AMD’s latest professional graphics.
The CPU supports multithreading
so offers 128 threads. The base clock is
2.7GHz with a boost to 4.5GHz. While
there’s no DDR5 support yet for the
Threadripper Pro, the eight-channel
memory configuration improves
bandwidth. PCSpecialist includes a
whopping 256GB of 3,200MHz RAM in
the form of eight 32GB modules, taking
advantage of the extra throughput.

PCSpecialist opts for the brand new
AMD Radeon Pro W7800 for graphics
acceleration. This combines 4,480
RDNA 3 unified shaders with 32GB of
GDDR6 frame buffer operating with
576GB/sec bandwidth.
Two storage devices are supplied
with the Ultra. The 2TB Samsung 990
Pro NVMe M.2 drive operates at PCI-E
4 speeds. It achieved sustained
reading at 7,404MB/sec and writing at
6,818MB/sec. The other storage device
is a capacious 10TB Seagate IronWolf
Pro 7,200rpm mechanical hard disk,
delivering 261MB/sec reading and
253MB/sec writing.

ABOVE PCSpecialist
includes a top-of-therange AMD CPU

and when IBM became a services
company Lenovo inherited its server
and workstation business. The chassis
is still reminiscent of the former
brand, with excellent tool-free design.
In this high-powered company, the
P620 fell behind, achieving 529 in the
media-focused PC Pro benchmarks,
21,580 in the Cinebench R23 multicore
rendering test and 486 seconds for the
Blender CPU render. These would have
been amazing scores a year ago, but all
other systems here are way ahead. The
Adobe Media Encoder results were
impressive, however, taking 121 seconds
with CUDA acceleration enabled.
Although the Threadripper Pro
has a solid 4.5GHz top single-core
frequency, this clearly held it back
when modelling. The SPECviewperf
2020 v3.1 results were excellent on an
absolute scale but were beaten by
every other system. The 2TB Samsung
PM981ab was also the slowest NVMe
drive here, delivering just 3,519MB/sec
reading and 2,986MB/sec writing.
It’s hard to mark down the Lenovo
P620 Tower for lagging behind in
performance. It’s the cheapest system
in this labs test by nearly £900 inc VAT
and if upgraded to £4,500 would be far
more competitive. It’s also a solid,
well-built workstation. With the right
specification for your money, it could
be well worth considering.

The Onyx Ultra managed a score of
794 in the PC Pro benchmarks, beaten
only by the systems using Intel’s Core
i9. Its main weakness 231 in image
editing, which is a single-core task. The
Cinebench R23 multicore rendering
score of 71,519 is phenomenal,
although Armari went further with
the same processor. The Blender
Gooseberry CPU render time of 134
seconds was also behind Armari.
Although the AMD Radeon Pro
W7800 is a fantastic new graphics
accelerator, it benefits from being
paired with fast single-core CPU
speeds, which the Threadripper Pro
can’t offer. With SPECviewperf 2020
v3.1, the scores of 194 in 3dsmax-07
and 792 in maya-06 are superb, but
Armari did better by partnering the
GPU with a Ryzen 9 7950X. Similarly,
engineering and CAD viewsets were
behind. However, a number of these
scores were ahead of the Nvidia RTX
A5000 and A6000. The LuxMark 3.1
score of 12,317 and Blender GPU time
of 153 seconds were more mediocre.
This is a fantastically powerful
workstation, although PCSpecialist
hasn’t squeezed as much rendering
performance out of the CPU or
modelling ability from the GPU as
Armari. It’s well worth considering,
though, with great all-round abilities
and lots of storage for media assets.
89

Labs Workstations

@PCPRO

SCAN 3XS GWP-ME
A132C
It just misses out on an
award, but a pairing of Core
i9-13900KS and RTX A5000
means it’s terrific value
SCORE
PRICE £3,750 (£4,500 inc VAT)
from scan.co.uk

S

can opts for the Intel route with
its lower-priced system, as the
3XS GWP-ME A132C packs the
best Intel CPU available in this class.
Where other manufacturers chose the
Core i9-13900K, Scan steps things up
with the i9-13900KS. This incorporates
eight P-cores with Hyper-Threading
and 16 E-cores without, but the
P-cores have a base frequency of
3.2GHz and 6GHz maximum boost,
while the E-cores start at 2.4GHz and
go up to 4.3GHz (although the latter is
the same as the K variant).
Scan also takes advantage of the
processor’s support for DDR5 memory

by supplying 64GB of 5,600MHz RAM
in the form of two 32GB DIMMs. This
leaves two slots free for upgrade. The
graphics choice is dependable, too:
you can’t go wrong with Nvidia’s RTX
A5000 handling 3D acceleration.
Sporting 8,192 CUDA cores and 24GB
of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus
providing 768GB/sec of bandwidth,
the A5000 is a potent GPU.
The components are built into a
capacious Fractal Design Meshify 2
chassis, which offers lots of space for
storage upgrades. Scan supplies only a
single drive, but it’s a good one – a 2TB
Corsair MP700 NVMe M.2 SSD, which
supports PCI Express 5. According to

ABOVE Scan’s neat
cabling is as evident
as ever

WORKSTATION
SPECIALISTS WS
AR-X6700
A competent machine,
but not quite enough
performance to challenge
for the top spot this month.
SCORE
PRICE £3,662 (£4,394 inc VAT)
from workstationspecialists.com

T

he WS AR-X6700 makes good
use of its £4,500 budget, with a
solid balance of components.
Workstation Specialists has chosen the
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, which offers 16
cores and 32 threads, with a base 4.5GHz
clock and boost up to 5.7GHz. This is
backed by 64GB of RAM, provided as
two DIMMs, so there’s room to
upgrade. It’s 5,200MHz DDR5, which
the Ryzen 7000 series now supports.
Graphics acceleration comes from
the Nvidia RTX A5000. With a hefty
8,192 CUDA cores and 24GB of GDDR6
90

frame buffer on a 384-bit bus offering
768GB/sec of bandwidth, it’s a potent
workstation accelerator. Its quartet of
DisplayPort 1.4a connections support
up to four 4K screens at 120Hz, or two
8K screens at 60Hz.
Apart from the decidedly skinny
Lenovo chassis, the Fractal Design
Define C Tempered Glass case here
is the most compact this month.
There’s still room for a couple of 3.5in
or 2.5in drives, plus up to three 2.5in
units. The only storage supplied,
however, is a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro
NVMe SSD, which when tested with
CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 delivered

ABOVE The Fractal
Design case is among
the most compact here

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

testing with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4,
this drive provides sustained reading
of 10,074MB/sec and writing at
10,190MB/sec, nearly 50% faster than
the best PCI Express 4 NVMe SSDs.
Only the Crucial T700 used by Armari
this month is faster.
Despite its Core i9-13900KS CPU,
the A132C came second to systems
equipped with the K variant in the PC
Pro benchmarks, although a score of
827 is still superb. Its Maxon Cinebench
R23 CPU rendering result of 37,442
was also beaten by the Chillblast Apex
Core i9 and Armari’s AMD Ryzen 9
7950X. However, the Blender CPU
rendering time of 296 seconds beat
other Intel-equipped workstations.
The RTX A5000 graphics delivered
as expected with SPECviewperf 2020
v3.1 viewsets, showing competent
scores for 3D animation, engineering
and CAD. The excellent OpenCL
result in LuxMark 3.1 of 15,287 was
mirrored by a Blender GPU render
time of just 143 seconds, although
Armari’s AMD Radeon W7800 was
faster, and the PCSpecialist Onyx
Pro’s Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 was
in a different league entirely.
This is an excellent workstation for
£4,500, and superb value when you
consider its components, but it’s
pipped to the top spot by Armari’s
entry this month.

competent 7,457MB/sec sustained
reading and 6,915MB/sec writing.
The overall result in the PC Pro
benchmarks of 731 is superb compared
to systems from any previous year,
but in this month’s company it’s joint
second slowest. For everyday tasks,
Intel’s Core i9-13900K has the lead.
The multicore rendering result in
Maxon Cinebench R23 of 36,030 is
similarly both excellent while still
being third slowest this month. The
Blender Gooseberry render took 282
seconds with the CPU, however,
which is more competitive.
Sadly, with so many powerful
systems in this test, the Nvidia RTX
5000 manages performance only in
the middle of the pack. Looking at the
SPECviewperf 2020 v3.1 results, the
score of 178 in 3dsmax-07 is the third
slowest, although 535 in maya-06 is a
bit higher up the rankings. Only
Lenovo’s P620, with its RTX A4000,
consistently falls behind. The OpenCL
rendering result in LuxMark 3.1 of
15,489 is in line with our expectations
for an RTX A5000, while GPU
rendering with Blender took 148
seconds, which is also mid-range.
Overall, while the Workstation
Specialists WS AR-X6700 is well put
together and specified, it doesn’t
have the leading performance of
this month’s Labs Winner.

WhereisSapphireRapids?
We had hoped to see the latest version of Intel’s workstation Xeon in this month’s Labs,
to challenge AMD’s Threadripper Pro. But it never materialised – and might be too late

L

ast year’s workstation Labs test
looked like a return for Intel,
and we still have some very
credible systems from the company
in our £4,500 category this month.
But Intel has been conspicuous by
its absence in the more expensive
category for some time. This class
of workstation would normally
be serviced by Intel’s Xeon
Scalable range, but for a few
years now there has been
nothing from the company to
compete with AMD. That
pattern has been echoed in the
server space, where AMD’s
EPYC has been biting huge
chunks out of Intel’s Xeon
Scalable market share.
Part of the problem has
been that AMD has such a lead in
core count per socket over Xeon
Scalable, thanks in large part to taking
the lead in shrinking transistor size.
The current Ice Lake-W3300
generation of Xeon Scalable for
workstations maxes out at 38 cores
and is based on 10th-generation Intel
cores on a 10nm process, whereas
AMD has been offering its Ryzen
Threadripper and Threadripper Pro
with 64 cores on a 7nm process since
2020. The latter enables around twice
as many transistors to be packed into
the same space as a 10nm process.
The answer to this was supposed
to be Intel’s Sapphire Rapids,
manufactured using Intel 7, a 7nm
process like that used by current
Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs, and
integrating the “Gold Cove” P-cores
that gave the 12th generation Intel
Core processors such strong
capabilities. However, these are still a
generation behind the Raptor Cove
P-cores used in the 13th generation
Core i9 processors found in a few
systems in this month’s labs test.

Variations on a theme

The workstation variants of
Sapphire Rapids will include
w3, w5, w7 and w9 options.
The top w9 goes up to 56
cores, running at up to
4.8GHz, with eight-channel
DDR5 memory support up
to 4,800MHz. Even
against a 64-core
Threadripper Pro
5995WX, the top Intel
Xeon w9 3495X looks
promising, with a
higher boost clock,
92

before seeing the light of day.
The problem for Intel is that just
as Sapphire Rapids is arriving,
AMD has its next generation
ready to up the ante still further.
The Zen 4 architecture has
already made its debut with the
AMD Ryzen 7000 series in this
month’s Labs and 4th Gen AMD
EPYC (Genoa). Versions of the
latter processor with up to 96 cores
hit the market at the end of 2022,
and a 128-core “Bergamo” variant
has just gone on sale. The Sapphire
Rapids Xeon Platinum server CPU
has a 60-core ceiling, so it will be the
generation after that before Intel can
compete with 4th Gen AMD EPYC. By
this time, AMD will be looking at Zen 5
on a 4nm process.
albeit alongside a lower base clock
of 1.9GHz (compared to 2.7GHz for
the 5995WX). The first published
benchmarks revealed by YouTuber
Der8auer gave the Intel processor a
12% lead over the AMD one. The
pricing also looks competitive. The
processors with an “X” after their
model numbers can even be
overclocked, enabling yet more
performance capabilities.
The problem for Intel is that Some of the
manufacturers who
just as Sapphire Rapids is
entered systems in this
arriving, AMD has its next test
were considering
generation ready to up the submitting Sapphire
ante still further
Rapids systems, but the
platform wasn’t ready,
and we received AMD Ryzen
Threadripper Pro systems instead.
We’ve been waiting for Sapphire
Rapids for months now, because of
the potential it holds. HighBELOW Intel’s Xeon
performance computing (HPC)
Scalable range has
platform builders clearly agree. The
been losing out to
Aurora exascale supercomputer at
AMD in recent years
Argonne National Laboratory uses
Intel Sapphire Rapids
server CPUs, for
example. Quite a
few recent exascale
supercomputers, such
as Frontier at Oak
Ridge National
Laboratory and Lumi in
Finland, had opted for
AMD EPYC processors, so
this is a reassuring return
to form for Intel.
In the workstation
market, however, Sapphire
Rapids may have missed its
window of opportunity even
ABOVE Intel’s
Sapphire Rapids are
manufactured using
Intel 7, a 7nm process

Transistors of mercy

The AMD Threadripper Pro is a close
relation to the EPYC, although
releases tend to lag behind. The
imminent AMD Ryzen Threadripper
Pro 7000 series will be based on the
Genoa version of Zen 4 so will top
out at 96 cores. It deploys a 5nm
manufacturing process from TSMC,
like the Ryzen 7000 series, which
means it can pack almost twice as
many transistors into the same space
as the 7nm process of Intel Sapphire
Rapids, and four times as many as the
10nm process of its Ice Lake Xeon
predecessor. Clock speeds are likely to
be higher across the range, with lower
power consumption.
Intel is also working with TSMC for
a 5nm CPU and has a 4nm process in
the pipeline. But AMD seems to be
maintaining its lead for the time being,
getting its processors to market more
quickly. Sapphire Rapids will be great
when it arrives, but there’s a strong
chance that it won’t be enough to
dominate the Ryzen Threadripper Pro
7000 series, at least when it comes to
the performance at the top of each
range. It might compete on priceperformance, though.
As this Labs test has shown, at
the high-end desktop end of the
market, the best AMD Ryzen 7000
series and Intel Core processors are
extremely strong direct competitors,
with not much to choose between
them. But higher up the price
bracket, the workstation processor
market is likely to remain the domain
of Ryzen Threadripper Pro for the
time being. If only Sapphire Rapids
had arrived a year ago.

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Labs Workstations

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View from the Labs

Not only have you never had it so good when it comes to workstations,
you’ve never had so much choice of high-quality components either

T

his month’s Labs test has
shown that the workstation
market is in rude health. Even
if Intel still doesn’t have a high-end
Xeon Scalable processor to compete
with AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro,
its mainstream Core i9 is a match for
the Ryzen 7000 series. Monopolies
aren’t good for innovation, and this
competition will benefit end users
with increasingly excellent
processors for some time to come as
Intel and AMD slug it out.
In the past, the same could not
have been said for professional
graphics acceleration. Whatever
AMD did, Nvidia soon dominated
again; thankfully the consumer
market was more competitive. But
the superb performance of the new
AMD Radeon Pro W7800 could be a
sign that this is going to change, too.
There’s an even faster W7900
version, although that’s quite a bit
more expensive, and there’s no
lower-end option just yet.
The secret of the Radeon Pro
W7800’s success is AMD’s new RDNA
3 graphics architecture. GPUs based
on RDNA 3 use the 5nm process, like
the Ryzen 7000 series and other Zen 4
processors. RDNA 3 also introduces
the chiplet packaging to graphics

accelerators that AMD has been using
with its CPUs since the arrival of the
Zen architecture. This separates the
GPU into memory cache dies (MCDs)
and a main graphics compute die
(GCD), with the former on 6nm and
the latter on 5nm. The GCD is the
part of the GPU that benefits most
James Morris is a
from die shrinkage, enabling more
former PC Pro editor
cores, faster clock speeds and lower
and has been testing
power consumption.
workstations for
In the consumer market, AMD has
over two decades
Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX as well
as a cheaper 7600 based on RDNA 3,
although the latter doesn’t take the
chiplet approach. There’s been no
announcement yet whether there
will be a Pro version of
the 7600, although in
“As this Labs test shows,
terms of GPU capability,
there’s a great deal of
would be positioned
choice if you’re looking to this
well below the Nvidia
upgrade your content
RTX 4000, so AMD might
creation workstation”
hold back and release
something in between
this and the W7800. AMD is also yet
to unleash RDNA 3 on its Instinct
range of HPC GPU accelerators.
Nvidia does have something new
in the wings, however. At the
beginning of 2023, it launched the
Ada generation of its professional
cards with the RTX 6000. This comes

with 18,176 CUDA cores, compared to
10,752 on the A6000. While it sticks
with 48GB of GDDR6 memory on a
384-bit bus, bandwidth increases to
960GB/sec. But this card currently
costs £8,000, and there’s been no
announcement of versions below
the 6000. These are likely coming,
though. The GeForce RTX 4090 in
one of this month’s systems employs
the same Ada Lovelace architecture,
to incredible effect.
Either way, as this Labs test
shows, there’s a great deal of choice
if you’re looking to upgrade your
content creation workstation. We
had six different CPUs from two
different manufacturers across the
ten machines, and six different
graphics cards from two different
manufacturers as well. Main storage
keeps getting faster, with the latest
PCI Express 5 NVMe SSDs rocketing
past the 10,000MB/sec barrier. There
were options whether you wanted
more CPU processing power and less
GPU, or a balance between the two.
So even without Intel competing in
the high-end price category, plenty
of variation was available. I can’t
wait to see what the workstation
market has to offer this time next
year when we revisit it again.

Testresults
CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential read
Armari Labs Winner
MC16R7 £4,500
Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A132C

(MB/sec)

12,373
10,074

Overall desktop 8 sequential write
CrystalDiskMark
performance

Armari Labs Winner
MC16R7 £4,500
Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A132C

(MB/sec)

11,807
10,191

PC Pro benchmarks

(video encoding)

Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A132C

842

Chillblast
Core i9

828

Workstation
Specialists

7,475

Workstation
Specialists

6,916

PCSpecialist
Onyx Pro Recommended

Armari
MC64TP

7,418

PCSpecialist
Onyx Ultra

6,818

PCSpecialist
Onyx Ultra

PCSpecialist
Onyx Ultra

7,404

PCSpecialist
Onyx Pro

6,802

PCSpecialist
Onyx Pro

7,213

Recommended

Armari
MC64TP

Recommended

5,792

6,851

Chillblast
Threadripper

4,949

Chillblast
Threadripper

Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A164T

6,844

Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A164T

4,949

0

2,500

5,000 7,500 10,000 12,500

0

2,500 5,000 7,500

794

706

Workstation
Specialists

0

Armari
MC64TP

716

692

Lenovo P620
Tower
10,000 12,500

PCSpecialist
Onyx Ultra

746

200

400

600

Relativescores(Corei7-4760KPC=100)

800

1,000

772
754
753

Chillblast
Threadripper

731

Workstation
Specialists

731

Lenovo P620
Tower

506

849
827

Scan 3XS Labs Winner
GWP-ME A164T £10,000

Chillblast
Threadripper

2,986

Scan 3XS
GWP-ME A132C

822

721

Armari
MC64TP

Lenovo P620
Tower

PCSpecialist
Onyx Pro Recommended

Scan 3XS Labs Winner
GWP-ME A164T £10,000

5,015

3,519

849

Armari Labs Winner
MC16R7 £4,500

Chillblast
Core i9

Lenovo P620
Tower

Chillblast
Core i9

731

6,871

Labs Winner
£10,000

(overall)

Armari Labs Winner
MC16R7 £4,500

Chillblast
Core i9

Labs Winner
£10,000

PC Pro benchmarks

0

529
200

400

600

800 1,000

Relativescores(Corei7-4760KPC=100)

93

TheNetwork
Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers

Buyer’sguide

All-in-one
business
protection 2023
If they want to stay safe in 2023, SMBs should switch
to all-in-one business protection devices, argues
Dave Mitchell, who puts four such devices to the test

S

mall and medium businesses
(SMBs) still relying on
separate anti-malware,
web security and firewall
products need to dump them and get a
next-generation UTM (unified threat
management) appliance. These are the
perfect defenders for SMBs as they
amalgamate every security service
into a single, easily managed unit.
There’s no place for separates, or
point solutions, in today’s fearsome
threat landscape: they’re complex to
manage, prohibitively expensive and
require IT staff trained in many
disciplines. Malicious online activity
is increasing exponentially and using
multiple security solutions that, in
many cases, don’t even talk to each
other is adding unnecessary risk.
The latest UTM appliances are
chock-full of security features.
Along with a business-class firewall,
they offer virus and malware
protection, threat detection,
intrusion prevention systems (IPS)
and web, email and application
security. Running them all on one
hardware platform means every
94

feature is in lockstep, and most can
be managed locally from a single
administrative web console and
from the cloud as well.
In this month’s guide, we review
appliances from four well-established
names – Firewalla, Sophos,

BELOW Firewalla
Gold offers a good set
of features for a
one-off payment

WatchGuard and Zyxel. We’ve chosen
solutions suited to environments
ranging from small and home offices
up to larger, more complex networks
and test them in our lab to help you
make the right buying decision.

Close to the edge

UTM appliances are designed to be
deployed at the network perimeter so
all inbound and outbound internet
traffic passes through a single point.
This makes it simple to apply
company-wide security policies
to every individual and device
located behind it.
All four products in this guide are
well suited to SMBs with limited
on-site IT expertise. You connect
them in between your internet router
and local network and run a quickstart wizard that enables essential
protection by creating and applying a
default security policy for you.
Another advantage over separates
is that it’s much easier to keep all
security services updated with
the latest attack signatures and
intrusion prevention profiles. The

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

The Network BusinessFocus

best products can do this for you by
automatically requesting updates at
regular intervals and will also advise
you of new firmware upgrades.

so you can apply the same security
policies to wired and wireless clients.
Two of the appliances on test this
month include integral wireless
services, but the differences could
hardly be greater. The most expensive
model only offers older Wi-Fi 5
services and basic WPA2 encryption,
whereas the cheaper one provides a
Wi-Fi 6 AP and supports the more
secure WPA3 encryption.

Security detail

Appliances have evolved rapidly to
keep up with the latest threats and
offer an incredible range of security
measures. The biggest decision
facing SMBs is deciding which ones
they need, and the good news is
that most vendors offer a range of
subscription services so you can pick
and choose the features you want
and stay within your budget.
Anti-malware is an essential
ingredient that checks traffic and web
downloads for malicious content and
blocks it at the gateway so it doesn’t
get onto your network. Look for
sandboxing, which protects against
zero-day attacks by grabbing
unknown files when they’re
downloaded and running them in a
cloud environment to see if they’re
safe to allow through.
Web filtering is a valuable ally
for improving productivity as
you can decide which types of
websites users are allowed to visit.
Application controls are a great
feature that use thousands of
signatures for managing access to

Cloud nine

common applications and categories
such as social networking.
With the vast majority of web
traffic now encrypted, TLS (transport
layer security) 1.3 inspection is
another must-have feature as this
allows the appliance to decrypt and
inspect HTTPS traffic at the network
perimeter. This can place a heavy load
on the appliance’s CPU so it’s
important to choose a model with a
good hardware specification – the
performance number to look for in
the datasheet is the SSL/TLS or HTTPS
inspection throughput. One company
goes even further, with its appliances
having a separate processor dedicated
to this task.

On my radio

No right-minded
business will be
without a wireless
network and a
security appliance
can protect them
as well. As long as
you ensure that
your existing
wireless access
points (APs) are
deployed on the
appliance’s LAN
side, it will be able
to inspect their
traffic and apply
security policies.
Another
alternative is
to choose an
appliance with
an integrated
wireless AP. The
main advantage
here is it sees the
AP as just another
network interface

Businesses that want to deploy
multiple UTM appliances to protect
remote sites and home workers
should make cloud management a top
TOP Firewalla offers a
priority. Most vendors provide free
cloud-hosted service
cloud portal accounts and, after
for managing multiple
registering the appliances, you can
security appliances
monitor and configure them from
anywhere over the internet.
ABOVE Sophos
Another great feature is zerodelivers a wealth of
touch provisioning, as this reduces
protection features,
the burden on support staff and
including sandboxing
doesn’t require end users to do
anything other than plug the
appliance in and provide an internet
connection. After registering the
appliance with your account, it can
be sent to the remote site and, once
connected, it takes all the settings
and security policies from the cloud.
You can also extend protection to
remote workers beyond
“Most vendors offer a range the firewall’s reach, as
of subscription services so some vendors have
integrated support into
you can pick and choose the their
appliances for their
features you want and stay endpoint protection
within your budget”
agents. These link up
with the appliance’s
cloud management portal, provide
status information and issue alerts if
threats have been detected.
No business should think that
LEFT The portal threat
it’s too small to be of interest to
map in WatchGuard
cybercriminals; everyone is now fair
Cloud shows the
game. The numbers make grim
source of web traffic
reading – in its 2022 Cyber Threat
Report, ISP Beaming concluded that
2022 was the worst year on record,
with UK businesses experiencing
687,489 online breach attempts, or
one every 46 seconds (to read the full
report, visit pcpro.link/348beaming).
It’s clear that SMBs must take
security seriously, and investing
in a UTM appliance is a smart move.
The products on review all offer an
impressive range of data protection
LEFT Zyxel’s Nebula
measures at affordable prices, so read
cloud portal offers
on to see which one will be your new
great remote
network guardian.
management tools
95

FirewallaGold

Simpletodeployandmanage,
FirewallaGolddelivers
valuablethreatprotection
for smallnetworks
SCORE
PRICE $485 (approx £380) from
firewalla.com

F

irewalla claims its Gold security
appliance is the world’s most
affordable multi-gigabit
firewall, and the sub-£400 price
certainly lends credence to this.
In fact, value looks even better as this
is a one-off fee that includes the
appliance, all security services,
lifetime updates and online support.
This palm-sized package uses its
aluminium shell as a heatsink and
sports a reasonable hardware
package with a 1.6GHz quad-core
Intel Celeron N3160 CPU and 4GB of
DDR3 memory in the driving seat.
You get four gigabit ports for WAN
and LAN duties, but if you want more
speed, the Gold Plus model ups these
to 2.5GbE at a cost of around £486.
It’s a cinch to deploy as you insert
it between your internet router and
network and use the Firewalla
Android or iOS mobile app to link up
with the appliance’s USB security
dongle for Bluetooth pairing and
activation. The appliance can also
function in bridged mode if you
have a separate modem and ISP
router, and the excellent online
help also shows where it fits in a
meshed wireless network.
We used the iOS app on an iPad,
which required an email address to
register the appliance and then asked
us to scan its QR code. An autoconfiguration wizard steps in next

where you choose an operation
mode, add your internet speeds
for usage analysis, state whether
you’re using Google Meet, Microsoft
Teams, Webex or Zoom for traffic
prioritisation using Smart Queue
and enable the Active Protect mode
so it can block malicious activities
and send alerts.
The appliance builds on its
standard SPI (stateful packet
inspection) firewall with extra layers
of protection such as the Zeek IDS
(intrusion detection and inspection)
service and the OpenDNS-powered
Family Protect feature for filtering
out malicious and undesirable
websites. No technical expertise
is required as a base firewall rule
for inbound traffic inspection is
created for you, while Active Protect
turns on IDS and IPS (intrusion
prevention service) with options for
default or strict modes.
The mobile app provides a tidy
dashboard showing network
performance and a graph for traffic
flows and blocked activities, with
icons below for viewing all network
devices and accessing the various
security features. Under the surface,
the appliance is surprisingly
configurable as you can create VPNs
for remote working and ports can be
placed in separate groups with
custom rules.

These control access to targets,
which can be anything from a single
IP address or range to a domain, a
port or a specific country. You can
also assign popular apps as targets,
with Firewalla currently offering
nine, including Facebook, Instagram,
TikTok, YouTube and Twitter.
For general operations, all bad
connections are automatically
blocked while those deemed
suspicious raise an alert. Pop-up
notifications are very informative as
they tell you which network device is
RECOMMENDED
viewing videos, playing games or
being very naughty – it also advises
on abnormal upload activity with a
map showing the location of the
external endpoint.
“The sub-£400 price is a
The appliance doesn’t
have a local web interface
one-off fee that includes
the appliance, all security but Firewalla’s new
cloud-hosted managed
services, lifetime updates security portal (MSP)
and online support”
provides remote
monitoring services.
We tried the free personal plan,
which supports one appliance, and
were impressed with the level of
information provided and the options
to view alerts, apply blocking actions,
create new device groups and assign
custom rules.
Don’t be deceived by its compact
dimensions: the Firewalla Gold packs
in an impressive range of network
BELOW Mobile apps
security measures. It’s easy to install,
are provided for
the well-designed mobile app makes
appliance
light work of management and the
management
all-inclusive fee will appeal to small
businesses and home workers that
want to avoid the expense of yearly
security subscriptions.
ABOVE Thecompact
FirewallaGoldpacksin
animpressivesetof
securitymeasures

SPECIFICATIONS
Desktop fanless chassis
1.6GHz quad-core Intel Celeron
N3160 CPU 4GB DDR3 RAM
4 x gigabit ports (WAN, 3 x LAN)
2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, USB-A
security dongle HDMI RJ-45
console port external PSU
wall-mount bracket Android
and iOS mobile apps 130 x 110
x 34mm (WDH) 565g 1yr
hardware warranty
96

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The Network Business
BusinessFocus
Focus

SophosXGS126w

Only Wi-Fi 5 services, but it
delivers Xstream power, lots
of security measures and
great remote management
SCORE
PRICE Appliance with 3yr Xstream
Protection, £3,585 exc VAT from
broadbandbuyer.com

S

MBs and branch offices looking
for a powerful security
appliance will find Sophos’
XGS 126w a worthy candidate. Inside
this compact desktop model lurk two
processors, allowing Sophos to claim
an impressively high firewall IMIX
(internet mix) throughput of
10.3Gbits/sec and 0.9Gbits/sec with
all threat protection services enabled.
This super power is achieved by
teaming up a 2.6GHz dual-core AMD
Ryzen Embedded R1600 CPU with
Sophos’ Xstream flow processor.
The latter provides a dedicated
FastPath hardware layer that handles
TLS 1.3 encrypted traffic plus deep
packet inspection (DPI) and
application acceleration, with the
latest SFOS v19 firmware adding
IPsec VPNs to FastPath.
Network ports are plentiful, with
the appliance offering 12 copper
gigabit ports with 30W PoE+ on the
last two and two gigabit SFP fibre
ports for longer connection
distances. The triplet of external
aerials indicate that wireless is on the
menu, although this is the older
dual-band 2.4/5GHz 11ac variety.
Sophos’ new licensing scheme
presents a pick-and-mix buffet of
features so you can choose only those

security services you need. We’ve
gone the whole hog with a three-year
Xstream subscription, which
activates the base firewall, all
Xstream features, the network, web
and zero-day protection modules,
central orchestration and enhanced
24/7 support. Email and web server
protection are optional, with each
costing £365 for three-year licences.
Installation is a pleasant
experience, as the web console’s
deployment wizard automatically
upgrades the firmware to the latest
version. All you need to do is set a
strong admin password. The wizard
configures the LAN port zones as well
as internet access, and enables
essential protection with a default
set of firewall policy rules that
include anti-malware and web
content filtering.
The appliance’s local Control
Center web console keeps you firmly
in touch with the action, presenting
a detailed overview of network
activity, security issues, web traffic
and detected network attacks, plus
blocked and allowed applications and
web categories. The “User & device
insights” section keeps a tally of the
advanced security measures, and
clicking on the zero-day protection
portion opens a report on
downloaded files sent to the Sophos
cloud sandbox for further analysis to
see if they can be safely released.
Policies make light work of
security configuration: they bring

together firewall rules, service
filters, time schedules, web and
application filtering, intrusion
detection and email anti-spam.
The web filtering service offers 130
URL categories to block or allow,
and SafeSearch and YouTube
restrictions can also be enabled.
Application filters are equally
extensive, with Sophos currently
providing 3,532 signatures, 73
specifically for all Facebook
activities. For more control over
users and groups, you can download
the Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS
RECOMMENDED
and Android authentication
clients from the web console and
apply extra policies with daily
upload and download
“The internal wireless AP restrictions and limits
on internet usage.
supports multiple SSIDs
The internal wireless
with client isolation, and
AP supports multiple
their traffic can be placed SSIDs with client
in separate network zones” isolation, and their
traffic can be placed in
separate network zones with custom
security policies. Guest users can be
presented with hotspots and
acceptable use policies, but this
Wi-Fi 5 AP doesn’t support the
more secure WPA3 encryption.
We have a Sophos Central account
and registering the firewall with it
provides full remote management
services as the portal presents the
same Control Center console.
There’s more to be gained with the
appliance’s Synchronized Security
feature, which uses a heartbeat to
BELOW A local web
monitor systems running the Sophos
console and Sophos
Intercept X endpoint agent and
Cloud integration are
isolate them if malware is detected.
both provided
The XGS 126w impresses with its
easy deployment and deep set of
security features. The Wi-Fi 5 access
point is dated, but the appliance
works seamlessly with the Sophos
Central cloud service and its smart
Xstream architecture delivers an
impressive performance.
ABOVE The two
processors inside the
XGS 126w offer plenty
of power

SPECIFICATIONS
Desktop chassis 2.6GHz dual-core AMD
Ryzen Embedded R1600 CPU 4GB DDR4
RAM 64GB SATA SSD 12 x copper gigabit
ports (PoE+ on ports 11/12) 2 x SFP gigabit
ports dual-band Wi-Fi 5 RJ-45/micro-USB
COM ports USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 USB-A 2 Flexi
module slot external PSU (max 2) 320 x 213
x 44mm (WDH) 1yr hardware warranty
97

WatchGuardFirebox
T45-W-PoE

Delivers joined-up wired
and Wi-Fi 6 network
security plus classy cloud
management at a fair price
SCORE
PRICE Appliance with 3yr Total Security
Suite, £3,148 exc VAT from guardsite.co.uk

W

atchGuard’s Firebox
T45-W-PoE is an eyecatcher not just for its
tomato red chassis but also for its
excellent range of security measures.
Aimed at small businesses and branch
offices, it combines wired and wireless
protection and is one of the first
desktop appliances to bring integral
Wi-Fi 6 services to the table.
Sporting a new NXP quad-core
1.6GHz CPU, it claims a high raw
firewall throughput of 3.94Gbits/sec
and 557Mbits/sec with all UTM
services enabled – respective speed
boosts of 16% and 86% over the older
T40-W. Its internal aerials don’t give
the wireless game away, and for those
who want WAN redundancy, the
T45-CW model has an integral 5G NR
SIM slot at the rear.
The appliance has five gigabit ports
for WAN, LAN and DMZ duties. The
fourth LAN port presents 30W PoE+
services for powering external devices
such as IP cameras or phones and
other wireless APs.
WatchGuard offers a range of
pocket-friendly licensing schemes;
we’ve shown the price for a three-year
Total Security subscription. This
enables a wealth of services including

gateway antivirus, anti-spam, web
content filtering, application controls,
intrusion prevention services (IPS)
and an advanced persistent threat
(APT) blocker with cloud sandboxing.
You also get WatchGuard’s
reputation enabled defence (RED)
cloud-based URL filtering,
DNSWatch to monitor client DNS
requests and block access to known
malicious domains and ThreatSync
XDR for collection, correlation and
automated responses to threat
events. Unlike the entry-level T25
appliances, all T45 models have
enough CPU power to run the
Cylance AI-based IntelligentAV
malware scanning engine.
The appliance can be managed in
standalone mode, but both the Basic
and Total Security packages include
access to the WatchGuard Cloud for
remote management, with the latter
extending log and report data
retention to one year and 30 days
respectively. It’s easy to set up: we
registered the appliance with our
support account, allocated it to our
site and chose the management and
monitoring option.
All the settings in the local console
are mirrored in the cloud portal.
From the content scanning section
you activate antivirus scanning,
APT blocking, IntelligentAV and
anti-spam policies, while the
network≈blocking section covers
botnet detection, IPS, port and site

blocks and detection of Tor (The onion
router) exit points.
The portal’s content filtering
section allows you to control website
access by creating policies using up
to 130 URL categories and deciding
whether to block or allow them.
You can use a single policy to
combine these with application
controls, and WatchGuard
presents over 1,250 predefined
app signatures, including 40
subcategories for social networking
with 12 just for Facebook activities.
Monitoring details are impressive.
You choose a remote Firebox from
the cloud portal and view details such
as live activity, traffic, application
usage, blocked websites, the top
clients, a geolocation map, IPS and
botnet detection. The
“WatchGuard presents
dashboard view takes
all the features from
over 1,250 predefined
WatchGuard’s onapp signatures, including
premises Dimension
40 subcategories for
monitoring software
social networking”
and provides executive
threat summaries, live
graphs of all security services, a
customisable global threat map and
policy activity graphs.
Wireless services see big
improvements over the older
Fireboxes as you can now create
multiple SSIDs with guest networks,
enable either or both radios on each
one and enforce strong WPA3
encryption. It’s a good performer,
too, with large file copies between a
BELOW This appliance
Wi-Fi 6 Windows workstation and
can either be managed
server on the LAN returning closelocally or integrated
range speeds of 89MB/sec.
with the cloud
WatchGuard’s Firebox T45-W-PoE
offers enterprise-class gateway
security measures at an affordable
price, making it a great choice for
SMBs and remote offices. Integral
Wi-Fi 6 services add extra value and it
can be easily managed and monitored
from WatchGuard’s slick cloud portal.
ABOVE The Firebox
T45-W-PoE offers
enterprise-class
security measures

SPECIFICATIONS
Desktop fanless chassis quad-core 1.6GHz
NXP LS1043ASE7QQB CPU 4GB DDR4 RAM
16GB M.2 SATA drive 5 x gigabit ports (WAN,
4 x LAN – PoE+ on LAN4) dual-band Wi-Fi 5
2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 RJ-45 serial port
external PSU 216 x 203 x 43mm (WDH) web
browser, Dimension and cloud management
warranty included in subscription
98

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The Network BusinessFocus

ZyxelZyWALLATP500

Zyxel delivers tough gateway
security and advanced
threat protection at a
very appealing price
SCORE
PRICE Appliance with 1yr Gold
Security licence, £1,191 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com

Z

yxel’s ZyWALL ATP (advanced
threat protection) appliances
are aimed at SMBs that want
much more than a firewall can offer.
The ATP500 takes the standard UTM
features from Zyxel’s USG Flex family
and adds advanced security measures
such as cloud-based threat
intelligence using machine learning,
sandboxing to protect against
unknown threats and deep analytics.
The ATP500 sits in the middle of
this family of six appliances and
claims a decent 2.5Gbits/sec raw
firewall throughput and 0.9Gbits/sec
with all UTM services enabled. This
desktop unit presents seven copper
gigabit ports that can each be
configured for WAN, LAN or DMZ
duties, plus an SFP fibre gigabit port
for longer connections.
The price we’ve shown will appeal
to smaller businesses as it includes a
one-year Gold Security licence, with
one- and two-year renewals costing
£381 and £660 respectively. This
enables every security service and is
the only licence Zyxel offers.

It’s an
impressive list, since it
includes all the advanced protection
features along with hybrid antimalware, email security, web content
filtering, application controls,
IPS, all threat filters and Zyxel’s
SecuReporter cloud-hosted reporting
and analytics service. Another smart
feature is Zyxel’s collaborative
detection and response (CDR), which
allows you to set thresholds on the
number of times client devices can
trigger the malware, IDP or web
threat services before they are
automatically quarantined.
The ATP500 can be easily managed
in standalone mode, where a wizard
enables internet access, upgrades the
firmware and activates all security
services with a default firewall policy
applied. You can keep a close eye on
all the action through the console’s
ATP dashboard, which provides a
detailed seven-day view with charts
and graphs of all security services,
reputation filters, the top apps, threat
statistics and sandbox activity.
Most businesses will prefer the
Nebula Control Center (NCC) platform,
although it’s annoying that the email
security component is still only
supported in standalone mode. The
benefits outweigh this, though, as NCC
provides cloud management services

ABOVE The
ZyWALL ATP500
includes seven gigabit
ports, plus an SFP
gigabit port

for all
ATP appliances
along with Zyxel’s wireless APs,
switches and mobile routers.
Registering the ATP500 to our
cloud account was simple: we used
the Nebula iOS app on an iPad to scan
its QR code and add it to our site. The
appliance then appeared online,
disabled its local web console and
took all settings from our cloud portal.
We found it easier to use than
RECOMMENDED
standalone mode as a single site policy
applies firewall rules, web content
filtering, applications controls and
the anomaly detection and prevention
service. From the security services
section, you can create as
“Hybrid mode activates
many web and application
filters as you want and
Zyxel’s cloud threat
intelligence, which teams up choose which ones to use
in the policy.
a local signature database
Zyxel’s application
with cloud queries”
patrol service presents
over 3,700 business app
signatures, including plenty for social
networking activities. You can choose
from 103 predefined categories for
web filtering controls and add custom
URLs to the blocking list as well.
Anti-malware services are global
and the hybrid mode activates Zyxel’s
cloud threat intelligence, which
teams up a local signature database
with cloud queries to check whether
it’s safe to allow downloaded files to
LEFT The ATP500 can
pass. It’s the same with the sandbox
be managed in
service, which is enabled with one
standalone mode or
click, runs unknown files safely in the
from the slick Nebula
cloud and destroys them if they are
cloud portal
deemed to be malicious.
The ZyWALL ATP500 is a great
choice for SMBs and remote offices
that want tough and affordable
gateway security. Zyxel needs to get
its email security integrated with the
Nebula cloud portal, but apart from
that, this desktop appliance delivers
sophisticated protection against
zero-day threats, is easily managed
and remarkably good value.
SPECIFICATIONS
Desktop chassis quad-core CPU 4GB
RAM 7 x gigabit ports (WAN, LAN, DMZ)
gigabit SFP port 2 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 serial
port external PSU 300 x 188 x 44mm
(WDH) 1yr Gold licence web browser
management 5yr limited warranty
99

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EposExpandVision5

Thisversatileall-in-oneVC
barwithgoodvideoquality
combinesMicrosoftTeams
RoomsandBYODmodes
SCORE
PRICE £1,600 exc VAT
from best4systems.co.uk

E

pos offers a wide range of
business videoconferencing
(VC) solutions, and the Expand
Vision 5 is its most versatile product
yet. Designed for small and mediumsized meeting rooms, the Vision 5
is the company’s first all-in-one VC
bar and combines built-in support
for Microsoft Teams Rooms with a
BYOD mode so you can use your own
preferred VC app.
It takes many of the features from
the Vision 3T – a dedicated Teams
Rooms bar – but adds two internal
speakers, doubles the number of
digital MEMS microphones and
provides dual HDMI ports (one for
for connecting a PC or Mac, one for a
meeting room monitor). It also uses a
classy Sony 4K UHD camera, which
offers a wide 110° horizontal field of
view (FoV) and outputs at 1080p.
Digital PTZ functions are used for
automated framing and speaker
tracking, while noise reduction is
handled by the embedded Epos AI
feature. The Teams side of things is
handled by an 8-core Qualcomm
Snapdragon CPU plus 4GB of memory,
which runs the certified Microsoft
Teams Rooms on Android app.
Setting up the Vision 5 may
require some extra layout, as after
loading the Android 10 OS, it presents
a setup screen on a local monitor that
requires user input. If you have a
touchscreen then you’re ready to
go but, if not, you may need to

consider the Epos Expand Control
touchscreen tablet or the Vision-RC
01T Bluetooth remote handset,
which aren’t included and cost £520
and £45 respectively.
We opted for the cheapest option
by connecting a wireless dongle for a
keyboard and mouse to the USB-C
port. For network connections,
gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi 5 are
supported; we used the former,
which automatically connected and
received internet access.
An onscreen wizard guides you
through setting a time zone, changing
the admin password, optionally
enabling remote management with
the Epos Manager cloud service and
updating the firmware. Teams setup
is simple, too, as it generates a unique
code that you use to assign the Vision
5 to your Microsoft 365 account.
It duly appeared in our Teams
admin console as a new Teams Rooms
on Android device. We used the free
Basic licence, which supports up to 25
Rooms devices and provides features
such as scheduling, joining meetings
and white-boarding. Upgrading to a
Pro licence removes the device limit
and enables remote firmware
upgrades and health status views.
The Vision 5 presents the standard
Teams meeting interface, and
controls such as audio mute, volume

and ending meetings are accessed
using an attached mouse, the handset
or Control tablet. During Teams
meetings we found auto-tracking
took a couple of seconds to pick up
the active speaker and follow them
as they moved around the room.
Auto-tracking can be disabled
from the camera settings page; in
manual mode, the Vision 5 uses a
combination of 4x digital zoom and
mechanical pan/tilt to move the lens
to the desired position. The camera
presents a sharply focused
image with good colour
“The four MEMs mics
balance, but don’t point it
impressed, with meeting
at brightly lit areas such
participants saying they
as sunny windows as it
could hear us clearly at
doesn’t currently have
backlight compensation.
distances of up to 4.5m”
The twin speakers lack
any decent bass but voices are very
clear, and we found a volume level of
80% was sufficient to cover our
24-metre square meeting room.
The four MEMs mics impressed,
with remote meeting participants
saying they could hear us clearly at
distances of up to 4.5 metres.
In host mode, the Expand Vision 5
worked fine with the Teams and
Skype apps on a Windows PC. The
BELOW The Vision 5
runs the Teams Rooms process is automatic, with the camera
swapping to host mode when it senses
on Android app and
a USB connection, and returning to
supports BYOD mode
standalone Teams mode when the
cable is removed.
The Expand Vision 5 will appeal
to SMBs that want a flexible all-inone VC bar at a reasonable price.
It’s easy to use, delivers good video
quality and seamlessly combines
Microsoft Teams Rooms and BYOD
modes. DAVE MITCHELL
ABOVE Epos’ latest
videoconferencing
bar includes a classy
Sony 4K UHD camera

SPECIFICATIONS
Sony 4K UHD camera 110° FoV 1080p
Android 10 4x digital zoom 2 x speakers
4 x MEMS mics gigabit Ethernet Wi-Fi 5
Bluetooth 5 HDMI in/out USB-C
external PSU with 2.1m cable 620 x 115 x
74mm (WDH) 2.5kg wall-mount bracket
2yr limited warranty
100

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The Network Reviews

QnapTS-855eU-RP

Thisshort-depthrackNAS
providesbigstorageina
smallspaceanddelivers
strongperformance
SCORE
PRICE Diskless, £1,860 exc VAT
from broadbandbuyer.com

Q

nap’s TS-855eU-RP aims to
show that good things come
in small packages as it
squeezes eight 3.5in SATA drive bays
into a chassis that’s only 297mm deep.
This makes it one of the shortest 2U
rack NAS devices on the market and
makes it ideal for slotting into a small
wall box or a two-post rack cabinet.
The appliance is powered by a
reasonably modern 2.8GHz 8-core
Intel Atom C5125 processor, and the
base 8GB of DDR4 RAM can be
upgraded to 64GB. Dual 2.5GbE ports
are provided along with a pair of
PCI-E expansion slots and, even
though the motherboard is barely
12cm deep, Qnap has found room to
add a couple of M.2 NVMe slots.
The lack of an “H” in the model
name indicates that Qnap is aiming
the TS-855eU-RP primarily at
businesses that prefer its more nimble
QTS operating system. The setup
wizard offers an option to install
QuTS hero, but that’s a lot more
memory-hungry so you’ll need to
upgrade the memory to at least 16GB
to get the best out of it.
For testing, we decided to go
with QuTS and used dual mirrored
480GB Kingston M.2 NVMe SSDs as
a fast system pool. For data storage,
we fitted four 20TB Western Digital
DC HC560 hard disks, although when
we configured them as a 53TB

RAID5 array, QuTS complained about
insufficient memory so we upgraded
this to 16GB.
If data integrity and protection
are top priorities then QuTS is your
best bet as it offers a lot more features
than QTS. These include end-to-end
checksums, ZFS copy-on-write for
fast, near unlimited snapshots,
triple mirroring and triple parity
RAID, plus WORM (write once read
many) policies for protecting NAS
share data from tampering or
unauthorised deletion.
App choices are very similar.
Qnap offers around 120 apps for both
OSes, with all key backup apps
present and correct. These include
Qsync for protecting PC, macOS,
Android and iOS end user devices,
and Hybrid Backup Sync 3 for
on-appliance data backup and
syncing to remote servers.
Remote replication is deftly
handled by the SnapSync app, which
provides fast snapshot backups to
remote QuTS appliances using
block-level replication run to a
schedule or in real-time. The free
Hyper Data Protector is great
for backing up virtualised
environments, and we had
no problems using it to create
scheduled jobs for selected virtual
machines (VMs) on our Hyper-V
and VMware vSphere hosts.

For performance testing, we fitted
a standard Broadcom dual-port fibre
10GbE card, which was accepted
without any problems. It’s worth
noting that Synology’s short-depth
RS1221+ rack NAS is only certified
for the company’s own-brand NICs
and storage devices.
NAS performance over 10GbE is
excellent, with a share mapped to a
Dell T640 Windows Server 2019 host
returning Iometer sequential read
and write rates both of 9.3Gbits/sec,
while random rates panned out at
RECOMMENDED
9.3Gbits/sec and 9.1Gbits/sec. The
last two numbers highlight another
QuTS advantage: its efficient ARC
(adaptive read cache) and ZIL (ZFS
intent log) features do away with the
need for SSD caches.
Real-world performance is great:
copies of a 25GB test file
between the NAS and
“Remote replication is
server averaged read and
handled by the SnapSync
write rates of 8Gbits/sec
app, which provides fast
and 9.1Gbits/sec, while
snapshot backups to
our backup test using a
remote QuTS appliances” 22.4GB folder with 10,500
files was secured to the
share at an average of 2.4Gbits/sec.
IP SAN performance over 10GbE is
a mixed bag, with a 1TB iSCSI target
delivering read and write rates both of
9.2Gbits/sec. Increasing the pressure
with a dual 10GbE MPIO link to the
target saw only modest improvements
to 13.9Gbits/sec and 10Gbits/sec.
You’ll need to double the base
memory to run QuTS hero, but the
TS-855eU-RP is ideal for space-poor
SMBs as it packs a high storage
density into a remarkably small and
very quiet rack chassis. It delivers
good 10GbE performance and offers
an incredible range of business apps
for both OSes, with a sharp focus on
data protection. DAVE MITCHELL
ABOVE Eight SATA
drive bays are
squeezed into the
297mm deep chassis

LEFT Qnap’s QuTS
software offers
high-quality data
protection features

SPECIFICATIONS
2U rack chassis 2.8GHz 8-core Intel Atom
C5125 CPU 8GB DDR4 ECC SODIMM (max
64GB) 8 x LFF/SFF SATA hot-swap drive bays
2 x M.2 NVMe SSDs, supports RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10,
Triple Parity, Triple Mirror (QuTS) 2 x 2.5GbE
4 x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 2 x PCI-E Gen 3 x4 2 x
300W hot-plug PSUs 3yr hardware warranty
103

The big cloud
How can you
your
question: protect
assets on
You may own your data, but are you really in
charge of it? Steve Cassidy explores some of
the pitfalls of hosted services

I

write this as an old fool who
remembers sitting in endless
meetings and presentations back
when the whole concept of the
cloud was starting up. So I can tell you
that, right from the beginning, while
vendors were pitching the allencompassing business suite that was
going to change your life, there was
very little discussion about important
ideas such as backup and portability.
The focus was much more on what
I call the imaginary cloud. That is, the
service that business decision makers
dream of: perfectly reliable, utterly
global and monolithic, unconstrained
by electricity supply or computing
power, infinite in storage and free to
use. When the boss says “the cloud”,
this is likely what they’re picturing.
You can see why I call it imaginary.
Nor was there much talk of assets.
This is problematic, because assets
104

someone else’s
servers?

aren’t just spy-movie slang for
deadly assassins – they represent a
crossover of two vitally important
business concepts; namely economics
and intellectual property. And
they’re fundamentally important,
because cloud computing cannot
work without customers
“The cloud is a mash-up of transferring assets from
different products, with inside of their businesses
to outside.
similarities in their modes
The thing is, if the cloud
of delivery but differences really were a universal,
in their overall operation” ineffable resource then it
would be a melting pot of
everybody’s assets, inextricably
cobwebbed with links and likes.
Fortunately, it isn’t. In fact, the
cloud isn’t a single thing at all: it’s a
mash-up of all sorts of different
products, with similarities in
their modes of delivery but
many differences in their overall

operation. I’m talking about all
those acronyms that redundantly end
in “aaS” – “I” is for Infrastructure, “P”
is for Platform, “S” is for Software
and so on. And which particular
version of the cloud you’re working
with doesn’t just reflect what you
get for your money, it determines
how easy it will be to keep your
assets within reach.

Infrastructure as a Service

Talk of assets is almost orthogonal to
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
setups. With IaaS you quite literally
own nothing. You certainly don’t
own the servers, and even the local
hardware that handles your cloud
traffic is likely to be owned by
someone else, who bundles up a kit
rental cost, connection contracts,
maintenance and business continuity
into one single relationship.

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It’s easy to see why this appeals to
larger businesses, although it’s often
used by companies that have little
need for the elastic part of the cloud
proposition – as you get bigger,
computation demand tends to get less
and less variable, at least in ways that
benefit from cloud elasticity.
Regardless, IaaS can save the day
when it comes to hanging on to your
assets through the worst possible
scenarios. Your data and code reside
in dedicated virtual machines, within
a network that isn’t physically tied to
any particular geographic location.
You can keep your e-commerce site
up and running from literally
anywhere – the back of your garage
at home, if need be – because the
infrastructure is inherently steerable,
switchable, scalable and so forth.
Backing up, meanwhile, is as
simple as grabbing a copy of a
running VM, perhaps even while it’s
participating in live sales transactions.
One copy can sit at the hosting centre,
and another can be dumped to a local
NAS appliance. Tick the backup box
and you have instant protection
against plane crash, tsunami, lahar,
nuclear attack – you name it.
Of course, that’s not how it works
in the wild. The companies that have
most to gain from IaaS are often those
stuck with older code and resources
that can’t be simply flipped into a VM
and operated over a wide-area
network. That old code is itself a key
part of their asset base. So cloud
management may be easy to embrace,
but a little harder to stand back up
after the Bad Thing has happened.

The Network Cloudsecurity

Conversely, there are deployments
where the architect has stuck
meticulously to the rules of serverless
computing, so that no platformspecific features are used in functional
or customer-facing code. This ensures
that services can be fired up as needed
on any half-decent host, without
relying on a particular vendor’s
resources or systems. If your cloud
asset is a website with a simple,
modern mission then serverlessness
is a very helpful step towards
protecting your assets. Note, though,
that the term is really part of the
imaginary cloud: of course the
server is still needed, it’s just a case
of hiding what lies beneath.

Platform as a Service

The situation is similar with Platform
as a Service (PaaS) offerings. While
PaaS chisels out a different jigsaw
border between supplier and
consumer, the distinction is almost
academic from an asset protection
and management point of view. At the
end of the day, such things are always
the responsibility of the customer.
This, of course, can be a problem
if the customer has bought into the
vision of the imaginary cloud – such
as when a government department
keeps the entire voter database on a
single hosted VM. Hosted platforms
can and do crash, and they can be
hacked or misconfigured
just like local desktops
and servers. Unlike local
systems, they can also
get abruptly suspended
because someone’s credit
card was maxed out.
The red flag is when
anyone suggests that a
system is safe because it’s in
the cloud. Read the small
print and I very much doubt
you’ll find that the provider
has undertaken to patch,
scan or even traffic-analyse
your leased platform. Many

high-profile “hacks”
and “breaches” are
perpetrated not by
shadowy figures in
far-off countries, but
by white-collar
criminals who know
how vulnerable a PaaS
system can be.
To be fair, with
a clear brief and
a reasonable
understanding of what
the parts of a multiserver database or web
host actually do, a
modern, containerbased VM deployment
inside a PaaS provider
such as Amazon or
ABOVE PaaS services
Azure can be pretty robust. Issues are
such as AWS and
more likely to arise from complexities
Azure are generally
outside of the boilerplate specification
pretty robust
– old bits of software with an
unreplaced vital role, strange
regulatory demands, anonymisation
of sensitive data and so forth.
Thinking about PaaS should
illustrate the value of owning, and
assembling for yourself, the building
blocks of your cloud systems.
Protecting your assets by being able to
fulfil the machine management role on
your own becomes much
“Hosted platforms can and easier and more likely to
do crash, and they can be help out once something
or contractual
hacked or misconfigured –– technical
gets messed up.

just like local desktops
and servers”

BELOW Keep your
assets on a NAS to give
yourself peace of mind

Software as
a Service

So far so good – but once you buy into
Software as a Service (SaaS), things
get murky. If your business is active
on social media sites then you can
include those under this heading,
because architecturally there’s no
real difference between Instagram
and some industry-standard
e-commerce platform. In neither
case do you have any input to the
software design process, nor are you
able to scale the service to suit
demand; almost everything is in the
hands of the service provider,
including your assets.
Depending on the terms of
service, that may be literally true.
Photographers who rely on
social media platforms to
promote their work have
sleepless nights worrying
about how they’ll cope if, or
when, their photo library
decides to unilaterally
change its service or its
terms of doing business.
The same concerns apply
to whatever data you’ve
invested in a remote service.
The trouble is that the SaaS
provider probably isn’t that
105

The Network Cloudsecurity
problem for one customer might
cause a restore for all customers.

What’s the solution?

bothered. They know that every
change will generate some winners
and some losers. They can’t please
all of the people all of the time, so
they don’t even try.
What can you do, then? If we
return to those unfortunate
photographers, the defensive posture
is easily described – always keep your
own local drafts, edits and final
versions. There’s a reason why vehicle
dashcams save their recordings
locally, rather than uploading them to
a distant host service: so you can keep
the asset under your control.
With commercial SaaS offerings
the pitch is more business-oriented
than social media, but the asset
protection situation is, if anything,
worse. Most SaaS products operate on
a web-based or web-type model,
where information and assets must
necessarily leave your control in
order to be useful. Otherwise a
service may come in the form of an
bespoke app, which supplants the
browser with a custom software
environment that’s entirely within
the control of the SaaS provider.
The situation there is even more
complicated, as the provider may well
itself be somewhat beholden to an
outsourced app developer. If you
think this is a pedantic distinction, let
me share my own recent experience of
a travel service that didn’t draw my
attention to the specifics of its
smartphone app partner. When my
bank phoned me up to ask if I
recognised a transaction 10,000 miles
away in Portland, Oregon, I truthfully
said that I did not, since neither the
name nor the location matched those
of the service I’d signed up with. As a
result, they stopped my card from
internet use completely, until I got
home from a ten-day trip. Clearly this
was my own fault, because I hadn’t
read all the small print. Equally
106

clearly, I won’t be going back to that
particular service.
Looking at SaaS through this lens
shows you who’s in charge. Of course,
it’s ultimately your decision to engage
with a hosted services provider, and it
may make perfect sense
“You need to understand
for your business. But you
need to understand who
who will control and
will control and present
present your assets, and
your assets, and what
what happens to them when happens to them when
the relationship ends.
the relationship ends”
When you see companies
promising to handle everything but
the kitchen sink, start asking detailed
questions, such as how backups and
restores are handled, and whether a

ABOVE Photographers
should try to keep all
their assets under
their own control

By now you might be thinking that the
modern business is in a pretty dire
situation. But there are ways to take
matters into your own hands: look for
hosted services that offer APIs. Using
hosted software as a tablet-tapping
human is a very limited interaction,
providing no practical way of keeping
your own records or proofs. But when
your own code is transacting with a
service’s API, that same code can take
care of keeping your own logs and
records. Hosted services become
part of a broader workflow that’s all
yours, providing a layer of asset
management which the service
provider hasn’t thought to offer.
It doesn’t need to be a major
development project, either. The
extremely helpful IFTTT.com service
offers plenty of simple ways of making
connections between web services.
Indeed, it’s a good bet that the
person best able to define the value of
your assets in cloud SaaS is you, so it
naturally follows that you’re likely to be
your own most successful programmer.
API scripting isn’t a hard hill to climb
– not compared to old-school site
coding or infrastructure deployment
– and it allows you to bridge the gaps
between indifferent cloud providers
and dependent real-world customers.
And if your chosen service doesn’t
offer download, hybrid and API
access, you’re better off going
somewhere else.

Supplier security
In this feature we’ve focused mostly on protecting
your assets from the hosting business that handles
your bit of the cloud. But if you get into real trouble
here, then there’s a reasonable chance that the
provider will be able to help you out, especially for
the right amount of money. Another very serious
question is how to protect your assets from those
who are expressly not on your side – hackers,
crackers and all the rest of it.
One thing you can’t rely on is security through
obscurity. That was always an illusion anyway,
but in the cloud it’s all but impossible, as the
cloud’s universality and flexibility is guaranteed
by some very widely understood protocols and
standards. For example, if you’re not connecting
via HTTPS or RDP then you may have shut off a
lot of potential attacks, but you’ve also made it
very hard for yourself to switch providers, or
even scale up or down.
There’s also the second-order problem: even if
your hosted systems are nominally safe, could the
hosting infrastructure itself be compromised? The
further away from raw code and bare metal your
service is, the more you’re at risk from the provider
being sloppy with its passwords, VPN tunnels,

update deliveries and so on. The problems in
this area are often not technical but human –
disagreements happen, staff come and go,
sometimes under tumultuous circumstances,
things fall through the cracks, and of course you
won’t be aware of any of it. Yet when a breach
happens, it’s your assets on the line.
Some commentators wave this sort of thing
away as a mere matter of “due diligence”, but the
idea that you’d be able to review your supplier’s
procedures and platforms in sufficient depth and
detail to reassure yourself that they’re proof
against future attacks is too tall an order. The whole
point of having a cloud service is so that you don’t
have to have an in-house security guru auditing
systems night and day.
The long-term effect of this security pressure is
to gradually turn SaaS relationships into PaaS or
hybrid architectures, as the job the provider does
for you becomes increasingly central to your
business. In the short term, if you’re not satisfied
that your provider is properly safeguarding your
security, there’s probably not much to be gained
by asking probing questions – just start making
plans to migrate.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

The Network CheatSheet
continual progress and hit regular
milestones, so it’s hardly surprising if
their working patterns shift away
from long-term best-practice models
and more towards the quick and dirty.
Is this fundamentally a
management problem, then?
Poor management can easily rack up
technical debt, but with external
development the problem could
equally be the customer. While many
clients have no idea what makes for
an efficient, responsive, scalable
website, they do love to tinker with
the visible features. Even where
management recognises that
long-term issues are piling up, they
have to consider who pays the piper.

Technicaldebt

Cutting corners now means more work down the road – but
Steve Cassidy asks whether that’s always a bad thing

Let me guess – another aspect of
the cost-of-living crisis?
You could be forgiven for thinking so,
and rising business costs are certainly
a problem. But that’s not what
“technical debt” means; in fact, it’s
one of those neat insider concepts
that everyone can benefit from
understanding. Simply put, it’s a
software development-oriented
expression of the fact that every
decision comes with a cost.
So it just means we need to stay on
top of our IT expenditure?
Not quite – perhaps talking about
costs is misleading. Technical debt
isn’t about money, at least not
directly. It’s more to do with the fact
that every project plan involves
constraints of time and resources,
which mean that compromises must
often be made along the way.
If you’re saying projects tend to go
over budget, I already know that...
That is sort of what I’m saying – but
again, it’s not about money. Technical
debt is a debt of time or effort, which
represents all the work you might
need to do in the future because, for
whatever reason, you took a simpler,
quicker route today.

Is this something that boils down
to lazy developers, then?
Certainly not in all cases. Frequently
the poor developers are the ones most
concerned about technical debt – after
all, it’s their department that’s going
to have to repay it at a later date.
It’s more likely to be something
that originates from company boards
and managers. When your milliondollar project plan is all set out in a
Gantt chart that completely encircles
the walls of the meeting room, you
don’t want to be thrown off course
by piffling technical concerns.
Developers are expected to show

So the result is that managers end
up at odds with the developers?
It doesn’t have to be. If your coders are
voicing concerns about cut corners,
that’s a potential opening for you to
learn something beneficial. There are
few better ways of finding out what’s
really going on at the coalface than
making a polite enquiry about your
balance of technical debt.
How can I use this concept to
make my products better, or
my developers happier?
As with all debts, the trick is to budget
for technical debt before you incur it,
and make sure you can afford the
repayment terms. For example, your
team might be able to throw together
an iPhone app in a week or two – but if
there’s the slightest chance that the
project might grow to include
Android, then it’s worth building in a
bit of abstraction and careful
minimalism at the outset.
One such example that I keep
coming across is CCTV platforms and
industrial systems running on
Windows XP, on a desktop PC from
2003. Solely targeting the dominant
desktop OS might have seemed like a
sensible efficiency at the time, but the
interest payments – in terms of
support and security issues – have
been steadily growing ever since.

Managingyouraccount
The phrase “technical debt” was coined in 1992 by a
developer named Ward Cunningham. Among other
things, Cunningham was one of the pioneers of agile
software development – a project model in which
evolving goals are par for the course.
This being the case, Cunningham didn’t argue
that technical debt is necessarily a bad thing. As with
all borrowing, there are scenarios in which it’s
smart and beneficial to accrue debt. A business
may be able reap advantages by getting an
incomplete software solution to market quickly,

which will more than offset the cost of refactoring
and updating the code at a later date. Technical debt
may also be an inevitable consequence of usercentric design, in which the final project goals are
determined and refined through an iterative
process of prototyping and testing.
In all cases, though, technical debt is something
that needs to be managed. The longer the debt goes
unpaid, the more “interest” it tends to accumulate,
meaning future development and maintenance will
take more time, manpower and upheaval.

107

Real world
computing
Expert advice from our panel of professionals

JONHONEYBALL

“Iwanttoolsthatonlytellmewhen
somethinghasgonewrong.Forall
othertimes,silenceisgolden”
Jon explains the drastic steps he takes to clean up his Twitter feed, creates
his first Apple Vision Pro app and sets up a cool in-car camera system

T

he great calamity of Twitter
continues to roll forward but,
much to my surprise, it hasn’t
actually collapsed into a hole in the
ground. I still use it as an information
feed, despite the fact it is becoming
increasingly difficult to weed out the
quality from the noise.
I particularly miss the previous
blue-tick service, which highlighted
those that had gone through an
auditing process to establish their
credentials. It wasn’t perfect,
working best for big companies,
celebrities and publishers who could
register a bunch of accounts in one
go. By the time I tried to get a blue
tick, I discovered that the whole
process had essentially been shut
down to single applicants.
With the arrival of Mr Musk, the
blue tick process has been turned on
its head. Now anyone can get one just
by paying the monthly subscription
fee. Notable organisations decided
that they weren’t going to pay a
corporate rate for the appropriate
coloured tick, and thus this
authenticity mark dropped from
their accounts. Within a few
months, the blue tick went
from being a moderately useful
authentication signal to being
something probably best ignored.
The problem, at least from my
perspective, is that Twitter’s noise
level has increased significantly.
Much of this is down to the recent
aggressive insertion of advertising
tweets within the main feeds, both
into the main feed but also into the
middle of discussion threads.
Because I use the official Twitter

110

app on my iPhone, there isn’t
anything I can do about that. This
week it has been running at about
one advert for every four posts,
which isn’t an acceptable signal to
noise ratio. I am clicking the “Not
interested in this ad” button on every
“Promoted” tweet that comes my
way on my phone, but it’s far from
clear whether this does anything
useful. The lockdown on third-party
apps means that the old route of
using a tool of my choice, blocking
adverts along the way, is no longer
possible on my phone.
However, I have managed to get
a very clean feed on my desktop.
That’s down to a rather excellent
browser plugin called Twitter Ad
Blocker. If you want the source code,
head to pcpro.link/348blockcode.
Most people will find a pre-built
package rather more useful, of
course, and there’s a browser
extension in the Chrome store
(pcpro.link/348block).
There’s no user interface for this
add-in. Just fire it up on Chrome or
Microsoft Edge (or, I presume, any

Jon is the MD of an IT
consultancy that
specialises in testing
and deploying kit
@jonhoneyball

BELOW Thanks to this
Chrome extension,
Twitter ads on my
desktop are a thing of
the past
BELOW LEFT I wish I
could say the same
about ads on the
official Twitter app

other browser that supports Chrome
extensions) and ignore it. It doesn’t
even have a user interface or counter
to tell you what it is doing. However,
if you open up the developer tools
pane and head to the Console panel
then you’ll see a debug message from
the plugin telling you each time it has
killed off an advert. And it’s not just
adverts – it’s all that nonsense about
suggested tweets, and all the other
ephemera that Twitter is injecting
into its feed now.
I’ve been reading Twitter in an
Edge session now for about four
hours, and already it has killed off
1,281 adverts and other spam noise.
It just works, and does so silently,
which is exactly what I want from a
tool like this. Too many tools are
noisy and chatty, shouting “look at
the good I’m doing!”. Firewalls used
to be particularly bad at this. I want
tools that only tell me when
something has gone wrong. For all
other times, silence is golden.
I have no idea how long this
browser add-in will continue to
work, before Twitter finds ways

@PCPRO

Real world computing

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Jon Honeyball
Opinion on Windows, Apple and
everything in between – p110

Lee Grant
Tales from the front line of
computer repair – p113

Dr Rois Ni Thuama
Risk analysis from Red Sift’s
head of cyber governance – p116

Davey Winder
Keeping small businesses
safe since 1997 – p118

Steve Cassidy
The wider vision on cloud and
infrastructure – p120

around its filtering. But for the time
being, it’s a huge help in removing
the crud from Twitter.
If you want something similar
for Facebook, again on a desktop
browser based on Chrome or
Microsoft Edge, then I can highly
recommend the duo of Fluff Busting
Purity (FBPurity) from fbpurity.com
and Social Fixer (socialfixer.com).
Facebook is much sneakier in the
way it creates a web page of content,
and it is an ongoing battle between
these add-ins and Facebook itself.
But it’s worth fiddling with the
settings in these tools to fine-tune
your Facebook experience.

Mac Studio to the M2 Max

I really should be updating this
Mac mini that I use as my daily
desktop here. It has a reasonable
specification: a six-core 3.2GHz Intel
Core i7 processor, 64GB of RAM and a
1TB SSD. It is, however, a 2018 model
and gets rather hot in use. Being
Intel-based in itself isn’t an issue,
because I still do quite a lot of work in
Parallels virtual machines running
Windows 10 and 11. My decade-old
Mac Pro is still used for that primary
task, but it can’t run the latest
version of the base operating system,
being stuck on macOS Monterey
12.6.7. Although this is still
functional, it will soon be two
versions out of date.
My plan was to pension off the old
Mac Pro, move the Mac mini 2018
into that role, and buy a new unit for
my desktop, thus maximising the
Shiny New Toy factor. I nearly bought
one of the tasty Mac Studio units
when they launched last year, but
held off knowing that one based on
the newer M2 CPU was likely to arrive
fairly soon. A “soon” that has become
“now”, as the M2 Mac Studio (see p60)
was announced at the recent WWDC
developer conference.
With trembling hand, I clicked my
way to the purchase page. The M2
Max is apparently an excellent
implementation here, with some
claiming that it’s just as quick as last
year’s M1 Ultra monster chip. But
there is, of course, a new M2 Ultra
version that will be even quicker still,
given that it’s essentially two M2 Max
CPUs bolted together in the same
package. You can tell this comparing
the specifications: the M2 Max has 12

CPU cores, 30 GPU cores and 16
Neural Engine cores. The M2 Ultra’s
equivalent numbers: 24, 60 and 32.
Of course, I clicked on the more
powerful M2 Ultra version, where
Apple kindly presented me with
more choices. For a mere £1,000, I
could up the GPU count from 60 to 72.
Now there’s no rational way that I
would need that today, but what if I
was looking for a seven- to ten-year
lifespan for this? Better go with the
bigger one.
Now for unified memory. While
64GB might be sufficient, the
options for 128GB and 192GB were
tempting. I ticked the 192GB option.
For storage, the 1TB option might
have sufficed, but I thought 2TB
would be enough. Even for me, 8TB
would be quite unnecessary.

ABOVE The M2 Mac
Studio is now available
to buy, if your pockets
are deep enough

“My eyes were
drawn to the
price tag… At
this point, my
clicking stalled”

Before I clicked on the continue
button, my eyes were drawn to the
price tag: £7,199 including VAT.
And that’s before adding on the
rolling warranty.
At this point, my clicking stalled.
And then proceeded to backtrack.
Maybe the M2 Max with its 12 cores
would be enough. And, after all,
64GB is still a lot of RAM. With 2TB
of storage, the bottom line had
plummeted to £2,699. I’ll report
back in seven years on whether all
that was enough.

QuickBooks missing a page

BELOW Finding out
how quickly invoices
are settled isn’t as
simple as it could be

As regular readers will know, I use
QuickBooks for the accounts for the
lab. I used to rely on straightforward
Excel worksheets, but now
everything has to be digital for HMRC
so it made sense to move to a “proper”
accounts package a few years ago.
QuickBooks is supported by my
accountants, and it does a reasonable
enough job. There have been hiccups
along the way, especially in its
handling of some credit card
accounts, but for the moment it is
working adequately well.
I have had one ongoing client
that was, shall we say, rather lax
when it came to paying invoices.
Around Christmas, this was pointed
out to said client and it promised to
do better. Despite its newly imposed
60-day payment terms.
111

Headrest mountings

When wrapping up my quarterly
VAT return, I thought it would be a
good idea to check on the promptness
of this company’s payments. Now
you would think that this would be a
standard report: for each invoice, tell
me how long it took to get paid. But
this information was nowhere to be
seen. The closest I could get was a
promising-sounding report called
“Invoices and received payment”, but
all this showed was a table where the
first row was the date an invoice was
paid, and the second row was the date
the invoice was raised. And onwards
down the table.
In the end, I used the export to
Excel feature, and dropped in with
some cell-munging tools to get the
difference between the two dates for
each entry. I accept that this wasn’t
too much of a hassle, but I am
somewhat astonished that a
standard business report of “how
long is this client taking to pay
invoices?” isn’t built in.
And the payment times this year?
Between 54 and 59 days. Which at
least is more consistent.

My First Vision Pro app

Apple has just released the new Xcode
platform, which is its development
tool set. And in there is the capability
to create apps for the forthcoming
Vision Pro headset, due next spring.
It’s a beta release, and it sits on top of
a beta version of macOS, so it isn’t
exactly the most stable of tools at

112

present. On Intel, at least; I haven’t
tried it on the M1 yet, but I suspect it
might be better there.
If you’re familiar with Xcode
then there will be no surprises here.
What is of interest in the runtime
simulator. For years, Apple has
provided runtime simulators for its
platforms, be that WatchOS, iOS,
iPadOS or tvOS. And now it has
added in the VisionOS runtime. So
you can build an app, and then
launch it into a simulator.
Obviously, this isn’t a stereoscopic
vision. Nor does it have head tracking
or the Lidar support for hand
movement. Or the built-in cameras.
Or most everything else that will be
in the physical headset. But that
doesn’t matter: it’s a working 3D
space in which your app runs, and
you can zoom around it, play with the
controls, and start to get a feel of how
your application will work.
I took the easy route and made
a “Hello World” app, because
computing folklore says that this
is where you should
start with any
new development
platform. My
somewhat tired Core
i7 Mac mini did its
best to give good
performance, but was
clearly somewhat
overwhelmed with
the task. Once the
simulator was
running, my app
was there: a nice
window with Hello
World in it. Nothing
special, of course,
but it’s a start.

ABOVE The Camera
Headrest Mount
keeps the camera
steady while driving

“Wedging a
tripod between
the front and
rear seats was
going to be too
unstable”

BELOW My first
VisionOS app in a
working 3D space

It was one of those odd requirements
that makes you scratch your head
and ponder the alternatives. I
needed to mount a camera in a
car. Now this isn’t particularly
difficult, as hundreds of YouTube
videos will show. My problem was
on two fronts.
First, I wanted to mount the
camera at head height, but in the
middle of the car between the two
front headrests. This precluded using
sucker mounts on the side windows.
Second, I needed to mount something
more substantial than the usual
GoPro or equivalent. In fact, it was
the Sony FX30 camera that I
mentioned a few months ago, one of
Sony’s professional cinema cameras.
Clearly, wedging a tripod between
the front and rear seats was going to
be much too unstable. And the
thought of a multi-thousand-pound
camera and lens combination
flapping around unrestrained
wasn’t workable at all.
I needed something more
professional, so I turned to one of
those go-to companies for camera
mounts: B Hague and Company,
based in Nottingham. It has been in
business since 1860, and started
making camera supports and
mountings in 1994. A quick perusal
of the company’s website located
the £54 CHM, or Camera Headrest
Mount (pcpro.link/348hague).
It’s extremely solid, clamping
onto the two headrest posts between
the seat and the headrest itself. If
your car seats don’t include this
then of course this solution won’t
work, but my Audi does and it was
a matter of a minute or two to
mount one. A quick run home with
the FX30 running at 4K and 120fps
revealed that the output was stable
and remarkably lacking in shake,
given the weight of the camera.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

So this solution was put to good use,
with perfect, usable footage.
The reason for wanting to do this
filming? We were evaluating in-car
satnav solutions, and it’s very useful
to have 4K video of the satnav screen
and the view out of the windscreen.
This allows for precise evaluation of
the response lag of the satnav when
you encounter road junctions, and
especially roundabouts. It’s also a
good way of logging what happens
when you drive away from a
pre-determined route. How
quickly does the satnav notice and
provide an alternative route? If you
have it all on hi-def video, then
there is no argument.
I have also used this mounting for
recording sound in the car. We have
been looking into ways to remote
after-the-fact evaluation of the
sound of in-car systems. To do this,
we use the Rode NT-SF1 sound field
microphone (pcpro.link/348rode),
which records in full 360° using four
capsules. You need a four-channel
digital recorder for this, but we have
units from Sound Devices and Zoom.
Having captured the in-car sound
field, we then process it through the
rather lovely Harpex plugin. This
takes the “A-format” sound
recording, and then can process it to
any one of numerous formats,
including surround sound, Dolby
Atmos and arbitrary speaker arrays.
And also to binauralise it to a
surround sound on headphones,
which is very useful to us. If you want
to be extra precise, then you can load
a custom head related transfer
function (HRTF) definition file,
which models the shape of your head
and thus ensures the resultant
binaural output is a precise as
possible. It is really quite amazing
how realistic it sounds on a pair of
very good headphones, such as the
Sennheiser HD800 or Stax
electrostatic headphones. Being able
to then rate the sound quality away
from the distractions of being in the
car itself allows for much more
repeatable evaluations.
It has one extra advantage. A car
that is tailgating might spot the
camera or microphone on the
headrest boom and assume that I’m
an undercover policeman. A win on
all fronts, then!
jon@jonhoneyball.com

Real world computing

LEEGRANT

“I’maself-taughtfixerandI
havenothingthatcertifies
measskilledorcompetent”
Lee heads back to school to turn the tables on teachers, and offers an
insight on how not to hide other people’s underwear

Y

ou may recall that last year I
wrote a feature for PC Pro
about who we should trust
when getting our devices fixed (see
issue 334, p32). I highlighted the
contrast between the domestic gas
industry, where anyone wishing to
poke around inside your boiler needs
to be Gas Safe certified, and PC repair,
where any untrained and uncertified
lunatic like me can take a soldering
iron to your laptop. Striving to
become a trained and certified
lunatic, at least, I’ve been to
electronics school. And it was a bit
of a shock to the system.

Lee Grant and his wife
have run a repair shop
in West Yorkshire for
over 15 years
@userfriendlypc

Back to the future

At the start of June, I completed a
week-long crash course called
Introduction to Electronic Fault
Finding. My hope was that the course
would plug some of my knowledge
gaps by introducing some formal
testing and diagnostic strategies to
enable me to have a better chance at
fixing circuit board faults.
Like 99% of computer repair folk,
my knowledge sources for learning
new tricks are a carefully curated
blend of reading lists, experimentation
and hours of YouTube videos. As far
as my CV goes, I’m a self-taught fixer
and I have nothing that certifies me
as skilled or competent; not very
reassuring, is it?

“This course
didn’t give me
any form of
accreditation,
because there
isn’t one”

BELOW My return to
the classroom was a
shock to the system

My tutor was a fantastically
experienced technician who was
trained by the military in the late
1960s and then worked on pioneering
innovations involving radar, radio
and missile guidance. He’s worked in
the private training sector for years
and built the course and syllabus I’d
been wrestling with all week.
Apart from him, I was the only one
in the classroom, and although this
one-to-one learning was a golden
opportunity to learn from an expert,
it’s symptomatic of a wider problem.
This course didn’t give me any form of
accreditation, because there isn’t one
to be had in the world of small
electronics. This has resulted in a
pitiful amount of training
opportunities, making skilled and
competent electronics repairers rarer
than hen’s dentists.
Juxtapose this with a societal
transformation towards the
electrification of anything that
moves, and the skills gap will become
a chasm before we know it. While
searching for the course, I engaged
with several training bodies that
cover the whole of Yorkshire. They
offered me plenty of courses covering
automotive, commercial and
domestic electricals, so I could get a
certificate to wire a Tesla to a house,
but nothing to help me fix the coffee
machine. The training bodies stated
that my course doesn’t meet their
criteria – it’s electronics,
not electrical – however,
they can do me a discount
on a two-day PAT testing
course. There are
certifiable standards in
soldering and circuitboard re-working, but
these concern
manufacturing and
quality control, nothing
to do with repair.
Despite this, Alison and
I invested four figures and
closed the shop for a week
to make it happen. Peanuts
to some businesses, but it
113

added to the considerable pressure I’d
already placed on my own shoulders
to extract the maximum from this
course. Although I had time to play
with logic probes, ESR meters, signal
generators and oscilloscopes, I was
always conscious of how I could use
the knowledge back at the shop as a
revenue generator. The tutor
presented some simple circuits that
he’d nobbled to simulate
faults, but each was
accompanied by a manual of
schematics, block diagrams
and component datasheets,
all the things that I’ll never
have when trying to work out
why a laptop won’t turn on.
After hours of tracing a
NAND logic glitch to fathom a
faulty circuit, the tutor
announced we could end the
course on day four, as we’d
made good progress. As this
announcement didn’t feature the
words “small refund”, I made a
suggestion. According to the Royal
Navy (pcpro.link/348RAF), if you can
fix a bike, you can fix a car. If you can
fix a car, you can fix a helicopter. I
wanted to see how an experienced
military engineer would cope with a
knackered laptop.
So, on day five, I watched my tutor
go to work on laptop that wouldn’t
power on. We poked and probed, then
scrambled around the internet for any
hint of a schematic. Defeated, we
nailed it back together. It was a
reminder that repairers often fly
blind, because we don’t have the
documentation to fix stuff. I’d spent a
week learning to fix electronics, but
on the assumption that in the real
world, I’d have component lists and
block diagrams galore.
When electronics go back to the
manufacturer for repair, they have
the documentation that I can’t get.
Large organisations that handle
warranty repairs for multiple
manufacturers also have access to
that documentation, which is
available to their in-house trained
staff. However, the rules are
changing. The Digital Fair Repair
Act has been signed into law in
Minnesota, and it’s by far the most
progressive version that we’ve yet
seen. From 1 July 2024, manufacturers
must provide Minnesotans with the
same parts, tools and documentation

114

ABOVE/LEFT Tea and
laptops are never a
good combination

that they make available to their own
repair providers. The jewel in the
crown is that manufacturers must
make documentation available for
free, so even though I don’t operate
in Minnesota, I’m excited that
essential schematics will be made
available. I look forward to watching
manufacturers attempt the Sisyphean
task of ensuring that nothing leaks to
the rest of the world.
The law doesn’t cover every
device, but it applies to products sold
after 1 July 2021, including laptops,
TVs, washing machines, tablets,
refrigerators, smartwatches and lots
of other small gadgets. Frustratingly,
lobbyists managed to get games
consoles excluded, but still, Rome
wasn’t repaired in a day.

Tea and (no) sympathy

Two machines suffering with the same
problem came into the shop on the
same day last month. The first call was
early in the morning and, after a

“Repairers
often fly blind,
because we
don’t have the
documentation
to fix stuff”

BELOW After a
thorough clean and
drying off, this laptop
sprang back to life

frantic exchange, the machine arrived
in the shop within the hour. There was
still liquid dripping out of it. The
owner had launched a glass of water
into the machine and wisely killed the
power to the machine. He’d wanted to
remove the internal battery too, but
he removed a few screws, prised open
the case and spotted more internal
cables than he was comfortable with.
Once on my workbench, I got it
apart and nodded with approval at the
thorough job he’d done on rinsing the
inside of the machine. When water is
spilled onto a component, an excellent
strategy is to gently soak up the excess
with a paper towel and carefully dry
any residue with hot air. Some spots
required a quick scrub with Isopropyl
alcohol, and I gave every connector a
thorough clean. The machine was left
overnight to dry thoroughly, and in
the morning I put it back together, not
really knowing if it was going to work.
This time, the owner was very lucky as
even the keyboard survived the bath.
The other machine that I
mentioned didn’t stand a chance.
Someone had spilled a cup of tea into
this one. I asked the owner for a few
more details and received very vague
answers. Again, I opened up the
machine and saw a few signs
of liquid, hidden among the
vast patches of mould that
were thriving in the crevices
of the machine. It turns out
that the spill had occurred
over two weeks earlier and
the prompt attention that
saved the first laptop
couldn’t be applied to the
second. This customer was
desperate for the data from
the hard drive, but despite
my best scrubbing, I
couldn’t resuscitate it. So
once the data recovery firm’s
fees are considered, that was
an expensive cup of tea.

@PCPRO

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Now to something that certainly
can’t be learned in a classroom.
Janet is a small business owner
who runs her empire from home.
Operationally, it’s lots of documents
and images that were all stored in
OneDrive, and she enjoyed a resilient
and reliable workflow until Janet
discovered something unusual in
her home. It was a pair of ladies’
knickers, and I realise that the
relevance of lace under-crackers in
the tale of computing calamity you’re
expecting may not be immediately
obvious. At the time, it wasn’t
obvious to Janet, either. All she cared
about was identifying the owner of
the silky bun-huggers because they
weren’t hers.
Mercifully, we’ll hit the fastforward button here, past the point in
the narrative where Janet discovers
the owner of the mystery garment
laying in Janet’s own bed, underneath
Janet’s own husband. We’ll rejoin a
few weeks later where a furious and
emotionally wrecked Janet contacted
me for help.
You won’t be surprised to learn
that Janet and Mr Janet are now only
communicating through a lawyer or,
in Janet’s preference, a medium. To
drag this back to computing, the
impending divorce highlighted a
glitch in her IT setup. Her business
machine is tied to her husband’s
Microsoft account, which is also the
control for the Office 365 account
that houses nearly 700GB of data
within OneDrive. By a quirk, Janet’s
business funds the account, but her
365 login is merely a guest invited by
the master one. There was never any
intentional skulduggery behind this
convoluted account setup, it just
happened that way.
My aim was to facilitate a
Microsoft-based divorce and liberate
Janet’s data and payments details and
synchronise everything back into her
own name. It’s a straightforward
process but has a couple of large traps
that could prove catastrophic for
Janet and her business, should I fall
into them.
Timing was critical. Janet is unsure
if Mr Janet knew her password, but we
changed it anyway. He could, if he’d
wished, de-invited her from his
account, and I’ll be very honest, I’m
not sure what the ramifications would
have been and I certainly didn’t want
to delay by finding out. I told Janet to
rip the cellophane from the USB hard
drive she’d bought for business
backup (free PC Pro tip: external hard
drives work best when unwrapped

and plugged in) and
remotely, I began the
overnight process to
off-load OneDrive to it.
There are many words to
describe OneDrive. Rapid is
not one of them.
When the machine
arrived the next day, we still
had access. Mr Janet could
have made life very difficult
by exercising his right to
change his Microsoft
password, so we needed to
stay ahead of the curve.
Call me an over-cautious
technician, but I was still
unhappy about Janet’s data.
The OneDrive download
was a safety net if the next
stage went badly wrong. I’d already
spotted that her SSD was BitLocker
encrypted, so I re-exported the key,
and began the decryption.
My worry was that if the password
changed and we had a power fail or
restart event, we’d potentially face a
“password incorrect” message. If that
had happened, I could have pulled
the drive and used the extracted
BitLocker code to move the data to our
workshop machine. Although the
chances of that going wrong are
minimal, this was a game of risk
management and the fewer
screwdrivers involved, the better.
Once decrypted, I imaged the drive,
securing the data.
Back on the machine, I converted
the machine’s login from Mr Janet’s
online version to an offline account,
giving machine control back to Janet.
When I attempted to subsequently
re-upgrade the offline account to
Janet’s online version, Windows
refused, claiming the account was
already in use. It was, but as a 365
login and not a Windows login, and
although they’re the same, Windows’
flexible account login system was
having a meltdown.
The quick and dirty solution was to
open a Command window (CMD.exe)

Real world computing

ABOVE OneDrive is
many things, but rapid
is not one of them

“A digital
divorce is quite
complicated
with potentially
serious
consequences”

BELOW Untangling
your data can be a
complicated process

and use NET {USERNAME} /delete to
remove any account I didn’t require.
After the restart, I upgraded the
offline account to Janet’s own online
account. With a fresh 365 subscription
in her own name, we re-uploaded
Janet’s files to OneDrive, re-enabled
BitLocker and then triggered the
Leave Subscription option from her
Microsoft dashboard, severing
another link with Mr Janet’s account.
If we’re to take anything from this
story, it is that a digital divorce is
quite complicated with potentially
serious consequences. Even after all
the shenanigans I’ve described,
Janet’s account was still being
monitored by Microsoft Family with
Mr Janet as the controller and,
although she could leave the group
using her own credentials, she was
unaware that her account was part of
Family and had no idea her mobile
could be tracked through the app
she’d installed and forgotten about.
Edge was also logged in as Mr Janet
but as Janet is a Chrome user (synced
to a Gmail account), there was no leak
and this was fortunate. If you consider
what data browsers can sync, you
don’t have to think too hard about the
consequences of giving a live data
stream of browsing history and
passwords to persons unknown.
I want to clarify there’s no
suggestion at all that Mr Janet
was using, let alone abusing,
any of Janet’s data, but I hope
you realise how complicated
this could get should minds be
moved to cause mayhem. With
an already acrimonious divorce
in progress and Microsoft yet to
implement any form of a “we’re
getting divorced” button, Janet
needed to untangle her data and
protect her business.
lee@inspirationcomputers.com
115

ROISNITHUAMA

“Byfailingtoadopttheright
toolsfortherightjob,we’re
bringingaknifetoagunfight”
Rois wonders why we don’t apply the lessons we learn in real life (and Far
Cry) to our digital defences – including using the right tool for the right job

T

his summer’s big job is to get a
patio laid. I needed to replace
what was left of the lawn
following the activity of two
overactive rescue greyhounds,
accompanied by a committed but
much slower terrier whose daily
pilgrimage to a single zoomie spot was
ripping it up. Literally.
The activities of the dogs spinning
like vintage jazz records at 78rpm
have made it unrecognisable as a
lawn. This is less an aesthetic project
than it is a practical undertaking to
address a problem that I created for
myself during Covid when I
overcommitted to increasing my pack.
A mistake that I don’t regret, but more
of that on another day.
This project, as with any project we
humans have undertaken since early
caveman fashioned the first
hammerstone, is an amalgamation of
people, tools and processes. What
follows next contains no spoilers.
There is, I’ve learned, a programmatic
approach to laying a patio. Complete
the steps in order and you have
yourself a robust patio that, much like
National Trust assets, if maintained,
will outlast all those involved.
It will surprise no-one that when
ordering the five tonnes of hardcore
required for the base level that it was a
tipper truck that delivered the five
tonnes in a single load. I did not, for
example, make my way with a bucket
to the merchants and drip feed the
project slowly and painfully by
making daily excursions back and
forth, back and forth to pick up
spoonfuls of crushed rock (MOT type
1). That would be an act of madness.
I’m working to a deadline, so if I
took this approach I would need an
army to assist me with this drudge
work. Imagine each individual filling
the bucket then transporting the

Rois Ni Thuama PhD
is an expert in risk
mitigation and head of
cyber governance at
Red Sift.
@rois_cyberstuff

PROBLEM 1

“We’re slower
to adopt the
right tool for
the job when it
comes to our
digital space”

RIGHT Rule Number 9
from Far Cry is one we
can all learn from
116

bucket and heading back to the
merchant to refill their bucket over
and over. It sounds completely
bonkers, and yet this is what we’re
doing in the digital space.
We live in an age of heavy
computational lifting. We have vast
amounts of metadata not intended for
human consumption. The insights
that the aggregated metadata can
provide can illuminate the decisionmaking process. It can provide useful
intel on how we deploy our resources,
how we protect our businesses, how
we defend and identify bad actors and
how we spend our budget.
We need tools that can crunch the
metadata in a fraction of a second. Not
an army of exhausted individuals
toiling with grubby labour.
We know to use the right tool for
the job IRL but we’re a little slower to
adopt the right tool for the job when
it comes to our digital space. This is a
problem for businesses and business
growth. But it’s not the only problem.

Not enough people

It’s been widely reported that
there’s a global shortfall of skilled
cybersecurity professionals, with
estimates ranging from between 3.2
and 3.5 million workers. This problem
is unlikely to be resolved any time
soon. Less reported is that while this

figure is the projected number of
additional resources required to solve
today’s problems, our problems in the
digital space are continuing to grow.
Even if we take the higher
estimate of 3.5 million, it’s likely
that this is a miscalculation based
on current needs. With matters
such as they are at the moment,
there are at least two factors that are
likely to contribute to that number
being an underestimation.
First, the cyber threat landscape
continues to expand as bad actors
devise new and novel ways to disrupt
business. We’ve seen this recently
with the MOVEit Transfer exploit,
which ransomware group Clop
worked on for two years to maximise
its returns (see Davey’s explanation
on p118). This expansion will cause
additional pressure on businesses to
resolve both long-standing known
significant cyber threats as well as
continue to patch and address for new
known significant cyber threats.
Finding experts to solve these
problems at scale will further remove
skilled cybersecurity experts from
businesses as they are required to
solve these problems.
Second, in the first quarter of 2023,
the number of new businesses
incorporated in the UK reached a
record high. Companies House puts
the figure of newly incorporated
businesses at 222,068. It’s difficult
to imagine any type of newly
incorporated business that could
thrive or survive without a digital
presence, email or internet banking.
Today, the price to prosper includes
a digital estate not only to drive
efficiencies, but to develop and
maintain multiple channels of
communications for consumers and
clients to find and connect with
businesses online. As Mike Karliner,
Shazam’s first CTO, is fond of saying: all
businesses are digital businesses now.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Chief information security officers
aren’t standing at the water cooler
complaining about the skills shortage.
For them, it’s simpler than that. Their
complaint is that they don’t have
enough resources.
The reality is that unless and until
we are using the right tools for the
right job, we will never have enough
people. By failing to adopt the right
tools for the right job, we’re bringing
a knife to a gun fight. We aren’t
putting ourselves in the strongest
possible position.
We should not expect humans to
be troubled with processing large
amounts of metadata, when there are
tools that surpass human efforts in
milliseconds. Not only are there tools
that can process the metadata but
many are also architected to present
that data in a way that is meaningful,
not only to the technical team but to
everyone in the business with a
responsibility to promote its success.
So we’re short on skilled
personnel and we need to do what
we can to alleviate that, because
the skills shortage creates other
problems for businesses. Problems
such as the bad hire.

PROBLEM 2

Skills gap + HR knowledge
gap = bad hires

The lack of skilled professionals isn’t
an isolated business issue, it’s a cog in
a bigger machine. This dearth in the
sector can contribute to creating
fertile conditions for additional
headaches for businesses.
The combined effect on an
overstretched information security
team with insufficient tools for the
job leads to lower productivity and
inevitably will lead to burn out. We
all know that a business’s greatest
asset is its people, and they’re worth
looking after. So it’s inevitable that
operations will seek to address the
deficit through the hiring and
onboarding process.
The law of unintended
consequences often gives rise to
conditions that undermine
organisational performance in the
shape of the bad hire. The skills gap
combined with an HR knowledge gap
produces a perfect storm for selecting
the wrong person. Combine
overwhelmed teams applying
pressure on the recruiting team, then
throw in a small hiring pool and a
well-intentioned desire to fix the issue
as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the quickest
way to a bad hire is to hire quickly.
This means the skills shortage has

turned into a much bigger and more
expensive problem.

PROBLEM 3

The cost of bad hires

Lack of cybersecurity knowledge
among HR professionals means that
hiring is more complicated, more
time-consuming and therefore more
expensive. Beyond the image problems
that business owners face following a
bad hire, the atmosphere within the
company can lead to lowered
productivity and poor morale. These
indirect costs include losses from poor
performance of the bad hire, but it’s
difficult to calculate with precision.
The direct losses are easier to assess
but will depend on the seniority,
salary, nature of the position and
how long the individual remained
with the firm. Direct losses include
recruitment fees, re-hiring fees,
salary, training and, of course,
include all losses associated with
additional poor hires if the bad hire is
themselves a hiring manager.
What we do know about total
losses, according to the Harvard
Business Review, is that the aggregate
losses for a poor hire stemming from
indirect and direct losses are
estimated to be between 100% and
300% of the salary of the replaced
individual. Protocol National
calculated a figure of £132,000
based on a salary of £42,000.
That’s a lot of money for
nothing but trouble.
A useful guide for
businesses to determine
whether the team
tasked with recruiting
cybersecurity personnel
are getting it right is to
calculate the turnover rate.
To calculate your annual
turnover rate in an
industry-standard way,
divide the number of
employees who left

Real world computing

ABOVE Finding the
right people for the
job is essential, but
increasingly difficult

(whether voluntarily or involuntarily)
by the average number of employees
over the year.
According to LinkedIn, the
average turnover rate across all
industries is 10.6%, while tech and
professional services come in above
average with turnover rates of 12.9%
and 13.4% respectively.
Businesses could use the turnover
rate as an indicator of poor hiring and
potentially signs of a knowledge gap.
Addressing this quickly will reduce
corporate waste and in turn produce
better candidates and hires.

Getting it pat
“The skills gap
I started this piece with the
and an HR
observation that we need the right
knowledge gap tools, people and processes. This
produces a
mantra operates in every part of the
world we inhabit, whether you’re
perfect storm
for the bad hire” laying a patio or supporting your

BELOW Protocol
National estimates the
average cost of a bad
hire at £132,000

information security teams.
We’re not using the right tools
nearly often enough in the digital
space. As a result, we’re
overburdening our teams, which in
turn leads to burn-out. We then
compound that mistake by hiring
quickly in an attempt to fix the first
problem – but that leads to corporate
waste and other problems, all of
which negatively impact the firm,
leading to misspending, lowered
productivity and contraction.
With a deficit of 3.5 million skilled
personnel, a sense of urgency
surrounds the hiring process
for these key players. To
guard against hiring in haste,
businesses need to have proper
processes in place to find the
right people for the job.
However we elect to
address this skills deficit
challenge, we will never fill
this gap if we don’t remember
Rule Number 9: use the right
tool for the job.
rois@redsift.io
117

DAVEY WINDER

“Whentheexploitwasexecuted
forreal,ithitfast,hardandwith
remarkablesuccess”
Cybercriminals like to move it, move it. Davey digs deeper into the Clop
ransomware drop, explaining how it worked and how worried we should be

M

y inevitable “criminals like
to move it, move it” joke
aside, there’s nothing funny
about the MOVEit cybersecurity
attacks that started at the end of May.
Certainly not if you’re one of the
organisations that has been caught
up in this tale of zero-day exploits,
multiple vulnerabilities and Russian
ransomware groups.
It’s not much fun if you happen
to be an employee of one of said
victims, either. One of my sons
works for the BBC and has been
informed his personally identifiable
information was accessed, and is
being held to ransom, by the criminal
group known informally as C10p. I
shall be referring to them as Clop,
because I’m not ten years old.

What, or who, is Clop?

This ransomware group was one of the
first to use the double-extortion
ransomware strategy of exfiltrating
data to be either published or sold to
the highest bidder if the ransom
wasn’t paid. The clever money
suggests that Clop is a sub-group, or
at least was spun out of, the TA505
threat group. A group you may
remember from the Dridex banking
trojan and Locky ransomware. Clop
has also been associated with FIN11,
another criminal group that emerged
from the TA505 collective.
The image is a little murky,
truth be told, because before Clop
became a group it was a ransomware
strain, used by both TA505 and FIN11
in the past. Clop as a distinct collective
of criminals appears to have meshed
together towards the end of 2018 and
the start of 2019, when it evolved into
a ransomware-as-a-service operation.
We do know these are all criminal
operations associated with Russia.
Which doesn’t necessarily mean that

118

Davey is a journalist
and consultant
specialising in privacy
and security issues
@happygeek

“We do know
these are all
criminal
operations
associated
with Russia”

BELOW Clop could get
clobbered after a
bounty of $10 million
was published

Clop is a nation-state actor. Indeed,
TA505 and its derivatives are all
financially motivated criminal
groups rather than state intelligence
operatives. Which doesn’t
necessarily mean they are adverse to
cooperating with those operatives
when pressed to do so.
The threat intelligence
community is mostly agreed that
these groups, and others like them,
are “allowed” to profit from their
criminal endeavours by law
enforcement and, by implication,
state-level powers. But, naturally,
there are provisos. One is that they
don’t target organisations on Russian
soil (or Russian organisations more
broadly), and the second is that
they do a favour or two for state
intelligence services when requested.
Say a ransomware attack hits a
foreign government agency by
mistake and exfiltrates data as part of
that process. By mistake, because
criminal groups know only too well
the jeopardy that attacks on such
agencies brings in terms of either
getting shut down or caught – and
possibly both – with little possibility
of profiting from any ransom
demands made. In such cases, said
criminals might say “sorry pal, our
mistake, we will delete the data and
say no more about it” in an attempt to
evade further scrutiny. A futile
attempt, no doubt, but hey.
Anyway, the point of this example
is that the possibility of that group
then being asked by state intelligence

operatives to hand the supposedly
deleted data to them, and doing so in a
heartbeat, is really very high indeed.

What is MOVEit?

MOVEit Transfer is what’s known as
managed file transfer (MFT) software,
used by enterprises as a way to ensure
auditable, automated, secure and
compliant transfers both on-premises
and in the cloud. What sort of
enterprises, you may well ask. Well,
I’ve already mentioned the BBC, but
the client base covers everything
from media to the military, from
transport to tech, from banking to the
government. The list goes on, but safe
to say it was an incident response
team’s nightmare when it became
clear that one of the more prolific of
ransomware groups had started
exploiting a zero-day vulnerability
within that MOVEit software.
The first vulnerability (there were
more to come) was disclosed on 31
May by the MOVEit publisher,
Progress Software. CVE-2023-34362
related to a SQL injection
vulnerability within the MOVEit
Transfer web application, and was
rated as critical. If there were a rating
higher than critical, maybe something
like “dumpster fire”, then CVE-202334362 would have got that.
Rather incredibly, although the
first exploitation of this zero-day
vulnerability is thought to have
happened on 27 May 2023, Clop had
been biding its time. Researchers from
Kroll found that Clop had been
holding on to that zero-day
vulnerability for two years (pcpro.
link/348clop). That’s no typo: two
years, not two months.
It appears that Clop was using this
time to test and tweak the exploit, in
terms of gaining access to vulnerable
MOVEit Transfer clients and,
simultaneously, learn more about
potential targets that were using it.
Kroll dates the first testing back to
manual processes starting in July
2021. By August 2022, Clop had
automated the test routines to probe
multiple targets at once. This testing,
this probing, this information
gathering, seems to have gone
on right up until just before the
real attacks were executed at
the end of May 2023. The final
stage, Kroll surmises, was to
grab organisation identifiers
for all MOVEit Transfer users.
This would have made it easier
for the criminal enterprise to
categorise and index the
organisations that were
vulnerable to the attack.

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

Real world computing

It should come as no surprise,
then, that when the exploit was
executed for real, it hit fast, hard
and with remarkable success. The
criminals were able to send malicious
SQL commands to the MOVEit
Transfer server by way of the web
portal and access all the database
tables it wanted, no credentials
required. The data that Clop was
interested in seems to have mostly
been employee records, including
payroll data.

Making demands
and promises

One of the more unusual aspects
of the MOVEit attacks was that,
instead of sending ransomware
demands to victims directly, it
issued a dark web announcement
telling them to get in touch to start
negotiations or it would publish the
exfiltrated data. That posting said it
wanted to educate companies using
MOVEit that Clop had likely
“downloaded a lot of your data” as
part of what it referred to as an
“exceptional exploit”.
Now, remember earlier I
mentioned how Clop would want to
avoid targeting government agencies?
Something that can be difficult when
your exploit is automated and works
on attacking every vulnerable
organisation. Clop addressed
government agencies and law
enforcement that may have found
themselves caught up in the attack
(which is thought to have hit more
than 100 organisations) in that same
posting, telling them not to worry.
Clop promised to have “erased your
data” saying it had “no interest” in the
information and those organisations
need not even contact them.
What Clop didn’t say, but you can
bet it was hoping, is that those
agencies, those governments, would
leave them alone as a result. Clop was
wrong, as the US State Department
made a posting of its own: up to a $10
million reward for “any info linking
Clop ransomware gang or any other
malicious cyber actors targeting US
critical infrastructure to a foreign
government”. This bounty was posted
by way of the Rewards of Justice
programme designed to help get
information on threat actors that
impact US national security.
Victim organisations have
included the BBC, Boots, British
Airways, OFCOM and Transport for
London in the UK. In the US, the list
includes several banks and
universities, as well as US federal
agencies the Department of

ABOVE UK and US
sanctions could mean
paying a ransom has
consequences
LEFT The Government
of Nova Scotia fell
victim to the MOVEit
attack

Agriculture and the Office of
Personnel Management. Interestingly,
the Government of Nova Scotia – yes,
the whole thing – said it was impacted
as it uses MOVEit for file sharing
across departments.
There have been other MOVEit
vulnerabilities found since the Clop
attack hit the headlines. Found and
patched, and ready to exploit (if not
already exploited) by criminal actors.
The two additional CVEs to look up are
CVE-2023-35036 and CVE-2023-35708.

“Criminal
enterprises are
experts when
it comes to
evolving attack
strategies”

How to mitigate
MOVEit attacks
To mitigate MOVEit attacks, the US Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has some sage
advice (pcpro.link/348cisa), though if you’ve not employed
mitigating actions by now then it’s probably a little late:
Take an inventory of assets and data, identifying
authorised and unauthorised devices and software.
Grant admin privileges and access only when necessary,
establishing a software allow list that only executes
legitimate applications.
Monitor network ports, protocols and services, activating
security configurations on network infrastructure devices
such as firewalls and routers.
Regularly patch and update software and applications to
their latest versions, and conduct regular vulnerability
assessments.

Ransomware is evolving;
defensive strategies need
to do likewise

Here’s the thing: criminal enterprises
are experts when it comes to evolving
attack strategies. They know how hard
it can be exploiting a well-resourced
organisation, and the big bucks come
from the larger organisations with
both more to lose and likely insurance
to pay. Which is why they have started
looking for easier ways to access data,
such as managed file transfer, or
managed anything to be honest.
In other words: why attempt robbing
the bank through the front door when
the side door is open?
Organisations must get wise to
this and ensure they can respond to
incidents quickly should they occur,
and apply the security basics to
prevent them happening in the first
place. Okay, defending against
zero-days is difficult, that’s why they
are so valuable to attackers. But, if I
may, take a proper look at that CISA
MOVEit attack mitigation advice.
Take a long hard look, and then chisel
it in stone and place it in whatever
room within your business has the
power and budget to get it actioned.
At which point I should intervene
and point out that the paying of such
ransoms is not black and white when
it comes to the law. For example,
several Russian individuals connected
to well-known ransomware groups
have been made subject to economic
sanctions by both the UK and US
governments. As such, paying a
ransom to a group they are connected
to would be prohibited and could land
your organisation in serious trouble.
The UK National Crime Agency
(NCA) (pcpro.link/348nca) says:
“Making funds available to the
individuals such as paying
ransomware, including in crypto
assets, is prohibited under these
sanctions. Organisations should have
119

Continued from previous page

STEVECASSIDY

or should put in place robust cyber
security and incident management
systems in place to prevent and
manage serious cyber incidents.”

“FewITprofessionalswillfeel
happyaboutbodges,butforme
thesituationwaswonderful”

And finally…

The whole Clop/MOVEit thing has
been rather depressing, so to cheer
you up here’s how hackers have come
up with a way to steal cryptographic
keys using an iPhone camera. The
iPhone in question being an iPhone 13
Pro Max, but it could be any recent
model as the cameras are good
enough. The cryptographic key in
question, for the purposes of the
research I am referring to, is of the
378-bit Supersingular Isogeny Key
Encapsulation (SIKE) variety, stored
on a Samsung Galaxy S8.
The hackers here are a bunch of
security researchers from the
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in
Israel. If that sounds familiar it’s
because I’ve written about the
research coming out of the place
before. Most relevantly a couple of
years ago, when there was a brilliant
bit of side-channel hacking going on
involving an analysis of optical
emanations from LED power
indicators of speakers. The payload
was the recording of conversations
within the same room, a variation of
the old military TEMPEST attack type.
That research used an electro-optical
sensory attached to a telescope to
monitor power LED fluctuations.
The latest development is
explained in the “Video-Based
Cryptanalysis: Extracting
Cryptographic Keys from Video
Footage of a Device’s Power LED”
paper, but there’s a readable FAQ
from researcher and giver of talks at
BlackHat band DEFCON, Ben Nassi,
at pcpro.link/348ben. The TLDR is
that they have managed to use
line-of-sight consumer-grade video
cameras, such as the iPhone’s, to
record those fluctuations.
The good news is that it required
the Galaxy S8 to be connected to a
set of USB speakers, and it was that
power LED that was monitored. For 18
days. With the iPhone in the same
room. All the time. File under “really
interesting”, but nowhere near as
worrying as Clop and MOVEit.
davey@happygeek.com

120

Now that the post-pandemic upgrade cycle is beginning, this is the perfect
time to consider whether you have the right architecture in place

D

o you feel you have done the
right thing, when it comes to
setting up a working from
home (WFH) architecture? Incredibly,
most of us are now thinking about the
second generation of devices and
network layout to support a workforce
who could be at home, at work, on the
road, or indeed in the middle of a war
zone. That first-try lash-up from the
early days of lockdown in 2020 was
just about the worst nightmare for a
well-disciplined, business-aligned IT
department: a bodge that had to be
put together out of the stuff you could
see or touch on the day the news
broke. No sooner had Boris’s chilling
“This is not a request. This is an
instruction” hit home, nerds’ phones
all across the world rang.
Even though vital supply services
were exempt from economic
shutdown, the sheer scale of a
species-wide emergency with IT as its
main fix meant that supplies of the
“right kit for the job” were plainly
going to be unavailable on a scale of
months, not weeks. It didn’t matter
how big or small you were: that was
the ultimate bodge job scenario.
Few IT professionals will feel
happy about bodges, but for me the
situation was wonderful. I have
learned to admit that I am a crisis
person. My reputation for producing
exceptionally long-lived machines,
networks and software was
founded mostly on
being allowed to do
whatever it took in the
aftermath of some
crisis or another. The
less dramatic cycle of
machinery upgrade
and replacement left
me cold.
So, the pandemic
was, in a terribly
selfish way, a godsend
for me and people like
me, either in terms of
the lash-ups we would
present or by loosening
previously clinched-

Steve is a consultant
who specialises in
networks, cloud, HR
and upsetting the
corporate apple cart
@stardotpro

“The pandemic
was, in a
terribly selfish
way, a godsend
for me and
people like me”

BELOW Lenovo’s
new workstations
have been developed
with Aston Martin

tight purse strings. It meant we could
push through that handy firewall
upgrade or second fibre internet
connection so long resisted. This type
of exciting brinkmanship is seldom
seen in regular business, but then the
pandemic represented the pinnacle of
abnormal conditions.
Let’s not fall into the nostalgia trap,
especially not for those years. The
reason I write this now is because
we’re at a refresh stage in the
equipment lifecycle from that time,
which gives us the chance to give up
on the lash-ups and figure out the
answer to a surprisingly wide-ranging
question: what is the “right”
architecture for our post-Covid
world? Could it bear any resemblance
to the lash-up we’ve been living with
for the past three to four years?
I was prompted to think about this
by a recent shindig with Lenovo, who
wanted to draw our attention to the
new models of workstation it has
released: the ThinkStation PX,
ThinkStation P7 and ThinkStation P5.
They were designed in association
with Aston Martin, a long-standing
customer of Lenovo’s and now a
technical contributor, too. It’s
possible I didn’t pay much attention
to the presentations. First because it
all seemed to be about airflow
management, but more so because

@PCPRO

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

the men from Aston Martin played the
“not a computer person” card a bit
early for my liking.
What perked me up no end,
though, were the discussions about
just how many processor cores you
could specify in a workstation like
this. The demo machines on show
could be fitted with 120 CPU cores,
spread across two sockets. By
contrast, my first WFH machine was
an ALR deskside server, with a
Pentium Pro/200 CPU. It could
support roughly 25 simultaneous RDP
users. How many users could you fit
into a machine with over a hundred
times as many processor cores?
People who work for large
corporates will shake their heads
sadly at this idea, because their
server rooms are hybrid cloud
deployments, with VM images
wafting across an ethereal fabric of
software-defined networking. Why
on earth would they want to use a
device sold as a CAD workstation for
a job reserved for the heaviest-metal
servers in their inventory?
And there’s the point. Those guys
wouldn’t be interested, precisely
because they are full-blown
participants in megascale cloud
computing. Other, smaller players
(or, often, isolated departments in
bigger businesses) have much more
pragmatic and interesting
perspectives on this problem.
Remember, shortage of
components and an inability to place
orders was a massive constraint on
doing WFH right first time around.
Something the Lenovo team
confirmed as a problem back then,
once we got into fireside chat mode
over a rank of designer workstations.
In trying to build a rational plan to
respond to future irrational incidents
and catastrophes, the issue of parts’

A digital twin of
a digital thing
Lenovo has a quite visually
arresting fully detailed 3D model of
these new ThinkStations. You can
click on things and they jump off the
chassis and float in midair: it’s well
cool. It’s also so utterly enormous,
so stupendously detailed, that you
can only actually run the fully
rendered interactive twin
simulation on one of the PCs the
twin is depicting. So my hopes of
having a sexy URL for you to follow
were somewhat dashed.

“swappability” and
inter-operability really
starts to hurt. What
would be absolutely
ideal, in that situation, is
a machine that can be
bent to any workload in
the business, from CAD
to server duties, from
Zoom ringmastery to AI
annealing. The VW
Beetle of compute
devices, in fact.
That isn’t likely to be
a dedicated rackmount
device. Gone are
domestic objections to
visible trailing wires or
digging up the petunias
to get the fibre line in from the
housing estate at the bottom of the
garden; we’re no longer playing
around, and the point about a broad
line of similar machines is that when
confronted by the unexpected, you
can rob one deployment group in
order to build up another. This is
near enough impossible to do
between data centre rackmount
servers and “normal” desktop PCs.
For reasons that remain somewhat
unexplained, servers have one type of
RAM, desktops have another. A divide
that has gone unchallenged for several
decades, only to be highlighted by the
difficulty in easily obtaining upgrades
during the pandemic.
I heard of another justification, for
a smaller company. With only a few
directors and a mid-sized working set
of apps and data, the epitome of
business continuity was to keep one
full set of its working data inside the
homes of all their directors, with at
least a fighting chance of being able to
run their whole company suite on
one, ideally house-trained,
workstation-grade PC.
This is often quite a big ask, not
because the PCs have previously not
been quick enough, but rather
because the software environment
isn’t flexible enough. Lots of internal
software packages have clonky
licences based on the IP address
of the live network
connection, or the
existence of particular
files in obscure,
apparently unrelated,
folders. Such
applications don’t take
kindly to wholesale
machine shifting and
moment-to-moment
hybrid cloud deployment
– it’s the opposite of
scalable computing.

Real world computing

ABOVE The ideal
workstation is one
that can be deployed
in different scenarios

“For reasons
unexplained,
servers have
one type of
RAM, desktops
have another”

BELOW It’s tricky to
spot a bug in code
when it’s on someone
else’s servers

But that doesn’t mean that any
terrible sins are being committed in
delivering such a configuration: the
demand of that small business’s board
of directors is both achievable and
reasonable. What’s amazing to me is
that there’s still room in the original
PC design to accommodate such a
proposal. And, to bring it back to
those Lenovo ThinkStations, such a
well-specified machine, with such a
range of options, suddenly becomes a
very logical choice.

Don’t have database
nightmares

What’s worse than finding your vital
business-automation product has a
show-stopping bug in it? Finding out
that everyone else using it is suffering
from the same bug. Yep, that’s worse.
I watched the whole process –
mercifully, not from inside the client’s
offices – pass through a set of entirely
predictable and painful stages. At
first, there’s hope: phone calls are
booked in, walkthroughs undertaken.
Unfamiliar excursions into the
command line are done with
agonising, bomb-disposal-like
lip-biting and cold sweats. Network
performance, which was just fine
with an average day’s sales
transactions, comes under scrutiny
when database-fixing utilities are
being let loose on millions of
rows of data.
Perhaps the most
difficult part of this
process is when a
modern version of the
immovable object and
irresistible force
parable is played out.
Business people are
often arch-persuaders,
relying on their ability
to get things done by
manipulating the people
121

@PCPRO

they’re commanding. The type of
character who IT people seek to avoid
most assiduously is the aggressive/
seductive persuader salesperson –
exactly the role most harshly affected
by this particular database failure.
Several times in my career, my
most important contribution to a
business continuity crisis intervention
has been to activate nightclub
bouncer mode on someone who
thinks the fix will be delivered earlier
if they “apply pressure” to those most
involved in getting them up and
running. As every IT worker knows, if
there were ever a construct that’s
immune to being “persuaded” of
anything, by anybody, it’s a computer.
Much the best thing the management
team in a business with a critical
problem can do is stay out of the way,
or offer their assistance rather than
giving it the heavy manners.
One incident I remember most
fondly was when a dying fan tray took
out the core backbone switch in a
sizeable firm of lawyers. I realised that
most parts of the switch were in
protective thermal shutdown, so I
soon had eight senior partners all
standing in a neat semicircle in the
server room: each held a sizeable PCB
gingerly by the opposing corners, still
connected down the exterior edge to
the fibres serving the rest of the
property. Some had the nerve to
blow on the hot chips, while we
manhandled a replacement chassis in
past their expensive brogues.
Back to 2023 and the misbehaving
database. The actual problem turned
out to be, if anything, procedural.
Some script the database people
needed to run suddenly developed a
painful behaviour in which it partially
purged the data it was converting.
The way this came to light as the
cause of the problem is a lesson in the
apparent inevitability of history
repeating. Initially, the support team
asked for a complete check of the
hardware, then the storage
architecture, and finally the operating
system. Only once that was completed
would they consider looking at what
the remote-support guys were doing
at the time of the problem.
Slowly, while working through
more and more diagnostics, stuck
firmly on the blower with the support
centre, did it emerge that this was not
an isolated case. Other customers

(they didn’t dare say how many) had
hit exactly the same iceberg during
exactly the same update and
processing cycle. As a result, the
support system was throbbing with
unresolved support tickets: a situation
the support guys were feeling
increasingly uncomfortable about,
mainly because the database support
and development processes had been
undertaken by a third-party specialist
in a different country.
I’m not thinking about the
security implications here. I want
to keep attention on what the
customer could do to get its data
back as quickly as possible.
While there’s a well-trodden
route between nerds and support
people, of minimising contact until
there’s something material to
discuss, the game plan for the
business owner is – apparently –
rather less widely accepted.
I have become used to seeing
competitor companies within an
industry come together inside
umbrella associations for decades.
It’s practically a generational
tradition, with some business sectors
devolving a whole lot of work
common across their field to the
association. Others use it as a
drinking club, while others again
engage in bulk relationships with

ABOVE Computers
tend to be immune to
human persuasion

“Thebestthing
managementina
businesswitha
criticalproblem
candoisstayout
oftheway”

BELOW This database
snafu caused
headaches all round

FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO

insurers, legal regulators, lobbyists:
it’s a big part of some of their lives.
Most interesting for us here is that
some of those trade bodies are the
owners of the software development
process for their industry.
But this modus operandi has been
hit hard by the cloud. We must be
honest: the model of interaction with
a cloud service is taken from that fine
vocal artist, Mr Bobby McFerrin:
“Don’t worry, be happy”, he sang.
Cloud as a proposition says that the
service will be so marvellous that you
won’t need to check up on who’s
connecting, who’s doing what, and
who can work on your data. (I should
say, in this case, the data was stored
on-premises, though that was not the
root cause of the problem.)
What’s needed in situations like
this is an arbitrator. Of course, not
everyone has the steely patience or
brinkmanship to stay off the phone
while the red flags are out, and
therefore an arbitration body – in
this case, a user association – can
provide a sympathetic ear while the
front-liners are deep inside the fix
investigation process.
The industry in my client’s case
had no such thing. To see obstructive
and pointless activities pop up the
minute the going got tough in this
case, over a matter that could have
been handled with a tiny bit of
well-disciplined testing and process
control, made my client do a lot of
sighing, and shaking his head.
By not learning the lessons of recent
history, he had been obliged to engage
me in a role with almost no technical
input at all, for long enough that my
summer holiday is now very nicely
bought and paid for. All for a simple,
catchable cock-up with disastrous
results, by someone who has yet to be
identified, sitting in an unknown
company somewhere far, far away.
cassidy@well.com

122

Credit: Rama & Musée Bolo, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, Wikimedia Commons

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past

The inside story of
Compaq’s portable
clone
Forty years ago,
Compaq broke IBM’s
dominance by creating a
portable computer that
ran all IBM PC software.
Co-founder Rod Canion
tells David Crookes how
it was achieved

C

omputers cannot survive and
thrive in isolation. They need
software and lots of it to make
them practical and useful.
History is littered with machines that
appeared to be promising on the face
of it yet were let down by a lack of
support from software developers.
With too few apps, consumers would
shy away from making a purchase
and, with too few consumers,
developers would decide their efforts
would be better rewarded elsewhere.
When three former Texas
Instrument (TI) workers decided to
set up their own business and
manufacture a computer, they were
acutely aware of the problems that
such a vicious circle posed. It was
the early 1980s and there was no
computing standard. Developers
needed to tweak their software to
work on various machines and they
would prioritise their work based on
the size of the different user bases.
The situation meant entering the
computing industry as a newbie

manufacturer was tough, particularly
so when targeting the business
market. Fail to attract software such
as the first spreadsheet program,
VisiCalc, for instance, and the
company was likely to go bust. But
what if a computer manufacturer
could tap into another machine’s vast
library of software? Surely that way
its computer would end up being
well supported from day one.
Such was the approach made by
Compaq – and it had an impact far
beyond the co-founders’
expectations. By creating the
first fully IBM-compatible
portable computer, the
fledgling company helped
to shatter IBM’s dominance
of the PC market. Not bad
going for three people who
had left their jobs at TI
without much of an idea
of what to do next.
Here, we speak to one of
Compaq’s co-founders to
find out how they did it.

ABOVE The Compaq
Portable was
groundbreaking, but it
didn’t come cheap

BELOW Rod Canion
proudly shows off
Compaq’s portable PC

DOSing around

Rod Canion, Jim Harris and Bill Murto
were senior managers at TI, but they’d
grown disillusioned with life at the
semiconductor manufacturer. They
yearned to create a company that
promoted trust and satisfaction, so
they worked on a business plan,
explored potential funding avenues
and created a startup called Gateway
Technology, all while looking into
product areas that interested them.
“We’d worked together for more
than five years in our respective roles
in starting up new businesses inside
Texas Instruments,” Canion told PC
Pro.
Pro “We were excited
about the opportunity the
growing demand for PCs
represented and, at the
same time, were frustrated
at the over control coming
from TI management.
“When IBM entered the
market in August 1981, we
could see that the PC
industry was going to
123

Better ingredients

To attract investment, Harris and
Canion wrote a product description,
explaining why their computer would
be different to the Osborne 1. The key
idea was to make their machine look
124

and operate like an IBM PC, even if
they weren’t entirely sure at this stage
how it would be accomplished.
To help communicate the concept,
Harris called Ted Papajohn. “We had
known Ted from his days at TI as an
industrial designer and we wanted to
have a sketch of the portable we
wanted to build for our business
plan,” Canion explained.
“We believed that it needed to be
professionally styled to look good in
an office environment. So we asked
Ted to meet us at a Computerland
store in Houston to show him the IBM
PC and the Osborne 1. After looking
over these products at Computerland,
we walked next door to the House of
Pies to sketch out the product.
“One of the important things was
to have the keyboard identical to the
IBM PC so someone running software
designed for the IBM PC would have no
trouble operating the same software
on the Compaq Portable. After Ted
sketched it on the back of a placemat,
we knew that it was the way the
product should look. It was a thrilling
feeling to see it for the first time.”
With a sketch, a four-page business
plan and a product description in the
bag, the company co-founders met
with former TI engineer LJ Sevin and
Morgan Stanley technology analyst
Ben Rosen. They were
partners in the
venture capital firm
Sevin Rosen Funds
and they sent Canion
and Harris to meet
with venture capital
firm Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers in
San Francisco. “Two
weeks later, we had a
funding commitment
for $1.5 million,” said
Canion. Gateway
Technology was then
incorporated on 16
February 1982.

Canion and Harris had long
resigned from TI by this point.
Murto resigned a little later, but all
were ready to hit the ground running
with Gateway by the time the funding
was in place. “We began hiring
engineers and programmers to start
the process of figuring out how to
reverse-engineer the IBM PC,” Canion
said. “As soon as word got around that
we had started a company, people we
had worked with at TI started
contacting us to apply for a job.”
Among them were
“The key idea was to make electrical engineers Steve
Ullrich, Ken Roberts and
their machine look and
Gary Stimac, all of whom
operate like an IBM PC,
were very highly regarded.
even if they weren’t sure Stimac was tasked with
buying an IBM PC from a
at this stage how”
store in Dallas, and he
became very excited when he saw
that the IBM BIOS ROM code was
printed in the manual.
ABOVE A reproduction
of Ted Papajohn’s
sketch of what became
the Compaq Portable

Clean room

BELOW With the
keyboard stored neatly
away, the computer
could be easily carried

Unfortunately, looking at that code
was a mistake. It meant Stimac
wouldn’t be able to work on any of the
BIOS code for the proposed computer
– if he did, IBM could claim that he’d
been influenced by its work and that
would put the whole project in murky
legal waters. “We didn’t
copy IBM’s code because
it was illegal and would
have resulted in being
shut down,” Canion
said. “We were fanatical
about getting good legal
advice and then
following it totally.”
Instead, another
engineer, Steve
Flannigan, was given
the task of writing the
BIOS code. The team
was also bolstered by
engineers John Reilly,
Walt Russell and Bill
Bray and, slowly but

Credit: Rama & Musée Bolo, CC BY-SA 2.0 fr, Wikimedia Commons

explode so we decided to launch our
boat and start paddling. All we knew
then was that we were going to find a
need in the industry and fill it.” The
trio spent six weeks brainstorming
ideas without success but then, on
8 January 1982, inspiration struck.
Canion was drinking coffee,
thinking about portable computers.
By this time, a few had entered the
market, most notably the first
commercially successful machine,
the Osborne 1 in 1981. This was based
around the Zilog Z80 processor and, as
well as having a 5in monochrome CRT
display, it ran the CP/M 2.2 operating
system for which lots of software had
been created. Canion reckoned
Gateway could do better.
“In 1981, there were a lot of portable
computers on the market, but none of
them were styled professionally nor
were they rugged enough to be carried
on an aeroplane,” Canion explained.
“Our first thought was that we could
fill a need with one that was both, but
we also knew that, with more than
200 computer companies coming to
market with PCs, there was no way we
were going to get software adapted to
our product.
“There were just too many
different companies competing for,
say, Visicorp’s limited resources, so
only the biggest companies would be
successful in obtaining software such
as VisiCalc. Of course, IBM and Apple
would get the first versions from every
software company.” Yet, with IBM
being the personal computer
industry’s market leader, a golden
opportunity presented itself.
Since August 1981, MS-DOS had
been gathering momentum. Microsoft
had licensed it to IBM, which offered it
as PC DOS while different versions
were being licensed by dozens of other
companies. Canion reckoned buyers
would swoop on a portable computer
that, on the one hand, used the IBM
version of MS-DOS and, on the other,
ran software written for the IBM PC.
However, this meant the portable
would need to be fully IBM compatible.
“We had the idea to make our
product run the exact same software as
the IBM PC,” Canion said. “We weren’t
trying to copy the IBM PC, but we did
want to have all the popular software
available for our portable. Whether
we could legally make that happen
was the 100-million-dollar question.
We convinced our investors that we
could, but it turned out to be a lot
harder than we originally thought.”

Credit: HPCA

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surely, the project came together with
the team doing all they could to iron
out incompatibilities with the IBM PC.
For Gateway, nothing but full
compatibility was acceptable. Other
computers were coming to market
claiming to be compatible with the IBM
but, in reality, they were falling short.
One of the biggest problems was
licensing an MS-DOS version that was
compatible with PC DOS. Due to the
way it had been created (in conjunction
with IBM), Microsoft would have to
reverse-engineer PC DOS, and it
wasn’t going to start burning bridges
with such a big partner.
The best Microsoft could do was
allow Gateway to use a version that
was as close to PC DOS as possible,
yet that meant Gateway would have
to fix any compatibility problems
itself (although Microsoft did lend
a hand). Meanwhile, the engineers
were still hard at work on creating an
early working prototype. They were
nailing down some of the key design
features, although the process didn’t
always run smoothly.
“One of the features we’d planned
for our portable was a display that
could do both high-resolution text for
word processing and graphics for
graphs and drawings,” Canion
explained. “IBM required two
different display boards and monitors
to do both, so we went down the path
of making our display switchable
between the two.
“It was giving us trouble, though,
and we had a critical demonstration
planned for early June 1982 when the
National Computer Conference was to
be in Houston. The night before the
demo Ken Roberts and others stayed
up trying to get it to work and I stayed
up with them to help wherever I
could. They finally got it working
and it turned out to be a key feature.
We impressed the dealers, press and
investors we showed it to by
demonstrating something no other
computer could do at the time.”
With interest rising as the weeks
went by, Gateway hired more staff.
The new members would help to
speed up the process of coding the
ROM BIOS and writing a compatible
version of MS-DOS. Around this
time, Gateway also changed its
name to Compaq and, by
November, the company achieved
its objective. It finally had a fully
compatible portable PC capable of
running all IBM PC software. As
Byte magazine reported in
January 1983, having tried a
prototype, the “interesting
approach to duplicating the
functions of the IBM PC, as well as
the overall quality of the machine,
is a testament to the designers’
engineering expertise”.

The Compaq Portable was
certainly impressive. It had a
4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU,
128KB RAM and could be
configured with one or
two 5.25in floppy disk
drives. It also featured a
CGA-compatible video
card and a built-in 9in
green-screen monitor.
Costing $2,995 for a basic
system, it wasn’t cheap, but it
weighed a then modest 12.7kg
and could be carried by a handle.
For business people on the move,
it proved ideal. “To transport it,” Byte
wrote, “you simply secure the
keyboard to the main unit by locking
two sliding latches.” There was a
sliding door for storing the power
cord and another to reveal expansion
slots. Just as importantly for a
computer designed to travel, it was
built to withstand knocks.
“Jim Harris was shown a prototype
one day in his office and he asked the
engineers if it was rugged enough.
They replied that it was,” Canion
remembered. “So he picks it up,
walks out into the hall and tosses
it down the corridor. It cartwheels
along with parts flying off in all
directions. Jim turns to the engineers
and tells them to go make it rugged!”

Deal or no deal

Although the computer appeared to
be a technological success, Compaq’s
work wasn’t done. The next step was
ensuring people could actually buy
the computer, but it was tough going
initially. “Bill and I were going
showing dealers our product but they
were being deluged with other PC
companies getting them to carry their
product, too,” Canion said. “It was
hard to get an appointment with
someone to show our product to.”
When they did get through, the
pair would describe the product
features and capabilities and, at the
end, tell the dealers that it would run
all of the software written for the IBM
PC. “They were always sceptical, so
we told them to pick any package off
the shelf and try it out,” Canion said.

Retro CompaqPortable
“When the software they had
picked came up and ran, their
eyes got big, they thought for
a moment, and then asked
how soon they could get
five, ten or even 25 of
them. Every dealer we
talked to did the same
thing. The big surprise was
that we had invented the
solution to a very big
pent-up demand for a
portable version of the IBM PC.”
This, however, caused a
problem. Demand threatened to
ABOVE Compaq was
exceed supply. “Back in Houston we
to become a major
met with our team and decided we
player in the PC world
had to increase our production ramp
thanks to Canion
in order to meet the demand,” Canion
said. “We raised an additional $20
million in February of 1983 to fund the
rapid expansion. We also signed all of
the important computer dealers who
sold the IBM PC to carry our product.”
By the end of 1983, the Compaq
Portable remained the only thirdparty computer that ran all IBM PC
software, and it sold 53,000 units in
its first year. The dealers were also
taking the company very seriously
indeed. Back then, dealers
“He picks it up, walks into believed they could only
the hall and tosses it down carry three or four PC
– IBM and Apple
the corridor. It cartwheels brands
were seen as a given. “But
along with parts flying off when we took up the third
spot, there was only one
in all directions”
spot left to be fought over
by 200 companies,” Canion said. “We
went public in December 1983 and
raised $66 million. At that point the
first leg of the race was decided.”
Of course, IBM – rocked by the fact
another manufacturer had managed
to muscle in on its dominance –
wasn’t going down without a fight. In
February 1984, it introduced its own
portable PC, and everyone expected it
to knock Compaq out of the market.
“At first, orders for our product
stopped completely and we were
faced with a critical decision of
BELOW The Compaq
whether to cut back on production,
Portable Plus was
drop our prices or both,” Canion said.
released in 1984,
“Instead, we kept building new
adding a hard drive
computers at full speed and waited to
see the market’s reaction.”
Two weeks after the IBM
announcement, orders started
pouring into Compaq and it was
able to enjoy a record quarter.
“IBM stopped producing its
portable two years later,” added
Canion. Compaq, meanwhile,
went from strength to strength.
Strong relationships with Intel
and Microsoft, a host of new
portables and desktops as well as
a leading role in the creation of a
new PC standard (EISA) would
prove revolutionary. But that’s
another story for another time.
125

Futures
We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future

Robobutlersmaynever
happen,butrobotcare
workers
workersareontheirway
are on their way
Do you hate loading the
dishwasher enough to
pay someone to do it
remotely? Nicole Kobie
wonders about the weird
future of home robots

S

omeone to make a cup of tea
for you, fix dinner while
you’re at work and then do
the dishes while you catch up
on your favourite shows. This is no
backwards dream of a stereotypical
1950s housewife, but the muchpromised future of robot butlers.
Such robobutlers don’t yet exist.
But plenty of startups, researchers
and billionaires are trying to make the
dream a reality – for those with large
bank accounts, at least.
British-based Prosper Robotics,
founded by former OpenAI staffer
Shariq Hashme, has built Alfie to do
chores while you’re out. Tesla is
working on the humanoid Optimus to
help around the house (and
in Tesla factories). And
humanoid robots are in
the works for a variety
of use cases, including
warehouses and retail,
from companies such as
California’s Figure,
Norway’s 1X Technologies,
Oregon’s Agility Robots and
Canada’s Sanctuary AI.
Nor should we forget that
Honda, Toyota and Sony have
long been working on humanoid
robots for home and industrial
use. Still, robobutlers
remain around
the corner, as
they have for years.

Early movers

You can make the argument that home
robots already exist. Roombas have
been vacuuming homes for over two
decades, with 20 million sold during
that time, and there are now bots to
wash your windows, mop your floors,
scrub your BBQ grill and even clean
your pool (you do have a pool, right?).
But there’s a big gap between making
126

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specialist devices such as these and a
general robot to operate in a home.
Even Amazon has struggled. In
2018, the tech giant was rumoured to
be working on a domestic robot under
the codename Vesta, only to send up a
metaphorical white flag four years
later when it acquired Roomba maker
iRobot for $1.7 billion (a deal currently
being examined by regulators).
And consider Boston Dynamics,
perhaps the world’s best-known
robotics maker. While it’s famous for
the bipedal robot Atlas, that was only
built because the US military threw a
big contract at the company. So far,
the firm has commercialised just one
robot: the four-legged Spot, which is
used for maintenance and monitoring
in dangerous situations such as oil
rigs, nuclear plants and bomb scares.
“If you have a particular application
I think you should design something
for your application,” Marc Raibert,
co-founder of Boston Dynamics and
now the head of its AI Institute, told me
at the IEEE’s International Conference
on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) at
Excel in London. “If you have a set of
applications, you need to do a balance
between generality and a solution. I
think it’s going to be tough to get
humanoids to do lots of practical work.”
He added: “There’ll be some things
they’re the right thing for – you know,
some people argue that spaces are
designed for humanoids and therefore
a human form works. But Spot does
pretty well [in those spaces], so there’s
a lot of things that could go in this place.”
Boston Dynamics’ next robot is a
big box on wheels with an arm that
can grab cardboard boxes from pallets
using suckers. Stretch is already being
tested at warehousing and shipping

companies. In his keynote at ICRA,
Raibert explained that Stretch is
actually a derivative of Atlas, but as it
was developed it evolved away from
two legs to wheels to a clunky base,
becoming less humanoid. Stretch is
designed to replace human workers in
a hard job, but it doesn’t need to look
like us to be successful.

Movement and thinking

Why is making a human-shaped robot
so difficult? First, there’s the machine
side. Building a robot that can walk
around a home safely is no easy task.
If a bipedal robot’s power or controls
cut out, how do you ensure it doesn’t
fall and crush the family dog? Then
you’ll need a super manoeuvrable arm
with a gripper that can clasp objects as
delicate as mugs and plates. This all
exists now, but at high cost.
The other problem is intelligence
and automation. There’s something
you need to know about the whizzy
robot videos on YouTube: they’re as
choreographed as Swan Lake. Consider
two recent Boston Dynamics videos.
The first (pcpro.link/348robodance)
features the bipedal Atlas and
four-legged Spot dancing to the
Motown classic “Do you love me”
– the performance is so remarkable
that comments under the video
wonder if it’s CGI. The bots have
rhythm, they have actual moves.
But it took months of
programming to make the video.
The robots haven’t learned to
dance – this is the only
routine they can do.
Adding further to their
repertoire requires more
programming. That
matters when it comes to

Futures Robobutlers
robot butlers. It’s possible to program
an Atlas or even a Spot to clear your
table and load your dishwasher, but it
would need to be reprogrammed – or
at least adjusted – for every home.
There is as yet no AI that can manage
the task, and we all have different
homes. That’s just for one chore.
“You know the phrase, if it walks
like a duck, if it sounds like a duck,
then it is a duck?” said Raibert. “Well,
with robots it’s not that way. That
looks like a person and moves like a
person for some things. It’s got the
shape of a person. But that doesn’t
mean it’s got the intelligence, or the
morality or immorality, of a person. It
doesn’t really mean anything.”
Robotics companies choose a
problem to work on, but that doesn’t
mean they’re solving every challenge.
Boston Dynamics has made robots that
move around well, but that doesn’t
mean they have true intelligence.
People see promo videos and make
assumptions. As Raibert put it: “We’re
ABOVE LEFT Tesla’s
experts at making them look good.”
Optimus is designed to
There’s another Boston Dynamics
help around the house
video that’s worth watching (pcpro.
– and in its factories
link/348robojump). It shows a bipedal
Atlas leaping around scaffolding,
ABOVE The Nao is one
tossing a bag up to a human worker,
of the most successful
and doing a backflip off a platform to
humanoid robots
get back to the ground. Again, it’s
remarkable – and again, it’s heavily
programmed. To be clear, it does have
automation and intelligence: it can
analyse data from sensors
“It’sgottheshapeofa
to maintain balance, sees
with computer vision, and
person.Butthatdoesn’t
has a system that lets Atlas
meanit’sgotthe
decide on a rough path once
intelligence,orthemorality it’s been told where to go
orimmorality,ofaperson” and walk, jump or backflip
its way into position.
Those built-in facets of intelligence
are continually being improved,
adding to Atlas’ skills one by one.
BELOW Stretch
Raibert notes that careful watchers of
shows that robots
Boston Dynamics videos might
don’t need to look
have noticed that Atlas tends
like us to be
to backflip from up high and
successful
land at a lower level. There’s
a reason for that: the company
needed the extra time to
get Atlas to rotate fully
before landing. After
careful programming
adjustments, Atlas can
now backflip from ground
level. “It’s gotten more flight
time, more rotation rate, without any
changes to the hardware,” Raibert
said in his keynote at ICRA 2023.
Step by step, robots are getting
better at navigating our world
without as much hand-holding
from us. But controlling robots is
such an intractable problem that
the robot butler developed by
Prosper Robotics isn’t controlled
127

Futures Robobutlers
by AI or even programmed – it’s
driven remotely by employees in the
Philippines wearing VR headsets. That
idea is also behind Toyota’s T-HR3 and
Honda’s Asimo follow-up, the Avatar
Robot, both of which use human
operators, as does 1X’s EVE, letting a
remote operator step in when needed.
Such robots still have intelligence, in
that they “know” how to walk, can
navigate a space and perform basic
tasks, but the remote operator makes
the decisions and directs the actions.
Why not just hire a maid or a
cleaner? There are benefits to a
human-controlled robot: they can do
small tasks and then return later in
the day for a few minutes when
needed, while a human cleaner comes
for one set tranche of time; it removes
the middle-class awkwardness many
people feel when paying someone else
to scrub their toilets; and it lets us
outsource cleaning overseas where
the minimum wage is lower. That list
may not make anyone’s marketing
brochure, but such human-driven
avatars could help find labour in
difficult-to-fill jobs – such as care
work – or more dangerous,
unhealthy-to-human roles.

Dreaming of humanoid bots

There are humanoid robots you can
buy now. Or Nao, we should say.
Released in 2006 by French robotics
company Aldebaran – before it was
bought by Japan’s Softbank and
subsequently sold to Germany’s
United Robotics Group – the Nao is
one of the world’s most successful
humanoid robots. With built-in
obstacle detection, Nao can walk, get
up if it falls and even play football, as
it’s used to make up the teams of one
part of the RoboCupSoccer challenge.
As well as speaking 20 languages
using four microphones, the Nao also
has seven sensors to feel its way
through the world, and a quartet of
cameras. With a sixth edition
launched in 2018, more than 13,000
are in use around the world, largely in

128

schools as a programmable teaching
assistant or a research platform.
So why isn’t Nao the answer to our
bipedal humanoid robobutler dreams?
First, because it’s just a little guy, at
58cm tall. It couldn’t reach your table to
grab your dirty dishes. Second, it lacks
the built-in automation and AI to
figure out how to load the dishwasher.
You could certainly
program Nao for your
own household
tasks, but you’d
have to be pretty good at
robotics software engineering.
That football challenge is part of
a wider RoboCup, one aspect of
which is teaching robots how to do
household chores – programming a
robot butler to do basic tasks is so hard
it’s part of a global challenge.
Nao’s bigger sibling, Pepper, is the
platform robot for one aspect of that
home tasks competition, and at human
height at least solves the reach issues.
Like its smaller stablemate, Pepper has
a cute face, the ability to speak multiple
languages and can move around of its
own accord; however, Pepper has a
wheeled base rather than a pair of
legs, and features a touchscreen table
for additional human interaction.
Pepper has been used for everything
from cheerleader to receptionist, but
has struggled with more complicated
roles, reportedly failing to hold jobs
leading funerals and aerobics classes.

Caring roles

Robots might never make it into most
homes for more practical reasons.
Rolling robots can’t navigate stairs,
these machines are incredibly
expensive and they’re inherently
large – where do they stand when not
in use? Curl up in the closet? Lurk in a
corner in the spare bedroom? Chill in
the garage next to your car?
And what happens if they mess up?
There are plenty of social media
stories about robot vacuums failing to
spot faeces left on the carpet by the
family dog and diligently smearing it

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evenly across the entire living
room. That bug has since been
addressed, but the more we
automate the more frequent
we’ll find unexpected mistakes –
and robot butlers would be so much
bigger than a Roomba, so the potential
for damage is considerable.
Still, there’s one type of home
that robotics
makers and
their investors
have long been
eyeing up: the care home. There’s
already a shortage of workers for care
homes and in-home carers, set to
ABOVE Boston
worsen as the demographics of
Dynamics’ Atlas was
Western countries become older.
built thanks to funding
The idea is that robotics could help
from the US military
support staff in care homes, either
taking on repetitive tasks or assisting
with heavy loads, such as lifting
people in and out of bed. Robots could
also help people stay in their own
homes, be it helping the elderly move
around, doing basic household tasks,
and even administering medicine or
monitoring indicators
“Robots could help people such as blood pressure.
This use case makes
stay in their own homes, be
more sense. Robots are
it helping the elderly move
expensive, but so too is
around, doing basic tasks or social and health care. We
administering medicine”
lack employees. People
may prefer having a robot
in their home than a person, feeling it
less invasive for trips to the loo or
getting dressed – though of course
some people may prefer a human.
David Hanson, CEO of Hanson
Robotics, said in a panel at ICRA 2023
that his company’s lifelike Sofia and
Alice robots have been successfully
deployed in elderly care as well as
BELOW LEFT Robots
acting as therapists and supporting
such as Pepper could
people with autism. In one study, the
help out in care homes
robots were more effective than
human therapists, he said, because
people didn’t feel judged by the robot.
BELOW Robot
“They weren’t self-conscious with the
vacuums have been
robot,” he said. “The robots can be
known to spread the
more useful in some regards, and also
dirt rather than clean it helped to extend the capabilities of
our overburdened healthcare staff.”
It’s hard to see leaving our elderly
to be managed by robots as anything
other than a lonely dystopia, but if
deployed sensitively and alongside
human help, they could be useful
tools. Avatar-style robots could fill
both roles at once, offering a human
– remote though they may be – to
check in and chat with a housebound
person, while also taking out the bins
and making a quick meal.
That could be the foot-in-the-door
for robots in the home, but for most of
us, the closest we’ll get to a robobutler
is a Roomba. Which is a shame, as I
could really do with someone making
me a cup of tea after writing all this.

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Features

Labs
Virtual
private
networks

VPNsarenowacrucial
weaponinanypower
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offerthesamelevelof
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Upgrade to a
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humblysuggestyoutakealookatanewbreed
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Retro

The Network

Teaching kids to code
the old-fashioned way

Create your own Spotify

Ifyoudon’twanttopaySpotifythatmonthly
subscription,whynotsetupyourownpersonal
musicserver?Weshowyouhowit’sdone,and
revealhowtomakeitworkwithAlexaand
othersmartdevices.

How
do you get
Howdoyouget
children
interested
childreninterested
incoding?
Wetalkto
ICTtechnician
ICT
technician
GaryMcNab,
Gary
McNab,
whohassetupatravellingworkshop
who
has set up a travelling workshop
calledTheCodeShowthatusesold
computermagazinelistingstoinspire
hisyoungsubjects.Butdoesitwork?

F1 tech
How technology is
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How to code like a pro

Learntocodeliketheprofessionalsdo,withthe
freeeditionofMicrosoftVisualStudio.Our
guideexplainshowtostartcreatingyourown
programsandappsusingindustry-standard
librariesandtools.
Please note: Labs and features are subject to change

When it comes to demanding sports,
surely none can match Formula 1. Every
millisecond matters, and the teams
along with the broadcasters are always
operating at the cutting edge. We
explore what that means in practice
(and in the race).

Remote support
software

Weallknowthatpreviouslyoffice-bound
We all know that previously office-bound
workershavebeensetfree.Nowthat
workers have been set free. Now that
hybridworkingisafactofworkinglife,
howdoyousupportthem?DaveMitchell
hastheanswernextmonth.

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Onelastthing...

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Copilotisthemost
excitingOffice
updateinyears,so
whyisJonHoneyball
sonervous?

M

icrosoft’s announcement
that it’s rolling out its
Copilot AI and large
language model (LLM)
technology into Office 365 is both
thrilling and terrifying. It doesn’t
come cheap, of course. At $30 per user
per month, this is a significant uplift
on the cost of a regular Office licence.
Many have taken the view that
the price is simply outrageous.
Well, Microsoft has to find money to
pay for its multi-billion-dollar
investment into the technology – both
into the software platform and the
necessary hardware on which to run
it. This is going to be CPU-intensive
work, a level of processing that’s an
order of magnitude higher than
sending an email or dropping a
document into a SharePoint server.
From a business point of view, the
price is almost irrelevant. I don’t say
that flippantly. I simply mean that it’s
easy to justify $30 of increased spend
if more than this is returned to the
company in terms of direct benefits in
productivity, along with indirect
outcomes such as improved data
mining, insight and time planning.
For example, the new service can
act as your business’ digital avatar,
watching what you’re doing and then
acting upon it. It can take all of the
notes and discussions from a Teams
meeting, say, and then summarise
them for distribution. This could be a
real help for people who spend much
of their working day in Teams,
especially on sales calls. Getting the
key information out quickly could
save significant time and show clients
that you mean business.
Then there are the daily AI/LLM
solutions being offered to workers.
One prime example: take a paragraph
in Word or Outlook and get Copilot to
rewrite it in better English. It would
help my clunky prose no end, and I’m
sure the same is true of most people.

130

The one feature that gives me
pause, however, is the ability for
Copilot to look at Excel data, and offer
analysis based on the content it sees.
For some data, this could work
well. But my love-hate relationship
with Excel stretches back to the very
first version in the mid-1980s, and I
know its flaws along with its
phenomenal capabilities. I have seen
shockingly bad Excel models and
analysis, and this is to be expected
when it’s so rare for Excel users to get
meaningful training in the platform.
There is an expectation that, just like
Word, it’s a tool that everyone knows.
Maybe Copilot can help here by
offering up different models. Even
better would be the ability
to audit existing data and
analysis, to show where
errors might have occurred.
An expert on your shoulder,
as it were.
But will this fix the
underlying concern of a
homogenisation of output,
where everything turns into
bland mush? Worse still, will this
additional axis of obfuscation away
from core data sets, and thus the
trustworthiness of source, mean that
we have significantly increased the
volume while reducing the quality?
Consider that a few years ago the
first line of any email became, “I hope
this email finds you well”, or an
equivalent bland welcome. It has now
become just more noise, and I’d like
an AI tool to summarise and remove
this stuff. But there is the risk of false
positives where something important
gets lost too. I can see “Copilot ate my
data” becoming the modern version of
“The dog ate my homework” as the
excuse for anything going wrong.
To top it off, Microsoft has
announced a collaboration with
Maybelline to incorporate its Beauty
app into Microsoft Teams. This will

allow meeting attendees to adjust
their personal makeup using AI, to
help prevent the “morning after the
night before” look. The announcement
states: “The Maybelline Beauty app in
Teams uses AI-powered functionality
enabled by Modiface, an augmented
reality technology for the beauty
industry owned by Maybelline parent
company L’Oréal. Modiface AI
identifies over 70 points of the user’s
face to create a ‘virtual map’ that
enables the seamless application of
the digital filters.”
I fear this will become the default
setting, just like those auto-formatted
tables in Excel and style sheets applied
in Word. Anyone not having the

My love-hate relationship with Excel
stretches back to the very first version in
the mid-1980s, and I know its flaws along
with its phenomenal capabilities
smoothed skin effect, a touch of lip
gloss and maybe a smile make-over
will quickly look out of place. And this
matters in the workplace.
What has then happened to
integrity, to reality? To the
fundamentals of a business meeting
where trust is built upon the
relationships honed over time? There
are some areas where AI shouldn’t be
used. Unfortunately, we don’t know
where those boundaries are yet, and
there will be much pain experienced
in defining them in the coming years.
So my message to you is simple.
Don’t worry about how much the pig
weighs, or how much it costs. Worry
about the lipstick.
Jon Honeyball is a contributing editor to
PC Pro. A veteran of too many Teams
meetings to count, he has no need to add
virtual makeup. Email jon@jonhoneyball.com