Innehållsförteckning för April 2023 från Tech Advisor

Intel said in February that it’s closing the book on its 11th-gen Core chips, code-named ‘Rocket Lake’. The company issued an end-of life notice that covers the entire Rocket Lake chip line-up as well as its supporting chipsets. Intel said that it will accept orders for the chips up until 25 August, shipping them through February 2024, so vendors and retailers will have a while to stock up if desired. In reality, though, the Rocket Lake architecture won’t be particularly missed. As our original review of Rocket Lake pointed out, Intel’s 11th-gen desktop processor was the last vestige of the company’s 14nm manufacturing process, which at that time had endured seven whole years of Intel designs. The 11th-gen mobile processors, however, had since migrated to Intel’s 10nm process technology. The…

What do you get if you use a gaming PC from Alienware, a keyboard from Cooler Master, a headset from HyperX, and a mouse from Razer all at the same time? You get four different programs and interfaces to control all those blinking RGB lights. Sorry, that wasn’t a punchline, it’s just the annoying reality of different proprietary software to control a bunch of different PC gaming gadgets. But according to the code of the latest Windows 11 test build, it might be getting a more practical solution soon. Twitter’s prolific Windows analyst Albacore (fave. co/3YJJyFQ) spotted RGB lighting controls for USB accessories in Windows 11 build 25295, the latest Insider Preview Build that hit the servers in February. There’s no mention of lighting controls in Microsoft’s official changelog, but…

Samsung has finally unveiled its latest generation of flagship slab phones, the Galaxy S23 series. It’s a year for cautious upgrades though – the main S23 and S23+ have changed a lot in how they look, but a little less on the inside. Meanwhile, the S23 Ultra doesn’t look so different, but does benefit from an overhauled 200Mp main camera – and all three phones get the benefit of Qualcomm Snapdragon silicon worldwide. So, what should you expect if you’re considering picking up an S23? Here’s what you need to know. ON SALE DATE Samsung’s new phones are available to buy now. This launch includes the standard S23 model alongside the + and Ultra variants – these are the models we’ll focus on here. In 2020, Samsung introduced the FE…

Price: £1,849 from fave.co/3Xsbmxn Samsung’s Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 laptop packs in a self-contained movie theater, a sketchpad for digital artists, and an all-day productivity machine that can digitally connect to other Galaxy devices inside a single, 16-inch, 360-degree convertible laptop. Capping it all off is a gorgeous, powerful new OLED display that puts almost all of its rivals and predecessor to shame. Consider this £1,849 laptop for what it can do after hours as well as your workday. While its 13th-gen Intel Core processor doesn’t outperform everything in its class, you’ll find a ton under its hood that few rivals offer. So buckle up – there’s a lot to talk about. WHAT IT OFFERS AND WHERE IT FITS Samsung’s Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 is one of a small family…

Price: £319 from fave.co/3YfFqxH Poco’s 2023 X-range phones are here, and the cheaper of the pair is the Poco X5. Launched alongside the Poco X5 Pro, this phone comes complete with a dazzling 120Hz AMOLED display (a first from a base X-range Poco phone), fast-charging technology and a 48Mp triple camera set-up. But is the phone still good value for money, especially considering its place in the highly competitive mid-range space? I’ve spent some time with the Poco X5 to see how it handles everyday use. DESIGN The Poco X5 comes with an understated yet sleek finish – a welcome relief from the days when Poco used to blaze its logo on the entire back. The phone is 7.98mm thick, and weighs just 189g, so it’s relatively slim and lightweight…

It’s finally time to upgrade to Windows 11. Or is it? Our initial review of Windows 11 called Microsoft’s latest operating system “unnecessary”. Windows 10 was such a strong entrant within the Windows succession that we saw no need to move on to something new. It’s time now, however, that we think you should start seriously considering it. Why? Because the landscape has changed. Microsoft now provides some very good reasons to move to Windows 11, some of which weren’t available at launch. Some colleagues have switched full time to Windows 11, and the goal of this story originally set out to convince you that it was time to switch to Windows 11. But there’s a problem. Microsoft doesn’t seem as determined to convince you to upgrade to Windows 11…

February was a big month for Nvidia. Not only did the first GeForce RTX 4080 and 4090 laptops hit the streets (with absolutely eye-watering performance), but Nvidia also rolled out a feature-packed new driver that unlocks support for those GPUs, more DLSS 3 games, and a lot more. The one thing missing right now? Nvidia’s RTX Video Super Resolution, one of our top reveals of CES 2023. RTX Video Super Resolution will upscale ho-hum 1080p Internet video to crisp 4K, powered by the AI tensor cores in GeForce RTX 40-series and 30-series graphics cards. I had hoped Nvidia would flip its own driver switches to turn RTX Video Super Resolution on – I’m very keen to try it out – but when I asked about it, a spokesperson told me:…

Samsung’s new Galaxy Book3 Ultra is the most powerful laptop the company has ever unveiled, and addresses a content-creation market that the company hasn’t broached before. But here’s the really interesting news: You’ll find one of the Ultra’s most attractive features – a stunning 3K, 120Hz, OLED display – on both the cheaper Galaxy Book3 Pro and Galaxy Book3 Pro 360. For years, Samsung’s Galaxy Book laptops have typically been synonymous with three words: thin, light and OLED. But with more and more manufacturers deploying OLED screens in their laptops, Samsung is now leaning harder into its own OLED bona fides and thus we have the Galaxy Book3 Ultra, Pro and Pro 360 laptops, plus a Galaxy Book 360 announced at launch. All save the Galaxy Book3 360 feature a…

The new Galaxy S23 Ultra looks exactly the same as 2022’s Galaxy S22 Ultra. Look art the image opposite and try to spot the differences. This is because it is practically the same phone. Samsung can’t even be bothered to try and hide it. How can it when squared off corners with the same size screen house a phone with an S-Pen stylus and five circular camera cut outs on the back? Put the two phones side by side and you’ll struggle to tell them apart. The S23 Ultra gets the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, a 200Mp main camera, and a few new software tricks, but really this is evolution, not revolution. Qualcomm equipping the S23 with a special version of the 8 Gen 2, with a CPU…

Price: £1,869 from fave.co/3E94tug Most laptops make compromises to get the job done – notebooks for creatives eschew slim designs for power, for instance, and thinner notebooks lack speed. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Pro X tries to do it all, though, with a high-end processor inside a sleek design. There’s loads to like about this machine, especially if you want a slim and light laptop with the grunt for creative work. As ever, though, quality doesn’t often come cheap. If you want the high‑end specification we’ve covered here, you’ll have to pay £1,869. The Lenovo isn’t short of competition, either. If you’d prefer a small creative notebook from Apple then you can look at the MacBook Air or MacBook Pro 14, and Microsoft deploys the Surface Laptop 4 if…

You may have found that your Windows PC recently updated itself, whether or not you wanted it to, as Microsoft began automatically upgrading Windows 11 PCs with its big annual update at the end of January. It’s been an optional upgrade since its September release. But that’s okay: there are plenty of new things to check out in the huge Windows 11 2022 Update, codenamed 22H2. The system has been given a bit of spit and polish pretty much everywhere – you probably noticed some of the more obvious interface changes, like new icons for changing volume. Here are five of the more substantial changes you should check out first in the Windows 11 2022 Update. 1. CLIPCHAMP: A NEW, FREE VIDEO EDITOR Windows now has a new default video…

AI is going to end up everywhere within Microsoft’s consumer products: search, Office, business intelligence…and yes, eventually, even Windows. So what could an AI-powered Windows actually look like? We can speculate. If we had to guess, we’d say that the first drips of Bing’s AI won’t transform into a flood until some ways down the road. In part, that’s because AI requires either a persistent internet connection, AI-infused PC processors, or both. Both AMD and Intel are waiting for upcoming processor generations to include AI, with only Qualcomm Snapdragon Arm chips offering it today. But fast-forward – six months? A year? Suddenly an AI-powered Windows future is here. What could Windows powered by AI look like? We have a dozen ideas. 1. A SUPERCHARGED CORTANA This seems so obvious that…

Like its rivals, Microsoft’s Edge browser sports a built-in PDF reader that’s bare-bones but functional. You click a PDF link and a tab opens with the document that you can read, search, and lightly annotate. But that experience is getting supercharged: Microsoft and Adobe have teamed up to bring Adobe Acrobat to Edge, in what will become a wholesale replacement of the browser’s current PDF engine. This move will enable more features when viewing PDFs from the web, like mark-up tools, stronger security for PDFs, and greater accessibility, such as read-aloud narration. The increase in Edge’s PDF capabilities will be native, without the need to install a separate add-on. Users with an Adobe subscription will still need to install a browser extension to access additional advanced features like text and…

In general, Samsung’s new Galaxy Book3 Pro 360 offers a fascinating mix of stunning hardware and software experiences that try to elevate both work and play. But deep down we found two hidden features – one which we’d love to see more of and another which we’d be happy to never see again. To be fair, it’s not clear whether either of these features are ones that Samsung enabled or if they’re simply a quiet tweak by Microsoft to push out new features we haven’t seen before. Our Book3 Pro 360 review unit (see page 38) includes Windows 11 Home 22H2 build 22621.1194 (fave.co/3Xs644Z) and the default configuration of my personal PC is Windows 11 Home 22H2 22621.1105. The feature I like most is the ‘time to empty’ gauge that…

With the launch of the Galaxy S23 smartphones, the Galaxy Book3 laptops, and its existing Galaxy Tab tablets, Samsung is showing off a nifty trick, combining all three into a unified system that you can control or copy from a single mouse. It may not sound like much, but mousing from a tablet to a PC to a phone is something to see. It’s like Apple’s Universal Control, but Samsung’s implementation is much more versatile. It’s another twist on the old problem. What’s the best way to move data from device to device? PCs have USB keys and removable storage for just this reason. But phones don’t. It’s one of the ways that Samsung is trying to convince you to buy a phone, laptop, and tablet, all with the company’s…

Price: £799 from fave.co/3ljFSMD The early flagship phones from OnePlus made their name by having top end specs but miraculously costing hundreds less than the competition. Those days are seemingly behind the company now, but the OnePlus 11 is still a competitively priced Android phone that’s good enough to recommend above more expensive competing phones. If you want a phone with a large screen, amazing performance, great cameras, and long software support, you can’t do much better than this for £799 – hundreds less than the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and even a little less than the regular S23. DESIGN The OnePlus 11 is a large phone but feels slim and compact enough even in small hands thanks to its rounded edges and its curved display. It’s only 8.5mm thick,…

The best Windows 11 tips are the ones you use – to make you more efficient, to make you more productive, and to customize your PC to how you want. But to integrate a tip, you have to try it out. So that’s what we’d like you to do: give each of these tips a quick whirl, see if they work for you, and if they do, great. We want to take what helps us and use it to help you. The list below includes both tips for older features as well as tips for new ones. 1. OPTIMIZE START UP APPS Everyone hits the gym to start off the year. So why not use the time to trim some of the holiday bloat from your PC? There are potentially…