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Intel has released a new video to give us a detailed look and breakdown of its upcoming Lakefield hybrid processor. Lakefield should sound familiar if you caught wind of it during CES 2019, when it was first unveiled as a hybrid processor designed to compete with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon computing APUs. In fact, this new video is actually more of an extended cut of the demo video that Lakefield debuted with at Intel’s keynote. From the video, we can see the Lakefield processor makes use of the Foveros 3D design packaging to stack a massive array of memory on top of the chips’s main cores, which in themselves contain a mix of 'big' and 'small' CPUs. Intel has told us this chip will use a mix of 10nm Sunny Cove performance-focused CPUs and other 10nm-based smaller low-energy CPUs. Aside from those main processor components, we can see other pieces like Intel’s Gen11 integrated graphics as well as interfaces for cameras and hardwired connections, or I/O. Meet Intel's other long-promised 10nm processors, Cannon LakeMeanwhile, AMD is going full speed into 7nm Ryzen 3rd GenerationGet caught up with Intel’s latest Coffee Lake Refresh processorsThis layout essentially makes the Intel Lakefield processor more like a System on a Chip (SoC) processor you would find in your phone, wherein almost every major component is found on the processor chip, and a major deviation from the monolithic chips typically found in computers today. But, don’t think Intel is making a CPU for just phones and tablets, the video ends by showing how Lakefield can power a wide range of devices from traditional notebooks to 2-in-1 convertible and detachable laptops. The footage even suggests dual-screen laptops similar to the Intel Tiger Rapids and Asus Project Precog could get this new hybrid processor. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/nfv3DYwkNjWSkRtY9TXfME.jpg Image Credit: Intel Lakefield might seem like a pipe dream, but Intel has promised it will be in production this year. The company has yet to announce a possible ship window, but you can be sure we’ll report the date – and anything else – as soon as we hear it. Intel Gen11 graphics are great, but we want Intel Graphics Cards alreadyhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/tKotdMOxtjY

Buying the best USB flash drives for your needs is an essential purchase, no matter how you're using your hardware, and we're here to help. In this list of the best USB memory sticks, we look at portable USB flash drives that offer you safe and secure portable storage for your important files. The best USB flash drives don't just offer you a quick and convenient way to transfer data from one PC to another. The brilliant memory sticks in this guide are versatile devices that offer plenty of storage space despite their small size. The best USB flash drives are also sturdily built, so they won't get damaged when you're carrying them about. The best USB memory sticks and flash drives also need to be dependable, so they don’t fail or break, making your data vanish into thin air. This means the best flash drives feature a strong build design. Speed is also important. Not only does this make moving large files to and from the USB flash drives quicker, but it's useful if you're using the USB flash drive for other purposes, such as running a 'live CD' operating system from it. To help you choose which USB storage is right for you, we assembled this list of the best USB flash drives you can buy today. If USB drives are either too expensive (for the amount of storage you’re planning to use) or their capacities are just not high enough (or you tend to lose them a lot), feel free to check out our list of the best external hard drives. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Fr9pXeTyo34XgwHXdrH7BU.png If you want one of the fastest possible USB memory sticks, then the Patriot Supersonic Rage 2 is definitely the one for you. Sure, the price is high, but we were blown away with how fast the device is. If you need to move around large files quickly, then this is definitely worth the price. It also comes with 128GB of storage space, which is a phenomenal amount of storage to carry around in your pocket. Just make sure you don't lose it! http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/024990e2c591f9b18cd89ae5fa22d748.jpg Over the past two years or so, the rise in wholesale transportation costs has made it uneconomical for retailers to sell USB flash drives that were too small, with the cost of postage and packaging actually constituting the biggest portion of the selling price. The Kingston Technology DataTraveler 100 Generation 3 is the most affordable 64GB USB 3.0 drive on the market with read/write speeds of 150Mbps and 70Mbps respectively. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/sbRMgirC5r8MFiJtn8Yt7W.png The SanDisk Extreme CZ80 is a brilliantly priced USB drive that offers plenty of storage space and file transfer speeds. Although it's priced more towards the budget end of USB sticks, the performance is anything but budget - this is a very speedy little performer. The slide-out design of this stick means you can tuck the USB interface into the body when not in use, minimising the risk of it getting damaged while you're carrying it around. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/e804fdcf2563f53baef69146f711b073.jpg This is the cheapest USB 3.0 drive on the market on a per-GB. It comes with a two-year warranty and a capless/retractable cap design. Worth nothing that Verbatim - a very well known Japanese storage and memory manufacturer - sells it on its website and usually has pretty good deals on the device. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/orVeCCMqirBFjdQwBLhBoM.png Another memory vendor that turned into a player in the USB market as well. which features a capped design as well as read/write speeds of 80Mbps and 20Mbps respectively. These are not super fast speeds and if you want something with more oomph then check out some of the other USB drives in this roundup. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/27fd86ce68230eb202ea5be14dbe1f4c.jpg A USB 3.1 drive (compatible with USB 3.0 and 2.0) from one of the most established memory players on the market but a relative newcomer to this segment. It has a zinc alloy body with aluminium accent and reaches read/write speeds of 380Mbps and 70Mbps respectively. No slouch and one that comes with a five-year warranty. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/25a418e65d430386db5f5fe5e0ffff5f.jpg We're solidly in premium territory with this model; not only does it offer absurdly high read speeds of up to 450Mbps thanks to Samsung's own 3D V-NAND technology, it also comes with a three-year warranty and has a USB Type C connector. Note that it is much bigger than a traditional flash drive and costs about five times a spinning hard drive of a similar capacity. In comparison, a 1TB SSD like the Samsung EVO 850 costs just £240. It comes with V-NAND based like the Samsung Portable T1 and it does boast speeds of 530Mbps and 520Mbps in read/write mode respectively. Note that you will need to get a separate enclosure to get it to work with a standard USB port. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8AEo5HFDRAEu2QKLNg4E3B.png If you don't want a USB stick jutting out of your laptop or tablet while you use it, then a low profile USB stick is a good choice, and the SanDisk Ultra Fit CZ43 is an excellent choice. It's small and light enough to easy carry around, and when it's plugged into your laptop it doesn't stick out much from the body. It's also very cheap, at around £10 for the 32GB version, with 64GB and 128GB versions also available. It's not quite as fast as many of the other USB memory sticks we mention here, but if you want a small form factor USB stick, it's worth the trade-off. How to choose your USB memory sticks?It's not worth looking for memory sticks with capacities smaller than 64GB simply because the price premium you pay for twice or four times the storage is tiny.Make sure you include delivery price when doing the numbers as quite often you end up paying more for the postage than the drive itself, particularly for low cost models.USB 2.0 is sufficient for smaller capacities but not for bigger ones where write speeds can be sluggish. Larger flash drives (128GB or more) often come only with a USB 3.0 connector.If you plan to move files to and from portable devices (tablets or smartphones), consider a memory stick with a microUSB connector and a full size USB one.Avoid buying your memory sticks from vendors with few feedbacks on auction websites as these drives might turn out to be fake. All the vendors listed below are tried and trusted ones.Above 128GB, you might want to consider a SSD if you want ruggedness, portability, versatility and better performance without the cost.Note that all the capacities are likely to be much less than stated when they are formatted and when mounted on an operating system.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/nYOU8ZvwffE

The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have announced the next major release in the duo’s role-playing game franchise for its Nintendo Switch console: Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. The two games are currently slated to arrive by “late 2019,” and will usher in the long-awaited 8th generation of new Pokémon monsters to capture. The current 7th generation was introduced with Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon for Nintendo 3DS in 2016. Naturally, the games will present another fully 3D area of the Pokémon world to explore, this time being the more futuristic Galar region. However, this game looks to seriously improve the visual quality over the first Pokémon games for Nintendo Switch: Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu and Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee. Nintendo Switch 2 may actually be a smaller versionThese are the best Nintendo Switch deals right nowHow to connect your Nintendo Switch to the TVDedicated fans will also notice that the classic game function of encountering Pokémon in the wild and battling them before throwing a Poké Ball to catch them has returned, and several Pokémon from previous generations will make appearances. Of course, the internet is already going wild for the game’s starter Pokémon that have already been teased: the monkey-like Grass type Grookey, the rabbit-like Fire type Scorbunny and the tadpole-looking Water type Sobble. Neither Nintendo nor The Pokémon Company have revealed more details regarding the specifics of each game, especially the inspiration behind the titles of these two new games. We’ll surely be drip-fed sweet Pokémon details right up until that vague “late 2019” release date. These are the best Nintendo Switch games to datehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/z1zm47xfvbs

Apex Legends has got off to a cracking start, without a doubt, but every game has teething issues of one sort or another, and the battle royale shooter has come under fire because some characters are much easier to hit than others thanks to their larger hit-boxes. This is an issue that the developer, Respawn, has acknowledged as problematic, noting on Reddit that: “We are aware of the feedback around the hit-box differences between characters. This is an area that definitely needs improvement and we will be addressing it in the future.” For the uninitiated, a hit-box is the area of a character model which when struck by a bullet will register a hit and therefore damage. Now, the problem is that the larger characters in Apex Legends have much bigger hit-boxes, and are therefore easier to hit (as opposed to all characters having the same or pretty similar-sized hit-boxes, with larger ones just being rendered as larger models). Meanwhile, here’s everything that’s new in FortniteWe’ve also picked the best gaming monitors for FortniteApex Legends is one of our best free games on the PCThis is particularly a problem in the shooter because the hit-box size discrepancy is so large. SookieSpy on YouTube has performed in-game testing to try and work out the rough size of each character’s respective hit-box, and the results are eye-opening. Rock of GibraltarThe hulking Gibraltar is something like 140% bigger than the slender Wraith; in other words, considerably more than twice the size, and therefore far easier to hit. Caustic and Pathfinder are also relatively big barn-door-sized lumps, with the other characters having smaller hit-boxes. Pathfinder also has another issue in that when you shoot the wide gap between his legs, he still gets hit. This has stoked a good number of threads on Reddit and other places online, as you can imagine, with arguments that this is totally unfair – or at least the size of the discrepancies are – and it’s no wonder that no one picks Gibraltar. Then again, others contend that this is all part of the overall balance of the game, and the character abilities compensate for any hit-box deficiencies. For example, Gibraltar may be easier to hit, but he has a pretty nifty front-on shield that comes up when you’re aiming down the sights. The problem is there are counterarguments to that, too. Namely that the shield only helps Gibraltar in head-on encounters, when outflanking maneuvers – or getting caught by another team coming from a different angle – aren’t exactly uncommon in Apex Legends. Furthermore, the shield can light Gibraltar up like a Christmas tree, to make him an easy target even from a distance, when he is, say, peering out a window and aiming down a sniper scope trying to draw a bead on someone. At any rate, these sort of balance arguments can go back and forth, but it’s up to the developers to evaluate and sort things out. Hopefully that’s what’s happening now as Respawn gauges what improvements are needed. The first major gameplay or character balance changes are likely in the pipeline, too, as the developer also stated: “We’ve been listening to player feedback and going through the mountains of data we get from the game. Soon we’ll be talking more about how we think about live balance for Apex Legends and some of the changes to expect to the meta.” In the Reddit post acknowledging the hit-box issue, Respawn also noted that a fix has been applied to stop players skydiving for longer distances than intended (which involved keeping their character looking up when ascending and gliding from a jump tower balloon). These are the best gaming PCs of 2019Via PC Gamer http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/xEL6lbLls8s

We're not sure if you've noticed but UK broadband deals have been pretty impressive over the last few weeks. Whenever one deal comes to an end, another seems to line straight up to replace it. But tomorrow, two of the best offers around will be coming to an end, giving you just one last day to grab them. The offers in question are on TalkTalk and BT - two of the best known names on the UK internet scene. The former offers an incredibly affordable ADSL package combined with a big Amazon.co.uk Gift Card and the other - an EXCLUSIVE TechRadar offer no less - crams in fast speeds, M&S vouchers and pre-paid Mastercards into one neat package. So if you want to grab some of the best cheap broadband deals around, scroll down to see both of these promotional internet offers in full. But like we said above, you will need to hurry before these deals come to an end tomorrow. These brilliant limited time broadband deals in full:Compare broadband deals - the UK's best:http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/8QolrXrbTuE

OLED televisions are now a crucial part of the TV landscape. Leading the way for high-end televisions, and offering a level of contrast and color accuracy beyond most of their LCD counterparts, OLED is proving to be the defining TV technology of recent years, and is only going to expand. Though OLED panels tend to be limited in brightness, advances in manufacturing have made them a better and brighter proposition than ever – and therefore even more adept at handling the ultra-bright high dynamic range (HDR) picture format that’s become the latest must-have television technology. Even more importantly, OLED TVs finally started to hit price points that you didn’t have to be an oil tycoon to afford. They still cost substantially more than the majority of LCD TVs. And while remaining peerless for contrast/black level performance, even the new improved OLEDs can’t get close to the HDR friendly levels of brightness some LCD TVs can muster. These key differences between OLED and LCD TVs have led to a real polarisation in the TV marketplace. In recognition of this, we’ve split our guide to the best TVs you can currently buy across separate LCD and OLED sections. The OLED section is below; the LCD one can be found at the following link. Best LED TVs: Our pick of the best LCD LED televisions you can buy todayFor more, watch our TV buying guide video above. In each section we’ve tried to pick a range of TVs that cover an array of different price points and features. And with each selected model we’ve explained why we picked it - and any flaws it may have. Need a screen with an inscrutable contrast ratio? Here’s our pick of the best OLED TVs you can buy right now. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ySL8U2eV953jxJJ8Q87x34.jpg Image Credit: LG Off the back of the OLEDC7, which topped this list last year, the OLEDC8 continues LG's winning streak as the best performing OLED television for the price. LG has been leading the charge with its OLED TVs – no surprise, given it's technically LG-made panels being used in rival sets by Sony, Panasonic, and the like. But where the OLEDC8 and cheaper OLEDB8 sibling triumph, is in offering a premium OLED picture at a lower price point than much of the OLED sets out there, widening the user base beyond a few high-earners. Like the rest of LG's OLED TVs, the C8 delivers a punchy, vibrant picture despite a limited peak brightness of only 820 nits. There's no HDR10+ support, sadly – but with regular HDR10 or the more premium Dolby Vision, you're getting rich colors alongside the deep, inky blacks that OLED is famed for. LG has also cracked down on motion handling issues for a cleaner, smoother picture than last year's model. This year's model also features a wider, sloped TV stand that's both pleasing to the eye and acts to funnel sound from the set's downward-firing speakers towards the viewer. Pictures can exhibit a little colour noise when running at the most satisfying brightness levels, and there seems to be some inconsistency between sets when it comes to how much they occasionally reveal ‘bands’ of different black level during dark scenes. For the vast majority of the time, though, you’ll find yourself wondering how a 'low-end' OLED TV in town could possibly look so good. Read the full review: LG OLED C8 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/F7twHW6mb5mE3JwYDMaJ7e.jpg Image Credit: Sony The AF9 is unquestionably Sony’s best OLED offering to date, and arguably a strong contender for best high-end screen of the year. With an all-glass front, no bezel, and a 3.2 surround sound system built into the screen itself, the AF9 is a looker that delivers astonishing visual and audio performance. The X1 Ultimate processor offers a host of improvements on Sony's previous OLED sets, giving greater definition to individual objects onscreen and boosting color contrast in what was already a startling clear and refined picture. You're paying a price premium for the privilege, but you can be sure you're getting a brilliant OLED display for the money. Sony’s processing prowess also does a better job than any other brand of ‘upconverting’ standard dynamic range content to HDR, meaning you get more consistent use out of your TV’s maximum capabilities. The Android TV smart platform has its share of problems (read: bugs), but the new Android Oreo interface introduced here solves a lot of them, and makes navigating Sony's apps and services far simpler, with menu bars for recently watched and favorited channels. An added bonus of buying into Sony's Master Series TV range is the inclusion of a Netflix Calibrated Mode, for calibrating those pretty pixels to best suit TV and films on the Netflix streaming service. Necessary? Probably not. A nice touch? Definitely. Read the full review: Sony AF9 OLED http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/J5kgPJrAPFKHCTea6yRzd6.jpg Image Credit: LG We were almost surprised to see LG improve on last year's OLEDE7, but it looks like they've done it. The OLEDE8 sees LG double down on software improvements, reducing picture noise and using a new Alpha 9 processor that really knows how to handle HDR images. The design of the model is still gorgeous, mapping a pixel display onto an astonishingly thin glass pane, even if it's ditched some of the E7's fancier protrusions. LG also saw fit to drop the integrated soundbar, opting instead for a thinner speaker band between the panel and the glass bottom. The speakers inevitably feel lacking compared to last year's model, and it feels like a step backwards in the sound department – but you're still getting a dynamic audio performance with some limited Dolby Atmos capability. It's maybe harder to justify the E8 over the C8, given the similar picture processing, same brilliant webOS smart TV platform, and less of an discrepancy in sound quality. But if you want the full OLED package with the looks to match, and a bit of boost to audio, the E8 is going to be your television of choice. Read the full review: LG OLED E8 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DjRXczUKHL8H2Ta4LFeuwj.jpg As usual with Bang & Olufsen, the Eclipse isn’t exactly your typical OLED screen. In fact, its screen is really just one ‘small’ component of its overall design rather than being pretty much the whole deal. This is because the screen slots into the top of a huge built in speaker bar that extends out beyond the edges of the screen above it, while the speaker bar in turn sits on top of a gorgeous sliver of glass below it. And all of that sits on a range of different stand options, including my personal favourite – a motorised rotating floor mount that can both move the whole screen forward and backwards, or rotate it left and right. The entire towering construction is beautifully built, too. The TV certainly isn’t a case of all style and no substance, though. That LG-based screen delivers all of its customary contrast and colour thrills, while that vast soundbar has so much raw power and such huge dynamics that it humbles many external high end speaker systems. With multi-room speaker support and surround sound decoding built in too, the only issues with the Eclipse are that its complicated to use, and that you probably won’t be able to afford one… Read the full review: Bang & Olufsen BeoVision Eclipse http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/io6jVE9iAEjDN96etqHkkm.jpg Image Credit: Philips Philips OLED 803 is a beautiful OLED television, if you can get past some minor issues. The main draw here is Philips second-generation P5 processor, which manages to double the processing power of the chip seen in the 803's predecessors. The results are stunning, with a Perfect Natural Reality function that algorithmically tweaks contrast, brightness, and definition to optimize your picture on the fly. The effect of Philips' P5 engine may sometimes be subtle with real-world content, but it gives this set an edge when it comes to playing in SDR 4K or HD. You're also getting Philip's unique Ambilight technology, which throws onscreen colors onto the wall behind your television, giving a sense of real atmosphere. The 803 is technically second-in-line to Philips' OLED, after the OLED 903+, but the only real difference is the latter's integrated Bowers & Wilkins soundbar – an improvement on sound, sure, but you'll save a neat £500 by going after the 803 and sticking with your current sound system instead. There's some input lag, so this isn't as well-suited a TV to gaming as some of the others on this list – and the Android TV interface isn't the most seamless. Not to mention the exclusion of the Freeview Play catch-up service, which is increasingly expected as standard for UK viewers. But the 803 is no doubt the most tempting OLED Philips has produced, and the competitive price compared to the 903+ just nabs it a place on this list. Read our full review: Philips OLED 803 For a full rundown of the best sets out there, whether LCD or OLED, check our our full best TVs of 2019 guidehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/apxnFSmlE18

It was only supposed to be available for a week! When Three brought back its Black Friday-evoking SIM only deal at the end of January, we were advising everybody to snap it up before it went. Another month on and the network's £20 per month all-you-can-eat data SIMO is still on sale - we're certainly not complaining. But Three has confirmed that the tariff will finally disappear at the very minute that the calendar changes from February to March - it ends at 11.59pm on Thursday February 28 (damn this shorter month!). So that leaves you less than two days to grab what we've been happy to call "the best SIM only deal ever". A year's worth of unlimited calls, texts and data for twenty quid each month. For Netflix binging, Spotify sessions and all the Facebiook scrolling a human being can put up with away from Wi-Fi, no deal matches Three. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/VgyagGS9HpAEPUQtUJBfrg.jpg Three's best ever SIM only deal in full:Probably the only downside to this stellar SIMO is that you have to commit to a whole year if you go for this offer. At £240 for an entire 12 months of all-you-can-eat data, texts and calls, we think it's still well worthwhile. But if you're a commitment-phobe who wants more flexibility to cancel, then check out Smarty's £25 per month unlimited data SIM that only makes you commit to 30 days at a time instead - and you'll even get your second month free if you sign up now. And what will the SIM only landscape be like when Three's deal departs us? Well don't worry too much...Vodafone currently has a bumper 100GB SIM for the same £20 per month - the heir apparent to the SIMO throne. Why go for a Three SIM only deal?If you haven't already been won over by this amazing offer then you'll be excited to hear that Three doesn't shy away from offering up some extra incentives as well. Whether that be free exclusive prizes or extra roaming. You can see all of best parts of a Three SIM only deal down below. Wuntu - Exclusive offers and freebies with Three's rewards appGo Roam - Roaming abilities in 71 worldwide countries at no extra costTravel Swagger - Get travel upgrades with Easyjet with bag drop and early boardingStill not convinced? Select from our list of best SIM only deals in the UK todayhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/_jNH7Qb0vgo

Samsung is on a spree of launching phones in India. On Wednesday, the company added another phone to its Galaxy M-series in India. The M-series debuted earlier this year with two phones, the Galaxy M10 and Galaxy M20. The M30 is the third phone in the series and boasts of some compelling features. Also Read: Samsung Galaxy A30 and Galaxy A50 go official in IndiaSamsung Galaxy M30 specifications The Galaxy M30 features a 6.4-inch Full HD+ (2280 x 1080 pixels) Super AMOLED panel with the infinity-u shaped notch design. This gives the screen a 19:9 aspect ratio and provides more screen estate to users. Samsung Exynos 7904 octa-core chipset powers the Galaxy M30 and is backed by 4GB/6GB RAM and 6GB/128GB storage. The M30 has a triple camera setup on the back which consists of a primary 13MP sensor coupled with a 5MP depth sensor and a 5MP ultra-wide sensor. On the front, there's a 16MP camera for selfies housed within the u-shaped notch. There's a fingerprint sensor on the rear plastic shell of the M30. The phone runs on Android 9.0 Pie based Samsung Samsung Galaxy M30 has a big 5,000mAh battery to its disposal and it also supports fast charging via 15w adapter provided in-the-box. Samsung Galaxy M30 price and availability The Galaxy M30 is priced starting at Rs 14,990 for the 4GB RAM variant while buysers will have to shell out Rs 17,990 for the variant with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. The first sale is scheduled for March 7 and users can buy it from Amazon India and Samsung India Store. Also Read: Spotify launches in India with exclusive features and premium monthly subscription at Rs 119http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/VeiNx0xR-g0

With Samsung opting to announce the Galaxy S10 family at its own Unpacked event the previous week, MWC 2019 had the potential to be one of the least exciting editions of the world’s biggest mobile technology show in recent memory. The good news is, it wasn’t. Instead, it allowed the other manufacturers from around the globe to step up to the plate and embrace the lack of new Samsung flagships by taking the limelight with their own releases. Below we’re going to talk you through every phone announcement at MWC 2019 that you should care about. Just because they’re in this list doesn’t mean you should buy one though; this is simply a look at the devices we think look the most exciting based on their initial announcement and first impressions. Huawei Mate X http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/wstYJYmWG7SFxU5dJCpuMm.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar Samsung’s Galaxy Fold isn’t the only foldable phone you’ll be able to buy later this year – there’s also the Huawei Mate X, and we awarded it the most exciting innovation award of MWC 2019. When folded out, the Huawei Mate X comes with an 8-inch display with a resolution of 2200 x 2480, but even when it isn’t folded out you’ve got the benefits of a 6.6-inch display to move around your apps. With the latest top-end Kirin chipset powering the phone along and three cameras on the rear, we’re expecting some big things from the Huawei Mate X. Just don’t expect to get it cheap, as it’s a hugely expensive phone at somewhere around $2,600, £2,000, AU$4,770. This phone is a big focus for Huawei going forward, and while the company is set to announce the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro next month it is currently plastering the Huawei Mate X all over billboards around Barcelona to soak up the hype. Read our hands on Huawei Mate X reviewSony Xperia 1 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/tYoKijEfDpbLapJJ7mU5qm.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar Sony’s latest phone comes packing all of the top-end tech you’d expect from a flagship device in 2019, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB of RAM and a powerful triple-lens rear camera, but the truly exciting feature is on the front of the phone. With the world’s first 4K HDR OLED screen on a phone, Sony’s Xperia 1 is a powerhouse when it comes to watching films on the move. It has a 21:9 aspect ratio - that’s why it looks taller - which the company is certain looks better when watching video in landscape orientation. We’ve yet to try the phone out properly as we’ve only been allowed to handle demo units without a working user interface, but it’s sure to be one of the best phones if you’re a commuter who often spends their journey engulfed in a film on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. Special mention also goes to the Sony Xperia 10 and Xperia 10 Plus - phones we have tried as they’re already on sale in some countries - which are mid-range devices that also sport 21:9 aspect ratio displays, offering you that widescreen experience. Read our Sony Xperia 1 first lookLG V50 ThinQ http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/bcuNnegTc3fWyjrzRefn6X.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar The most exciting LG phone of MWC 2019 in our opinion is not the LG G8, but rather the LG V50 ThinQ. The highlight of the phone is arguably its support for 5G. A few phones have recently been announced with support for this next generation of mobile networks, but there aren’t many yet, so get a 5G signal (once 5G networks have actually launched) and the V50 ThinQ should handle data far faster than most handsets. The screen is also a high point. The LG V50 ThinQ has a 6.4-inch 1440 x 3120 AMOLED screen with a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and support for HDR10 - which makes for an impressive if fairly typical flagship spec. But the phone also has a trick up its sleeve in the form of an optional second screen attachment dubbed the LG DualScreen. The V50 ThinQ also has a triple-lens rear camera, with a 12MP standard lens, a 12MP telephoto one and a 16MP ultra-wide one, as well as a dual-lens selfie camera, a 4,000mAh battery, a premium - if ordinary - design, and strong audio skills. Read our hands on LG V50 ThinQ reviewNokia 9 PureView http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/9enpLr9wZqKy7JxZTgkHtf.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar The Nokia 9 PureView aims to take smartphone photography to a whole other level, as it has a full five lenses on the back, as well as a time of flight (ToF) sensor. They’re all 12MP f/1.8 lenses and two shoot in color while three are black and white. So why offer five near identical lenses? Because the Nokia 9 PureView can optionally capture images with all of them and combine these into one seriously detailed shot. The Nokia 9 PureView also has a 5.99-inch 1440 x 2880 P-OLED screen, so visuals are sharp, and there’s an in-screen fingerprint scanner and a glass and metal build - though the phone sticks with bezels above and below the screen rather than a notch or punch-hole. In some ways the Nokia 9 PureView is less impressive, as alongside 6GB of RAM it’s stuck with a Snapdragon 845 chipset, which was top-end in 2018 but has now been superseded by the Snapdragon 855. As such its performance probably won’t quite be a match for most of 2019’s flagships, but given the $699 (around £535 / AU$980) price it doesn’t need to be. Read our hands on Nokia 9 PureView reviewSamsung Galaxy A50 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/sZ5mG7g5LSdeAgcZszBShh.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar Unlike the other phones on this list the Samsung Galaxy A50 is not a flagship. Instead, it’s a mid-range device, but one with plenty of style and features. That includes a 6.4-inch 1080 x 2340 Super AMOLED screen with a tiny teardrop notch and a fingerprint scanner built into the display itself - which is a feature that even the Samsung Galaxy S10e doesn’t have. The Galaxy A50’s camera is also set to impress, or rather, it’s cameras are, as there are three of them on the back. There’s a 25MP f/1.7 main lens, an 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one and a 5MP f/2.2 depth sensor, which should make for a lot of versatility, especially as they’re paired with a 25MP f/2.0 front-facing camera. You should be able to snap for a long time too, as there’s a big 4,000mAh battery with support for fast charging. With a mid-range octa-core chipset, either 4GB or 6GB of RAM, and either 64GB or 128GB of storage too, this could be a real winner if the price is right. Read our hands on Samsung Galaxy A50 reviewAnd then there's the rest...While the above five phones are the clear highlights of MWC 2019, they’re far from the only handsets that were announced. Numerous other Nokia-branded handsets were announced, such as the Nokia 4.2 and Nokia 3.2, as were other phones from Samsung, such as the Galaxy A30. And those are just a few examples. Many other phones from those companies and others have also been announced and you can find a full overview of them in our MWC 2019 hub. MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting live from Barcelona all week to bring you the very latest from the show floor. Head to our dedicated MWC 2019 hub to see all the new releases, along with TechRadar's world-class analysis and buying advice about your next phone. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/GgY5a982NCs

OnePlus recently displayed its 5G prototype smartphone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC at MWC 2019. The company will also be among the first smartphone makers to launch smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 855 in India, as well to start 5G trials in the country. We have been loyal to Qualcomm’s 800-series Snapdragon chipsets since the release of our very first flagship device. This strong partnership with Qualcomm makes us believe that we could bring the best 5G device to the world.Pete Lau, Founder and CEO, OnePlus OnePlus began research on 5G in 2016, and a year later, partnered with Qualcomm to on OnePlus’ 5G device development. The partnership was successful, and in October 2018, OnePlus sent out the world’s first 5G tweet by connecting a prototype device to a 5G Non-standalone Network, via an LTE b7 + 5G NR n78 air interface. The tweet by Pete Lau said ‘Say Hello to 5G’. OnePlus recently announced that it is also working with Qualcomm to launch the '5G Apps of Tomorrow' challenge for global app developers. Challenge winners will be awarded a total of €250,000, as well as other resources. MWC 2019: all the news from the biggest mobile show of the yearhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/al3Vy69EXRI

The OnePlus 7 isn't slated to release until June, so there isn't much buzz around it as yet. However, CEO Pete Lau recently told CNET that the company doesn't consider it worthwhile to add a wireless charging feature to its smartphones. That's a pretty big hint that the OnePlus 7 won't have wireless charging. "OnePlus charging is one of the best," Lau said at MWC 2019. "Wireless charging is far inferior." Hands on: Huawei Mate X reviewLau is sceptical about wireless charging's actual benefits to consumers, noting that it takes a long time to charge a device with a wireless pad. With the physical quick charge adaptor, OnePlus says, you can charge your phone by 50 percent in 20 minutes and fully in under an hour. OnePlus is working on bringing its quick charging tech to wireless charging, but still hasn't figured out how to do it without excessive heating. OnePlus does have a point in saying that wireless charging is inferior even compared with regular charging. But that's changing; Xiaomi, for example, claims that the Xiaomi Mi 9 has 20W wireless charging capability- two or three times the average. OnePlus is at MWC to display a prototype of its 5G smartphone, which will come to two carriers in Europe in Q2. Lau declined any comment on the OnePlus 7, as well as rumors that it may drop the notch and incorporate a pop-out camera. What we've learned about the OnePlus 7 from the OnePlus 5G prototypehttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/F8J7_fhhtTg

Redmi is offering discounts on three of its most popular phones. The Redmi Note 5 Pro, Redmi Y2, and Redmi Note 6 Pro are available on discount from February 26 to 28, on Amazon, Flipkart, and Mi.com. Redmi Note 5 Pro: INR 2000 off, effectively INR 10,999 (4+64GB) and INR 11,999 (6+64GB) across Flipkart, Amazon and Mi.com. The Redmi Note 5 Pro remains one of the company's most popular phones. The Android Nougat OS might be a little dated now, considering we're on the Android 9 Pie. But as for performance, it's still hard to beat. Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro review http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/obeY3YuoizUfGyfRybGHYZ.jpg Redmi Note 5 Pro Redmi Y2: INR 1000 off, effectively INR 7,999 (3+32GB) and INR 9,999 (4+64GB) across Flipkart, Amazon and Mi.com. The Redmi Y2 is a great option for budget camera phone users. The hardware is a tad old, but still reliable. The front camera is particularly noteworthy, especially from a company that hasn't always delivered in that particular department. Xiaomi Redmi Y2 review Redmi Note 6 Pro: INR 2,000 off, effectively INR 11,999 (4+4GB) and INR 13,999 (6+64GB) across Mi.com and Flipkart. The successor to the Note 5 Pro, the Redmi Note 6 Pro came with great expectations. It runs on the same processor as its predecessor, the Snapdragon 636, but comes with dual front and back cameras, and packs a 4000mAh battery. Spotify launches in India with exclusive features and premium monthly subscription at Rs 119Comparison: Samsung Galaxy M20 vs Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Prohttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/XKtO5VVbJmY

The foldable Huawei Mate X is our best in show pick here at MWC 2019, and we got ample hands-on time with what feels like the future of smartphones. It's pretty much a sci-fi dream gadget come to life. If you're looking for Mate X photos from every angle imaginable to better understand it, we've got the pics for you. Folded, unfolded, front screen, back screen and that all-important Falcon Wing hinge – all the angles have been captured by our team on the ground. Let's take a tour. Let's start with the Huawei Mate X folded up and its screens off, as if it just came out of your pocket – a pocket that no longer has money in it because you spent all of it on the Mate X. The phone is chunky when folded, but flat (especially when compared to the Samsung Galaxy Fold). The fold feels secure thanks to a clasp that keeps the bent screen in place. You'll need to touch a button to release the screen from this locked state. Here you can really see the folded Mate X screen in detail at the top. This has been the biggest problem in the development of foldable phones – making the wrap-around screen durable enough to bend so many times. This photo shows the display doing an extreme 180 degree change of direction, forming an arch you wouldn't want to see on a normal phone or TV panel. Good news: Huawei says the curved screen has been stress tested in a lab to last 100,000 folds. There's a tiny button on the Huawei Mate X grip, which also houses the triple-lens cameras, fingerprint sensor/power button, and the USB-C port. Press this magic button and your dual-screen phone begins to unfold into an 8-inch tablet. Open sesame. With the button pressed, you're able to manually unfold the phone thanks to a small spring mechanism that's inside the grip. The folding process feels good. We were afraid to break the thing at first because displays are usually so delicate. But the Falcon Wing hinge makes this feel solid. This is the little-photographed back of the Huawei Mate X. It shows the Interstellar Blue color, as Huawei calls it. You're not going to see much of this part of the Mate X, simply because you're going to be staring at the front-facing 8-inch screen on the other side. Let's turn to that other side – this is the 8-inch screen in all of its glory. It's bright and colorful, as you can see, with a Super AMOLED display panel giving us the full tablet experience. When folded up, the Huawei Mate X looks a bit thick for a smartphone in 2019, but the unfolded device is actually thinner than an iPad, Huawei reps boasted. An iPad's thickness? Apple's gotten that down to 5.9mm thin, and that has felt perfectly alright in our hands. The Mate X screen measures just 5.4mm thin. Here we tried to stand up the Mate X when it was unfolded in tablet mode. It doesn't have curved edges, but was too thin to try standing it up without worry. The Huawei rep held it in place for everyone's safety. You can call this a 'camera bump' when it lays flat on a table because the three cameras are in the protruding grip. But, really, it doesn't mar the experience. It reminds us of Lenovo 2-in-1 tablet (or the older Mac Magic keyboard) that has a thicker cylinder at one end. It may work in your favor with the screen tilted in your direction. From this overheard perspective, the Huawei Mate X looks completely flat while laying on the table. You don't even notice the hinge. Want an idea of how big the screen is? The 8-inch screen is roughly the same size (measured diagonally) as the iPad mini, which has a 7.9-inch display. Let's get to folding this phone with the screen on. It's a little scary at first because you feel like you're breaking a tablet in half. The fact that it's really expensive is always on your mind. It works. But maybe the most remarkable thing about the Huawei Mate X is that the pixels remain on until the screen is flat. They don't go dark when you apply a slight bend to the center. And here it is: the Huawei Mate X screen folded in half and feeling like a smartphone. It looks like a large Huawei phone, with a 6.6-inch screen on this side. We didn't have trouble standing the phone up when it was folded in half like this. Its thickness actually was a benefit, at least for snapping this photo. One side has a 6.6-inch screen, and the other side with the grip has a 6.38-inch screen. It's thicker than a smartphone in 2019, but still feels like a phone. The phone screen felt responsive when we touched it, and seems to run Android with a custom EMUI layer on top of it. We can unfold it again, 'but first, let me take a selfie.' This may be our favorite part because you can see a live view from either side of the screen. Selfies use the main camera, too. Here's a view of the current triple-lens camera. It's on the grip, which has a lot of functions: housing the cameras, fingerprint sensor/power button, some internals and the USB-C port. It also makes the phone easy to hold. We don't know a lot about the three-camera array that lines the grip of the Mate X. Things like megapixels, sensor size and aperture remain a mystery. From this photo, however, it seems to have a pretty normal field of view using the main camera. We were able to easily get two people into this shot without an issue. We do see camera modes listed along the button. They currently include Photo (for normal photos) Night (for photos in low-light situations), Portrait (for bokeh), and Pro (for manual controls). There also seems to be a More button on very bottom right spot. That could lead to several other camera modes. What about regular photos? Here's a Huawei rep taking a photo of me. Dismiss the pointing. I didn't need to do that. What's interesting: You can see yourself when someone else takes a photo of you, which should help you frame shots, even when you ask a stranger to snap a pic. Ignore the jutting hand. I'm just holding a DSLR to capture what the Huawei rep saw on the larger 6.6-inch screen when he was lining up a photo of me. You can see he got a live view too (a bit larger than mine) of what was going to be captured in the photo. So everyone wins. And here it is. An enlarged version of one of the photos we took. It gives a much bigger view (for better or worse) of the snapshot. This will make it easy to review photos, determine if you like it, and make edits. It's going to make a foldable phone the ideal handset type for photographers. This is what it looks like to watching a 16:9 movie with the Huawei Mate X when it's expanded in tablet mode. The screen aspect ratio makes it ideal for surfing the web and reading (like a Kindle), so for movies, you will have black bars at the top and bottom. When it's folded, you won't. It's closer to a theater-like 21:9 aspect ratio. Here's the Huawei Mate X still playing the video while it's being folded up. It can seamlessly transition from playing a video in tablet mode to playing it on one side of the screen. Want a shot of the USB-C port? Here it is, along with a view of the grip. Huawei says that it's difficult to grasp an iPad (especially true using only one hand), so this grip makes a lot of sense on a tablet phone. Here's our hands-on review of the Huawei Mate X on the slightly folded screen. It's a little meta and too good not to include. As you can see, having the screen folded out makes surfing the web a lot easier when you're seeing so much of text and a web layout. Gone may be the days when you see a slimmed down mobile version of a website. The desktop experience is back again. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/O-I_aw2G-Ts

After a long wait, Spotify just went live in India. The Swedish company had been eyeing an entry into one of the largest music market of the world and late Tuesday night, consumers were able to download and use the Spotify app from Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It was only yesterday that Spotify was at the receiving end of an injunction filed by Warner Music Group with the Bombay High Court. The case prevented Spotify to access Warner/Chappell Music catalog with the company going on record to say that it “remains the lone holdout needed for a Spotify launch in India”. While there’s no update on the case, eagle-eyed fans of the music streaming service were able to download the Spotify app. Spotify has built-in some exclusive features for the Indian listeners which it detailed in a blog post. The app’s recommendation engine has been tuned to suggest music in multiple languages including Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. This is for Spotify’s auto-curated Daily Mix, Home and Radio playlists. In addition, there are new playlists specifically for the Indian audiences including Indiestan, Rap 91, Namaste Love, Punjabi101, and Bollywood Butter, to name a few. Users will also be able to check out tracks based on what’s trending in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangaluru and Chennai. “As Spotify grows, our goal is to bring millions of artists and billions of fans together from every country and background. India has an incredibly rich music culture, and to best serve this market, we’re launching a custom-built experience. Not only will Spotify bring Indian artists to the world, we will also bring the world’s music to fans across India. We have been working towards this goal for quite some time, and I am thrilled with today’s launch,” says Daniel Ek, Spotify’s founder and CEO. Spotify India Premium subscription prices and student offerIndian users can listen to music on the Spotify app for free albeit with ads and streaming quality topping out at “high”. The Premium subscription bypasses these limitations and listeners can use the app ad-free, download music and set the streaming quality to “very high”. Spotify offers a bunch of Premium subscription plans for users to choose from. The monthly plan starts from Rs 119 per month on a recurring basis. Alternatively, users can choose from a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual prepaid plan which are priced as: Daily- Rs 13Weekly- Rs 39Monthly- Rs 1293 months- Rs 3896 months- Rs 7191 year- Rs 1,189Spotify is also offering a Premium subscription to students at a special price. For students over the age of 18 enrolled at an accredited college or university, Spotify can be subscribed for Rs 59 per month for four years. The second plan is priced at Rs 66 and enables a single month of subscription. There’s a student verification process in place through SheerID which will corroborate the student’s status, following which they will be able to get over 50% discount for Spotify Premium. Also Read: Sony WI-C600N neckband headphones with noise cancellation launched in India at Rs 10,990http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/LGrCTo86TEo

Previously limited to PCs, Apple TV, Telstra TV and Google Chromecast devices, Kayo Sports has announced that it can now be streamed on televisions and devices running on the Android TV platform. Users will be able to stream events from over 50 sports both live and on demand via Google-powered TVs and devices such as the Nvidia Shield, Nexus Player, Mi Box and Amazon Fire TV, so long as they're running Android TV OS 7.0 or above. Android TV: All the products that work with Google’s TV OSAmazon Music is heading to your Android TV boxOur picks for the best TVs for watching sportThe expanded device compatibility comes just in time for a huge month of sports on Kayo, with the NRL Telstra Premiership and Toyota AFL Premiership seasons both kicking off in March, along with the Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix. If that sounds right up your alley, you can sign up now for a free 14-day trial with no lock-in contracts on the Kayo Sports website, after which the price becomes either $25 per month (two simultaneous streams) on the Basic plan or $35 per month (three simultaneous streams) on the Premium plan. You can find out more about Kayo's packages and what they offer at the sign-up links below. Check out our in depth Kayo Sports reviewhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/MH7HVJcDPtI

While Microsoft and VMware were once fierce rivals in the software business, the two companies are reportedly working together on a cloud partnership that would be beneficial to customers of both businesses. According to The Information, VMware is exploring a partnership with Microsoft that resembles one it made with AWS several years ago. Despite the fact that the two companies were once in competition to see who would control the data center during the early days of cloud computing, Microsoft and VMware are reportedly developing software that would make it easier for businesses that built applications based around VMware's virtualization to move their workloads to Microsoft Azure. Google launches hybrid cloud betaMicrosoft Azure Kinect could power the next generation of VRThe high costs of storing data locally in a cloud native eraCompanies relying on business applications built during the last decade are aware that they will have to modernize their infrastructure but fear that the process of updating their software to run in a modern environment could potentially break these mission-critical applications. PartnersVMware fought the rise of cloud computing for years before finally giving in with a partnership with AWS back in 2016. Entering a similar partnership with Microsoft makes a great deal of sense as Azure is now the second-leading cloud computing provider and a potential deal could be great for customers that still prefer a hybrid cloud infrastructure over completely moving their workloads to the cloud. A partnership between the two companies would also be beneficial for Microsoft as it would help address the looming deadline for Windows Server 2008. The company will stop supporting Windows Server 2008 in January 2020 but many companies are still running their data centers using the software and a partnership with VMware could help customers planning migration projects over the next year. Via GeekWire We've also highlighted the best cloud computing serviceshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/wtpMoMqYFqk

Voting in second annual Australian PC Awards is about to close - if you've not yet voted, now's your chance. Vote by 5pm tomorrow and not only do you get a chance to let some of the PC industry's biggest names know what you think of them, but there's also a mighty fine range of prizes to be won! Presented by Future Publishing Australia for readers of APC, TechLife, PC PowerPlay, TechRadar and PC Gamer, the Australian PC Awards recognises the best gear for PC and the companies behind the top products. It’s up to you, our readers, to decide which products deserve to be called the best of the best across a range of PC-centric categories. Vote now, and keep an eye out for the big reveal of who wins on March 22, after a gala event in Sydney. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/_LvbpJ_i-s0

Halfway through 2018, Google revealed an AI-powered grammar checker for Docs and other G Suite apps, but at the time it was exclusively available to select business users, was disabled by default, and could only be activated via a company administrator. Now, the tech giant has announced that the feature is rolling out to all customers that use G Suite Basic, Business, or Enterprise – services which currently cost $5, $10, or $25 per month respectively. From today, these users will see “inline, contextual grammar suggestions in their documents as they type”, in a similar fashion to how Google’s spellcheck already functions in its ecosystem, but instead with a squiggly blue line beneath a grammatically incorrect or dubious phrase. G Suite reviewSentence make read goodThe technology is able to catch errors ranging from the commonly mistaken usage of “affect” versus “effect”, to more complex rules regarding the tense of verbs and correct preposition usage. In order to achieve this, Google has built a model using machine translation and then checked the AI-created rules with linguists to make sure it's accurate in its suggestions. Given that the model is powered by artificial intelligence, it also means that it has the ability to learn and improve the more it’s used. While the functionality is currently only available to paying customers of G Suite, its expansion is likely a hint that it will eventually make its way to an even wider release for all free users of the service, but we don’t have any indication yet of when that may be. Google hikes G Suite priceshttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/36VazHORSYE

Apple has today announced the winners of its ‘Shot on iPhone Challenge’ that ran between January 22 and February 7. 10 entries made it to the top and will be featured on Apple’s adverts, social media channels and in retail stores. The winning entries – taken on Apple smartphones ranging from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone XS Max – were shown off on the Today show in the US by Apple representative Kaiann Drance. How AI is making smartphone photography better77 photography tips and tricksBest iPhone apps in 2019The winners were selected by a panel of prominent photographers, including official Obama White House photographer Pete Souza and iPhone travel photographer Annet de Graaf. Entries were received from around the globe, with winners from Singapore, Germany, Belarus, Israel and the United States. The subjects of the winning shots are also varied, with architecture, wildlife, people and landscapes included. You can see all the winners, and learn more about why those images were chosen, in Apple’s newsroom. And, more importantly, Apple has announced that the winners will be paid a licensing fee after the company received criticism for wanting to use the photos for marketing purposes without compensating the photographers. 10 steps to improve your smartphone photographyhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/1QhHylVoRSw

People flocked to Toy Fair 2019 earlier this month to find the latest toy reveals from major brands like LEGO and Mattel for the coming year. But toy inventors, distributors and sellers also attend to pick each other’s brains on which toys will fly off shelves, not just this year, but in five to ten years, too. This year, the industry scuttlebutt was fairly straightforward: by 2023, consumers will spend tens of billions of dollars on augmented reality (AR) toys. With Apple and Google going all-in on their ARKit and ARCore platforms, and apps like Pokemon Go enjoying huge popularity, toymakers see augmented reality as the perfect way to bridge physical toys and app-loving, screen-addicted children. But successfully combining physical playsets with AR is no easy feat, the Toy Fair experts warned. You need both physical toy designers and AR programmers to successfully work together; a physical play experience that can stand on its own without the app; an AR interface that doesn’t have the child staring for too long at the screen and ignoring the physical toy; and a dozen other rules for making sure the augmented side of a toy doesn’t feel gimmicky or tacked on. We scoured the Toy Fair for all of the smart tech toys we could find, and unsurprisingly, many of them used AR. But does the AR actually make these toys more fun, or is it just a gimmick to increase the toys' price tags? Here are our thoughts on the highest-profile AR toys due to come out later this year. LEGO Hidden Sidehttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/GerDnKeDATQejLopPGtSpf.jpeg By 2023, consumers will spend tens of billions of dollars on augmented reality (AR) toys. LEGO Hidden Side, an 8-set series of spooky locations and possessed vehicles, is the best example of an AR toy that technically doesn't need AR for a kid to enjoy playing with it. As with any LEGO set, kids can engage simply by building the haunted town of Newbury, then playing with their minifigs inside of them, without ever opening a phone app. Plus, Hidden Side's sets have a fun mechanic. Some of the blocks rotate between their normal appearance and their haunted appearance. These were designed as something for kids to interact with that would trigger an augmented reality reaction, but they easily work as a purely physical way to play. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/8saigugzjibVquQLirzb8g.jpeg The pieces have been rotated and activated to show the haunted school in its true form. Once kids open the AR app, they begin a more guided experience as a ghost-busting sleuth, investigating the area for clues before driving the hidden ghosts out into the open and defeating them during a rail-shooter minigame. Finding the ghosts is relatively simplistic: kids will hover their phone over bright lights of "gloom"; collect enough gloom currency (which takes a few seconds), and a haunted object will be highlighted. Interact with that object in the real world, and the ghost will appear to be captured. There are 100 ghosts to collect, and certain ghosts are much more likely to appear in certain sets than others. Supposedly, different ghosts will have different personalities and actions while being hunted, but the core gameplay of ghost hunting should be the same across each set. The optimistic view of the AR app is that it extends the physical play of Hidden Side by helping kids to imagine the haunted world surrounding their sets—a world they can conceptualize and play in once the app is closed. Plus, the LEGO rep said they would be able to add more missions to the app as time went on, further adding to Hidden Side's replay value. The more cynical view is that this app exists for collectible-loving kids to pressure their parents into buying all 8 sets so they can collect all 100 ghosts. Video games and mobile games compel kids to invest more and more time into them in exchange for rewards—achievements, loot boxes, collectibles, etc. By adding an AR online element, LEGO hopes to lure its kids into a similar recurring play pattern. And we find it highly likely that other companies will try to replicate this model, and potentially sell subscriptions or season passes to toys. Pictionary Airhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rhV9jzm9gMYU4sjWad9aGF.jpeg At the other end of the spectrum from the highly independent Hidden Side LEGO sets, Pictionary Air relies entirely on augmented reality tech for its playing experience: You draw in the air using a light-tracked pen, in front of someone holding a phone or tablet camera. The camera tracks your drawing and projects it onto the screen for everyone else to see, and they guess what you're drawing. It's a simple system, and it mostly worked very well when we tested it out at the Toy Fair. The pen uses light tracking instead of more advanced sensors to make it more affordable for consumers, but in our experience it tracked our drawings accurately. Though it's difficult to tell, since we're drawing in mid-air: without a real canvas you'll find it difficult to remember where you've already drawn, leading to some pretty inscrutable sketches. Also, since you have to face the person with the table so the camera can track the pen, your drawing is a mirror image of what you want the person to see. I tried to draw the United States for a clue, and California and Florida ended up flipped, making it pretty hard for the other person to recognize. "Use the screen in order to get you off the screen. Screens can sometimes facilitate interaction with other kids."littleBits founder Ayah Bdeir Pictionary isn't just a promising AR toy because it's fun to use, or because it fulfills the "A" requirement for a STEAM toy (Arts). It's also promising because it doesn't isolate the person using it, like many AR apps. During a panel on STEM/STEAM toys, littleBits founder Ayah Bdeir said that, while research is still ongoing on the effects of prolonged screen time on kids' brains, "social interaction is a key component of helping the development of kids. And so by inference you can say that if face-to-face interaction is so important, and if the screen is getting in the way of that, then we need to make room for what’s working ... Use the screen in order to get you off the screen. Screens can sometimes facilitate interaction with other kids." In other words, giving kids toys that revolve around screens isn't bad per se, but it's better if those screens involve work or play with other people. In this case, drawing for and responding to other people. By contrast, Hidden Side's AR app clearly restricts the play to one person, where normally multiple children could build and play together. PaiBotzhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YhTApmA62Cs6RBKaNs5qFC.jpeg A lot of parents are looking to cut down on kids' screen time; an entire Toy Fair panel titled "Screenless Is In" was devoted to covering tech toys that don't use screens. So it's safe to say that toys with corresponding AR apps aren't going to be popular with parents unless they combine recreation with learning. PaiBotz is one such toy that strikes that balance. It teaches young children about Block-based coding languages and techniques like sequencing and looping. But not just through the AR app shown above, but also through the 150 physical building blocks your kid will use to build and rebuild the robot. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QftXeFthuX3QhrVZGfMfxX.jpeg Intriguingly, during the Pai Robotics demo, I saw that someone from Google had come to check out the little bot as well. He and one of the Pai representatives were having a serious discussion about PaiBotz's calibration issues. Google, Apple and Microsoft have engaged in a years-long war to determine AR dominance in the tech marketplace. Google, for instance, is reportedly developing an AR headset designed to be competitive with Hololens 2. We aren't surprised by the idea that Google would look for promising AR toymakers and developers to partner with, and that AR toymakers would want to grab some of that $100+ billion competitive marketshare. What the rise of AR means for kidsTechnology is already rapidly changing how young children see the world. During a panel, toy business owner Kate Stone discussed how two-year-olds have been seen pinching and zooming magazine pages, not understanding why they were "broken" and not reacting to their touch. Toymakers see augmented reality as the perfect way to bridge physical toys and app-loving, screen-addicted children. Before long, if augmented reality apps and toys continue to proliferate into our daily lives, children will consider seeing holograms into the real world to be the norm. The real question is what form all of these AR apps will take. Phil Sage, an inventor at Hasbro who was on the same panel, said that these apps will become more and more multi-modal, incorporating other senses and features beyond AR like voice assistant support. Eventually, your child may be able to summon holographic objects into their toy realm simply with their voice. Or, if glasses like Apple AR take off, kids could use AR apps without having to hold a phone in one hand, encouraging freer playtime in an augmented environment. Here are the best AR apps available nowhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/InYy8WcoXWM

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is a graphics card we never expected to be real, but we’re so glad it is. If you’ve been waiting for Team Green to release a Turing-based GPU that was actually affordable, this is it. Although it lacks ray tracing and tensor cores to power Nvidia’s new RTX and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) features, this card is a stunning performer and comes in at a reasonable price, too. This is, unsurprisingly, our pick for the best budget graphics card you can buy today. Unlike Nvidia’s past GPU launches, the company didn’t release its own Founders Edition of the GTX 1660 Ti. Without this baseline model to set the benchmark for how other versions should be configured, you’ll find a wide variety of cards going for varying prices out there. The good news is you won’t have to pore over the dozens of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti models on the market, as we’ve done the job for you and picked out the very best ones. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7G3TEiuSrJX43uGRBStS78.jpg Image Credit: PNY The PNY GeForce GTX 1660 Ti XLR8 Gaming OC may look like a small graphics card, but it packs a punch. Equipped with a 70MHz factory overclock and otherwise solid specs, this card delivers on the dream of 1440p Ultra quality gameplay at 60 fps. Better yet, all of this performance costs less than 300 smackers. This is the best bang-for-your-buck graphics cards you can get. Read the full review: PNY GeForce GTX 1660 Ti XLR8 Gaming OC http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/h9JEzdXaeDLp6hBSrhscVA.jpg Image Credit: Asus Looking to max out the performance of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti? Well, then the Asus ROG Strix GTX 1660 Ti OC is the right card for you. It features the highest factory overclock we’ve seen on this mid-range graphics card yet. Additionally, its oversized heatsink and triple axial fans keep this card running a full 10C cooler than most. Overclocking this card is a breeze, thanks to its extreme cooling system. Read the full review: Asus ROG Strix GTX 1660 Ti OC review http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/LxMFZs9ks7imCFijehdGTC.jpg Image Credit: Gigabyte Looking for something in the middle of the road between basic and extreme? The Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Windforce OC is the closest thing to your average GeForce GTX 1660 Ti. Although it’s only equipped with a pedestrian dual-fan cooler, Gigabyte has made use of 3D molded curves on the fan blades for increased airflow. The graphics card’s fans also spin in alternate directions to further increase airflow. Top that off with a 1,845MHz boost clock, and this card delivers more performance for not much more money. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/DMeRWEtyWmVWDbv93QPwxD.jpg Image Credit: Palit The Palit GeForce GTX 1660 Ti StormX OC is one of the most compact graphics cards designed to fit in the smallest of PC cases. Despite its small size, this GPU still packs all the might of a full-sized GTX 1660 Ti and then some with a factory set 1,815MHz boost clock. Best of all, it costs the same amount as the most inexpensive versions of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, so it’ll be light on your wallet too. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/yYRYaYCcJL2pQM3Njh6yiF.jpg Image Credit: MSI Just because you’re gaming with a mid-range card doesn’t mean you can’t be stylish. The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 TI Gaming X 6G is easily the most handsome of the bunch with a sharp aesthetic and fully addressable RGB lighting – in other words, you can customize how it glows in sync with an MSI motherboard. Looks aside, this card delivers tuned up performance and a Twin Frozr cooler designed to keep it chilled. Find the best processors to go with this budget graphics cardhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/xkQKvnGvGkQ

Back when the first AMD Ryzen processors came out, they changed the world. And, we were impressed even more with Ryzen 2nd Generation. However, with Ryzen 3rd Generation, or Ryzen 3000, we’ll finally get the first 7nm mainstream processors and even more profound improvements. Considering Intel’s well-documented struggles to introduce 10nm Cannon Lake chips, AMD has swooped in and upstaged its rival completely even before it had a chance to launch Sunny Cove or Ice Lake, while also introducing some of the most impressive consumer processors ever made. Cut to the chase What is it? AMD’s next line of mainstream processors When is it out? Mid 2019 What will it cost? TBDhttp://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/h5YaHb4resJtLyLymu56sS.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation release dateAt CES 2019, AMD announced its first Ryzen 3000-series processor will arrive some time in the middle of 2019. Unfortunately, the chipmaker didn't give us an exact date, but Ryzen 3rd Generation does seem to be releasing a little later than previous launches. The first generation of Ryzen processors hit the market in March 2017 and Ryzen 2nd Generation arrived a month later in 2018. With that in mind, it's a bit surprising Ryzen 3000-series chips will be coming a bit later – our best guess is they'll arrive in May to July at the latest (we hope). In fact, we’ve seen a new rumor that suggests that AMD Ryzen 3000 chips will be launching alongside AMD Navi graphics cards in July. That would line up with the mid-2019 window that AMD announced at CES 2019, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/7theBC5zg7CN3LPppF5PrS.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation priceAMD didn't announce any pricing information on its upcoming 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 3000-series processor so don’t have any empirical proof what it'll cost unfortunately. However, thanks to a curiously detailed report from a , we have model names and prices for nearly every possible Ryzen 3rd Generation processor.Here’s how much Ryzen 3rd Generation processors may cost: Ryzen 9 3850X: $499 (about £400, AU$700)Ryzen 9 3800X: $449 (about £350, AU$600)Ryzen 7 3700X: $329 (about £260, AU$450)Ryzen 7 3700: $299 (about £230, AU$400)Ryzen 5 3600X: $229 (about £180, AU$320)Ryzen 5 3600G: $199 (about £160, AU$270)Ryzen 5 3600: $178 (about £140, AU$240)Ryzen 3 3300X: $129 (about £100, AU$180)Ryzen 3 3300G: $129 (about £100, AU$180)Ryzen 3 3300: $99 (about £80, AU$140)Although, this list of prices seems compelling and on track with the prices of AMD’s current lineup of Ryzen 2nd Generation processors, we would buy into them until Team Red officially announces prices. Now what’s interesting here is AMD has a track record of lowering the prices of its processors going from Ryzen to Ryzen 2nd Generation. The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X originally launched with a $399 (£389, AU$569) price and it was succeeded by the more affordable $329 (£349, AU$515) AMD Ryzen 7 2700X. With that in mind, we couldn’t imagine/would be disappointed if the Ryzen 7 3700X were to cost more. For now, it seems AMD will hold onto the same pricing scheme from its current slew of chips going into the next generation. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vZiyBEt9XQov29r2xAoVrS.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar AMD Ryzen 3rd Generation specsSo far we only know of one Ryzen 3000-series processor and that is a 8-core and 16-thread chip designed to go toe-to-toe with Intel's flagship Core i9-9900K. On its CES 2019 keynote stage, AMD On benchmarked its secretive processor with Cinebench to achieve a score of 2023. Comparatively the Intel Core i9-9900K and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X scored 1,873 and 1,798 points, respectively, in our own testing. What’s more impressive is that the new Ryzen 3000 chip seems to be more power efficient than Intel’s current Coffee Lake Refresh lineup. During the Cinebench demo, AMD also displayed the maximum power draw of the Intel system running at 179.9 watts (W) while the new Ryzen system maxed out at 133.4W. Overall it seems that, Ryzen 3rd Generation's 7nm architecture affords it 12% more performance while making AMD chips about 30% more power efficient than Intel's latest 14nm CPU architecture. This is all thanks to the smaller 7nm Zen 2 platform, which introduces a massive die shrink. Previously, Ryzen 2nd Generation processors were built on a 12nm Zen+ architecture that introduced a slight die shrink from the original 14nm Zen architecture. Despite being built on a new architecture, Ryzen 3000 CPUs will still fit into the AM4 socket used by Ryzen 2nd Generation and the original Ryzen processors. That said, Ryzen 3rd Generation is introducing something new with PCIe 4.0 support. Before you get too excited about unlocking even more power from your Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 or AMD Radeon VII, PCIe 4.0 will only enhance your storage solutions for now. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rCFbjDd8BQ3TDnx9s5x6sS.jpg Image Credit: TechRadar Aside from the single unnamed processor AMD introduced, we've also seen a multitude of leaks that have pretty much outlined what Ryzen 3rd Generation processors there will be and they are as follows: Ryzen 9 3850X: 16-cores, 32-threads, clocked at 4.3GHz to 5.1GHzRyzen 9 3800X: 16-cores, 32-threads, clocked at 3.9GHz to 4.7GHzRyzen 7 3700X: 12-cores, 24-threads, clocked at 4.2GHz to 5.0GHzRyzen 7 3700: 12-cores, 24-threads, clocked at 3.8GHz to 4.6GHzRyzen 5 3600X: 8-cores, 16-threads, clocked at 4.0GHz to 4.8GHzRyzen 5 3600G: 8-cores, 16-threads, 12 GPU cores, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHzRyzen 5 3600: 8-cores, 16-threads, clocked at 3.6GHz to 4.4GHzRyzen 3 3300X: 6-cores,12 -threads, clocked at 3.5GHz to 4.3GHzRyzen 3 3300G: 8-core, 12-thread, 12 GPU cores, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHzRyzen 3 3300: 6-cores, 12-threads, clocked at 3.2GHz to 4.0GHzWe heard the first murmurs of what Zen 2 processors could do as early as October 2018. In the report suggested that AMD Radeon Technologies Group received its first engineering sample for the unreleased architecture in the form of an 8-core chip capable of reaching frequencies up to 4.5GHz. Whether this rumored processor and the one AMD officially announced are one and the same remains to be seen. In December 2018, the rumors began to really head up as we received an almost complete breakdown of this new series of CPUs. This nearly complete set of listings came from a YouTuber named AdoredTV and while they seemed unlikely to be true, a Russian retailer would later back up the influencer’s report with nearly identical specs on all its product pages for the whole series of chips. We’re not sure if the Russian retailer was just cribbing AdoredTV’s video like a cheat sheet, but so far no other rumors or reports have contradicted what we know so far. In fact, notorious leaker Tum Apisak revealed a leaked UserBenchmark entry for a 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 3000 processor. This leaked processor didn’t have any kind of product name attached to it, but it’s still exciting. This is all we know so far, but we’re certain that AMD will show off the specifics of Ryzen 3rd Generation later in the year. AMD Rzyen Threadripper 3rd Generation HEDT processors could be even more impressiveImages Credit: AMDhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/AMCyBL4gX4A

For too long, we were stuck buying one of the best hard drives when we wanted to expand our computer’s storage. However, with their spinning disks and slow transfer speeds, they haven’t aged well. In 2019, however, the best SSDs or solid state drives, are fast enough to free you from the mechanical shackles of hard drives. And, you don’t even need to rock one of the best PCs to take advantage of the best SSDs. The best Ultrabooks are practically designed to take advantage of the best SSDs, thanks to their unrivaled durability and speed. You can even slot one of the best SSDs into a PS4 Pro to seriously slash loading times. When you head out to buy one of the best SSDs, you’ll likely notice that there are a lot of them out there. This is great for anyone on a budget, because there’s a wide spread in price points. But, because there are literally hundreds of SSDs out there, it can be hard to find the right one for you. That’s why we curated a list of the best SSDs you can buy today. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/WCoUFqDWHCN7EJcxXLjpJX.jpg Image Credit: Samsung Samsung isn’t a stranger to creating some amazing SSDs, but when it launched the Samsung 970 Evo Plus with higher speeds and new silicon, even we were surprised. The Samsung 970 Evo Plus is simply one of the fastest drives on the market, but the fact that Samsung is selling it at such a bargain price is just the cherry on top. Because of how affordable this drive is, it’s not hard to recommend it as the best SSD for anyone. Read the full review: Samsung 970 Evo Plus http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/2HmeJYwBfYZFzywsFe6KYR.jpg Image Credit: Western Digital Western Digital has been busy making a name for itself among the best SSDs over the last few years, and with the WD Black SN750, it’s finally claimed the throne of the best SSD for gaming. This NVMe SSD has insane random reads speeds of 412.5MB/s, which will make games load before you get a chance to sip your drink. And, when you consider how affordable this SSD is, it’s hard not to proclaim it as the best SSD gamers can buy today. Read the full review: WD Black SN750 NVMe SSD http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/si6CBKGVNhJFwpHzLAsXsN.jpg Image Credit: Samsung For years, Samsung has been behind some of the best SSDs on the market, and even though other manufacturers like Western Digital and Adata are creeping up on its turf, the Samsung 970 Evo is still the best SSD you can buy if you’re after raw speed. And, while the read speeds haven’t improved over the previous generation’s 960 Pro, the write speeds see a significant bump – up to 2,700MB/s – which is how it retains its ‘fastest SSD’ crown. If you’re after the best SSD, with no compromises, you can’t go wrong with the Samsung 970 Pro. Read the full review: Samsung 970 Pro http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Uq7HTTr4PbM7ia6LbaqCCb.jpg Image Credit: Toshiba If you're looking for plenty of options, the Toshiba OCZ RD400 series of drives come in 4 sizes and three different form factors: M.2, M.2 2280, and add-in card (AIC). Not all sizes are in all form factors, so if you're looking for a fast 1TB drive, make sure you have room in your computer case. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/VWBYHoG2wtxrGi33yfUoaT.jpg Image Credit: Adata If you’ve been waiting to jump on the M.2 train for an SSD that’s both fast and affordable, we have some good news for you. The Adata XPG SX8200 isn’t one of the best SSDs because it’s the fastest drive on the market, but because there isn’t a single drive out there that can match the raw price to performance ratio that the XPG SX8200 offers. Sure you can get any of the much faster, much more expensive SSDs on the market, but this is the drive we can recommend to anyone.to anyone. Read the full review: Adata XPG SX8200 http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/yXo5hdAcZytCPawmzFeDEM.jpg Image Credit: Samsung People might not be going crazy about SATA 3 anymore, but the Samsung 860 Pro proves that there’s still plenty of life in the aging interface after all. With storage up to 4TB and transfer speeds that approach the theoretical maximum of the SATA 3 interface and top-of the-line reliability and security – the Samsung 860 Pro is the best SSD for anyone still clinging to SATA 3. Read the full review: Samsung 860 Pro http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/CWwZptgvKSkodF3VmJTdBb.jpg Image Credit: Intel The U.2 standard allows for bigger SSD capacities and uses your computer's PCIe x4 slot to send all that data back and forth. The Intel 750 series includes a cable so you can mount the drive in the bay on your case and still plug it into the PCIe slot on your motherboard. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/BZFeqrxB3hxavepHrd9jC5.jpg Image Credit: Samsung Samsung had a hard act to follow – the Samsung 850 Evo was beloved for its stunning performance and affordability. And, the Samsung 860 Evo absolutely succeeded. Though limited by the SATA3 interface, the Samsung 860 Evo delivers performance that iterates on its predecessor with improved read/write speeds and an array of form factors, while still maintaining its budget price. The 860 Evo is the best SSD for anyone looking for an entry-level SSD without having to break open their piggy banks. Read the full review: Samsung 860 Evo http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/v9h6hfXC3Mg9czVJZtmeBb.jpg Image Credit: HP If you need an SSD that will last through multiple computers, the HP S700 Pro is exactly what you want. Its life will far exceed its warranty, offering up to 2 million hours of use and up to 650 terabytes written. This is one of the best SSDs you can buy if you need something that’ll last, but the SATA interface may slow things down a bit in the read/write department, which technically helps it last even longer. This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Samsung 860 Evo http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZZphKfQ35vGNQ6gFzNCHPL.jpg Image Credit: Intel The best NVMe SSDs used to be way too expensive for most users. But, those days are coming to an end – the Intel 760p Series SSD changes everything. This SSD features awesome performance that’s only slightly behind the beloved Samsung 960 Evo, boasting speeds of 3,056 MB/s read and 1,606 MB/s write. But, what makes the 760p stand out is the fantastic price to performance ratio. Yeah, there are faster NVMe drives on the market, but you’ll be paying a premium that, frankly, isn’t worth it. This is one of the best SSDs out there, not just because it’s fast, but because the Intel 760p makes us excited about the future. Read the full review: Intel 760p Series SSD http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/76GF92P58b8Vvcto7dG5ji.jpg Image Credit: Samsung If you’re a creative or a professional, and you need an external NVMe SSD that’s going to save you time rather than waste it, you might want to give the Samsung X5 Portable SSD a look. Thanks to its use of Thunderbolt 3, rugged magnesium build and AES 256-bit encryption, it’s fast, secure and durable – everything you want in an external SSD. However, this isn’t a cheap accessory, this is one of the best SSDs and it’s priced as such. Everyday users may want to look elsewhere, this is all about sheer speed. Read the full review: Samsung X5 Portable SSD Bill Thomas and Gabe Carey have also contributed to this article http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/dX7IPWniFmA

The best hard drives are obviously not as fast as the best SSDs, but they are much cheaper and more capacious. Yeah, you’re not going to find one in an Ultrabook, but the best hard drives are definitely useful as an extra drive or an external measure – especially if you have a lot of data to back up. Finding the best hard drive for your needs ultimately boils down to what you need to do with it. If you’re looking for the best hard drives for game consoles, you’ll want a 2.5-inch drive, or maybe one of the best external hard drives. However, if you’re rocking one of the best gaming PCs, and you just want the biggest drive you can get, you’ll want a hard drive with a ton of space – and a ton of speed. It’s a lot to take in, but we went ahead and gathered up the best hard drives you can buy today. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ofW6Wmfd5KpeeVVDtgSGzh.jpg Image Credit: Seagate Seagate’s BarraCuda lineup is the indisputable face of the best hard drives. And, it’s not without good reason – they offer a great ratio of gigabyte per dollar and speed benefits to top it off. The 2TB model hits a sweet spot by balancing high performance and affordability. Since this drive combines 7,200rpm platters and high density data, computers outfitted with this drive will be able to read data extra fast. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/YdWqbh9HVLPKkkooeD2Rrj.jpg Image Credit: Toshiba Even if its laptops aren’t as popular as they used to be, Toshiba is still a huge name in computing, and has a lot to offer. When it comes to the best hard drives, the Toshiba X300 is a high-capacity, high-performance champ worth taking a look at. The X300 drives boast great gigabyte-to-dollar value without sacrificing on performance. These drives all spin at 7,200 rpm and include 128MB of cache for higher speeds. The only downside is the warranty only lasts two years, which feels short for a drive meant to store so much important data. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/pMFEDEVrvrR3GM9Wq6w8nm.jpg Image Credit: Western Digital When it comes to PC gaming, it’s better to be fast than capacious. So, if you’ve been resisting the allure of an SSD, and looking to kick it old school with one of the best hard drives, the WD VelociRaptor should be up your alley. Not only does this drive have a whopping 10,000 rpm spin speed, but you’re going to want to pay attention to it. With capacities up to 1TB, the VelociRaptor drives are ready to store large game libraries, and the super fast platters will help your games launch and load quickly. This product is only available in the US and UK at the time of this writing. Australian readers: check out a fine alternative in the Seagate FireCuda http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/r3J4giQbPfQSTiGzj6EvJo.jpg Image Credit: Western Digital Western Digital offers a solid bargain with its line of WD Blue hard drives. With a wide variety of storage options from a small 500GB to a capacious 6TB, the WD Blue is a viable pick for almost any type of PC build that’s sticking to a budget. The best value comes from the larger drives – they’ll give you much more storage per dollar spent. And, if you’re looking for a bit more speed, there are also 7,200rpm models available that don’t come with too much of a price hike. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/RdJtw7eUEjfBcZfetGyQC4.jpg Image Credit: Seagate SSDs are all the rage these days, and it’s not hard to see why. But if you need a lot of fast storage, hybrid hard drives – which contain a small amount of solid state storage to bump of their speed – are a great option. The SeaGate FireCuda is the best hybrid drive out there, it can fit up to 2TB of data, and then its 8GB of solid state cache storage learns and stores the data you use most to access it faster. That speed boost is even sweeter when you consider this drive spins at a fresh 7,200rpm. With its 5-year warranty and approachable price tag, it’s easy to see why it’s one of the best hard drives out there. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jSEX3zxxi5te5PdLsLTTe5.jpg Image Credit: Seagate It’s a little unfortunate that the Seagate IronWolf NAS drives come at a premium, but they aren’t priced much more expensively than a standard hard drive at their capacity. However, their native NAS optimization makes that premium totally worth it. These drives are capable of running at a fast 7,200rpm spin rate 24/7 without having to worry about drive failure. Really, if you have one of the best NAS devices for your business or home, the Seagate IronWolf NAS really is your best bet. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/WqpGYSxfMiJYCXnVEArwP7.jpg Image Credit: Seagate Upgrading the storage in a laptop in a hard drive can be tough, since they typically require a smaller drive to fit. A lot of the 2.5-inch options aren’t terribly attractive, as anything fast comes with a serious markup, but Seagate’s 2.5-inch FireCuda hybrid drive strikes a nice balance. It offers an easy way to add lots of storage to a laptop while also giving it a speed boost thanks to 8GB of flash storage. A 5-year warranty on the drive will also help ensure it for as long as almost any laptop’s lifespan. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EaenHwBta7vSrYw3mmd8zM.jpg Image Credit: Western Digital Game consoles hard drives fill up fast with massive libraries. And, like laptops, the upgrade path for 2.5-inch hard drives isn’t all that great, but that’s where an external drive comes in. The WD My Book strikes an amazing balance of storage and price, offering enough room for massive game libraries. Running on USB 3.0, it may not be quite as fast as an internal drive upgrade, but it will run games and offer more storage at a cheaper rate. http://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/aHmntAKAxYEMhyCSL6hgQo.jpg Image Credit: G-Technology A lot of people seem to think that the best hard drives are ancient and dead technology in 2019. However, with devices like the G-Technology G-Drive, you can show the naysayers in your life that spinning disks have their own place in the future. Not only does this external hard drive offer huge amounts of storage – up to 10 TB – but thanks to Thunderbolt 3 compatibility, it can even charge your laptop while you work. If you have a MacBook Pro, it’s hard to think of a better work companion. Read the full review: G-Technology G-Drive http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/4yFWGJ3V2jQ

Although the battle between Coffee Lake Refresh and AMD Ryzen 2nd Generation is still raging on, the war between Ryzen 3rd Generation, Ice Lake and Sunny Cove is about to begin. It’s also time for us to dive into the perennial deathmatch: AMD vs Intel. Essentially acting as the brain of your computer, the best processors are behind everything your PC does. This is why it’s so important to find the one for your specific needs – you don’t want to pay for features you don’t need. If you’ve been following the frantic war of Intel vs AMD as closely as we have over the years, you probably already know that AMD and Intel have traditionally focused on different segments of the CPU market. Where Intel has focused on higher clock speeds and efficiency with low core counts, AMD has focused on upping its core counts and boosting multi-threaded performance. Still, there’s room for the coexistence of AMD and Intel – they cater to different audiences, with direct competition in the middle. If you’re not quite sure whether to pledge allegiance to either Team Red or Team Blue, continue on to the next slide for a constantly updated look at the AMD vs Intel clash. Gary Marshall originally contributed to this article For bargain shoppers on the prowl for the next hottest deal, it used to be assumed that AMD’s processors were cheaper, but that was only because the Red Team did its best work at the entry level. Now that Ryzen processors have proven AMD’s worth on the high-end, the tide has ostensibly turned. Now Intel reigns supreme in the budget CPU space, with its $64 (about £46, AU$82) MSRP Pentium G4560 offering far better performance than AMD’s $110 (about £80, AU$140) MSRP A12-9800. Even among mid-range, current-gen chips, Intel is leading the pack by offering 8th-generation Coffee Lake CPUs as low as $117 (about £83, AU$152) for the Core i3-8100T. Much of this is due to the Advanced Micro Device company’s reluctance to move beyond simply iterating on its antiquated Bulldozer architecture and onto adopting the current-generation ‘Zen’ standard it’s already introduced with pricier CPUs. Still, on the low end, Intel and AMD processors typically retail at about the same price. It’s once you hit that exorbitant $200 (around £142, AU$252) mark where things get trickier. High-end Intel chips now range from 4 up to 18 cores, while AMD chips can now be found with up to 32-cores. And, thanks to some recent price cuts you can find the AMD Ryzen 5 2400G and the Ryzen 3 2200G for $160 (around £129, AU$208) and $105 (around £84, AU$135), respectively. While it was long-rumored that AMD’s Ryzen chips would offer cutting-edge performance at a lower price, benchmarks have demonstrated that Intel is remaining strongly competitive. If you can get your hands on one, the Core i7 9700K is is $409 (£499, AU$659), while the still more-capable Ryzen 7 2700X is priced at $329 (about £230, AU$420). And, if you’re looking to get your hands on the new hotness, the Intel Core i9-9900K is available for $579 (£599, AU$859.) For anyone looking to dip their toes into the realm of the HEDT processors, AMD and Intel are very close right now, especially on the heels of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX CPU, at $1,799 (£1,639, AU$2,679). That might seem like a lot, but compared to the $1,999 (£1,649, AU$2,729) Intel Core i9-7980XE, it’s a downright bargain – especially given that AMD’s offering has nearly double the cores. If you're building a gaming PC, truthfully you should be using a discrete graphics card, or GPU (graphics processing unit), rather than relying on a CPU’s integrated graphics to run games as demanding as Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Still, it’s possible to run less graphically intense games on an integrated GPU if your processor has one. In this area, AMD is the clear winner, thanks to the release of the Ryzen 5 2400G that packs powerful discrete Vega graphics that outperforms Intel’s onboard graphic technology by leaps and bounds. Yet, as we mentioned before, Intel has officially started shipping its high-end H-series mobile CPU chips with AMD graphics on board. In turn, this means that hardier laptops powered by Intel can now be thinner and their accompanying silicon footprints will be over 50% smaller, according to Intel client computing group vice president Christopher Walker. All of this is accomplished using Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology, along with a newly contrived framework that enables power sharing between Intel’s first-party processors and third-party graphics chips with dedicated graphics memory. Even so, it’s too early to tell whether this is a better solution than the purebred AMD notebooks slated for the end of this year. Intel might be aiming to shake things up though as it has announced that it’s planning on releasing a GPU aimed at gamers by 2020. And, if we could see Intel putting some of that effort into improving integrated graphics. Still, if all you're looking to do is play League of Legends at modest settings or relive your childhood with a hard drive full of emulators (it's okay, we won't tell), the latest Intel Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake or AMD A-Series APU processors for desktops will likely fare just as well as any forthcoming portable graphics solution. On the high-end, especially in cases where you don’t need to worry about on-board graphics, Intel’s processors are typically on top – its Core i9-9900K handily beats out the workstation-class Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX for less than half the price. AMD typically provides better multi-threading performance, as a result of higher core and thread counts. Ryzen CPUs also offer more PCIe lanes, which come in handy if you want multiple NVMe SSDs alongside SLI and CrossFire multi-GPU performance. While there is no clear winner in the graphics department, survey says AMD is the better option for integrated graphics, while hardcore gamers who don’t mind shelling out the extra cash for a GPU will find that Intel is better for gaming alone – although with Ryzen 2nd Generation AMD is closing that gap. Meanwhile, AMD is superior for carrying out numerous tasks at once. If you're building a gaming PC, truthfully you should be using a discrete graphics card, or GPU (graphics processing unit), rather than relying on a CPU’s integrated graphics to run games as demanding as Middle Earth: Shadow of War. Still, it’s possible to run less graphically intense games on an integrated GPU if your processor has one. In this area, AMD is the clear winner, thanks to the release of the Ryzen 5 2400G that packs powerful discrete Vega graphics that outperforms Intel’s onboard graphic technology by leaps and bounds. AMD has also launched an updated driver for its mobile Ryzen chips, which leads to up to 20% better performance in games like CS:GO and Fortnite. Yet, as we mentioned before, Intel has officially started shipping its high-end H-series mobile CPU chips with AMD graphics on board. In turn, this means that hardier laptops powered by Intel can now be thinner and their accompanying silicon footprints will be over 50% smaller, according to Intel client computing group vice president Christopher Walker. All of this is accomplished using Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology, along with a newly contrived framework that enables power sharing between Intel’s first-party processors and third-party graphics chips with dedicated graphics memory. Even so, it’s too early to tell whether this is a better solution than the purebred AMD notebooks. Still, if all you're looking to do is play League of Legends at modest settings or relive your childhood with a hard drive full of emulators (it's okay, we won't tell), the latest Intel Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake or AMD A-Series APU processors for desktops will likely fare just as well as any forthcoming portable graphics solution. On the high end, such as in cases where you'll be pairing your CPU with a powerful AMD or Nvidia GPU, Intel’s processors are typically better for gaming due to their higher base and boost clock speeds. At the same time, though, AMD provides better CPUs for multi-tasking as a result of their higher core and thread counts. While there is no clear winner in the graphics department, survey says AMD is the better option for integrated graphics, especially on mobile with its Ryzen chips for laptops.However, Intel is working on improving its own integrated graphics in 2019, with its Gen11 graphics – we’ll have to see how well they work when they actually ship. Hardcore gamers who don’t mind shelling out the extra cash for a GPU will find that Intel is better for gaming alone. Meanwhile, AMD is superior for carrying out numerous tasks at once. When you buy a new computer or even just a CPU by itself, it's typically locked at a specific clock speed as indicated on the box. Some processors ship unlocked, allowing for higher clock speeds than recommended by the manufacturer, giving users more control over how they use their components (though, it does require you know how to overclock). AMD is normally more generous than Intel in this regard. With an AMD system, you can expect overclocking capabilities from even the $129 (about £110, AU$172) Ryzen 3 1300X. Meanwhile, you can only overclock an Intel processor if it's graced with the “K” series stamp of approval. Then again, the cheapest of these is the $180 (£160, AU$240) Intel Core i3-8350K. Both companies will void your warranty if you brick your processor as the result of overclocking, though, so it’s important to watch out for that. Excessive amounts of heat can be generated if you’re not careful, thereby neutralizing the CPU as a result. With that in mind, you’ll be missing out on a few hundred stock megahertz if you skip out on one of the K models. Intel’s more extravagant K-stamped chips are pretty impressive, too. The i9-9900K, for instance, is capable of maintaining a whopping 5.0GHz turbo frequency in comparison to the 4.3GHz boost frequency of the Ryzen 7 2700X. If you’ve access to liquid nitrogen cooling, you may even be able to reach upwards of 6.1GHz using Intel’s monstrous, 18-core i9-7980XE. In the end, the biggest problem with AMD’s desktop processors is the lack of compatibility with other components. Specifically, motherboard (mobo) and cooler options are limited as a result of the differing sockets between AMD and Intel chips. While a lot of CPU coolers demand that you special order an AM4 bracket to be used with Ryzen, only a handful of the best motherboards are compatible with the AM4 chipset. In that regard, Intel parts are slightly more commonplace and are often accompanied by lower starting costs, too, as a result of the wide variety of kit to choose from. That said, AMD's chips make a little more sense from a hardware design perspective. With an AMD motherboard, rather than having metal connector pins on the CPU socket, you'll notice those pins are instead on the underside of the CPU itself. In turn, the mobo is less likely to malfunction due to its own faulty pins. When it comes to availability in the latter half of 2018, it gets complicated. While both Coffee Lake and AMD Ryzen 2nd Generation processors are widely available, Intel is going through supply shortages, and AMD is starting to catch up to Team Blue’s titanic market share. In fact, financial analysts have downgraded Intel’s stock in the face of both 14nm shortages and Cannon Lake’s constant delays, according to a report from CNBC. AMD really has a chance to steal the crown here. Still, you can pick up processors from both companies today, though Intel chips like the Intel Core i7-8700K might have some increased pricing. AMD APUs like the AMD Ryzen 3 2200G are still great options for anyone on a budget, though. Future speculation It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that AMD had a great year in 2017 with its Ryzen processors – especially the high-end Threadripper processors. And, now that the Ryzen 2nd Generation CPUs have been released, AMD is claiming more and more of Intel’s market share, up to 50% at the time of writing. And, if AMD keeps putting out processors as good as the Ryzen 5 2600X and the Ryzen 7 2700X, we think this trend will only continue. As for Intel, it continues to struggle with 10nm production, which has seen its Cannon Lake processors pushed back again and again. We’re not sure when Cannon Lake is going to come out at all as Intel recently announced its 10nm Sunny Cove architecture, which will be behind whatever Ice Lake, Lakefield and a host of other chips we hope Intel will launch in 2019. The first of these appears to be Ice Lake, rather than Cannon Lake. Ice Lake will be behind the next generation of Ultrabooks, and will feature built-in Thunderbolt 3, WiFi and Gen11 graphics. Intel is making some promising claims for Ice Lake, like that it will be able to search for images twice as fast as Whiskey Lake. As with all Intel’s on-stage demonstrations, take that with a grain of salt though. AMD, on the other hand, has announced the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs, based on the new Zen 2 architecture. And, while we don’t know any specifics beyond the nameless 8-core processor it showed off at CES 2019, there are plenty of rumors floating around. For instance, we’ve seen a 12-core, 24-thread chip show up in a leaked UserBenchmark result. http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/digital-home/~4/mhA7mN95EDc