Roundup: Best of TechRadar: this week's best features and hottest reviews

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25 Google search tips and tricks you need to know

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Search smarter with our expert guide to Google

Everybody knows Google, but not everybody knows its secrets, the little things that make finding what you want faster, that make searches more specific and that uncover entertaining Easter eggs. Here are 25 of our favourite ways to find Google's G spots

Meet Slice: the Raspberry Pi-powered media player with a difference

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Turn your media files into a personal Netflix library

Anyone with a large digital media library will be familiar with the problem. Thousands of MP3, MKV, AVI, FLAC and MOV files sit at your beck and call, but how best to unleash their full potential instead of keeping them cooped up on a hard drive somewhere? FiveNinjas thinks it has the answer. It's a media player called Slice and it's set to be the first device to hit the shelves with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module at its heart. It's designed to transform your media library into a 1TB personal, portable Netflix, allowing you to plug into any TV via HDMI and play back any media file you have in your collection. Read all about it

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PlayStation 5: what to expect

The PS5 is coming but when and in what form?

The PlayStation 4 is barely out of its box in terms of a console life cycle. But with so many recent advances - PlayStation Now, pre-loading games, YouTube streaming and PlayStation TV to name but a few - we're thinking about the future of black boxes under the television. Is there one or are we just looking at Sony TVs shipping with a DualShock 4 from here on in rather than a PS5 console? A PlayStation 5 will land in some form but what's most interesting is whether it'll be the big component packed box we've grown accustomed to heating our living rooms, a palm sized streaming device or an invisible power ever present on our televisions or even iPhones and iPads. Continue reading...

Another case of password theft leaves commenters feeling hacked off

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INFLAME All your passwords are belong to some Russian hacker dudes

Turns out it doesn't really matter how many uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers or words about horses you have in your internet passwords, as most of them have been hacked and stolen anyway. News this week suggested that an amazing 1.2billion email addresses and passwords have been harvested by hacking group CyberVors, which poked insecure servers with a malware botnet (and perhaps bought in more stolen data from other hackers) resulting in the biggest data collection in the history of hacks. Read all about it

OnePlus women-only photo contest shows we still have a long way to go

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Really, a t-shirt?

If you haven't already heard, OnePlus launched a contest to commemorate reaching 200,000 message board members in which only women – or "ladies" as we're referred to like a Tuesday night cover charge special – were asked to submit a photo of themselves with the OnePlus logo drawn on a piece of paper or themselves. The 50 photos that garnered the most "likes" on the predominately male OnePlus forums would earn the entrants a T-shirt. If there were at least 500 entries, OnePlus would do the gentlemanly thing and invite its "favorite photo" to buy a One smartphone. Reaction on Twitter was decidedly negative

Android L (5.0) release date – when can I get it?

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Android L is now out in the open and it includes a handful of new features, a visual overhaul and numerous under-the-hood improvements to make if faster, more efficient and lighter on your battery, but while we know all about it, it's not yet available for public consumption. Even once it does launch it will be down to individual manufacturers to port it to their devices, so chances are you'll still be waiting a while to get it on your phone and tablet (unless you've gone full Nexus already) and most companies haven't yet been all that forthcoming with details of when they'll bring it to their phones and tablets. Find out when you'll get it

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How to build a Steam Machine for less than the price of a PS4

It's not hard to see why PC gaming isn't so straightforward for the modern casual gamer. Graphics can look better on PC than on console, but most people own a laptop instead of a desktop these days and the price of high-end graphics cards is still scarier than the combined efforts of a horror film festival. But there is another way

Samsung Galaxy Alpha vs Galaxy S5 Mini vs iPhone 5S vs Xperia Z1 Compact

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The battle of the tiny powerhouses

Apple has long argued for the merits of a smartphone you can use one-handed, that's why the iPhone 5S grew taller, but not wider. The idea of a scaled down flagship isn't alien to the big Android OEMs, but Sony is the only one so far to avoid scaling down the specs when it shrank the phone, which is why the Xperia Z1 Compact is the current king of smaller Android smartphones. But wait, what's this? A premium design in a small body with cutting edge specs? Samsung has been listening and it's trying to blow away the compact competition, including its own Galaxy S5 Mini, with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha. Does it have what it takes to be the leader in the category of mini hyperphones? Let's take a look

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Samsung Galaxy Alpha vs Samsung Galaxy S5

Samsung's new premium smartphone goes head to head with the flagship

The Samsung Galaxy Alpha may not share the 'S5' moniker of the Korean firm's flagship smartphone, but this new 'premium' device certainly has several similarities to the Samsung Galaxy S5. It's fair to say that the two handsets are aimed at slightly different markets, with the Galaxy S5 one of the top all-singing, all-dancing Android smartphones on the market, while the Galaxy Alpha's approach looks to be more refined, targeted specifically at the upcoming iPhone 6. The tricky thing is, it now looks like Samsung has two top-end handsets - so which one should you choose? Read on to find out

Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini review

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The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini was quietly announced via press release at the beginning of July, and it's now finding its way into stores around the world, so how does the pint-sized smartphone shape up? As far as design goes there's no mistaking this is a close relative to the Samsung Galaxy S5, with the S5 Mini sporting the familiar ribbed faux-metal band around its circumference and the dimpled polycarbonate rear linking it directly to its bigger brother. It's got the HTC One Mini 2, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, iPhone 5C and the LG G3 Beat in its sights, as these shrunken smartphones look to do battle a couple of tiers below their flagship brethren. Hands on: Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini review

Samsung UE48H6700 review

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Selling for around £850 in the UK, the UE48H6700 is a great looking TV, with a rectangular aluminium desktop stand complete with a leaning tower column lending an industrial, though classy, look. The TV itself has a sleek-looking 9mm surround on three sides of the screen, which does create just enough of a floating effect for the money. On the underside of the TV is a transparent plastic rim, which nicely catches the light, though there's not much motion to get excited about; that desktop stand can't swivel even a few degrees. Does it look as good as Samsung's curved TVs? No, but it's pretty close and a fraction of the cost. Read: Samsung UE48H6700 review

John Lewis 55JL9000 review

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Having successfully introduced its branding to other electronics products, predominantly in the white goods arena, it makes perfect sense for respected retailer John Lewis to turn its attention to big-screen TVs. However successful John Lewis might be as a retailer, though, it isn't in a position to suddenly start building TVs from scratch. So it's had to turn to an established manufacturer for its big own-name TV debut, the 55-inch John Lewis 55JL9000. And that manufacturer is… [drum roll please] … LG Electronics. Read: John Lewis 55JL9000 review

Amazon Fire Phone review

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Don't buy the Amazon Fire Phone. It's very rare that we'll say that to kick off a verdict, but that's the bottom line with this device. We don't need wax philosophical about its implications and its competition. We don't need to talk about Amazon's strategy in depth. Do not buy this phone. First, it's expensive for what it is. If you buy this on contract, it will cost you the same as an iPhone, HTC One M8, LG G3 or Galaxy S5. If you buy it off contract, you're nearing the $700 territory, and the Fire Phone is closer to a midrange device than a high end one. Read: Amazon Fire Phone review

Acer Chromebook 13 review

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Chromebooks have come a long way since their debut just over three years ago. In their first year, Google's laptops sold to the tune of tens of thousands. This year, some firms estimate sales in the tens of millions. But even with such meteoric growth, at least one of the search giant's partners isn't sitting on its laurels. The latest leap forward in the category comes from a newcomer to the space that would be surprising if not for its rapid branching out from its bread and butter: Nvidia. Hands on: Acer Chromebook 13 review