Most people use ChatGPT like they’re walking up to a stranger and starting a new conversation every single time.

You open a new chat, explain what you need, add a bit of context, correct the tone, ask it to be more concise, then finally get something useful. And then, the next time you need the same kind of help, you do the whole thing all over again.

That’s fine if you’re asking something random each time. But if you use AI regularly for the same kinds of tasks, it’s a surprisingly inefficient way to work.

The solution is simple: stop starting from scratch.

Instead of treating every chat as a blank page, you can build reusable conversations that already know the job, tone, and desired output. Here’s how I use that one habit to save time every week.

A simple trick

So, we know what we want to do — remove repeated setups for prompts, make the AI’s first answer better, and reduce the amount of refining you need to do afterward. But how do we do it? Here’s the clever bit - you get the AI to do it for you.

Load up one of your previous chats that was productive and worthwhile. Then at the end I want you to copy and paste this:

“Turn this conversation into a reusable prompt I can paste into a new chat next time. Include the goal, tone, format, constraints and the steps you followed. Make it general enough that I can reuse it with similar tasks.”

Your AI will give you a handy prompt you can use whenever you like now to get a chat that’s exactly what you want.

My meal planner prompt

I now have a reusable prompt for meal planning. Instead of starting from scratch every week, I paste in a short prompt that already knows the rules: I want quick family meals, nothing too expensive, leftovers if possible, and a shopping list organized by supermarket section. Then I add whatever’s in the fridge and how many nights I need to cover.

Here it is:

“You are helping me plan practical family meals for the week. Prioritize meals that are quick, affordable, not too fussy, and likely to produce leftovers. Ask me what ingredients I already have before suggesting anything. Then give me:

A simple meal plan

A shopping list grouped by supermarket section

Any ingredients I can reuse across multiple meals

One backup meal in case I don’t feel like cooking”

This has saved me so much time planning meals in the evening.

A tool that remembers you

Before you get too carried away with this idea, remember that reusable prompts are useful but not infallible. A reusable prompt is only worth saving if it produces better work, not just more predictable work. If your saved prompt is too vague, too bossy, or based on a weak workflow, you’ll just get the same mediocre output, but delivered faster.

Having said that, using reusable prompts has been the biggest change I’ve made to how I use ChatGPT. When a conversation works, I don’t let it disappear. I turn it into a reusable starting point.

If you stop starting every ChatGPT conversation from scratch, ChatGPT starts feeling much less like a conversation with a stranger and more like a chat with a tool that actually remembers how you work.

Whisper it, but I think that Clarkson's Farm season 6 might actually be on the up.

If you can bear to cast your mind back to the dramatic season 5 finale, you'll remember that in episode 7 Jeremy Clarkson revealed that he'd been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

"If all goes well, I'll see you for season 6. If not, I won't," was how the star signed off at the end of last season.

However, shortly after the final two episodes were released, Prime Video and Clarkson released a social media video confirming that season 6 is currently in production.

"So... bit of a year," Jeremy reflected on TikTok. "But, I'm delighted to tell you that season 6 of Clarkson's Farm is currently in production. And, that's particularly good news for me because... well, if you know, you know."

It's hopefully safe to assume that things are slowly getting better at Diddly Squat, then.

With season 6 still filming, another happy announcement might mean that forthcoming episodes are the most positive of all time... and it's all thanks to farm manager Kaleb Cooper.

Kaleb marries long-term partner as Clarkson's Farm season 6 continues filming

In an Instagram post, Cooper announced that he had tied the knot with his long-term partner Taya, having originally proposed in 2022.

In a caption, he wrote, "Such an amazing day yesterday celebrating our wedding! We both had the most amazing day! Mr and Mrs Cooper."

If you have a look at their first wedding photo, you'll notice that it's on a farm in front of a tractor. With Cooper's big life dream being to buy his own land and run his own farm, for the meantime, it stands to reason that Diddly Squat could be a likely candidate for the location.

We've currently got no idea if Clarkson, Lisa, or any of the other Diddly Squat crew were in attendance, but again, it could be likely. Jeremy himself is currently in remission as of mid-2026.

What is much more certain is that Kaleb's wedding, or at least the build-up and fallout, will be featured in Clarkson's Farm season 6. In fact, it would almost be silly for it not to be.

Not only have Kaleb's life and personal growth been well documented across the five seasons (remember his national tour during the season 4 premiere?), but season 6 is in desperate need of some light-hearted entertainment.

Jeremy's personal commitment to showing "warts and all" farming is admirable, but in the wake of season 5, I think we've had about as much of that as we can take.

If anybody is going to lead Diddly Squat out of trouble and into happier times, it's Kaleb.

Getting started with smart home can feel intimidating, not least because it feels like there's sure to be a hefty cost involved. It doesn't have to be that way, though. I asked the TechRadar team for their top affordable smart home recommendations, and they came through with some real winners. All the gadgets featured below come with the stamp of approval from TechRadar, will make your home that little bit more convenient, and won't cost you more than $50 / £50. Hit the 'View details' button to learn more about each one.

Budget-friendly smart home

The temperature is rising again, and fans are selling out fast, but you don't need to settle for something sub-par that will just waft warm air around. I've done the hard work for you, combing through online stores to bring you a list of eight top-quality fans from big names that are ready to dispatch right now — and they're all under £100.

There's something for every room here, including compact desktop fans for working, and extra-quiet tower fans to help you sleep better at night, plus lightweight handheld fans to keep you comfortable on the move,

Remember, they're likely to sell out fast as the temperature climbs, so I'd recommend grabbing one while you can. Personally, I've just opted for the MeacoFan Sefte 8in Air Circulator, which moves a large volume of air and is ideal for bringing the night breeze indoors when the temperature drops outside in the evening. Which one will you pick?

Quality fans under £100

Answer me honestly: do you actually understand what is going on in From season 4? I'm the first to admit that I have no idea, and it feels like the amount of lore I need to keep up with is spiralling out of control.

So it doesn't help, then, when the internet decides to add its own non-canonical lore that doesn't even exist. I'm talking about the Reddit rumors that From season 4 episode 11 exists, explaining all the plot holes that episode 10 (the actual season finale) left unanswered.

"Episode 11 is the best one yet," the thread begins. "They answered everything... every question."

A second fan added, "The pacing was insane. Answers actually landed instead of just more riddles."

But it should go without saying that From season 4 episode 11 doesn't exist, despite an alarming number of people searching for it.

Instead, we've got to wait for the already-renewed season 5, which is rumored to air at some point in 2027.

However, now is not the time to let our MGM+ subscriptions go to waste. From season 4 might be over, but get ready for your latest bingeable obsession: The Westies.

The Westies premieres on MGM+ this week — here's why you need to stream it

With a cast led by JK Simmons, The Westies follows a fictional version of the real-life Irish crime gang in New York of the same name.

As MGM explains, "The series is set in the early 1980s when the construction of the Jacob Javits Convention Center on the Westies’ home turf in Hell’s Kitchen promises a financial windfall. Despite being outnumbered fifty-to-one by the Five Families of the Italian Mafia, the Westies’ legendary brutality and cunning have given them the leverage necessary to share the spoils through a fragile détente.

"But internal conflict between the brash younger generation and the old-school leadership threatens to set a match to this powder keg, which will sweep the Westies into the FBI’s ever-deepening investigation into the Italian mafia."

If that hasn't sold you already, The Westies is getting an epic police procedural crossover in the form of Bosch star Titus Welliver, who is playing the lead FBI agent tasked with tracking the mobsters down.

Don't be fooled by the above trailer, either — new episodes are about as gory, gruesome and disturbing as TV can get. Episodes premiere on July 12th and are released on a weekly basis (just like From).

Sure, it's a completely different kind of mystery... but you're welcome, in advance.

For over a decade, driving profit from your website was relatively simple. Find the right keywords, optimize your site to rank for them, then convert as many visitors as you can.

But as AI overviews and conversational answer engines continue to replace search engines, traditional clicks from SERPs are rapidly dropping.

Fortunately, this shift isn't a death sentence for websites; in fact, it could be a big opportunity.

I caught up with Aja Frost, Senior Director of Global Growth and Paid at HubSpot, to get some insight into how HubSpot has reshaped its marketing strategy, helping it achieve a massive 1,850% increase in qualified leads from AI and a 3x higher conversion rate compared to traditional search.

With organic sessions and clicks sharply dropping for many websites, how can marketers continue to prove ROI? What are the new baseline metrics businesses should be measuring?

Traffic volume is no longer the right North Star metric. When AI answers a question that includes your brand, you might not see any clicks — but you’ve successfully generated awareness that could convert later that day, week, or month.

The metrics that matter most now are AI search visibility and branded search (awareness), as well as conversion rate, pipeline quality, and revenue. LLM-referred traffic converts around 3x better than traditional search for HubSpot.

With long-form ‘ultimate guides’ now struggling to compete with AI answers, how should teams be pivoting their content strategies to remain competitive?

Start writing for AI search. If an LLM answers the question “What is a CRM” and cites your CRM in the response — because you’ve structured your content in an AI-friendly way, included original data, etc. — you will still ultimately reach the buyer.

Additionally, HubSpot diversified where we showed up, including YouTube, newsletters, and podcasts. Not only do humans still spend a lot of time here, but LLMs train and cite from these sources. Today, 90% of HubSpot’s leads come from non-blog sources, with YouTube leads up 100% and newsletter leads up 90%.

What other things should brands be doing to optimize their websites for conversational AI questions?

Think about how your buyers will ask questions to an answer engine, not how they’d type keywords into Google. Your content needs to answer conversational queries directly and authoritatively.

Using unique data, structuring your content so it’s easy to understand, and being cited in the places LLMs pull from will increase your visibility. You should also track your AI visibility systematically – you need to know how your products are described, which businesses are showing up instead of you, and whether your share of voice is improving over time.

Can brands leverage legacy content for AEO? If so, how?

Yes, but it needs to be updated with intent. Legacy content written to rank on Google usually doesn’t explicitly connect the topic to your product or service. Update content with these connections so AI will make them for the user.

For example, if you have a blog post on running good sales calls, you’d add contextual lines like, “HubSpot’s Smart CRM includes real-time call insights, so you can course-correct while you’re still on the phone with a prospect.”

Is SEO still important? If so, what are some good strategies small businesses can use to balance search engine and AI optimization?

SEO is still important for a few reasons.

Google’s AI search (AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini) pull information from Google results. In addition, once buyers have discovered you in AI search, they’ll often use Google to navigate to your website.

HubSpot claims that its AEO playbook helped achieve an 1850% increase in qualified leads and a 3x higher conversion rate. What were the three main driving factors behind these wins? How can entrepreneurs and marketers apply them to their own businesses?

Our strategy had three pillars.

First, on-site content built for AI. We created industry-specific pages with structured data, unique insights, and FAQ schema. 92% of those pages ended up cited by answer engines, generating a 49% lift in AI visibility. We also launched a glossary covering top-of-funnel terms (with explicit links to relevant products), which increased citation share for related prompts by 60%.

Second, off-site amplification. We identified publishers already winning citations but not yet mentioning HubSpot, gave them AEO recommendations and templates, and scaled to hundreds of new pages, earning hundreds of thousands of new AI citations.

Third, Reddit. We invested heavily in our Reddit strategy, as it was one of the most cited sources for questions our buyers are asking.

Any business can apply these tactics. You should start by measuring where you show up in AI answers, then systematically close the gaps.

Spoilers for Dutton Ranch episode 9 ahead.

From the jump, it was clear that the eventual finale of Dutton Ranch — episode 9 — would be an absolutely chaotic mind-melter. While I'm happy to report that my assumptions were right, there were some unanswered questions that I didn't expect at all.

For the most part, the Yellowstone spinoff has left us with multiple dilemmas following the ranch raid. The most pressing is whether Carter(Finn Little) will survive his kidnapping, and whether Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) can get to him before anything bad happens.

Then we'll have the fallout of Rob-Will's (Jai Courtney) death, which will definitely have messed with Joaquin's (Juan Pablo Raba) mind. This is also going to affect Mariano's (Raoul Max Trujillo) standing in the 10 Petal business, arguably likely to see even more power than he had before.

Beulah (Annette Bening), meanwhile, has absolutely nothing to her name. She needs to grieve Rob-Will, but Everett (Ed Harris) wants nothing to do with her, so her next moves cannot be immediately guessed.

Then, there's Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind). Will she keep the baby? Will Beth be there to support her? And will Rio Paloma ever be the same again?

Amazingly, none of these issues are what fans are the most perplexed by... and if you've been keeping a close eye on the show's first-look images, you might have noticed that something is missing.

Dutton Ranch season 1 completely cut out Beth bonding with her horses — despite advertising it

Recognize the above image? Despite it being a key part of Dutton Ranch's initial advertising campaign, the scene itself never materialised.

It's this that fans are hung up on, rather than anything that actually transpired in the explosive season finale.

"It makes me so mad they cut this scene of Beth and her horse from the season finale," one fan posted on Reddit. "This photo was released as an episode still on the Paramount+ press website. I’ve been looking forward to this scene. I can’t believe they cut it, but left in the teen angst. Beth and her horse have more chemistry than Carter and Oreana."

A second added, "I was so annoyed this scene was cut! It looks so sweet. It really does seem like so many tender scenes were cut this season, which is so disappointing.

"I loved this storyline and hope we get to see more of Beth with her horse in season 2. I’d also like to know what she named her."

According to the show notes, the still should have come from the season finale, but was cut. Some fans are speculating that the change is linked to the exit of showrunner Chad Feehan, who announced his departure from Dutton Ranch three weeks before it aired.

"With 6, 7 and 8 being such short runtime episodes, it begs to wonder how much footage — that potentially could have elevated those episodes as they were not the strongest of the season — ended up on the cutting room floor?" a third fan speculated.

As of writing, we don't yet know when Dutton Ranch season 2 will air, enter production, or who will take over as its showrunner. For now, all we can do is keep our fingers crossed for some more equine action.

Are you a Google user living in the European Economic Area (EEA), the UK, or Switzerland? If so, you have probably received a message from the tech giant informing you that it will soon start using your IP address for advertising measurement purposes.

Google has so far only used IP addresses to route traffic and display adverts in these regions. However, as reported by Bleeping Computer, from 4 August, it will allow third parties to show you more personalised adverts by tracking your activity via your IP address.

The move raises questions about compliance with the GDPR in the EU and UK, which classifies IP addresses as personal data. Under current regulations, companies must obtain users’ consent before tracking IP addresses for the purpose of personalising adverts.

Indeed, the tracking of IP addresses in the EU is regarded as 'fingerprinting' — an invasive profiling practice that tracks an individual and their devices to link their digital activities. IP addresses can help identify your device, making it much easier for third parties to build a profile and bombard you with targeted ads while potentially exposing your data to hackers.

Google has stated that it is now shifting the burden of complying with the regulations in these regions onto advertisers, reminding them to adhere to its EU User Consent Policy and to obtain valid consent from users in the regions concerned, thereby placing much of the responsibility for managing and tracking IP addresses directly on these companies.

The days when the tech giant promoted a privacy-friendly digital environment now seem a distant memory. However, the best VPNs can help you retain control over your IP address.

What Google’s IP-tracking means for your privacy

Google's new initiative could mark a significant turning point in terms of consent. Above all, it involves the creation of persistent profiles based on users' activities.

By placing the responsibility for obtaining consent on advertisers, while at the same time making it impossible for users to delete their own 'digital footprint' themselves, the Big Tech giant heavily impacts users’ online privacy.

Additionally, advertisers may implement consent banners in ways that are unclear or designed to encourage users to click 'accept', leading regulators to question whether the new system truly respects users' choices.

Although users might soon be able to manage IP-based personalisation, current opt-out options are limited to existing cookies and ad personalisation settings — meaning that, at present, users have little control over this new form of profiling.

It is particularly clarifying that Google itself was previously against the move, having completely U-turned from 2019, when it recognised fingerprinting as 'wrong', claiming it undermines users’ freedom of choice.

However, in 2024, the platform backtracked on its pro-privacy stance and lifted the ban on advertisers' use of fingerprinting, almost immediately raising concerns at the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which described the reversal as 'irresponsible'.

Awkwardly for Google, new developments come just one month after the ICO published its 2026 guidance, where it reiterated that tracking a person's digital activity across different websites to build a behavioural profile will continue to require users' explicit consent.

How can a VPN help?

A virtual private network (VPN) gives you control back over these issues, as it spoofs users' IP addresses to minimise tracking — routing your traffic through remote servers and fooling websites you visit into thinking you’re somewhere else.

Leading providers, including NordVPN, Surfshark and Proton VPN, offer services such as ThreatProtection, CleanWeb and NetShield, which provide both shared and dedicated, static IP addresses, as well as blocking trackers, reducing cookie pop-ups and using alternative IDs, making IP-based identification harder.

A handful of secure free VPNs, including ProtonVPN Free, Windscribe Free, and Privado VPN Free, are also worth the game. However, these solutions usually have limitations, often a limited number of servers, which can slow down connection speeds and cause traffic congestion.

In recent years, some top VPNs have also integrated anti-fingerprinting technologies. Windscribe, for example, has added such a feature on its Chrome and Edge browser extensions, while Mullvad VPN developed the Mullvad browser with fingerprinting resistance.

Finally, using a privacy-first browser like Mozilla Firefox, which incorporates an ad-blocker, free proxy, and fingerprinting protections, will help minimise IP-tracking for ad personalisation, making unpleasant ads a distant memory.

I’ve been writing about fitness tech for years, and we’re finally at a point where more affordable fitness trackers are now every bit as capable as models that would have cost hundreds of dollars or pounds, little more just a few years ago. That’s not to say premium options don’t have their place too, but many of the standouts this year have certainly been on the cheaper end.

Whether it’s screenless devices showing less can be more, the latest iteration of the popular Oura Ring, or a pair of Amazfit options that can cut it with much more expensive models, here are the best fitness trackers in 2026 so far, in no particular order.

1. Google Fitbit Air

• Release date: May 26
• Rating: 4/5

Whoop bands are growing in popularity for their distraction-free, sensor-packed, highly comfortable nature, and Google didn’t want to be outdone.

The tech giant’s answer to Whoop’s popularity, the Google Fitbit Air’s companion app boasts an effective but controversial AI-powered premium tier for additional insights, courtesy of Google’s new AI Health Coach. However, even on the free tier, this comfortable tracker weighing just 12 grams and reasonably priced at $99.99 / £84.99 / AU$199 is well worth a look.

Its real strength is heart rate metrics, which are consistently impressive for a cheap device, and it includes FDA-certified background AFib detection for additional peace of mind.

Our main gripe (outside of the two-tier app offering) is that it lacks GPS, and therefore run data feels less accurate than we’d have liked – even at this price.

Watch our YouTube review of the Google Fitbit Air here:

2. Oura Ring 5

• Release date: June 4
• Rating: 4/5

From the low-priced end of the spectrum to the expensive, the Oura Ring 5 is the latest offering from the company that, if they’re not the only game in town, more or less popularised the smart ring form factor.

Starting at $399 / £399 / AU$649, it’s hardly cheap, but it does a great job of offering a less intrusive way of tracking your wellness and fitness. In fact, despite its size, the fact that it could easily be mistaken for a piece of jewellery, and how comfortable it is, it’s remarkably accurate, too.

With a week of tracking between charges (including sleep), it offers more color options and better connectivity (Bluetooth 6.0 vs 5.4) at the same price as the Samsung Galaxy Ring. It’s also somehow 40% smaller than the last generation of Oura Ring, while still matching up with a dedicated chest strap for heart tracking.

Watch our YouTube review of the Oura Ring 5 here:

3. Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro:

• Release date: April 16
• Rating: 4/5

When a company like Amazfit (one of the best budget tracker manufacturers) takes aim at the premium market, it’s wise to take notice. The Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro offers a Garmin-like experience with a bunch of runner-focused tools like training plans and detailed metrics, all with marathon-tackling 31 hours of dual-band GPS tracking.

Using it day-to-day can get you 20 days of battery life, and while it is a fairly bulky watch on the wrist, it’s a much cheaper rival to Garmin offerings.

GPS tracking is solid, but offline maps could use some work. Still, if you’re a runner, this is one of the models to beat this year.

4. Amazfit Active 3 Premium

• Release date: February 26
• Rating: 5/5

Another Amazfit, sure, but if the Cheetah 2 Pro is too much for you, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium is well worth a look. Despite the name, it’s priced very reasonably at $169 / £169 / around AU$325), while still offering an AMOLED display, built-in GPS, and a fairly weighty (but comfortable) 54.6g chassis.

Battery life can run you for up to 12 days according to Amazfit (but I hit around 11 in testing), and the Zepp app has improved massively in recent years so it’s a very solid running companion with some bona fide coaching options.

You’ll likely want something a little more durable if you’re going off-trail, but what it lacks in ruggedness, the Amazfit Active 3 Premium makes up for by being a great-looking budget option.

5. Garmin Forerunner 70

• Release date: May 15
• Rating: 4/5

Reviewer Mike Sawh wasn’t kidding — the Garmin Forerunner 70 really might be better value than its more premium cousin, the Garmin Forerunner 170.

High praise indeed, but even without Garmin’s latest, more expensive sensors, it packs accurate metrics alongside an easy-to-read AMOLED display and physical buttons that make it easy to use, excellent sports tracking, and impressive training insights.

It does lose the affordability of the Garmin Forerunner 55, and doesn’t have smartwatch features like NFC payments, but for a runner it’s a great option that’s one of the year’s strongest.

We’re now halfway through the calendar year (yes, really), so what better time to round up our favorite phones of 2026 so far?

I say ‘our favorite phones’, but I really mean ‘my favorite phones’ — I’ve collated five models that may not have perfect TechRadar review scores, but either surprised me in testing or offer something unique in today’s busy smartphone landscape.

The reviews for each model (which I’ve included in each entry) may have been written by someone else, but I’ve personally used all the phones listed below for specific feature deep-dives, video shoots, or general device comparisons. Don’t agree with my list? Let me know your favorite phone(s) of 2026 so far in the comments below.

5. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

• Release date: March 11
• Review rating: 4.5 / 5

Any phone-related ‘best of’ list has to include Samsung’s latest Ultra-branded Galaxy device. This year’s edition is the feature-packed Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and while it’s not the most surprising phone I’ve tested this year (hence its place at number 5), it is the most powerful and versatile of the bunch. It’s an everything phone — an all-you-can-eat buffet of top-end hardware and software.

Chief among the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s new software features are Privacy Display and Super Steady Horizontal Lock. The former stops prying eyes from viewing content on your screen, while the latter stabilizes videos even when you turn the phone a full 360 degrees. I’m a die-hard Apple fan, but the iPhone 17 Pro doesn’t have either of these features, nor classic Samsung tools like DeX and the S Pen, so the Galaxy S26 Ultra feels like a cut above the current best iPhone when it comes to productivity.

Add in some customarily premium hardware specs, and you’ve got a formidable pocket companion — albeit one that will cost you an arm and a leg to own.

Read our in-depth Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra review

4. Google Pixel 10a

• Release date: March 5
• Review rating: 4 / 5

Like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the Google Pixel 10a is the definition of ‘iterative upgrade’, but it’s still my go-to recommendation for buyers looking for an affordable Android phone with great cameras. Google’s excellent Android software is just as good on this cheaper device as it is on the premium Google Pixel 10 Pro, and I’d go as far as to say that the 10a is actually the better-looking of the two phones (look at that flush camera!).

Sure, Google’s Tensor G4 chipset is underpowered compared to the midrange competition, and you don’t get any PixelSnap compatibility here, but at $499 / £499 / AU$849, it’s hard to argue against the Pixel 10a’s value for money. Its 6.3-inch Actua display is gorgeous, its two cameras are as good as anything you’ll find for the same price, and its AI-powered software features — from Camera Coach to Call Screen — are genuinely useful. Bravo, Google.

Read our in-depth Google Pixel 10a review

3. Motorola Edge 70 Fusion

• Release date: March 2
• Review rating: 4.5 / 5

I know what you’re thinking: the Motorola Edge 70 Fusion? Surely this little-known device — which isn’t even available in the US — is not my third-favorite phone of 2026 so far? Well, it is, if only because it surprised me (and our reviewer) so much in testing.

The Edge 70 Fusion costs just £379.99 / AU$499, but it looks like a flagship phone. It’s slim and lightweight for its large size, and boasts a nice textured finish on its rear panel. Its 6.78-inch display can reach 144Hz, and the 7,000mAh battery routinely got me through two days on a single charge. And don’t forget the IP68 and IP69 resistance ratings.

There are, of course, compromises. Motorola’s software continues to be… just OK, while the Edge 70 Fusion specifically is only due to receive three years of major software updates. But for such a low price, these shouldn’t be deal-breakers. The Edge 70 Fusion is my surprise package of 2026 so far, and it deserves more attention than it’s been given.

Read our in-depth Motorola Edge 70 Fusion review

2. Nothing Phone (4a) Pro

• Release date: March 19
• Review rating: 4.5 / 5

I recently played around with the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro for an upcoming ‘best midrange phones’ video, and it floors the competition in terms of value for money.

As much as I love the Google Pixel 10a (as you’ll have read above), for the same price, Nothing’s latest a-series phone adds a 50MP telephoto camera, faster charging, and a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 chipset into the mix. And best of all, the (4a) Pro is a thoroughly unique-looking device.

Nothing swapped the transparent rear panel of its other phones for an industrial, aluminum backplate on the (4a) Pro, making the huge camera module the star of the show. This module also features the gimmicky-but-fun Glyph Matrix introduced on the Nothing Phone 3, which, for me, has drawn as much attention in public places as the iPhone Air this year.

If the Google Pixel 10a is my safe value-for-money Android pick of 2026, the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro is my exciting value-for-money Android pick.

Read our in-depth Nothing Phone (4a) Pro review

1. Oppo Find X9 Ultra

• Release date: May 8
• Review rating: 4.5 / 5

And now we come to the Oppo Find X9 Ultra — my favorite phone of 2026 so far. This is the first Ultra-branded Oppo phone to ship outside of China (though it’s unfortunately still not available in the US), and it blows the competition out of the water in terms of camera performance.

Specifically, the Find X9 Ultra boasts a 200MP (f/1.5) main lens, a 50MP ultra-wide (f/2) lens, a 200MP 3x telephoto (f/2.2) lens, and a 50MP 10x telephoto (f/3.5) lens, which is the sort of combination we rarely see on even the best camera phones.

We recently compared the Oppo Find X9 Ultra against the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and the Chinese flagship won out in almost every category. My colleague, Tim, even compared the Oppo Find X9 Ultra to a Lumix TZ300 and Nikon Z8, and the phone absolutely held its own, particularly at 10x zoom.

Away from camera performance, the Find X9 Ultra boasts a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 12GB of RAM, a 6.8-inch OLED display, and an enormous 7,050mAh battery, so it doesn’t leave you wanting for power or endurance.

It’s heavy, it’s thick, and it’s eye-wateringly expensive, but the Oppo Find X9 Ultra is still the most exciting phone of 2026 so far.

Read our in-depth Oppo Find X9 Ultra review

Going anywhere nice this summer? If you have a trip planned, a tablet might be what's missing from your kit list. These packable computers can be loaded up with TV shows, games or movies, to provide hours of entertainment while you're on the move. As many parents may have already discovered, they can also be ideal for keeping young children occupied at times when running about / getting stuck into bigger games isn't possible or desirable.

At TechRadar, we've tested hundreds of tablets over the years, and below I've rounded up our computing team's top recommendations for travel. What makes the perfect travel tablet? I've focused on options that aren't too big (it needs to be able to slip easily into a bag when not in use), offer good battery life, and aren't too pricey (just in case it gets dropped / sat on / spilled on). Because these tablets are predominantly for streaming, none of them are especially powerful or advanced — if you're looking for that type of slate, head to our general best tablet ranking for a wider range of options.

All clear? Let's get started. Click on the More details button to see more about why each pick is especially well-suited to travel, as well as a link to the full review for each one.

Top travel tablets

I’m a child of the DSLR era. Back in 2009, when I truly decided to make photography my career, if you wanted to be taken seriously as a digital pro, you had to have your eyes set on a high-end DSLR camera. My first love (creatively speaking) was a Nikon D80, then a Canon EOS 40D, at the time considered to be amongst the best DSLRs available, at least for enthusiasts.

However, it was the likes of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and the Nikon D3 – the photographic equivalents of Concorde – that most aspiring professionals sought to own. These monster cameras were often as useful for weight training as for photography, and they looked as powerful as they did expensive.

Today, things are very different, and rather than bigger often being seen as better, the mirrorless age has reversed the formula. Compact is now king, and even professional-level cameras are a fraction of the weight of the mid-range models of yesteryear. Cameras have never been more powerful: armed with the latest in processor and autofocus technology, models like the Canon EOS R1 are able to capture images that would once have been considered impossible.

I recently had the opportunity to shoot the EOS R1 alongside the Canon EOS 1DX Mark III, bringing together the very best of each generation of Canon cameras. DSLR versus mirrorless.

The 1DX Mark III was the last pro Canon DSLR to roll off the production line, and it is still available to buy new today, despite being launched back in early 2020. But in digital terms, seven years is a long time, so can it hope to keep up with the new pinnacle of mirrorless tech?

Well, I couldn’t wait to find out, and I had a sneaking suspicion that specification alone wouldn’t be enough to change my mind about DSLRs being as relevant today as at the turn of the decade. To make the test as tricky as possible, I headed out for a spot of bird photography – arguably one of the biggest challenges for a camera’s speed and accuracy.

A pro camera for the modern age

There’s no denying it; the EOS R1 is a lot more manageable than the EOS 1DX Mark III. At 3.17lb / 1,440g, the DSLR is approximately 325g heavier than the mirrorless alternative, which might not sound much on paper, but it makes a significant real-world difference.

The body of the EOS R1 is also a lot narrower, which helps to give the impression of a less intimidating product. Using either of the cameras individually, they both seem large compared to other mirrorless models like the Canon EOS R6 Mark III, Sony A7 V, or Nikon Z6 III. However, the weight of the EOS 1DX Mark III wasn’t quite as much of a challenge as I remember.

Having used mid-range DSLRs and mirrorless cameras for several years now, I had expected the mammoth 1DX Mark III pro-spec body to put my core strength to the test, but I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I acclimatized. Paired with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, the setup was certainly noticeable around my neck, but it felt perfectly balanced. The EOS R1, meanwhile, seemed a bit more front-heavy when a larger lens was mounted, the center of gravity having shifted forward.

I quickly came to realise that balance was the biggest influence on comfort rather than overall weight. When a larger, heavier optic is required, I found the 1DX Mark III to be the better choice for me. This balance also made the setup more stable when shooting fast-moving subjects.

For example, when photographing birds in motion, it seemed easier to track the subject thanks to the camera and lens’ inertia. It’s a bit like having the tension on a tripod control turned up; smoother movements were possible, allowing me to keep my feathered subject in the viewfinder.

Of course, overall manageability is helped when pairing the mirrorless body with a mirrorless-first lens. Once I attached a Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM zoom to the EOS R1, rather than an adapted EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS III USM or EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM, the center of gravity was shifted back towards the lens mount, restoring balance at an overall lower weight.

From a convenience perspective, the EOS R1 is a professional camera for the modern photographer. The weight of one camera might not fully demonstrate the mirrorless advantages, but since many pros will find themselves carrying two or possibly even three bodies, the EOS R1 will surely take a lower toll on the spine than the EOS 1DX Mark III over a full working day.

Handling like a dream

Let’s talk about something that can never be fully described in a camera’s press material or spec sheet: what the body actually feels like to operate. One aspect of a pro DSLR I’ve missed in recent years is an integrated vertical grip for portrait-format shooting.

Yes, it’s possible to add a battery grip to either a DSLR or mirrorless body – I always kept a Canon BG-E7 grip attached to my EOS 7D, while the BG-R20 can add power to an EOS R5 Mark II through holding multiple Canon LP-E6P batteries, alongside dedicated vertical controls – but the handling isn’t quite the same.

And while the EOS R1 and EOS R3 before it bring an integrated vertical grip, the balance still feels a little off to me. The deeper grips of the 1D Series were inherited from the later film SLRs, such as the EOS 1v and the beautiful EOS 3, and as such, they were designed to support the huge fast telephoto lenses of that era.

Therefore, the body of the 1DX Mark III is more contoured and properly gives the impression that the camera is an extension of the photographer’s arm – a big deal for fast-paced wildlife and sport photography.

Then there’s the build quality itself. Although the EOS R1 and other pro-spec mirrorless cameras like it are as robust as their DSLR predecessors on paper, the greater use of high-impact plastics does cheapen the overall feel. Now, I realise that perception might play a role in that aspect of the handling experience, but when you have invested tens of thousands of dollars in your kit, and when shooting important assignments, confidence is critical.

The 1DX Mark III, with its predominantly metal construction, just oozes quality and solidity. I was far more confident when caught out in a spring rain shower with the DSLR than the lighterweight but less metal-reliant EOS R1.

A race that DSLRs can’t win

Technology advances a long way in a short time, and seven years is more than enough time for a revolution to occur in autofocus, processing power, and operational reactivity. The EOS R1 is fast. Very fast. The EOS 1DX Mark III is obviously no slouch, but it simply can’t keep up with the latest Canon tech.

In practise, this means fewer missed shots, greater sharpness, and above all, better reliability on tough jobs. I’m not a professional wildlife photographer, so I haven’t developed the muscle memory needed for completely instinctive reactions when a possible image presents itself, as is the case for the top pros in this genre.

With the EOS R1, I felt as if the camera was taking on a much bigger role in my success rate than its older DSLR counterpart. When I did predict a super-fast reaction from my subjects, it was the EOS R1 I reached for more regularly. I just knew it would be able to track my subject in almost any conditions.

There is then the matter of noise footprint. When used in electronic shutter mode, the EOS R1 is silent, and I mean completely silent. By comparison, the audible ‘snap’ of the 1DX Mark III’s reflex mirror seemed like a percussion player had joined me in the hide. Did it spook more subjects than the R1 in this case?

Probably not, but if I were perched on a mountainside, and my Director from the BBC was asking if Sir David Attenborough could have an update on my Snow Leopard shots for his new documentary, I might reckon I’d take this matter quite seriously.

Then again, it’s worth remembering that the 1DX Mark III does essentially have a mirrorless workaround to this problem. In Live View mode, the mirror is locked in the up position, and unlike older models in the range, the on-sensor AF is virtually as good as the current R-system technology. This means no mirror noise, a super-fast 20fps burst rate, and no focusing compromises.

This brings me neatly onto why I think the last generation of pro DSLRs have a unique and currently unmatched advantage over every other mirrorless camera on the market.

EOS R1 vs EOS 1D X Mark III: conclusion

Many of the shortcomings we see in DSLRs these days, at least when comparing them to the latest mirrorless offerings, are not a flaw in the design. It’s an age thing. Yes, the Nikon D850 isn’t as fast to focus as the newer mirrorless Nikon Z 8, nor is the Nikon D6 able to rattle off shots as rapidly as the Nikon Z 9. But this is to be expected considering how much older those cameras are.

The manufacturers have had far more time for R&D in the intervening years, building on the very finest features of the last pro DSLRs and making them even better. The same is true of the EOS 1DX Mark III; of course the EOS R1 is faster and quieter, but this is as much due to years of extra development than it is because of the differences between the DSLR and mirrorless formats.

Most of the systems we see in Canon’s pro R-Series cameras were trialled on the last 1D EF-mount models. And that’s why I’d sooner choose a 1DX Mark III (or a D6) than the latest models available.

Functionally, there are relatively few differences in tech between the two camera types, meaning you get almost all of the same features with the advantages of an optical viewfinder, almost double the battery life, and deeper handgrips, if they are your preference.

I often think of the last DSLR camera generation as the golden age of digital photography; the technology was prepared for the mirrorless revolution, but the cameras retained the tactile experience of classic types. The EOS R1 might have more firepower, but the EOS 1DX Mark III has more stamina and an unbeatable user experience.

For years now, vendors have been competing on benchmark scores, inference speed and model capabilities as businesses try to work out where AI can fit in with their daily workflows, but experimentation has evolved into actual deployment and what’s important is changing.

Accuracy and measurable business outcome is now more important than ever, with questions around return on investment, accountability and governance being raised across all sectors.

This is especially important in ecommerce, for example, where AI-generated imagery must be totally accurate. Marketers no longer have any qualms over using AI to produce ad variants and subtle market tweaks, but the quality of the output needs to be consistently high to ensure that the product is being accurately reflected.

Even the smallest changes in color, texture or dimensions can have major reputational risks, like a drop in customer trust or a rise in product returns. We already know that poorly executed AI strategies reduce customer trust, and that a lack of branding consistency also undermines the perception of a brand.

AI usage patterns are changing buying habits

But this challenge is also playing out as pricing models for AI subscriptions evolve. The boom started off with seat-based pricing and token consumption models, but we’re entering a new era where wasted AI is no longer being chargeable.

Zendesk, for example, recently announced that it would only be charging its customers when they realized verified outcomes, and Photoroom CEO Matt Rouif believes this pricing strategy could be a big hit for AI customers as customers shift from capability-led adoption to assurance-led adoption.

To explore how enterprise attitudes toward pricing and generative AI outputs are shifting, how organizations are measuring success, and why assurance and accountability are growing in importance, I spoke with Rouif.

• How are enterprise buyers’ expectations of generative AI changing as adoption matures?

As generative AI moves from experimentation into production, enterprise buyers are becoming far more focused on control, accountability and measurable business outcomes.

The first phase of adoption was largely about proving that AI could generate a credible output, whereas the current phase is about whether those outputs can be trusted inside commercial workflows, where accuracy and reliability directly influence customer experience and business performance.

Increasingly, enterprise leaders are asking more about governance than model capacity, assessing how outputs are evaluated and where accountability sits when something goes wrong.

In e-commerce, this is significant because a product visual is a central part of the buying decision. If an AI-generated image changes a colour, or alters or removes a detail, the issue moves beyond creative quality and becomes one of product fidelity, with direct implications for consumer trust, returns and commercial performance.

Our marketplace research reflects that changing expectation, with 55% of consumers saying poorly executed AI-generated or heavily edited product images make them trust an online marketplace less, while 77% expect marketplaces themselves to ensure product listings are accurate and trustworthy.

The same thinking is increasingly shaping enterprise procurement, where organisations are moving beyond asking whether AI can generate an output and toward whether those outputs can meet agreed commercial standards at scale.

That broader shift is turning assurance into a procurement consideration, with enterprise buyers increasingly expecting AI vendors to define quality standards upfront and stand behind outputs once they are operating inside live commercial workflows.

• What are organisations using to measure whether AI initiatives are delivering meaningful business value?

The way organisations measure AI is changing significantly, with early adoption often judged by visible output and perceived model capability, while today the discussion sits much closer to traditional business performance.

Leadership teams are now focused on whether AI can make production materially more efficient, less resource-intensive and more commercially useful. The question is no longer how much AI can produce, but how much of that output is genuinely usable inside a live enterprise workflow.

In e-commerce, that distinction becomes particularly important because production does not end when an image is generated. If teams still need extensive manual review, correction and quality assurance before an asset reaches a customer, the bottleneck has simply moved downstream rather than disappeared altogether.

Enterprise buyers are therefore placing much greater emphasis on output readiness than output volume, measuring whether AI-generated assets are accurate enough to be deployed with confidence rather than simply generated at scale.

Similarly, commercial standards are becoming a more meaningful measure of AI maturity than generation quality alone, reinforced by our March 2026 buyer analysis, which reflects 37% of enterprise buyers name inaccurate visuals as their top pain point in AI visual production.

The analysis reflects a clear organisational requirement for a distinct framework determining whether outputs are fit for purpose before they become customer-facing.

• What challenges remain when deploying AI-generated content in commercial environments at scale?

The biggest challenge is that commercial deployment exposes the difference between generating content and governing it. A single AI-generated image can appear convincing in isolation, but enterprise commerce depends on thousands, and often millions, of assets being accurate enough to support purchasing decisions.

Scale magnifies small inconsistencies, and those inconsistencies quickly become operational and commercial risks rather than creative ones. As a result, enterprise organisations are increasingly investing in validation as much as generation.

Small changes to a product’s colour, shape or packaging may pass a superficial creative review while still misrepresenting the product itself.

Our marketplace research reflects the commercial importance of that challenge, with 63% of consumers saying variation in product imagery, branding or presentation makes a seller or marketplace appear unreliable, while 51% believe marketplace listings often look acceptable but still fail to give them complete confidence in what they are buying.

At catalogue scale, those numbers represent a significant volume of assets that look passable on review but carry real commercial risk once they reach customers.

The unresolved enterprise challenge is therefore not simply producing better AI outputs but building systems capable of catching and correcting failures before they become customer-facing.

• How should businesses balance creative flexibility with consistency, accuracy and reliability in AI-generated outputs?

Businesses should think of product truth as the fixed foundation, with creative flexibility built around it rather than replacing it. AI is exceptionally good at adapting content for different channels, audiences and formats, but those creative decisions should never compromise the factual attributes of the product itself.

The practical way to operationalise that distinction is to define upfront which product attributes are locked - colour, dimensions, materials, key details, and which elements sit within the creative range.

That gives teams a clear framework for evaluating outputs rather than relying on subjective review at the point of approval.

Our research suggests consumers are already making that distinction themselves, with only 33% of UK consumers saying they are comfortable with AI-enhanced product images if clearly labelled, while 41% disagree.

That result matters because it shows transparency alone is not sufficient - the more important question is whether customers believe the image accurately represents what they will receive. For enterprise organisations, that means the governance framework has to be built around factual accuracy as the primary standard, with creative flexibility operating within those boundaries rather than alongside them.

• Where do specialist AI tools add value compared with more general-purpose AI models for enterprise workflows?

General-purpose models have dramatically expanded what AI can create, but enterprise deployment depends on much more than generation capability alone.

Organisations increasingly need systems that understand the commercial context in which those outputs will be used and can support quality evaluation, workflow integration and consistency at scale.

The value therefore shifts from the model itself to the operating system built around it. A general-purpose model may produce an attractive product image, but enterprise teams also need confidence that the product remains accurate, consistent at catalogue scale and that failures can be identified before assets become customer-facing.

The long-term value of specialist AI therefore comes less from producing visually impressive outputs and more from solving repeatable commercial problems. In visual production, that means building systems capable of evaluating product fidelity, reducing manual review and creating structured validation processes that organisations can rely upon consistently at scale, rather than depending solely on subjective human approval.

• What forms of accountability or assurance are enterprise customers increasingly looking for from AI vendors?

Enterprise buyers are increasingly looking for AI vendors that can operate within clearly defined commercial standards rather than simply offering more capable models. That means agreeing success criteria before deployment, evaluating outputs transparently and creating clear processes for handling exceptions when outputs fall short.

As AI becomes embedded within operational workflows, assurance is becoming every bit as important as capability. A failed AI output during experimentation is largely an inconvenience, whereas a failed output inside a live commercial environment can affect customer trust, listing performance and revenue.

Our marketplace research reinforces why this is becoming a board-level discussion, with 51% of consumers saying they would switch to a different marketplace entirely if another platform offered clearer, more accurate product images, while 62% believe marketplaces should actively help sellers improve listing quality.

That expectation increasingly extends beyond marketplaces to the technology providers supporting them, with buyers beginning to look for accountability mechanisms that resemble those expected from other enterprise software providers.

• Looking ahead, what do you see as the next major shift in enterprise AI adoption over the next 12–24 months?

Over the next 12 to 24 months, I expect enterprise AI adoption to move decisively from capability-led adoption to assurance-led adoption.

Businesses will continue to care about model quality, speed and efficiency, but those attributes will become increasingly expected rather than differentiating.

The organisations creating the greatest value will be those capable of embedding AI into revenue-critical workflows with confidence, governance and measurable accountability.

In practical terms, that means much greater emphasis on evaluation, validation and operational trust. Enterprise buyers will increasingly ask how outputs are verified, how failures are handled, how responsibility is shared and how AI systems integrate into existing governance frameworks.

Commerce is likely to be one of the first industries where that transition becomes visible because consumers remain cautious about AI within the buying journey. Our research found that only 24% of consumers already use, or are happy to use, AI tools to help them shop online, while 59% remain uncomfortable doing so.

The next chapter of enterprise AI will therefore be defined less by what models can generate and more by whether organisations can deploy those outputs repeatedly, responsibly and with confidence.

OpenAI has begun discussions about giving the US government a 5% stake in the company, according to an FT report, with CEO Sam Altman supposedly raising the idea as a method for smoothing relations with the Trump administration.

Of course, right now there is no agreement or deal, and no guarantee the idea will ever move beyond conversations. Any arrangement would almost certainly require political support and significant legal work before it could become reality. Still, the fact that OpenAI is even entertaining the conversation tells us something about how seriously artificial intelligence is now being treated, both in Silicon Valley and in Washington.

The first reaction many people had was understandable. If the government owns part of OpenAI, does that mean ordinary Americans somehow get a share too? It's an appealing thought when AI companies are attracting eye-watering valuations while promising to reshape the economy. Unfortunately, that's not exactly a likely outcome, no matter what the intentions.

AI economy access

The reports suggest Sam Altman has discussed a model inspired by Alaska's Permanent Fund, which invests state oil revenues and distributes annual payments to residents. It's an odd framing of AI as a natural resource instead of a software business. Bullish AI fans insisting it will be economically transformative might see it that way, and if they're right, perhaps some of that value should eventually flow back to the public, many of whom have helped incrementally train the models through use.

But the government owning shares in OpenAI wouldn't automatically translate into everyone getting a check. Financial benefits would depend on lots of little details, including whether profits were distributed at all, and if they'd go to public services or even the national debt over your own bank account.

Despite being just a hint of a rumor of a conversation, the questions are worth taking seriously. AI companies are asking society to embrace changes that could alter workplaces, education, healthcare, and entire industries. It is not unreasonable for people to wonder whether they should share in the wealth created by those changes.

Power at stake

There is another reason these discussions matter, and it may prove even more significant than the financial side. OpenAI has become part of a broader conversation about national economics and technological leadership. Governments around the world increasingly see advanced AI as strategic infrastructure rather than another consumer technology.

That helps explain why OpenAI might want a closer relationship with Washington. AI companies already rely on government decisions. Those connections are likely to become even more important as AI models grow larger and more expensive to build.

But governments are expected to regulate powerful companies fairly and independently. Becoming a shareholder in one of those companies could make that relationship look unethical, even with the best will in the world. Public trust often depends as much on appearances as on legal structures. Especially since there's even less sense that OpenAI's competitors like Google, Anthropic, or Meta will follow suit.

A government stake does not automatically mean the public owns part of OpenAI in any meaningful way, and it certainly does not guarantee anyone will personally benefit. So even if the proposal starts to become more real, skepticism and a close eye on any actual agreements is a healthy approach.

As someone who loved Batman: Arkham Asylum back when it originally launched, it might surprise you that I never got around to playing Arkham City or Arkham Knight until very recently. Despite all the hype for Arkham City that you still read online, it was Knight that genuinely wowed me. It's a near-perfect Batman game, and believe me, that near is carrying a lot of weight.

Playing Arkham Knight is like being given a key to the DC vaults in game form. The cast is deeper and richer than a chocolate layer cake, with villains ranging from the Joker (somehow returning) to Firefly, all getting their moment in the sun.

Over the course of the many hours that you'll spend in Gotham, you'll fight all of them to some degree, and learn about their particular plans, foibles, and personalities through radio broadcasts aimed at riling up the Bat.

I'm like a bat, I always fly away

And what a joy it is to spend time in this depiction of Gotham. It's split across three large islands, each about as big as the entire Arkham City map, and you're given some fantastic traversal mechanics to help make your journeys easier. Chief among these is the Grapnel Boost, upgraded from its debut in City to make launching off platforms a way to gain significant altitude very quickly.

Then you have the Batmobile, which is, in my view, unfairly maligned. It's fine, as it goes, even if the vehicle handling is far from perfect, and it's also largely secondary to most of your traversal. When you do need it for a puzzle or a mission, it's easy to summon and then easily dismissed. Even the car combat, which many seem to hate, didn't bother me.

Sure, it's not as fun as the hand-to-hand stuff, not by a long shot, but it's a means to an end and never overstays its welcome.

There is one particularly sticky sticking point, however. One thing that almost ruins the game and that's the Riddler challenges, and how the game integrates them into the plot.

Everyone's least favourite genius has an entire mission tree dedicated to him, which is actually pretty fun. He's captured Catwoman, and you need to solve a series of challenges to set her free. Do so, and the mission is over, and you can hand him over to the authorities, right? Nah. Not by a long way.

The game seems to think that you'll love the Riddler challenges so much that just doing the 10 trials to free Catwoman won't be enough. If you want to clap the Riddler in irons, you'll need to find every Riddler trophy, solve all of his riddles, destroy every breakable object, and save every rioter who had a bomb implanted in his brain by the Riddler. That sounds ridiculous, but doable. Let me explain why it's not: there are so many of these. There are 243 challenges in total.

None of them are particularly difficult by themselves, but I didn't save Catwoman until I was close to the end of the game, and had found about 10 Riddler trophies and saved one bomb rioter. As I looked at the scope of the challenge ahead of me, the sheer time that it would take me to complete all of them, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. This game has just singlehandedly ensured that there is a boss fight that I will never see. I will never fight the Riddler mano-a-mano, and I'm quite okay with that, valuing my time more than a fight that many hail as a series highlight.

If only it ended there. I'd be fine missing a snippet of content, but no, it's worse than that. If you want to see the true ending of the game, the game that you've likely put 40-50 hours into by this point, you'll need to pony up a bunch more hours and complete all of the Riddler challenges. That's right: if you want to see all those hours converted into a narratively satisfying ending, you need to go on a hidden object hunt across the length and breadth of the map.

Or, you could do what I did, and just watch the true ending on YouTube and save yourself a lot of time.

Knight and day

It's a real shame that the game's decided to lock up its ending behind such a convoluted set of tasks that aren't even very fun to do. The riddles are tolerable, but not stellar, while the Trophies are just a collectible with a tiny puzzle attached.

It's as though Assassin's Creed Shadows hid the ending away until you'd found every shrine and painted every animal, and it is patently absurd. It's a far more serious sin than giving you vehicle combat that, while fairly tedious, never lasts that long.

None of this detracts enough from the otherwise towering highs of Arkham Knight. It's a brilliant game with the best traversal and combat mechanics in the entire series. It trades the tight, claustrophobic (and coulrophobic) spaces of Asylum for a sweeping open world that is packed with villains, without landing on an unsatisfying halfway house as City did. It's got a great big bad, a wonderfully diverse set of environments, several playable characters, and is now cheap as chips. I had a huge heaping helping of fun with it.

So please, play Arkham Knight if you've not already, as you're in for a treat. Just don't try to go for the true ending if you value your sanity. Savor the gameplay, then open up YouTube.

Last month in June 2026 proved to be yet another packed month for 4K Blu-ray releases and July is looking just as busy. Despite the long list of discs on my radar, I’ve narrowed it down to my top four I’m most looking forward to, hopefully, testing.

I’ll be looking to test these discs as part of the Blu-ray Bounty, our monthly column where we test the latest 4K releases on their picture and sound quality, to see whether they’re worth adding to the bursting shelves of a 4K blu-ray collection.

4K Blu-ray is my bread-and-butter source for testing the best TVs and best soundbars, as it offers the best bitrate for picture and uncompressed audio for sound. I’m also a collector myself, so I’m always looking for new discs I can add to my collection!

In my June 2026 most anticipated article, my picks were Speed Racer, Bullet In The Head, EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert and Hoppers. Three out of the four featured in the June 2026 Blu-ray Bounty (Hoppers sadly didn’t arrive, but I’ll hopefully feature that another time) and while they were all great, the real highlight was Speed Racer, which was an audio showcase and an outstanding looking disc (check out the Blu-ray Bounty for my full thoughts).

Hard Boiled (Arrow Video)

Hard Boiled stars Chow Yun-fat as Inspector “Tequila” Yeun, a detective in pursuit of a Triad syndicate who gets involved in an operation involving an undercover officer. This is arguably director John Woo’s (Bullet In The Head, The Killer, Mission Impossible 2) most iconic movie.

Having recently reviewed Arrow’s recent restoration of Bullet In The Head, I’m excited to see what it can do with Hard Boiled. Where I’m hoping this disc’s strengths will lie is in its Dolby Atmos mix. Hard Boiled is a gritty, action-thriller with plenty of gunfights and a good Atmos mix should deliver plenty of impact, bass and a real sense of immersion, with ricocheting bullets covering the latter.

The Bullet In The Head restoration had rich colors, crisp textures and strong contrast, so I’m hoping for more of the same here. While I’m expecting it to have the haze that I’ve now clocked in a few early-90s Hong Kong cinema movies, I still think Hard Boiled has the potential to look great, especially as it supports Dolby Vision, which should work wonders for textures, detail and contrast.

• US release date - N/A: (Hong Kong Cinema Classics version released November 4, 2025)
• UK release date - 27th July

Alice in Wonderland (1951) (Disney)

Alice in Wonderland, based on Lewis Carroll’s novels Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, tells the story of a young girl called Alice who ends up in a strange, fantastical world where meets odd characters such as the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat and the evil Queen of Hearts. (This is a cheeky addition as this disc was actually released on 29th June, but I’m going to hopefully test it as part of the July Blu-ray Bounty!)

4K can do wonders for animation, especially when it comes to detail and colors. Alice in Wonderland has plenty of seriously bright colors and I expect Wonderland to look truly brilliant in 4K. The disc comes with Dolby Vision HDR support, which is only going to make colors pop even more. The 4K restoration will hopefully add more depth and texture to the picture as well.

As for audio, there’s no support for Dolby Atmos which is a bit of a shame as it would’ve been nice to get the full immersive experience as Alice falls down the rabbit hole. Thankfully, there is a DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack included and in recent discs I’ve tested this has proved to be just as good. There’s plenty of moments throughout the weird and wonderful Wonderland that should sound fantastic on 4K.

• US release date - May 6, 2025
• UK release date - 29th June, 2026

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

The sequel to 2023’s The Super Mario Bros Movie, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie follows Mario and his crew — Luigi, Yoshi, Peach and Toad — head to space to save Princess Rosalina from the clutches of Bowser and his son, Bowser Jr.

I’m expecting crisp, slick animation and of course boat-loads of fantastical colors from this disc on 4K. With Dolby Vision support included, I’m anticipating some seriously impressive color reproduction, whether it’s the red of Mario’s iconic suit or the green skin of Bowser and Yoshi, this disc could be a new reference disc for TV testing. As the movie takes the gang to space, there’s also a chance for some strong contrast between the deep blackness of space and any bright stars along the way.

Equipped with a Dolby Atmos track, I’m expecting an immersive soundtrack that will provide some excellent detail during the movie’s more action-packed sequences. Plus, with several flight sequences, as the character’s fly through space, I’m hoping for some real utilization of the height channels to give a wide, full sound. I can imagine this disc is going to deliver an impressive audio experience that I’m looking forward to trying out through our Samsung Dolby Atmos soundbar.

• US release date - June 16, 2026
• UK release date - 20th July, 2026

Hairspray (1988) (Criterion Collection)

Directed by John Waters, Hairspray (the original, 1988 movie) tells the story of teenager Tracy Turnbald, as she aims for fame as a dancer on a local TV show. Set in the 1960s, Tracy also rallies against racial segregation, which gets in her trouble with adults and authority figures.

As this is a release from Criterion, I’m expecting an excellent restoration job. I’ve tested a ton of Criterion’s 4K releases and all of them have looked fantastic. As Hairspray is set in the 1960s, there’s a potential here for some truly bold visuals, especially with color. Decor and outfits should really pop on screen, capturing the sometimes-garish, saturated aesthetic of the time period.

There are two soundtrack options on the 4K disc of Hairspray: DTS-HD 2.0 and 5.1 MA. This isn’t the remake from 2007, which is based on the 2002 stage musical, so I’m not anticipating many showcase audio moments. However, as the movie does involve music and dancing, there could be some nice, clean sound mixes, especially with DTS-HD 5.1 MA supported.

• US release date - June 23, 2026
• UK release date - July 20, 2026

July 2026 highlighted releases

Below, I’ve picked some highlight releases for July 2026. Both US and UK releases are featured here, with release dates noted. These release dates may vary by region, with some titles already available or yet to be released until later this year depending on where you are. 4K Blu-ray is region-free, so you should be able to order from wherever.

July 6/7

• To Live and Die in LA
• The Protector
• Double Impact
• The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
• The Drama (US - UK July 13)

July 13/14

• Obsession
• Hud
• The Usual Suspects
• Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (US - UK July 27)
• Michael
• The Mummy (2026)
• Red Sun
• The Crying Game
• Full Contact

July 20/21

• Falling Down
• The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
• Pleasantville
• Anyone But You
• Hairspray (UK)
• The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (UK)
• Excalibur (UK)
• Mortal Kombat II (UK - US July 28)

July 27/28

• Hard Boiled (UK)
• Strictly Ballroom (UK)
• Soylent Green
• Stranger Things: Complete Series
• X: The Unknown (UK)
• Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

We’re approaching the first anniversary of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, which means it won’t be long before we see the phone (or phones, as the case may be) that will replace it in Samsung’s lineup.

As someone who has relied on the Fold 7 as my daily driver since it landed, I couldn’t be more excited to see what the next generation holds, and I have a few wishes I hope Samsung will make come true — with leaks teasing some of them just might…

Before we get into that, vote in our poll to tell me which upgrade you most want to see in the Z Fold 8 when it’s finally announced.

1. An Ultra camera boost

The Z Fold 7 has been my go-to every day since I first received it, but for the past six months I’ve also consistently carried a second phone in my pocket — becoming the kind of kind of tech journo I hoped I never would, one obsessed with tech perfection no matter how inefficient and niche my collection of gadgets is (just you wait, I’ll be wearing two smartwatches next).

The reason I mention this is that the second phone is the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and its primary purpose is as a camera, because it frankly puts my Z Fold 7's shots to shame.

If you want a clearer sign that 200MP sensors aren’t made equally, see this pair’s photos side by side. Couple that with the Ultra’s superior zoom cameras — further amplified by its boasting dual 5x and 3x telephotos compared to the Fold 7’s lonely 3x — and for photo enthusiasts, it’s clear the S26 Ultra has an edge.

My hope is that if the Z Fold 8 is getting an Ultra moniker, as some leaks suggest, it’ll boast identical cameras, or risk feeling like a subpar alternative, despite having a price point that demands excellence in every category.

2. Affordability dreams

Speaking of price, the reality I’m preparing for is that the Z Fold 8 will cost more than the Fold 7, thanks to RAM and storage cost increases. There’s a chance Samsung could avoid this by having its memory-producing arm give its mobile division a discount, although there are conflicting reports about a cost-saving collaboration based on leaks and Samsung’s own comments.

Regardless, I think the Z Fold 8 design could hint at a slight discount. I’m not talking about the wider display — though it does seem to have a smaller area, which should reduce costs somewhat — I’m referring to the lack of a third camera.

With it being rumored to boast 12GB of RAM and a top-end Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset — essential components for Samsung’s top-tier AI — it’s yet to be seen if the display and camera downgrades will bring the cost down in real terms or merely counteract the cost increases we would have faced thanks to the RAM crisis. I have my fingers crossed we might see the cheapest Samsung Fold yet with the 8 (defeating the reigning champ: the $1,799 / £1,599 / AU$2,499 Galaxy Z Fold 3).

3. Begging for battery

The Z Fold 7 boasts a 4,400mAh battery just like the Z Fold 6 before it, but thanks to software and chipset optimizations, Samsung promised the battery life of the 7 would be a little longer. My anecdotal evidence, however, as someone who used the Z Fold 6 as my main handset before the 7 launched, is that the battery seems to disappear faster on the newer model.

Now, this isn’t based on any tests, but speaking to a few other regular Z Fold 7 users who had upgraded from the 6, my perception of worse battery life was echoed. Thankfully, leaks tease a bigger battery for the 8, taking us up to a whole 4,800mAh. The Ultra will apparently stretch to 5,000mAh.

Considering some reasonably priced Chinese brands are delivering phones powered by silicon-carbon batteries with capacities over 7,000mAh, the leaked specs leave me underwhelmed. However, considering my usage currently forces me to charge my phone in the middle of the day — or risk it running dry before I get home — I’ll be happy with any upgrade in the battery department.

4. Privacy display please!

The star of the show on the S26 Ultra is the privacy display, but after spending more time with it, the tech does need a little tweaking. An easy software update would be to add app controls that let me choose which software uses maximum privacy mode. I don’t want to use it all the time, but I would love for it to come on automatically for password entry and mobile banking. However, it is still impressive.

Seeing it on the Z Fold 8 would be fantastic, especially on the Z Fold 8 Ultra, as, like the cameras, it would bring the Fold Ultra on par with the unbending Ultra, though I’m willing to accept the tech only showing up on the outer screen.

Unfortunately for me, leaks don’t tease this addition making its way to Samsung’s latest foldables, but maybe I’ll get lucky!

5. Keep the S pen away

I’ve come around a little on the S Pen after experiencing it in the S26 Ultra, though I’m still not keen to see it return to the foldable line.

Why?

There’s no space to add it without making the phone thicker again. Frankly, the supreme thinness of the Z Fold 7 is what makes it infinitely more manageable than Samsung’s previous foldable phones.

With the Wide design being more tablet-like, I 100% see the appeal of a stylus to make the design perfect for casual digital artists, but I don’t think the S Pen’s positives outweigh the negatives. I hope it stays gone when the Z Fold 8 debuts.

At long last, Valve has finally announced the Steam Machine price to the world, and it's upset a fair amount of people. Originally billed as a console-sized (and performing) rival, many prospective buyers were expecting an MSRP in line with the likes of what Microsoft and Sony had done. Given the ongoing RAM crisis, and the continued price hikes of key components, chiefly RAM and flash storage, things haven't quite panned out that way.

That's because the cheapest Steam Machine configuration available will cost you a staggering $1,049 / £879 for the 512GB configuration, and up to $1,349 / £1,149 for the 2TB variant. That's shipping just as is, meaning you don't get the new Steam Controller bundled in, and you can forget about a Valve-branded keyboard and mouse for that rate as well. It isn't controversial to say that it's overpriced given the specs inside, the projected performance, and the longevity, which is a far cry from the otherwise pro-consumer (and more cost-effective) Steam Deck / Steam Deck OLED.

Factoring in the price-to-performance of the incoming Steam Machine, things aren't looking too good for Valve's second crack at the home computing hardware market. I'm showing you how you can build a far more viable and capable computer, going over the expected performance capabilities and other considerations that you can make instead.

What are the Steam Machine specs?

The Steam Machine positions itself as a mid-range gaming PC that's wrapped up in a small form factor chassis. Specifically, the "cube" measures in at just six inches. The size comes at the cost of what you can actually put in the box, though. Valve has opted for a "semi-custom" approach, going all-in on AMD hardware, specifically, the previous-generation RDNA 3 architecture for its APU, which is, sadly, now outdated.

Here are the full Steam Machine specs that you need to know as our baseline here:

What could the Steam Deck performance realistically look like?

When the Steam Machine was first revealed, Valve confidently claimed that its little black cube could deliver 4K60 due to it having "six times the horsepower of the Steam Deck". If you go to the Steam Machine page in its current iteration, however, it's a different story. The new listing, which also includes a strict waitlist policy, now states "Up to 4k gaming with FSR 4.1". This is a far more realistic depiction of what the rig can actually do, and it sounds as though AMD's FSR will be doing the bulk of the heavy lifting to achieve those lofty claims.

It's the same technicality that both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have touted since they were both released nearly six years ago. Those systems are technically capable of outputting in 4K, sure, even if it is checkerboarded (dynamically scaled) and sent to your gaming TV or monitor through the HDMI 2.1 port. The same can be said of the Steam Machine.

Unless you're running an indie or a select AA game, you're very unlikely to achieve true 4K, let alone consistent 4K at 60FPS or above. An older AMD iGPU just can't deliver the same level of performance as the best graphics cards, and discrete GPUs will always be more capable due to the increased power draw, die size, advanced cooling, and faster VRAM, among other considerations.

Fundamentally, the Steam Machine is severely limited by having just 8GB of slower GDDR6 VRAM, even if it is bolstered by 16GB DDR5 RAM, the bare minimum in 2026. Recent benchmarking results, such as those conducted by Gamers Nexus, have confirmed as much. Sticking just to gaming, the PC appears to be CPU-hamstrung. Baldur's Gate 3 in 1080p and Low settings achieved an average of only 60fps stock. Black Myth: Wukong fared a little better with averages of 73FPS in 1080p and Low settings. Considering that Steam Machine Verified games only need to hit 1080p at 30FPS for the green tick, this is not massively surprising.

How to build a Steam Machine 512GB alternative for under $1,049

This is where things get tough. Building a viable Steam Machine alternative means taking a few considerations into account. Chiefly, opting for an AM4 build in combination with a newer GPU, to prioritise graphical performance without much bottleneck from the CPU side. I've outlined everything inside of this entry-level machine which should offer superior performance to what Valve's incoming computer can do for less.

How to build a Steam Machine 2TB alternative for $1,349

If you want a current-generation, no-compromises 2TB Steam Machine killer, you can get one for about the same price as Valve's black box. This build gets you the stellar Ryzen 5 9600X, a more powerful Be Quiet! Pure Rock LP air cooler, and superfast DDR5 memory that's ready for the future of PC gaming. Here's my full build below, along with the real-world street price, since the components are now available.

Alternative components to consider for your build

While I've outlined two viable build alternatives to the Steam Machine, the great thing about PC gaming is that you aren't limited to what you can put inside a rig, provided space (and cash) aren't a problem. If you're looking for some alternative hardware to slot into the build instead, these are some viable and cost-effective, combinations you can try as well.

GPUs:

CPUs:

CPU coolers:

• Be quiet! Pure Rock LP - $37.90
• Thermalright AXP120-X67 59 CFM - $32.50
• ID-Cooling IS-47-XT V2 - $29.99

Motherboards:

• MSI Pro H810I WiFi Mini ITX LGA 1851 DDR5 - $149.99
• ASRock A520M ITX AM4 A520 - $149.99

Cases:

• Gamedias Athena - $79.99
• Lian Li DAN A3 mATX - $89.99
• Corsair iCUE Link 2500X RGB - $98.87

Storage:

• Silicon Power 1TB UD90 - $165.97
• Acer Predator GM7 1TB - $184.99
• Crucial P310 1TB - $174.99
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Gen 4.0 2TB - $299.99
• Acer Predator M.2 GM7000 - $309.99

PSUs:

• Cooler Master V850 Small Form Factor - $139.98
• NZXT C850 Gold - $139.99

Performance expectations for these Steam Machine alternatives

The real-world performance difference between DDR4 and DDR5 for gaming, including a generational uptick in FPS from the CPU isn't going to be as big of a difference when comparing the two Steam Deck alternative builds. The largest deciding factor when looking at gaming performance is the RTX 5060 and 16GB RAM. If the Steam Machine Verified games only need to reach 1080p at 30fps for the green tick, then the hardware inside these builds will eclipse that and then some.

If we look at how the RTX 5060 performs with a similar configuration to this one, in the benchmarked games as previously mentioned, we can see how much better these SFF builds can do. We can see the instant performance increase natively, with Black Myth: Wukong running at an average of 65 FPS with High settings, rather than struggling in minimum settings (via Gamers Nexus).

Baldur's Gate 3 also sees a huge uplift in performance, averaging 121 FPS averages in 1080p and 87 FPS in 1440p. 4K, it falls just short at a still playable 46 FPS (via TechPowerUp). These are native numbers, so using Nvidia DLSS 4.5's Multi-Frame Generation will help get you those smoother frames. Either build is considerably more capable, and retains the compact nature that the console-friendly look of the Steam Machine is catering to.

Smeg is best known for its bright, fun appliances that add a splash of color to your kitchen. Its new Musa collection takes a different tack, however, using shades of black with a fun twist that’s only visible when you get up-close. Musa — which includes ovens (both full-size and compact), warming drawers, and induction hobs, with an extractor hood coming next year — is the work of Milan-based studio BorromeodeSilva, which has a background in automotive design. I spoke to co-founder Carlo Borromeo to find out how the studio is bringing that experience to your kitchen, and the challenges experienced along the way.

This isn’t the first time BorromeodeSilva has worked with Smeg — in 2012, the two brands, along with eyewear company Italia Independent, teamed up to create a special-edition denim-clad version of the Smeg Fab 28 fridge. The resulting product didn’t just look cool; it was designed to be practical as well, withstanding regular use in an ordinary kitchen.

So how did an automotive design agency get involved in creating such an unusual product? According to Borromeo, the project came about from a relationship with Smeg’s founder, Roberto Vittorio, who pitched the initial concept.

“I'm like, 'No, but that's a terrible idea, you know? It will get dirty,' and they're like, 'Ah, you find a way,'” says Borromeo. “And so we took the project very seriously, and we developed a plasma treatment for the fabric that allowed us to coat it with a protective surface. So, if you touch it, it feels normal, but it's actually stain-resistant, odor-resistant; it doesn't pick up mold or stuff like that. And the fridge came out, and it was a mega success — they sold thousands of them.

“So, that was the beginning of a very fun relationship with the Bertazzoni family and Smeg at home, especially with the Vittorios’ father, Roberto, who became kind of like a mentor. And we kept the relationship going more as a friendship. But then, in recent years, we got back in touch, and they asked me to come and design a few products for them, and it was an absolute joy to rekindle that relationship.”

The brief for the Musa collection was very different. Rather than experimenting with novel materials, the goal here was to make an appliance with the fun personality and character of a Smeg product, but that would also fit into a modern kitchen.

“These kitchens tend to be quite understated nowadays, so we need to figure out a way to add our flair, our fun, our playfulness, but in a context where it doesn't explode too much, but fits in,” says Borromeo. “And this was the challenge about this project.”

There has definitely been a trend towards using natural materials and neutral colors in kitchens recently, exemplified by products such as KitchenAid’s stand mixer with a walnut wood bowl, and Pantone’s color of the year, Cloud Dancer. It’s a far cry from Smeg’s pastel-colored retro appliances, so I asked Borromeo how his team went about designing something that would suit.

“Was it a challenge kind of working with that, to create something unique?” he asks. “I mean, we wanted to do that right away, but as you see, the Musa, it's black and gray. This was done by design because we thought, let's try to see if we can make a product that is Smeg, even if we take away the color, which is the primary thing that identifies Smeg.

“We said, if we have to reduce it to its minimum components, let's try to take away the color as well, and see if we can create a product that is still connecting, that is still fun, that makes you smile, that has a sort of magnetic aura. And I think we achieved it, because I noticed it during [Milan] Design Week. There was a wall with all these different ovens, and Musa was one of them, and immediately, you would notice it. So, it's a product that doesn't scream for attention, but captures it anyway.”

Although the Musa oven might look plain at first glance, get closer and you’ll see the elements that make it interesting and different, despite the lack of color. For example, it has an unusual texture, which comes from BorromeodeSilva’s automotive background.

“We work a lot with classic cars, modernizing them. And so this method of taking character traits and applying them to objects is something that stems from there,” says Borromeo. “Then there’s also a practical thing that helps us a lot, which is our knowledge of CMF — color, materials, and finish — in developing the texture that we use to decorate the objects.”

He turns to the Musa oven. “If you look at it from far away, the window is like a solid, but as you get closer, you notice this stripey texture, which is playful, it's nice to the touch, it gives you more. And also, it gives you a little surprise as you get closer, which is a playful element.”

The other playful element is the window, which is smaller than usual, with rounded corners, prompting you to peek inside. Borromeo called it the portal — or “hublot”, in Italian.

“I think it's a fun idea that kind of defines the spirit of the product,” he says. “Usually, when you have these ovens, you try to have the largest possible opening because it's functional; it makes sense. In this case, we tried to actually reduce it, and we created like a portal — a smaller window that maybe looks not logical, but in the end, it invites you to peer in. So, it's trying to communicate to you in a certain way. It becomes like a little portal into your kitchen, into your food.”

He explains that the oven established a “design language” for the whole collection, and four of the studio’s 15-person design team already have it in their homes — including him. If you want your own, prices start at £399 (about $530 / AU$770).

AI’s timeline is very much still being written, but one thing is clear – companies are now in the midst of shifting from experimentation to widespread implementation after having determined strong use cases, with security and trust now becoming higher priorities.

The question is no longer about whether employees are willing to embrace AI, because that much is clear. It’s now about whether their employers know how AI tools are actually being used, whether they’re providing the right type of solutions, and whether their governance supports real-world use cases.

Off the back of that, companies are now struggling to tame shadow AI as workers go off to explore their preferred tools, rather than being confined to workplace-provided alternatives. But while organizations have years of experience handling shadow IT, shadow AI is presenting new challenges.

Shadow AI is harder to tame than Shadow IT – gaining visibility is the first step

Rather than being blocked from downloading certain software, workers can almost painlessly head to their chosen AI tool directly from the browser or via a personal account without approval or restrictions. As much as two-thirds (67%) of enterprise AI use now takes place through unmanaged personal accounts, even when an organization already provides enterprise-grade licenses.

But those sanctioned AI tools are clearly working for employees, who are seeing higher productivity. At the end of the day, this is a major win for companies who are under pressure to prove ROI, but shadow AI presents security risks that enterprise-grade software generally negates.

Teramind has revealed that 86% of organizations lack visibility into how data moves to and from AI tools, and it’s not just knowledge workers who are to blame. Nearly seven in 10 C-suite execs also admitted to prioritizing speed over security.

I spoke with Teramind VP of Strategy Leeron Walter to understand why shadow AI has become more of an issue than we might’ve thought, and what organizations can realistically do to regain visibility and control while continuing to meet workers where they feel most comfortable and productive.

• How do you define shadow AI, and why does it happen inside approved tools?

Shadow AI is any AI usage that operates outside organizational visibility and governance - whether through banned apps, personal accounts, or AI features embedded in tools you already pay for.

The reason it's hiding inside approved platforms is simple: vendors are racing to embed AI into everything. Your licensed Microsoft 365, your PDF reader, your CRM - they all have AI features now.

Our research shows 67% of enterprise AI usage runs through unmanaged personal accounts on corporate-licensed platforms. The perimeter didn't move. It dissolved.

• Do executives actually follow the AI policies they sign off on?

Not always. Our data is unambiguous: 69% of C-suite leaders prioritize speed over security when using AI tools, versus just 37% of frontline employees.

Executives feel competitive pressure more acutely, so they rationalize bypassing policies.

• What goes through an employee's head when they choose productivity over compliance - and can companies change that?

They're doing a fast cost-benefit calculation: "Missing this deadline hurts me now. A data breach is someone else's problem later." 60% of employees in our research said productivity benefits outweigh security risks when deadlines are involved.

You don't fix that with more restrictions - 48% said they'd use AI even if it were explicitly banned. You fix it by making the secure option just as fast and frictionless as the risky one. Remove the tradeoff entirely.

• Is Gen Z really more likely to work around AI rules?

Yes, but not because they're reckless - because they're impatient with policies that feel arbitrary. For them, AI is a basic utility, like a search engine.

Blocking it doesn't register as a security measure; it registers as the company being behind. Meet them with speed and enablement, not bureaucracy.

• Why do traditional DLP tools miss AI traffic?

Because they were built to catch files moving, not ideas being processed. Shadow IT was about unauthorized storage - a file uploaded to Dropbox.

Shadow AI is about unauthorized processing - sensitive data pasted into a chat prompt. There's no file transfer to intercept. The data moves through an encrypted browser session, and legacy DLP tools are pattern-matching against file types and network transfers, not semantic content in a chat box.

The threat model changed; the tools didn't.

• What does the first 90 days of gaining AI visibility actually look like?

Days 1–30: Observe, don't block. Deploy behavioral telemetry to build a full Shadow AI inventory - browser extensions, clipboard activity, personal account usage inside approved platforms. Understand what's actually happening before you touch anything.

Days 31–60: Categorize risk. Which tools train on user data? Which departments depend on them? This is when you find out Engineering lives in an unvetted coding assistant.

Days 61–90: Enable and enforce. Roll out approved alternatives for high-risk tools. Implement real-time coaching - block the risky action, surface the safe alternative immediately. Goal: not zero AI usage, but 100% visible AI usage.

• What does an enablement-first AI approach actually look like - and how do you stop it becoming shadow AI with extra paperwork?

You build paved roads. Give employees a fast, secure, approved AI path so they don't need to go off-road. That means enterprise AI tools with zero-retention data policies, integrated into existing workflows - not buried in a separate portal.

To avoid it becoming theater, your AI tool approval process needs to be agile. If the review takes six months, employees use the consumer version today and say nothing. Govern the data, not the application - allow the tool, but monitor and control what data flows through it in real time.

Predator. Omen. Legion, Asus. Imposing gaming PC sub-brands signal the power that elevates them over web-and-Word workhorses. But even before AI model training became the new killer app, gaming wasn’t the only application where performance, even GPU performance, commanded a premium.

Workstations such as Lenovo’s ThinkPad P series and HP’s Z series, optimized for applications like advanced data science, computer-aided design and 3D model rendering, have long boasted specs similar to leading gaming PCs. However, they ship in more conservative exteriors, offer greater durability, and traverse different distribution channels en route to the desks of enterprise users.

But there’s a third type of power user that PC makers have long courted: so-called “creatives” who work in a range of media from video to print.

These pros also need power, but their needs often fall between the gaming and workstation markets; this could be driven either by work setting and structure (corporate vs. independent) or kinds of tools and media needed.

While some PC makers have left these buyers to choose the path that they think best suits them, others offer—or have at least tried—targeting certain sub-brands or configurations more explicitly.

Pros and Configurations

Acer was early to recognize the “creator” market potential, launching a line in 2019 called ConceptD. It featured powerful configurations that included Intel Xeon CPUs and Nvidia Quadro GPUs and bold yet organic-looking industrial designs, including a “pull-forward” convertible laptop (like the Surface Laptop Studio) line called Ezel.

It also included display products, including a monitor and a mixed reality headset. While the company shifted away from the sub-brand, Acer America's associate director of product marketing Eric Ackerson says that ConceptD helped validate the market segment and served as a testing ground to understand the needs of creative pros, which span a broad spectrum.

Today, he notes, Acer sees the key to reaching those customers more in terms of configurations than branding. “There are meaningful crossovers between [the gaming and creative] categories,” he notes. “The needs are similar, but the workflows are different.” In general, creatives tend to favor more subdued PC designs, an aesthetic that has much in common with what Ackerson calls “executive gaming,”

In contrast, in keeping with the high degree of specialization within its sprawling portfolio, Asus has leaned into its ProArt sub-brand, which targets creative pros, although he agrees on customer aesthetic preferences.

Sascha Krohn, Asus global director of technical marketing,, says that creatives want devices that are more minimalistic and low-profile. “We want the design to be simple and calm so you don’t get distracted by it,” he says. He cites the company’s ProArt P16, which features hardware such as SD Express card slots and touch dials. It evolved from a creator-focused edition of the company's gaming-focused Zephyrus G7 notebook.

One of the hallmarks of the ProArt line, which spans PCs and monitors, has been its displays, where gamer and creative pro priorities differ. Gamers place a higher value on brightness and, of course, refresh rates. For creatives, color accuracy and matte finishes matter more. However, the company sees an opportunity to satisfy crossover users as OLED displays get brighter. The ProArt P16 features a 120Hz tandem OLED display with 1600 nits peak HDR.

Big Things from Small Packages

The rival PC makers agree also that there is rising interest in small form factor desktops for these customers. ASUS has long championed tiny desktops. After being a close partner in Intel’s New Unit of Computing initiative small form factor PCs, Asus adopted the product line when Intel abandoned it in 2023, releasing new models in both standard and gaming variants. Acer’s Ackerson notes an upswing in interest in its small desktop platform.

Its NUC platforms include Revo, a brand the company had targeted toward entertainment and multimedia, and the GN100 AI Mini Workstation that uses Nvidia’s DGX Spark platform. At Computex, it announced a forthcoming Veriton small-form-factor desktop that will use the new RTX Spark architecture from MediaTek and Nvidia.

Wallace Santos, who founded Maingear more than two decades ago when he was 18 and serves as CEO, has also seen crossover into the creator market. “There are a lot of correlations and similarities [between] a gaming PC and one designed for a creator,” he says. Both need a high-performance GPU, lots of memory, and fast storage.” But creators “tend to want sleeker [PCs with] less flash.” Santos’ team took lack of flash to an extreme when it released two limited-edition high-performance gaming PCs in beige, ‘90s-style cases.

The designs sold out. But the company has shown restraint even in its more traditional gamer products. “When we do RGB, it’s cleanly done. Not rainbow vomit,” he says. Santos is skeptical that small form factor PCs will expand their audience among gamers, noting that huge GPUs, expensive SFF power supplies, and intense cooling demands quickly make mid-towers a more practical choice.

Less Elite, More Discrete

Professional media editing mainstays Photoshop, Premiere, and Pro Tools all launched between 1989 and 1991 (although they came to Windows a bit later). They create digital workspaces to more flexibly and efficiently support workflows that artists and editors used analog, physical tools for previously.

While 3D horsepower has been useful for some creative applications such as Adobe After Effects, system memory has been a more important variable in determining system performance for many of these tasks. Generative AI has changed that, however.

Generating images has become increasingly trivial and reliable, with improvements in conversational editing that eluded leading models just last year. And music and song creation is now flowing downstream from tools like Suno to being baked into Gemini.

While generating video, particularly longer-form video, may still have some rough edges, though, the short-lived Sora democratized shorter clips with Hollywood-quality cinematics and special effects. And Google recently released Omni Flash, a successor to its leading Veo video generation model that includes features for ensuring better consistency in characters and other elements over longer clips.

Now, instead of just importing video into an editing tool such as daVinci Resolve, video creators can use tools such as Google Flow, which allows them to use prompts to have AI create video, modify it, and keep it on track as elements tend to lose consistency from clip to clip. “The interface becomes less a toolbox and more a layer that translates intent into actions. You don’t need to know the steps. You just say where you want to go,” says Acer’s Ackerson.

Local video generation models like LTX and Wan can create high-quality videos, but require a GPU, preferably with at least 12 GB of VRAM. The full Wan model, which includes 14 billion parameters, optimally needs 32 GB or more of RAM and more than 50 GB of SSD space.

Even with today’s leading GPUs, best practices dictate using a workflow UI such as Comfy for keeping things on track and generating lower-resolution video locally before upscaling it using post-processing tools.

However, these compromises can seem like small sacrifices given the savings versus cloud-based options. And successive PC generations will only close the gap. “AI has removed the barriers,” says Maingear’s Santos. “The toolset is no longer the restriction in today’s creative workflow. It’s still expensive, but it’s achievable now.”

Our team has tested the best video editing laptops and the best video editing computers.

Audeze's own Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator (SLAM, for short) tech has been a game-changer for the premium head-fi brand.

It's seen a superb boost for all its most recent lines of headphones and gaming headsets that have seen an enhancement to bass, a reduction in distortion, and a mastering of the pressure equalization within a headphone's architecture.

As Audeze describes it on its website, at its core, SLAM is a collection of "precisely engineered channels seamlessly integrated into the ring that connects the ear pads to the drivers."

This physically manifests in headphones as a "structure that you put between the ear part and the transducer that resonates," according to Audeze's chief technical officer, Dragoslav Colich ('Dr C' for short).

These channels relieve air pressure buildup — the air has somewhere to go — and also help with low-frequency response, to the point where it enhances bass significantly. It's proved so good and transformational for the brand; it's one of the biggest upgrades on offer in the Audeze Maxwell 2 over the original Maxwell, for example.

But how did it come to be? Well, basically by accident, as I found out when speaking to Dr C last month when I visited Audeze's HQ in California.

"Well, I started this for one primary reason [and that] was to relieve the pressure on headphones, so we're not breaking diaphragms — that was the first objective," he began to tell me.

This is the characteristic of the SLAM channels funneling air out of the headphone and thus relieving pressure within; imagine the feeling of pushing your palm down on a headphone's ear cup, was the comparison Dr C gave me during our chat.

"Then when we were playing with these things, we kind of found out that we can tune these channels to resonate at low frequencies, and it was a really weird discovery."

It was this accidental finding that then led to a further 'SLAM-dunk' after Audeze discovered what these channels could do when sculpted purposefully: "We didn't plan for it, but I just [discovered by] surprise that when we shape the channels correctly [in terms of] cross section and length, we can tune the headphone chamber ... to whatever we want."

As a result, an even bigger 'SLAM-dunk' was the one-two punch the discovery offered: fixing reliability while tangibly changing and improving the sound output of Audeze headphones.

"What that does [is] basically solve the problem with reliability; diaphragms are not breaking anymore, because when you push it, basically air goes through these channels, there's no high pressure inside, but then we ended up having [a way] that we can tune the bass to get more output, pretty much for free — and it's not just bass, it translates into mid-range and high frequencies, [as] it's all connected to each other," he said, adding, "So, kill a couple of things at the same time: get more reliability, and we're tuning the headphones correctly for low bass extension."

And so SLAM was born. What started out as a means to stop diaphragms breaking "actually turned out into something spectacular," says Dr C, and from my ongoing use with the Audeze Maxwell 2 gaming headset as my everyday driver, and a new set of Audeze MM-520 headphones kept within arm's reach too, I'm inclined to agree.

Early last month, when I was planning this half-year look at the best laptops that have so far been released in 2026, it was easy for me to pick the number one spot: the MacBook Neo.

Launched in March for $599 / £599 / AU$899, it was a shot across the bows of other laptop and Chromebook makers, as Apple showed that you could have a stylish and well-built budget laptop that didn’t have to feel cheap.

Sure, there were compromises, such as the 8GB of memory and slow USB ports, but those were easily forgiven thanks to such an affordable price — especially when so much of the MacBook Neo puts similarly priced budget laptops to shame.

However, at the end of June, Apple announced a Neo price increase, taking it up to $699 / £699 / AU$1,049. While that’s not the biggest price rise in a world that, at the moment, seems to be full of them, it’s enough to make the MacBook Neo less of an easy recommendation. Suddenly, all those compromises are harder to accept.

The MacBook Neo still earns a spot in this list, however, due to the huge influence it’s had on the laptop market. Since its launch, I’ve seen numerous laptop makers, including Acer and Dell, release products directly aimed at challenging the MacBook Neo; offering slim and stylish designs, strong performance and screens, all for around the Neo's original $599 / £599 / AU$899 price. While Apple has raised the price of the MacBook Neo, many of those new challengers haven’t — yet — done the same, which makes them even better value in comparison.

Now, it’s probably inevitable that those new MacBook Neo rivals will eventually increase in price too (thanks, AI, for gobbling up all the RAM and making price rises an everyday reality for a lot of tech). However, due to the variety of Windows 11 laptops available and where they’re sold compared to MacBooks, if you shop around you should find prices remain relatively competitive.

So, Apple might have just inspired its rivals to make better, and cheaper, alternatives. That might not be great for Apple, but for us consumers, it certainly is. So, as we’re at the halfway point of the year, let’s look at the five best — or most influential — laptops that have been released so far in 2026.

5. HP OmniBook 7 Aero

• Reviewed: February 2026
• Rating: 4.5/5

The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a brilliant example of how Windows laptops are looking to beat Apple at its own game. The HP OmniBook 7 Aero is a thin, light and stylish laptop, with a capable AMD AI 5 or AI 7 CPU, integrated graphics, and a starting RAM configuration of 16GB, plus a 512GB SSD.

It launched at $949.99 / £649 (around AU$1,420), undercutting the MacBook Air and even (in the UK) the MacBook Neo after the price rise. For such a nicely designed laptop, this price is incredibly good value.

In our review we were impressed with the clear, bright, and vibrant screen and huge 26 hour battery life. Depending on the tasks you use it for, this laptop could go for multiple work or school days on a single charge, which is seriously impressive. It even manages to play games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, and while you certainly wouldn’t want to buy it as a gaming laptop, it shows how far Windows laptops, and the mobile components they use, have come in recent years.

4. Razer Blade 18 (2026)

• Reviewed: June 2026
• Rating: 4.5/5

This year’s Razer Blade 18 is another hit from the gaming laptop pros, which my colleague Christian Guyton, in his review, claimed "annihilates the competition". It features cutting edge mobile components such as an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX or Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti – RTX 5090 laptop GPUs, up to 128GB of RAM and a stunning 18-inch Dual UHD+ 240Hz / FHD+ 440Hz screen, which allows you to switch between resolutions to get even higher refresh rates. All of this is packed into a slim and stylish body that once again proves that gaming laptops don’t need to be big and bulky these days.

Gaming-wise, it’s a beast, hitting up to 160fps when playing Cyberpunk 2077, and 218fps with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Basically, it’ll handle any modern game you throw at it, and allow you to play at 4K resolution and the highest of settings. Its battery life — often the Achilles’ heel of gaming laptops — is pretty impressive, hitting almost eight and a half hours in our tests.

What’s the catch? Well, there’s the price, starting at a whopping $3,499.99 / £3,299.99 (around AU$4,870), but going up to $6,999.99 (around £5,200 / AU$9,735) for the highest specification. Ouch.

Razer’s devices are premium products, and when you combine that with some of the most powerful components you can get, and the ongoing memory crisis driving up prices, you end up with a brilliant laptop that’s wildly expensive. It’s a brilliant investment if you can afford it, it’s just a shame so few of us can.

3. Apple MacBook Neo

• Reviewed: March 2026
• Rating: 4.5/5

As I mentioned earlier, if I’d written this article before Apple’s price rises, the MacBook Neo would probably be number one in this list. When it launched, it really was a game-changer. It proved that affordable laptops could still feel premium, with exceptional build quality, modern features and solid performance.

Unlike other recent MacBooks, the Neo is powered by the A18 Pro chip (which powered the iPhone 16 Pro), rather than Apple’s more powerful M-series chips. Compared to chips found in budget Windows 11 laptops and Chromebooks, the A18 Pro proved impressive on test, handling regular macOS apps with ease.

It's possible to use an iPad as a second screen, and see your iPhone’s messages and answer calls all from the desktop — features we’ve come to expect from more expensive MacBooks. The bright and vibrant screen makes a mockery of other cheap laptops that often feature dim, low resolution screens, to keep down prices.

When it first launched, this budget laptop (from a brand that’s more associated with luxury devices), which undercut and outperformed the competition, was a surefire hit. Apple has commented about how well the Neo sold, and even more importantly, it seemed to light a fire underneath many of its competitors. Not only was the MacBook Neo one of the best laptops of 2026, it was one of the most impactful.

What a difference $100 / £100 makes. While the new price doesn’t completely undermine the MacBook Neo’s value proposition, it makes it harder to recommend to everyone.

It makes some of Apple’s compromises to keep the price down, particularly the rather paltry 8GB of memory, slow USB speeds (it has two USB-C ports, but uses older USB 3.0 and the practically ancient USB 2 technology) and lack of a backlit keyboard, much harder to justify as well.

Worse, those competitors that Apple ‘inspired’ are fighting back. Acer’s Swift Air 14 (2026) will launch at the same original price of the Neo, with a great-looking display, and an Intel Core Series 3 processor. An Acer employee I spoke to at Computex 2026 was particularly pleased to point out that the Swift Air has faster USB-C ports than the Neo, an extra USB-A port and is thinner and lighter as well. The fact that it’s also now cheaper spells trouble for Apple, and it’s why the MacBook Neo has slipped down in my ranking.

2. Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

• Rating: 4.5/5
• Reviewed: February 2026

I’ll be honest: I was torn between putting the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra or the MacBook Air (M5) in this spot. The reason I went for Samsung’s ultrabook in the end is that while the latest MacBook Air is undoubtedly a fantastic device (it sits atop our best laptops list for a reason), it’s also a bit… well… boring. It’s a simple spec update to the M5 chip, with no new design flourishes, but a new, higher price (which has since risen even higher after Apple’s price hikes).

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, on the other hand, feels a lot more ambitious. Samsung's laptops have never particularly impressed me, but with the Galaxy Book series, that’s changed.

As with Samsung's Galaxy phones and tablets, Galaxy Book laptops are high-end, premium devices, and as the name suggests, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is the pinnacle of this. It’s thin, light and powerful (especially if you go for the option with a dedicated Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU), and with a strong battery life of over 15 hours, this is a great choice for anyone seeking a stylish workstation laptop that can handle heavy duty tasks such as 3D modeling.

Its AMOLED screen is also stunning, and easily one of the best displays you can get on a laptop (another category that Apple was once untouchable in).

What I really like about the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is how Samsung has been working on integrating its ecosystem of devices, so its laptops, earbuds, smartphones, and tablets can all work nicely together. It leads to some very Apple-like features, such as the ability to use a Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet as a second screen for the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, simply by moving the devices close together.

It’s not quite as seamless as Apple’s implementation, mainly because Samsung doesn’t make the software its products run on (Windows and Android), but it’s come a huge way. If you have a few Samsung devices, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is particularly great, then, but even if you don’t, this is still a brilliant laptop that’s doing new things, not just resting on its laurels.

1. Dell XPS 16 (2026)

• Rating: 4.5/5
• Reviewed: May 2026

The Dell XPS 16 is a remarkable laptop for many reasons. It’s a beautifully crafted device with a stunning OLED screen, as well as premium — and powerful — components, and it’s a great showcase for how good Windows 11 laptops can be.

It’s also noteworthy for bringing the XPS lineup back with a bang. Last year, Dell made the baffling decision to drop its XPS branding. It was one of the few product names outside of Apple that had mainstream recognition, and had long been associated with Dell’s most premium laptops. Thankfully, Dell realized its mistake and has resurrected the XPS brand for 2026, and the new Dell XPS 16 makes a fantastic statement: XPS is back, and it’s better than ever.

In our review, we gushed over this laptop's slimline design and high resolution OLED display, whilst also praising its performance. Powered by an Intel Core Ultra X7 358H, which has an Arc B390 integrated GPU, the Dell XPS 16 can handle demanding tasks, and even a spot of gaming. Battery life is also superb, with the Dell XPS 16 (2026) lasting well over 17 hours in our tests.

It’s pricey, but the quality on offer helps justify the investment. Welcome back, XPS. You’ve been missed.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is utter joy in racing game form, and its depth, run-based structure, and deep vehicle customization options are going to keep me occupied for hours on end.

It was the game that made me grin from ear to ear the quickest out of all that I saw at Summer Game Fest 2026, and I am so excited for it. As soon as I took control of a racer and was on the starting grid, I was immediately smiling, and soon after, laughing to (or at?) myself — it really was that quick.

Blending some really excellent Burnout-style racing game features, with a level of depth and customisation that can get frankly mind-boggling, with the excellence that is Star Wars lore and settings, it has all the ingredients to be a hit this year.

Feel the burn

At the core of Galactic Racer is its Burnout-inspired racing experience, and let me tell you, this is fantastic.

The racers, be they landspeeders, speeder bikes, or podracers, on offer all have their own style, way of handling, and moves to master, and the team at developer Fuse Games has even added a brand-new vehicle to the roster — a whole new addition to the Star Wars universe — the Skim speeder.

Races feel intense and can get very enjoyable and chaotic very quickly. Collisions are not only a danger to you but can be of great benefit, allowing you to muscle your way through for track position or remove them from the equation entirely, so there’s always a balance to be had between taking evasive action or just going on the charge to create havoc.

The courses I tried were absurdly fun too, full of different routes to take, and plenty of opportunity for overtakes or other ways to try and gain an advantage over your competitors, crashing into your foes, and deploying skills. From inputting a series of button presses to get a bonus off the starting grid, which is a satisfying mini-game, to perhaps what is one of the best in-race features of slow-mo crashes of one of your foes — or yourself, which is amusing every time — each race is filled with moments of fun and a high overall level of sheer excitement.

It’s also incredibly beautifully realized, both on the track and off it: characters and cars look excellent, and the environments and race tracks, even though they’re passing at a high speed, are wonderfully detailed and evoke the style of Star Wars’ planets brilliantly.

The options are endless

Where Star Wars: Galactic Racer offers depth, however, is in, well, everywhere else: from in-race synergies between your vehicle and the environment, to the narrative, and to the amount of customisation and part combinations you can engage with, the game looks to be as deep as a Sarlacc is long.

The story here is about your racer’s rise through the ranks and is implemented in a runs-based, branching way where you pick the route of your races that are the map of your and the story’s progress. You can pick a route that’s higher risk-reward, or pick something safer to progress.

When it comes to how you can build, craft, augment, and customize your racer, we get into some serious depth. I was told by the devs at SGF that they think there are a number of vehicle part combinations that are in the order of ‘trillions’ in the game simply due to how many different things you can combine with other different things, from durability to boosts, from handling to abilities.

This gets further augmented by the fact that you can build specific racers for specific worlds, tracks, and conditions. Need a racer that won’t get slowed down by water? Check. Want to sacrifice durability to perhaps invest in a build which runs extremely hot for speed, but then rely on a racetrack’s water courses to cool it down? Absolutely.

The synergies between a racer’s parts and between a racer and the environments make the build possibilities seemingly endless.

As a result, Star Wars: Galactic Racer has shot up my list of anticipated games for the rest of the year, and I can’t wait for lights out when the game releases on October 6 this year, on PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC to dive further into everything it offers.

Spoilers for Dutton Ranch episode 9 ahead.

I knew that the season finale of Dutton Ranch was going to be a corker, and the Yellowstone spinoff hasn't let me down.

Last week, episode 8 saw Carter (Finn Little) flip out at Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) separately, both feeling alienated after their move to Rio Paloma and suffocated by their decisions for his life.

A week on, and Carter is no longer the main player in our drama. Beulah (Annette Bening) is now out of the hospital after a heart attack at the 10 Petal anniversary party, and her decision to announce Rob-Will (Jai Courtney) as her successor is now starting to have serious repercussions.

But in the season finale, everyone needs to watch their back. Here's a full Dutton Ranch episode 9 breakdown, including what you need to watch out for when season 2 hits Paramount+.

Beth and Rip find fentanyl in 10 Petal's latest cattle shipment

We join episode 9 as Rip and Beth are intercepting a cattle shipment arriving at 10 Petal. Rob-Will arrives and tells the pair to get off his property, causing Rip to punch him in the face when he insults Beth.

An incredibly satisfying fight unfolds, leaving Rob-Will on the floor with a bloodied nose. Beth picks up his cattle book, calling out numbers to be hauled to one side.

Everett (Ed Harris) is called, and the separate cattle are tested. Making an incision in the first, Everett finds packages of drugs — that we later learn are filled with fentanyl — hidden in the cow, confirming that 10 Petal has been running an illegal drug smuggling business across the Mexican border.

After working through them all, Zachariah (Marc Menchaca) and Azul (J.R. Villarreal) estimate that the drugs have a street value of around $2 million, meaning that somebody is bound to come looking for it... and soon.

Beulah confesses all to Everett

After examining the cattle, Everett returns home to question Beulah. He's furious that she's been lying to everyone around her for so long, especially after claiming that she wanted to "run away" with him at the end of episode 8.

Immediately, she tells him everything. As we already saw in episode 7's flashback scenes, Beulah confesses to ranch hand Mariano (Raoul Max Trujillo) helping her hide Luke’s body.

What we didn't already know is that Luke is Rob-Will’s father, and Beulah’s dad blames Mariano for her assault. He offered Mariana a deal: take the heat and escape to Mexico, and the family would take in baby Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba).

However, Mariano's wife was killed back at the border, meaning he had extra leverage on the Jackson family. Cut to 15 years before the events of Dutton Ranch, and 10 Petal was on its knees after a drought ruined everything they had.

Joaquin stepped in and offered financial help to Mariano, and the drug smuggling scheme was born. Beulah claims that she's been looking for a way out of it for years, but Everett tells her to leave.

Mariano returns — and immediately threatens everyone

As you might have guessed from Joaquin's phone call at the end of episode 8, Mariano is officially back on the scene. After refusing to help Rob-Will when Beth and Rip unearth the smuggling scheme, Joaquin meets Mariano at a nearby motel.

Joaquin fills Mariano in on basically everything that's happened in the present day, with Mariano seething with rage at the idea of "strangers" being brought in to manage the ranch.

Rob-Will arrives and tells Mariano about the compromised cattle, leading Mariano to call Beth and Rip and threaten them over the phone. He then asks his guys to kill the rest of the 10 Petal ranchers and asks Joaquin to kill Rob-Will.

Oreana finds out that she's pregnant

While all of this is going on, Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind) finds herself at a crisis point. She finds out that she's pregnant after spontaneously doing a test, having to play off her fear when Beth arrives to ask if Oreana has seen Carter.

Without Beth knowing, Oreana immediately tracks Carter down to Dwight's (Ray McKinnon) old farm, where the pair share beers and talk about their woes. Oreana convinces Carter to call Beth, who's been relentlessly trying to get hold of him since his episode 8 disappearance. He does, but puts the phone down when Beth asks him to come home.

Back at 10 Petal, Oreana convinces Carter that they should elope, not telling him about the pregnancy. Carter is only too happy to do so, and the pair begin to pack their bags while Carter sneaks home to get his stuff.

Rob-Will dies after Joaquin's drive-by murder

While Oreana is packing, Rob-Will arrives home to see her. Oreana tells him that she's leaving, and instead of discouraging her, Rob-Will says that there's nothing for either of them at 10 Petal or in Rio Paloma, and kisses her.

However, Oreana never actually goes anywhere. A few seconds after leaving her bedroom, Rob-Will is found bleeding to death in the house's hallway following a loud gunshot. Oreana comes down the stairs quickly enough in time to see a black SUV speeding away, breaking down in tears over her dad's body.

She stays there until Beulah arrives, who cannot believe what has happened. We cut to Joaquin in the car, who is struggling to collect himself.

Mariano's men descend on Dutton Ranch — and kidnap Carter

Not knowing what to do for the best, Beth and Rip have huge decisions to make. Beth raids Beulah's slaughterhouse, but finds nothing aside from a wrangler who wants to beat her up (don't worry, Rip gets there first).

By the time they get home, Beulah is there, with Beth pulling a shotgun on her. Rip convinces Beulah to be let inside the house, where she details the same story that she told Everett earlier.

Beulah claims that she needs the drugs before Mariano can find out that they're missing, with Rip telling her that he's already got Zachariah to load them up in her car.

Obviously, the threatening phone call means that Mariano already knows what's up, so Beth, Rip, Azul, Zachariah, and later Everett get ready for Mariano's men to storm their ranch. Sure enough, they surround the house in the dead of night, with a classic shootout then taking place.

All of Mariano's men end up dead, except one, whom Rip takes to a nearby barn and interrogates while suspending him in the air.

At the same time, we see another group of Mariano's men storm into Carter's bedroom, pinning him to the ground before bundling him into a van. Beth gets another phone call, with Mariano confirming that they've kidnapped Carter.

The final scene of episode 9 shows Beth running into the barn in tears and telling Rip, "They've got him."

Season 2 predictions

Obviously, there are quite a few questions that need answering here. The most pressing is whether Carter will survive his kidnapping, and whether Beth and Rip can get to him before anything bad happens.

Then we'll have the fallout of Rob-Will's death, which will definitely have messed with Joaquin's mind. This is also going to affect Mariano's standing in the 10 Petal business, arguably likely to see even more power than he had before.

Beulah, meanwhile, has absolutely nothing to her name. She needs to grieve Rob-Will, but Everett wants nothing to do with her, so her next moves cannot be immediately guessed.

Then, there's Oreana. Will she keep the baby? Will Beth be there to support her? And will Rio Paloma ever be the same again?

Can you believe it? We're at the midway point of 2026 already. That means one thing: it's time for our half-year 5-star reviews roundup. So far this year we've tested over 600 gadgets, games and appliances across all of our channels. That's way too many to put into a single roundup, so for this mini retrospective I've focused only on physical products, and only the five-star awardees.

These are the gadgets that soared through our rigorous tests, and shone in crowded markets. They're the products we just couldn't find fault with. There are speakers that wowed us with their "crystal clear, fathoms deep" sound, a "perfect" Android tablet that rivals the best Apple can offer, a soundbar that raises the — er — bar for soundbars in 2026, and a mini fan that blew the competition away.

Without further ado, let's begin our showcase of the best products we've tested so far in 2026. Click the More details button for more info and each one, and a link to the full review.

Headphones & speakers

Mobile & computing

Home tech

Cameras and accessories

Gaming accessories

Audio gadgets

For a company that prides itself on delivering polished, functioning hardware and software, Apple dropped the ball with its original AI-powered Clean Up tool.

Not only did this Apple Intelligence feature arrive almost a year after similar tools from Samsung and Google, but by all accounts, it was objectively worse at removing unwanted objects in images than those big-name rivals. We tested Clean Up against Galaxy AI last year, and found that the former “comes incredibly short of the mark when Samsung’s offering is capable of truly achieving what it sets out to do.” Ouch.

But Apple has promised to make things right in iOS 27. At WWDC 2026, the company announced that Clean Up will be faster and more capable in your iPhone’s next software update — and so I put that claim to the test by comparing Clean Up as it exists in iOS 26 against Clean Up as it exists in the iOS 27 developer beta (if you’re keen to try an early version of iOS 27 for yourself, here’s how to download the iOS 27 developer beta).

Before we dive into the image comparisons, an important note: Clean Up is better in iOS 27 because it’s capable of engaging Apple’s powerful Foundation models when needed. Say, for instance, you want to remove an obstruction from your face; your iPhone will employ a ‘High Quality’ version of Clean Up that taps into Apple’s own Private Cloud Compute servers to access these Foundation models. But it doesn’t do this all the time.

For small touch-up jobs, your iPhone employs a ‘Fast’ version of Clean Up that uses Apple's on-device AI models to complete your request, just as it does in iOS 26 (albeit not under this 'Fast' banner). This version is (surprise!) faster than the ‘High Quality’ alternative, but it's also not as effective at removing objects.

In iOS 27, your iPhone defaults to using an ‘Auto’ version of Clean Up that switches between ‘High Quality’ and ‘Fast’ depending on the edit request you’re making, but you can force your iPhone to use one or the other by selecting your chosen mode in a drop-down menu.

For this comparison, I stuck to ‘Auto’ to test how well my iPhone recognizes when (and when not) to use the more power-intensive ‘High Quality’ version of Clean Up — and because most people will use Clean Up in this default ‘Auto’ mode. I also wanted to see whether ‘Fast’ in iOS 27 — which my iPhone surely used for a few of the photos below — is more effective than it is in iOS 26.

I've added a separate section for comparing ‘Fast’ and ‘High Quality’ results in iOS 27, which is the starkest example of how much Apple's Clean Up tool has been improved.

And, of course, my results are based on the iOS 27 developer beta, not the finished version of iOS 27. There's every chance that Clean Up will be improved further once iOS 27 proper arrives later this year.

Photo comparisons

In this first example, iOS 26 leaves behind an unnatural smear in place of the dog, while iOS 27 adds a more detailed, natural-looking replacement. The latter looks more like a bush than grass — and the end of the dog's tail is still visible in both examples — but iOS 27 delivers the better overall result.

iOS 26 actually delivers the better result here, leaving behind a slightly less visible L-shape than iOS 27. I suspect this is an example of that 'Fast' version of Clean Up in action, and that if I manually selected 'High Quality', the iOS 27 version would be superior (see the 'Fast' vs 'High Quality' comparison at the bottom of the page to see what I mean). This comparison also proves that 'Fast' in iOS 27 doesn't always deliver superior results to Clean Up in iOS 26 (at least as far as the developer beta goes).

Again, I'd say iOS 26 delivers the better result in this example — focus on the llama's erased head in both photos to see what I mean.

This is the first example in which I'm convinced my iOS 27-enabled iPhone switched from 'Fast' to 'High Quality'. When asking Clean Up to remove the long strands of hair over my left eye, the iOS 26 version completely botches the job, adding random ugly smears and not actually removing anything. The iOS 27 version, meanwhile, serves up a genuinely impressive result. It's not completely devoid of fakery, but it's certainly the more usable of the two results.

Now you see him, now you don't. At first glance, both iOS 26 and iOS 27 appear to do a similarly OK job at removing Bad Bunny from the roof of La Casita, but if you look closely, iOS 26 doesn't recognize that there are stairs behind him. The iOS 27 result isn't that much better, but it's the objectively superior of the two.

Another slim win for iOS 27 here. Neither version of Clean Up completely removes the dog's shadow, but iOS 27 makes a slightly better go of it than iOS 26.

In this example, the iOS 27 result is the much better of the two. Not only does iOS 26 leave behind a smeary cloud, but it also adds a random shape and (badly) generates an extra helping of mountain in the background. None of these mistakes are visible in the iOS 27 result.

iOS 27 wins again here, but not by much. The dark splodges left behind in the iOS 26 result are a tad more visible than those in the iOS 27 result, and I'd be more comfortable passing the latter off as reality.

This is probably the most challenging request of the bunch. I'm sitting on a backless bench while pedalling a piece of urban gym equipment, and I asked Clean Up to remove me, but keep everything else intact. iOS 26 fails miserably, and while iOS 27 doesn't totally succeed either — it leaves my right foot behind and removes the end of the bench entirely — it does do a better job of replacing what it removes with real-looking imagery.

Fast vs High Quality in iOS 27

Here's an example of the different results you can achieve by manually selecting the 'Fast' and 'High Quality' versions of Clean Up in iOS 27.

As you can see, the difference is huge. The 'Fast' result is a total mess, while the 'High Quality' result is genuinely real-looking. The latter isn't perfect — it's changed the menu art, for instance, and reduced the menu count from two to one — but I suspect that's because a portion of the menu was caught in the circle I drew around the coffee cup (and for that reason, I hope Apple reduces the thickness of the Clean Up line when iOS 27 releases in full later this year).

First impressions

In all but three of the comparisons, the iOS 27 developer beta version of Clean Up delivered the better result; however, it's clear that, when your iPhone opts for the 'Fast' version of the feature, the gulf in quality is not dramatic. In fact, in some examples, the iOS 26 result is better — so it's probably best to think of 'Fast' Clean Up and iOS 26 Clean Up as the same tool.

It's a different story for the 'High Quality' version of Clean Up in the iOS 27 developer beta, which delivered vastly superior results to Clean Up in iOS 26 when my iPhone auto-selected that option, or when I manually enabled it (as in the coffee cup example).

This proves beyond doubt that Apple has improved Clean Up in iOS 27 as it exists right now — but unless users manually select this 'High Quality' option (or always request complex edits that trigger its automatic use), the difference in Clean Up's capabilities may not be all that noticeable.

Again, though, I've been careful to specify that these iOS 27 results are from the developer beta — Apple will likely further tweak Clean Up between now and iOS 27's September release, so I expect the tool to get even better.

Any serious photographer knows the importance of great glass. And while I've had the personal pleasure of testing the best cameras for 2026 so far, innovative lenses get me even more excited.

Only a true macro lens can bring the insect kingdom to life, or a telephoto optic get you close to distant wildlife, or a fast prime bag you punchy portraits with dreamy bokeh.

With that in mind, I regularly review the latest lenses as well as cameras, and I've played with some real crackers this year. These include Sony's overdue macro lens upgrade, Sigma's world first 135mm with an f/1.4 aperture, Viltrox's impossibly tiny 28mm f/4.5, Canon's affordable f/1.2 prime, and Nikon's fabulous 70-200mm F2.8 Mark II.

Each of the above lenses serve different use cases, and they come in at varied price points, starting at just $99 / £90 / AU$169. Let's dive into my top five lenses for 2026 so far…

Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5

• Release date: Staggered release for various mounts
• Lens mount: Sony E, Nikon Z, Fujifilm X
• Verdict: 4/5

The Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 was first launched in 2025 for Sony E-mount, but it has been released for various lens mounts in 2026, including Nikon Z and Fujifilm X. I expect an L-mount version will land soon.

It's an impossibly small wide-angle prime considering that it features autofocus, full communication with the camera, and an impressively fast f/4.5 aperture. It's so small, in fact — measuring just 15.3mm in length and weighing just 2.1oz / 60g — that I'd describe it more as a body-cap lens than a pancake lens, with a neat sliding lens cover, and it costs just $99 / £90 / AU$169, with occasional sales knocking 10% or so off the price.

I'd describe image quality as characterful rather than technically precise, with detail being fairly soft in the corners, and some obvious vignetting. In the center of shots, however, it's actually pretty sharp. It's a full-frame lens, but the Viltrox 28mm F4.5 actually makes even more sense for Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm's APS-C cameras, because the 1.5x crop effectively transforms the lens into a 42mm optic, plus the softer corners are outside the image area.

The Viltrox lens is so small and so cheap that it's a zero risk purchase, and one that I'd happily keep on my camera instead of a body cap and for quick everyday snaps.

Read my Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 review

Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG Art

• Release date: January 31 (announced late 2025)
• Lens mount: Sony E, L-mount
• Verdict: 5/5

World-first is a term that's banded around a lot, usually with caveats, but Sigma's pro portrait prime is a true first — a 135mm lens with a maximum f/1.4 aperture. I've tested my fair share of 135mm f/1.8 lenses recently, including the Viltrox 135mm and Nikon Plena, while Sigma has its own that's now nine years old, but Sigma's latest offering has an even faster aperture and creamier bokeh for the ultimate portrait photography quality.

It's a beast of a lens, mind you, weighing 50.4oz / 1,430g, and with a massive front lens element and 105mm filter thread. If you're willing to lug the lens around, though, you'll be rewarded with "razor-sharp detail" and "stunning shallow depth of field", as we noted in our in-depth review, with the lens earning a perfect five-star rating.

Currently the Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG Art is available for Sony E and L-mount cameras; pro Nikon photographers can only hope that a Z-mount version is on the way soon.

Read my Sigma 135mm F1.4 DG Art review

Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS

• Release date: January 15
• Lens mount: Sony E
• Verdict: 5/5

If there was a Sony E-mount lens that needed updating, it was the 10-year-old Sony FE 90mm f/2.8 Macro G OSS — Sony's only true macro lens. Thankfully, 2026 delivered the new Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS, and it's a notable improvement on the 90mm original in just about every regard.

With "improved optics, faster autofocus, steadier stabilization, greater magnification, increased zoom and teleconverter compatibility", we concluded in our review that the new Sony 100mm is "the go-to macro lens for Sony working pros who make an income from close-up pictures, whether it’s product photography, still life, flat lays or macro nature shots".

Key features include the new maximum magnification, which was upped from 1x to 1.4x, plus its compatibility with teleconverters to further extend its reach. Compared to Sony's other macro lens, the new 100mm macro is in another league, and very much merited its five-star review rating. It's not the first optic of its kind — Canon walked this path years before with its own 100mm macro with 1.4x magnification. Still, Sony photographers finally have the macro lens their cameras deserve.

Read my Sony FE 100mm F2.8 Macro GM OSS review

Canon RF 45mm F1.2 STM

• Release date: November 6 (reviewed in March 2026)
• Lens mount: Canon RF
• Verdict: 3.5/5

What's this now — an affordable f/1.2 prime lens from Canon? Pick my jaw off the floor. True, it's far from being a perfect lens, but Canon's 45mm F1.2 STM makes a fast aperture and the attendant shallow depth of field potential available to beginners who would otherwise be priced out of owning such a lens.

We gave the lens a 3.5 star-rating because of its optical flaws; there's significant chromatic aberration and "swirly distracting bokeh". It doesn't even come with a lens hood. However, we've got to respect what this lens represents, and Canon for delivering it.

Not only is this the most affordable proprietary f/1.2 full-frame lens for any lens mount, but Canon also makes the most affordable mirrorless cameras. I can see the 45mm F1.2 STM pairing nicely with an entry-level full-frame mirrorless camera such as the EOS RP and EOS R8, and even with an APS-C model like the EOS R100, on which you're getting an effective 70mm lens (approx).

Where rival brands are typically ignoring beginners and putting their efforts into high-end gear, Canon is regularly delivering new cameras and lenses for all budgets and skill levels.

Read my Canon RF 45mm F1.2 STM review

Nikkor Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S II

• Release date: February 23
• Verdict: 5/5

If there's one lens for 2026 that I desperately want to add to my bag permanently, it would be the Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S II. Granted, I'm a Nikon shooter who regularly works at these focal lengths, who is also in need of upgrading (I still use the DSLR version of this lens via an adapter), but that's not to take away from what I called a "flawless" telephoto zoom.

It follows the 24-70mm f2.8 S II in being a second-generation upgrade of what was already an excellent Z-mount zoom lens, bringing a lighter build, fully removable tripod collar and teleconverter compatibility. The lighter design is thanks to an entirely new optical design that's somehow simpler and sharper at the same time, while also improving close-focusing capabilities.

There's probably not enough reason for owners of the original Z-mount 70-200mm to upgrade, especially given the jump in price, but for everyone else there's arguably no greater 70-200mm f/2.8 available — and it's the kind of lens I've relied on for so many shoots down the years. With the Mark II version now available, I finally feel like it's time to upgrade from my aged DSLR lens.

Read my Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S II review

What do you think of the lenses above? Are there any other new lenses that appeared in 2026 that you particularly like? Have you say in the comments.

We're halfway through 2026, which means a lot of products have passed through TechRadar's testing rooms — in total, we've reviewed a colossal 639 products in January to June 2026.

That includes a load of fantastic audio tech — including new options good enough to challenge the best wireless speakers, the best turntables, the best DACs to get more from streaming music on your PC or phone, and the best stereo speakers.

Our expert reviewers have tested a lot of stuff, and some products have proven to be the cream that rises to the top. Here are the products in these areas that scored either 5 stars or 4.5 stars in our reviews, making them best-in-class or highly recommended.

Wireless & stereo speakers

Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i

• Score: 5 / 5
• Price: $499 / £249 / AU$699 (pair)

What is it? The latest bookshelf stereo speakers in Wharfedale's famous 'Diamond' line, which is over 40 years old and clearly still going strong. They're two-way speakers with a 25mm tweeter, a 130mm mid/bass driver, and deliverying a frequency range of 65Hz - 20kHz. And they're easy to drive, and flexible on positioning — a great beginner hi-fi model.

What we said: "The Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i speakers turn out to be (yet another) high-achieving-yet-affordable loudspeaker option. They sound excellent, they're very unfussy about what drives them, they look and feel good, and they're extremely well priced. They're a little large for a pair of ostensibly 'bookshelf' speakers, so be warned if you're actually looking to put them on shelves, but that's easily forgiven."

Read our full Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i review

Cambridge L/R S

What is it? Small and stylish active stereo speakers with wireless connectivity as well as wired digital and analogue connections. There's 100 watts of Class D amplification powering a 21mm tweeter and 76mm mid/bass driver combo, and the connection stretch to USB-C, line-level stereo RCA, digital optical input, a pre-out for a subwoofer, and Bluetooth (with aptX HD codec compatibility).

What we said: "The Cambridge L/R S is a good-looking, well-built wireless active stereo speaker system that has the bold sound smarts to back up the fine, multi-option visuals. Sure, it's a little too confident at the bottom of the frequency range, with too much weight given to bass information, but for the money it's a genuine contender in an already-stacked market. Requires serious consideration."

Read our full Cambridge L/R S review

Sonos Play

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $299 / £299 / AU$499

What is it? Sonos' mid-size portable speaker, with enough power and quality to work as a home speaker, but a battery and charging cradle so you can take it away instantly. With audio input as an option over its USB-C port (via an adapter) it's incredible versatile — it's also tough and waterproof.

What we said: "The Sonos Play is a triumph of usability. It has just the right design and convenience considerations to make you pick it up and use it more often than other speakers, even great portable ones. To paraphrase a notable camera quote: the best speaker is the one you choose to listen on. The Sonos Play encourages me to listen more, in more places. It doesn't hurt that it sounds better than most portable speakers, too, and can hold its own as a home speaker."

Read our full Sonos Play review

Fluance Ri91

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $799 (about £640 / AU$1,270)

What is it? Big floorstanding active speakers with the power of a full hi-fi system, but no need for a separate amp or inputs. There's 150 watts of power behind two 6.5-inch mid/bass drivers and an AMT tweeter per speaker, and connections include HDMI, two RCA inputs, a subwoofer out, and Bluetooth (including aptX HD).

What we said: "The Fluance Ri91 sound great when turned up, though they can be a bit mid-focused, especially for those looking for neutral-sounding speakers. The included HDMI ARC input (quality control issues notwithstanding) are appreciated, as is the ability to stream higher-res audio over Bluetooth aptX."

Read our full Fluance Ri91 review

Denon Home 400

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $599 / £449 (around AU$999)

What is it? A relatively hefty and powerful wireless speaker (think of it as a fair bit bigger than a toaster), that uses six-drivers to deliver expansive Dolby Atmos spatial sound. There are left and right drivers, upfiring drive units, and two 4.5-inch woofers, all with their own Class D amplification. It uses the Denon HEOS wireless system and app, which is powerful and well-specced too.

What we said: "It's a home speaker that delivers where it counts, and is probably the most compelling single-unit spatial audio offering at this price, where it goes head-to-head with some serious competition. It offers confident, engaging and immersive spatial audio performance, a thoughtful and stylish design, and a great range of connectivity options, along with an excellent HEOS app. It sounds wonderful in its default Auto mode or the slightly more balanced Pure mode, but it really rewards those of us who tinker a bit, especially if you mess around with some of the customization options for the width and height of spatial sound."

Read our full Denon Home 400 review

Klipsch The Nines II

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $2,399 / £2,249 / AU$4,999

What is it? A pair of active standmount stereo speakers (their size and weight maybe pushes them beyond being 'bookshelf' speakers, really) that deliver tons of power connectivity with any extra components needed. They can be a soundbar replacement with HDMI and Dolby Atmos/DTS:X support, plus they have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for music, as well as optical, phono, USB, coaxial, and ethernet.

What we said: "The Klipsch The Nines II are an easy recommendation despite the weight and despite the price bump over the previous version. It's thanks to the immersive, robust sound and large set of features, not to mention broad connectivity — they're an excellent all-in-one hi-fi upgrade."

Read our full Klipsch The Nines II review

Sonos Era 100 SL

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $189 / £169 / AU$289

What is it? A cheaper version of Sonos' entry-level home speaker, delivering all the same connectivity as the regular Era 100 (including Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, plus line-in over its USB-C port using an adapter) and the same sound quality, but for cheaper. You lose voice control and Quick Trueplay on Android as a result, but it's hard to argue with the price.

What we said: "What Sonos has achieved with the Era 100 SL is impressive. It has managed to pack in the same quality sound, great connectivity and iconic design, while dropping the price to a more affordable level. But there are absolutely some compromises — voice control is absent here, while Android users will miss out Sonos' room correction. Despite this though, it's one of the strongest performers in its price range, making it an easy choice if you never invested in the original Era 100."

Read our full Sonos Era 100 SL review

Turntables

Sony PS-LX5BT 

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $499 / £399 / AU$599

What is it? Sony's successor to its previous and wildly popular affordable Bluetooth turntable, bringing fully automatic operation and Bluetooth connectivity in a sleek design. The ultimate beginner turntable? Well, there's a cheaper version that might be more tempting, but for the price, it's hard to argue with.

What we said: "The Sony PS-LX5BT picks up where the PS-LX310BT it replaces left off — as one of the best pound-for-pound Bluetooth turntables around. If you want the most painless vinyl experience possible, you’ve come to the right place."

Read our full Sony PS-LX5BT review

Goldring GR3

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $1,299 / £699 (around AU$1,599)

What is it? Goldring is one of the oldest hi-fi companies in the world, and hasn't made a turntable in several decades — and now it's back with a very well-specified and great-looking new model. A built-in phono stage and high-quality provided cartridge make it great for relative novices, though it's odd that you can't bypass that phono.

What we said: "Goldring has managed to enter a tricky area of the turntable market with a player that is distinct enough (where finish, specification and sound quality are concerned) to stand out and make quite a compelling case for itself."

Read our full Goldring GR3 review

Headphone DACs

Fiio KA15

• Score: 5 / 5
• Price: $99.99 / £99.99 / AU$189.99

What is it? This tiny DAC blends the retro with the modern. It does a better job of converting hi-res audio to analog than your device's built-in DAC will, and has a fun little cassette animation while it plays.

What we said: "If you have big audio ambitions and a very small budget, the KA15 is excellent value for money. It's a significant upgrade in sound quality for smartphones and computers, and while it's not as powerful as a desktop headphone amp it has more than enough oomph for a wide range of headphones and IEMs so it's fairly future-proof."

Read our full Fiio KA15 review

Eversolo DAC-Z10

• Score: 5 / 5
• Price: $1,980 / £1,939 / AU$3,339

What is it? A super-versatile addition to a hi-fi setup, providing a high-end DAC system, a pre-amp, and a powerful headphone amp all in one unit. It's pricey, but it's incredibly well-specified, making it kind of a bargain — at least as far as premium hi-fi goes.

What we said: "The Eversolo DAC-Z10 won’t fail to satisfy, provided your partnering equipment is up to scratch. It’s a premium DAC for a premium system, and offers all the bells and whistles you could hope for as a result, as well as immaculate sound quality that specializes in finding every possible grain of detail in your music. It's simply as capable a DAC/preamp/headphone amp as this sort of money can buy."

Read our full Eversolo DAC-Z10 review

iFi GO Link 2

• Score: 4.5 / 5
• Price: $59 / £59 (around AU$111)

What is it? A no-fuss, super-small headphone DAC to make it easy to use wired headphones and earbuds with your phone or laptop, and with an audio upgrade along the way. Oh, and it's super-cheap as a bonus.

What we said: "The iFi Go Link 2 takes everything that's great about the original and packs it into a dinky DAC that's even smaller and lighter than before. It's a fantastic audio upgrade and it's priced very keenly, too."

Read our full iFi Go Link 2 review

Gaming has officially reached its worst state in decades after PlayStation announced it will ditch game discs for PlayStation consoles starting in 2028.

It comes very shortly after Rockstar Games and its most anticipated game, arguably of all time, GTA 6, opened pre-orders.

Why is that relevant, you may ask? Well, in case you've missed it, there will be no discs available for 'physical' copies of GTA 6. Essentially, buying the highly anticipated game digitally or the physical edition at retailers means you won't have a hard copy of the game, as the latter comes with a code in a box.

Frankly, it's a reach to even suggest that GTA 6 has a physical edition at all, as a code in a game case definitely isn't a physical copy — and that's what makes things even more ridiculous.

Rumors recently suggested that there would never be any disc of GTA 6, and after PlayStation's disastrous announcement, it's safe to say that those rumors are accurate. We're not focusing exclusively on GTA 6 here, but if you're wondering what the future of gaming will look like from 2028 and beyond, GTA 6 is the example.

The PlayStation 'monopoly-like' behaviour begins

To put it simply, that example of GTA 6 means that all of the games purchased from the year 2028 and beyond on PlayStation consoles will no longer be owned by consumers, because digital purchases are actually licenses.

That's a huge issue for several reasons. If PlayStation wanted to revoke a user's access to a game, it could do so at any time, which we've recently seen with the removal of over 500 movies from user libraries without refunds. If a user loses their account from an unwarranted ban (or even by being hacked), then their digital purchases are effectively gone for good.

With this in mind, Sony's behaviour feels very monopolistic. Of course, gamers can still choose to buy third-party games on other platforms, but since Sony has reportedly tried to make certain games like Crimson Desert a timed exclusive (reported by Forbes), and it's now cutting off another avenue of purchasing games, it comes across as unfriendly to gamers, even if its moves aren't exactly illegal.

Physical copies have always allowed consumers to buy, resell, or borrow games and get their hands on cheaper copies at retailers, whether brand new or second-hand.

The latter is what gives stores like CeX, Game (in the UK), and GameStop purpose, letting consumers find games that they didn't want to pay full price for at launch, or buy games for retro systems like the PS1 or PS2, since the libraries from those game consoles are severely limited on PS5 (and some are only available via streaming).

Since the PlayStation Store will soon be the only place to buy games on PlayStation consoles, consumers will effectively be forced to pay high prices for most titles — including both PlayStation exclusives and third-party games that have been available for years already.

The examples are clear to see above; GTA 5 is a 2013 game that has received multiple re-releases from PS3 to P55, and somehow still costs $39.99 / £59.99 / AU$89.95. The same applies to Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, a 2022 game, which costs $49.99 / £44.99 / AU$74.95, and the list goes on.

At CeX, GameStop, and multiple other video game retailers, games of their caliber will cost significantly less, without needing a sale or discount to make them affordable for consumers.

That affordability is seemingly what Sony is also trying to eliminate alongside game ownership. Streamlining all PlayStation game purchases to its PlayStation Store ensures you can't find a cheaper deal for a game anywhere else. If that doesn't sound monopolistic, then I don't know what does.

Sure, there will likely still be cheaper options via video game retailers for 'physical' games with a code in a case. However, the fact that discs will no longer exist for games will instantly discourage gamers from opting for those so-called 'physical' editions, since ownership will be out of the equation.

It's always been more expensive to pay for games digitally than it has been to buy them second-hand — especially with constant price increases and few steep discounts — and once second-hand games are gone in 2028, there will be no going back.

To make matters even worse, Sony is also shutting down the PS3 and PS Vita stores in 2027, leaving PS3 and PS Vita owners with no possible way to purchase any of the games on those two platforms.

Announcing such a drastic move at the same time as informing gamers that discs will cease to exist on PlayStation does the exact opposite of instilling faith in consumers that buying digitally is the right move.

When the PS5 or any other future PlayStation console eventually becomes a retro console, Sony may very well do the same thing and close the platform's store. Without discs or hard copies of games, you can essentially kiss them goodbye for good.

The warning signs have been there all along; physical media, specifically within the gaming industry, has seen a steady decline over the years, with publishers and game studios of particular games opting for digital releases, and on some occasions, later releasing physical editions.

As Hideo Kojima, a veteran gaming designer, once said, "eventually, even digital data will no longer be owned by individuals on their own initiative". That reality is now here — and unless gamers stand up to Sony's anti-consumer practices now, it'll be too late once 2028 arrives.

Earlier this year I visited the global headquarters and showroom of gaming chair giant Secretlab in Singapore for an early look at the then unannounced Atlas task chair. Most of the trip was focused on the upcoming product, learning about how it was designed and getting some initial hands-on time, but also involved a lengthy chat with the company’s ergonomic advisor, Dr. Lindsey Migliore.

On top of her work with brands like Secretlab, the physician is the founder of GamerDoc, a consultancy firm that helps professional competitive players prevent injuries, and published a first of its kind handbook of esports medicine in 2021. She also delivers lectures on the subject around the world.

I can’t think of anyone better placed to tell you how best to sit in a chair, and she had plenty of useful advice — some of which will likely come as a surprise, even if you already think you have perfect seating position.

You could be sitting all wrong

“Ergonomics back in the day used to be a little different. When I started working, it was the 90-90-90 rule. Stiff, upright,” she begins, referring to the popular idea that your hips, knees, and elbows should all be at a 90° when you’re sitting at a desk.

“It started in airspace, and then worked its way into the rest of the world through assembly lines because business people didn’t want their assembly workers to get injured,” she continued. “That’s where the 90-90-90 [rule] and the origin of ergonomics came from.

“Then we started applying it more to office workers, and how we all sat in the early 2000s. That’s when adjustability started blowing up; we got split keyboards, vertical mice, and sit-to-stand desks.”

The advice, she argues, is now out of date and focuses too heavily on maintaining a perfect, still position: “Adjustability is great, it’s essential, but they replaced perfect upright sitting with supported stillness — there’s no movement. There’s all this data from five, 10 years ago about how bad sitting still is for us, and how bad a sedentary lifestyle is for us. It’s just as bad as diabetes.”

Rather than staying static, she says that it’s vital to keep “activating your muscles” by moving around.

“Back in the day when we were hunter-gatherers, you would eat food, and you’d use that food to kill more food. But now we eat food, and we go to sleep. We eat food, and we watch Netflix for six hours,” she adds with a chuckle.

“Muscles are meant to take load, external force, and respond with tension [...] but when you sit for a long period of time, that prolonged tension causes strain.

“In the short term it’s pain, it’s discomfort, but in the long term the tissue remodels to get used to stillness, to get used to a lack of movement.”

Motion is key

Dr. Migliore says this is supported by plenty of recent research: “What we’re looking at in modern day ergonomics is that you’ve got to get your butts moving. You’ve got to get up; you’ve got to move. We know that movement is good.”

As a result, she recommends chairs that offer dynamic tilt mechanisms and support multiple seating positions, like the Secretlab Atlas.

She also has some more general tips that everyone will be able to apply to their own setups, regardless of their chosen hardware.

“Back pain in the morning? Can’t touch your toes?” she laughs, before suggesting that having your “feet flat on the floor is the number one most important thing” when you’re seated. Footrests can be introduced if you require some added height or want to help stretch your ankles by propping your feet up at more of an angle.

Your knees should also be kept roughly in line with your hips, in the position that you find most comfortable. For chairs with adjustable seat depth, the ideal position is “two to three finger breadths” between the back of your knee and the chair. You should also aim to have your lower back flat against the backrest to reduce the risk of your muscle tissue weakening. Reclining back on your chair for a rest in between intense tasks can be helpful as well, and promotes back movement.

She recommends using a desk with an adjustable height, saying that your elbows should be at a 90-degree angle. “The 90-90-90 rule isn’t dead,” she adds. “We’re just not focused on upright posture all the time.” Your monitor should then be about an arm’s length away from where you’re sitting with the top of it about level with your eyes.

She advises those with ultra-wide displays to ensure that the middle of the screen is used as a “high focus area,” with the sides reserved for less important programs so that you’re not constantly turning your head and risking neck strain. “As long as your head and neck are neutral and looking forward, you’re good,” she says.

If you're looking to upgrade your setup off the back of Dr. Migliore's advice, you can see our recommendations for the best gaming chairs or best office chairs, and best office desks or best standing desks (perhaps even a gaming desk) depending on what you're after.

Anthropic has just released Claude Sonnet 5 for all users, and I wanted to test what it was good at. But the game has changed now. Sonnet 5 doesn't feel dramatically different from Gemini or ChatGPT if you ask it ordinary chatbot questions. Instead, the difference should show up when you stop asking for answers and start asking for completed work.

Anthropic says Sonnet 5 is built for "multi-step software engineering work," sustained coding, tool use, debugging, and "messy technical contexts." It also says it can make plans, use browsers and terminals, and run more autonomously than smaller, cheaper models previously could.

I'm not using Sonnet 5 for coding, but that doesn't mean I can't take advantage of its new abilities — just like you can. So I stopped asking Claude for answers and started asking it to finish jobs, beginning with planning a trip to Bath, UK, for my family: my wife, me, and two teens.

A trip to Bath

When I tested it, Claude Sonnet 5 defaulted to its Medium level of effort, so that's what I used. Here's the first prompt I tried:

"I want to test whether you can act more like an agent than a chatbot.

My task is: Plan a weekend trip to Bath for two adults and two teenagers, including travel, lunch, one activity, estimated costs, and what still needs booking.

Don't just give me advice. First, make a brief plan. Then identify which parts of the task you can complete yourself right now, which parts require tools or information you don't have, and which parts need human judgment.

Then complete as much of the task as possible without stopping after the first obvious answer.

At the end, give me:

What you completed

What still needs human action

Any assumptions you made

A short checklist I can use to verify the result

The next best step"

What I really liked was that, as Claude tackled this task, it gave me the option to be notified when it had finished. In reality, it only took a few seconds to come back with a plan, which included travel options, an itinerary, and a suggestion for lunch and something to do: a trip to The Roman Baths.

To my delight Claude gave me an interactive map showing where all the places it recommended were. It also gave me a useful list of what it had completed, what required human action, the assumptions it had made, a verification checklist, and a "next best step" action point. It felt ready to keep working with me as more details came in, rather than treating its first answer as final.

In fact, when I gave it more details, such as which day I was going to go, it gave me a visual weather report for the day. That was a really nice touch.

Claude vs ChatGPT

I also tried this prompt with ChatGPT-5.5 Medium and got a similar result. It acted as an agent, just like Claude did, and notified me when it had finished its tasks. It just didn't look as nice. There was no map, or any visual elements at all, and it felt more like I had been given a finished report than the start of a two-way conversation where it asked me for more details.

Both chatbots recommended lunch and a trip to The Roman Baths. Interestingly, ChatGPT assumed I’d get the train, while Claude assumed I’d drive. They also recommended different places to eat, but the core information they both provided was solid.

What was most impressive was that both models could adapt when I reframed the inputs. For example, when I gave them the ages of the kids, student status, a different mode of transport, or changed the day of the trip, both models could cope. Both also identified that since the oldest was a university student, he could get free entry to The Roman Baths.

This part of the test was probably the most meaningful, as it felt much more "multi-step" than simply providing one answer.

Overall, I’d give this test to Claude. You can clearly see that Sonnet 5 is set up for agentic actions. Neither Claude nor ChatGPT could actually do any of the booking for me at the moment, so we're still a long way from true personal-assistant-level autonomy. But for this kind of task, Claude currently has the edge.

A different domain

I wanted to test the models in a different domain that would let Claude show me it had genuinely improved, and that the Bath trip result was not just a fluke of the travel-planning use case. So I asked them both to:

"Build me a simple household budget tracker as a spreadsheet or small tool."

Both models thought for a while about this task, and churned through various options before opting to make a spreadsheet. ChatGPT produced a spreadsheet with a bar chart that tracked how much I’d spent on various household expenses against a budget. Claude, however, went for something simpler: dispensing with a budget, it just tracked actual expenses and created a pie chart showing where my money was going.

Claude’s initial approach was simpler, and easier to understand. Both models provided a .xlsx file, but only Claude provided a button to upload it straight to Google Drive so I could open it in Sheets.

I told ChatGPT, "I wanted the graph to be a pie chart," and it responded: "Absolutely — I’ll update the spreadsheet itself so the dashboard uses a pie chart for spending by category, rather than the current graph style."

It ran into a few problems because it was trying to show both the budget and actual values in the same pie chart, but eventually it worked out that it could show only one and produced a new spreadsheet that did exactly what I asked for.

I then asked Claude to change its spreadsheet to provide a budget section too, and to change the graph into a bar chart. Again, it showed me its workings and added a budget section and bar charts perfectly.

I can’t really separate the two AI models on this task. Both proved they can handle multi-step tasks well, and both were happy to revise the result when I changed the brief.

That, really, is the point. The most interesting AI tests now are not "which chatbot gives the best answer?" They are "which assistant keeps working until the job is actually done?"

On that front, Claude Sonnet 5 feels extremely capable. ChatGPT was close behind, and in some ways just as effective, but Claude felt more naturally organized around the idea of completing work rather than simply responding to prompts. It asked fewer invisible questions, presented its output more helpfully, and made the whole process feel more like collaborating with an assistant than interrogating a chatbot.

For now, neither model is ready to fully take over the job. I still had to check the details, make the decisions, and do the actual booking or uploading myself. But the direction of travel is obvious. The AI war is no longer just about who has the smartest chatbot. It’s about who can build the assistant that gets you closest to a finished task.

Google's new Nano Banana 2 Lite is really fast, as in about four seconds from prompt to image. That speed changes how you think about writing the prompts as much as the schedule of producing them.

The standard Nano Banana 2 model, and most other AI image generators for that matter, take long enough that it's worth spending some time working out the perfect prompt. It can be annoying to have to redo it multiple times when you have to wait up to a minute and still might get it wrong. You learn to be cautious in your prompting.

Nano Banana 2 Lite breaks that rhythm. I noticed my own speed changing to almost match. I didn't feel the need to write a perfect prompt. I treated it more like a sketchpad for ideas that could be quickly tossed out if they didn't work or revised until they did. None of them felt like much of a commitment because another attempt was only a few seconds away.

And it's not as though there's an enormous downgrade in results. For instance, I asked both versions of Nano Banana 2 to make "A steampunk fleet sailing through outer space above Earth, complete with ornate wooden airships covered in brass." There is plenty there to cause fits in any image model.

Without knowing which was which, more than one person guessed wrong or thought it was a trick and the two were from the same model. The one on the left is Nano Banana 2, and the one on the right is its Lite sibling. You can guess one is higher quality if you study it, and certainly over time you can spot where the Lite version might let you down, but when it only takes four seconds to come up with another one, it doesn't matter too much.

Speedy creation

While the standard Nano Banana 2 is good for when you need the highest fidelity or have an extra tricky request, Lite exists for speed and brainstorming. Google positions Nano Banana 2 Lite as the faster, cheaper companion, helpful especially at scale.

For the average person, it means you don't have to invest as much time in your initial prompt and can play around more.

It means you can iterate in interesting ways too. For instance, I started with a prompt for "a busy farmer's market." Crowds remain one of the quickest ways to expose the weaknesses of AI image generators because there are so many people, poses, and interactions happening at once.

The result was fine, but I began adding specific details and Nano Banana 2 Lite obliged me with about a dozen options in a few minutes. Now, my requests for things like children chasing bubbles, an elderly couple buying flowers, a street musician, and a fruit vendor making a sale in the foreground are all right there. There are some flaws and odd details, but for four seconds it's not bad.

Brainstorming prompts

And it should be repeated that Nano Banana 2 Lite is not much of a step down from the larger model and is capable of coherent storytelling, but not necessarily perfectly on the first try. I asked it to "Make a six-panel comic about a businessman who accidentally swaps briefcases with an alien in a train station."

The comic makes sense overall. The characters stayed consistent from one panel to the next, the sequence flowed naturally, and the final reveal landed with exactly the right amount of absurdity. There are, of course, two huge errors in the comic, where the human has no briefcase in the second panel and two in the third.

A couple of further prompts solved the problem, but it's important to note that the easier solution is to iterate, not to spend a lot more time reworking the prompt with extra detail. A version made with the regular Nano Banana 2 model notably did not share the same flaw. In other words, each model has its place, and you might even end up polishing a prompt in Lite and then taking it to the Nano Banana 2 for an even higher-quality version.

Still, when you can make so many images so quickly, you can rethink how you come up with the prompts. That seems to be Google's goal for Nano Banana 2 Lite. It feels designed for the messier parts of the creative process. The bigger model is for a deeper commitment. Making each individual image feel a little less important might eventually encourage people to create far better images.

The best streaming services have added plenty of new movies to their library in July and, as always, there are some horror gems among them.

Many of these horror movies were released at the beginning of July, meaning you can stream them immediately. Others require a bit of a wait, but based on their trailers alone, I'm sure they'll be worth it.

Here are the horror movies I recommend checking out in July 2026.

Talk to Me 

When: July 1
Where: Netflix (US); rent or buy (UK, AU)

Talk to Me was a hugely successful debut from filmmaking brothers Danny and Michael Philippou. After starting out on YouTube, they released this feature film and scared people all over the world.

It follows a group of teenagers as they discover they can contact spirits via a mysterious embalmed hand. They become hooked on the thrill of it until a seemingly innocent party game gets out of control and someone unleashes terrifying supernatural forces. Their second movie, Bring Her Back, is just as good, and you can find it on HBO Max.

World War Z

When: July 1
Where: Prime Video (US); Paramount+ (UK); rent or buy (AU)

Brad Pitt's zombie movie World War Z is a perfect choice if you want a blend of action and horror. The movie is based on the novel of the same name by Max Brooks, and follows Pitt's character Gerry — a former United Nations investigator who travels the world seeking a solution for a zombie apocalypse.

It was a huge box office success at the time of its release, and now you can watch it across the best streaming services. This is one of the zombie movies I go back to, as it's a shot of pure adrenaline.

The Witch 

When: July 1
Where: Netflix (US); rent or buy (UK, AU)

Robert Eggers' The Witch is streaming on Netflix, and considering the trailer for his new movie Werewulf dropped recently, now is the perfect time to watch his first folk horror movie.

Eggers is a huge name in the horror genre now, where he has become known for his love of period settings and mythology. This brilliant horror was also the feature film debut for lead star Anya Taylor-Joy, where she plays a woman who lives in a Puritan family and is accused of being a witch. Keep an eye out for Black Philip too, my favorite character of the bunch.

The Ring

When: July 1
Where: Paramount+ (US, UK); rent or buy (AU)

Gore Verbinski's The Ring is a remake of the iconic Japanese horror, but it's no less brilliant. The English-language version has become a staple among many horror fans, and now you can relive the terrifying moments on Paramount+.

The well loved (and feared) movie follows a journalist who discovers a cursed VHS tape that causes its viewers to die seven days later. It's a classic for a reason and if you haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend it.

Exit 8

When: July 17
Where: Shudder (worldwide)

Exit 8 is one of the great liminal-focused horrors that was released this year, and you can now relive the nightmare on Shudder. I loved this adaptation of the classic horror game, as we follow a man trapped in a never-ending subway tunnel.

Despite taking place in one location, it will leave you on the edge of your seat as you try to figure out if escape is possible for our poor protagonist, known only as The Lost Man. In my interview with director Genki Kawamura he described it as being "like purgatory", and I couldn't agree more.

Saccharine

When: July 24
Where: Shudder (worldwide)

Saccharine taps into the dangerous world of extreme weight-loss trends, and this one is especially disturbing. We follow Hana, a medical student who begins eating human ashes in an effort to lose weight quickly.

If that wasn't strange enough, it gets even stranger. Hana soon finds herself terrorized by the ghost of the person she's eating, making this a unique and truly frightening supernatural horror movie.

Nightborn 

When: July 31
Where: Shudder (worldwide)

Finally, Nightborn arrives on Shudder at the end of the month. Here, Seidi Haarla and Rupert Grint star as new parents living in the Finnish forest. We follow them over the course of one year as they discover that there's something wrong with their baby.

Nightborn explores well-known horror themes like anxieties around motherhood. Director Hanna Bergholm has done this before with the brilliant movie Hatching, and I'm excited to see where her latest story goes.

Not that long ago, I stumbled across my old AudioQuest DragonFly Red USB DAC when rearranging a work cupboard. Its paintwork might have seen better days, but its simple form factor took me back to a really exciting time in hi-fi — when more people were starting to care what their music sounded like again, and making better sound more portable was an important part of that.

The DragonFly line was really quite revolutionary among the best DACs of the time for that reason, and was an education piece as much as anything else. For so long, most people had accepted that the sound from their laptops and portable devices just was whatever it was — but the DragonFly, with its unintimidating, recognizable form factor, helped demonstrate the impact of dedicated audio electronics to a wider audience.

Plus it was just so convenient. I would wager I had one DragonFly model or another plugged into my laptop for most of the years between 2012 and 2018.

Its last model, the DragonFly Cobalt, was released in 2019, but it was eventually discontinued last year due to a rise in costs due to unpredictable US tariffs. Now, with a rethink on materials and supply chains, it’s back with a new version — and AudioQuest is promising the new DragonFly Copper is its most powerful and efficient DAC yet.

That’s because the new 32-bit ESS Sabre ES9218 DAC its outfitted with claims twice the output power of any DragonFly before it, but with a smaller processor that has helped reduce power consumption by a quarter. The new copper case, which AudioQuest says has been “informed and inspired” by the RF-draining barrels of its premium Mythical Creatures cabling, also adds to its improved performance, helping to minimize noise.

It also looks pretty nice, which is a bonus, and it still has the little light-up dragonfly to let you know the sample rate you’re listening to, from green at 44.1kHz, blue at 48kHz, yellow at 88.2kHz and light blue for 96kHz.

Long-time DragonFly designer Gordon Rankin is behind the tuning of this generation too, and AudioQuest says he has optimized it in a way that reduces distortion to a level “significantly below” that of previous models.

The one thing that AudioQuest hasn’t updated, though, is the need for the DragonTail USB-C converter, because the DragonFly itself is still rocking an older style USB-A connector.

While this was super-convenient for my laptop in 2015, my laptop is all USB-C now (along with my phone, and most of the rest of my life), and so some of that once-effortless form factor feels lost in 2026 (particularly because my personal chance of misplacing this necessary dongle is almost devastatingly high).

AudioQuest isn’t alone here — several USB DACs on the market rely on a similarly clunky addition — but there are tons of USB-C options, and it feels like an obvious problem for the DragonFly to solve.

I asked whether it had been considered, and while I wasn’t given a firm answer, it was suggested that the smaller connector wouldn’t be great for stability and longevity, but also that maintaining USB-A also gives it greater flexibility to use with as many devices as possible.

As for how it sounds, from a first listen, it’s as promising as ever. Although I wasn’t able to do any A/B testing due to the demo using an iPad with no 3.5mm jack, listening with a pair of Austrian Audio’s The Arranger through the DragonFly Copper sounds incredibly clean and precise.

Now, these $1,100 / £900 / AU$1,759 open-back headphones are undoubtedly not-to-shabby on their own, but even if we credit them with a good chunk of the space and airiness I hear on a listen of Come Away With Me by Norah Jones, I’m certain that the amount of clarity and insight is very much aided by the DragonFly.

Jones’ breathy voice is sweet and full of texture, as are the instruments — the DragonFly’s fine detail retrieval able to fully enunciate the leading edges of notes all the way through to their decay in a way that I’m confident you just wouldn’t hear without it.

Of course, the DragonFly Copper re-enters a market that is very different today, with more wireless headphones and much more competition in the affordable USB DAC market too. But talking to people in the hi-fi world, there’s a clear excitement for the DragonFly’s return, and I think that extends to more than just nostalgia.

I’m certainly excited to spend more time with it when it goes on sale in September for $250 / £230 (about AU$430 but there’s no confirmed Australian price as yet).

Long before today's wafer-thin OLED TVs became commonplace on our living room walls, televisions were big, bulky boxes built around cathode ray tubes, known as CRTs. They were heavy, deep and, for decades, they were everywhere.

But then back in the 2010s, manufacturers stopped making them, and now most people would consider CRT TVs to be an outdated technology — a stepping stone in the evolution of television before they were replaced with flatter, lighter and more capable displays took over.

But for a growing number of collectors, enthusiasts and retro gaming fans, these CRT TVs are far more than relics of the past. Browse Reddit, specialist forums or YouTube, and you’ll find people hunting for rare models, restoring decades-old sets, and swapping advice on how to keep their ageing televisions alive.

Some enthusiasts travel hundreds of miles to collect a particular screen. One of my favorite YouTube documentaries about CRT TVs tells the story of an enthusiast who obtained the biggest CRT TV ever made: the Sony PVM-4300, weighing a huge 200kg (440lb), shipped from Japan over to the US.

At a time when almost every piece of consumer technology is designed to become thinner, lighter and packed with smart features, CRT TVs have developed an unusually devoted following.

I think that raises an interesting question. If people still want CRT TVs, and if enthusiasm for them remains strong long after manufacturers stopped making them, why aren’t companies building new ones?

To find out, I spoke to display engineers, industry analysts and a former Sony CRT expert. What I discovered challenged my assumptions about why technologies disappear. The biggest obstacles aren’t a lack of demand or even the technology itself. They’re the factories, materials, regulations and supply chains that disappear around them.

But before we get there, it’s worth understanding what CRT TVs are and why people continue to love them decades after manufacturers stopped making them.

What are CRT TVs/monitors — and why do people still love them?

CRT stands for cathode ray tube. It’s a display technology that creates images by firing streams of electrons at a phosphor-coated screen. The phosphors gain energy from the electrons and generate light, creating the image.

Although the underlying tech dates back to the late 19th century, it’s safe to say that CRTs were the dominant display tech of the 20th century. For decades, if you owned a TV or a computer monitor, it almost certainly used cathode ray tube.

The popularity of CRT TVs peaked around the turn of the millennium. Global CRT PC monitor sales reached around 90 million units in 2000, and CRT TV sales peaked at around 130 million units in 2005.

Then, remarkably quickly, they disappeared. As LCD and other flat panel tech improved throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, most manufacturers began shifting production away from CRTs.

Which is why, within little more than a decade, the TV tech that had once dominated homes and offices for generations had vanished from retailers.

But just because you can’t buy new CRT TVs anymore doesn’t mean enthusiasm for them has completely disappeared.

Part of the appeal for enthusiasts and collectors is nostalgia. These are the same screens many people grew up with. They’re the televisions that sat in your living room, your bedroom, maybe even your classroom.

At a time when tech feels defined by algorithms, smart features, subscriptions and AI, it’s no surprise that some people are drawn to older devices that feel simpler and more tangible. It’s the same reason there’s been a continuous interest in the best record players and vinyl over the years — an interest that's grown over the last decade.

But nostalgia isn’t the whole story. Retro gaming enthusiasts argue that older games look better on CRT TVs because that’s how they were originally designed to be played. The way CRTs display images can soften pixel edges, blend colors together and create visual effects that developers wanted players to see, and actually designed their imagery around.

Others appreciate characteristics that are difficult to fully recreate on modern displays, including their motion handling, deep blacks and analogue look. While today’s OLED and LCD screens are sharper, brighter and more efficient, some enthusiasts argue that older games, films and video formats can feel more natural on the technology they were originally created for.

For some collectors, owning a CRT is as much about preserving an important piece of technological history as it is about using it.

There’s no single reason that people love CRT TVs. But whatever the motivation, communities dedicated to CRT restoration, repair and preservation continue to thrive.

So, if people still care enough to hunt down ageing CRTs, restore them and keep them running long after manufacturers stopped making them, why aren’t companies building new ones?

As someone with a reasonable understanding of modern display tech but very little knowledge of how CRTs were actually made, I became fascinated by that question. And it turns out the answer has surprisingly little to do with whether people still want CRT TVs and far more to do with how technologies actually disappear.

To build a CRT, we’d need to rebuild a whole industry

You might assume the story of why CRT TVs disappeared is fairly straightforward. Something like: flat screen TVs arrived, they were better than what came before them and consumers moved on. But the experts I interviewed painted a much more complicated picture.

I spoke to Hugues Orgitello, an engineer, electronics expert and founder and CEO of electronic design house Aes Techno, who told me that CRTs weren't necessarily replaced because they suddenly became inferior.

"It wasn’t just because flat screens looked better. Late CRTs were excellent," Orgitello says. "In fact, flat screens weren’t as good initially. They improved after new regulations."

That's a surprising thing to hear given how often technological progress is presented as a simple story of old being replaced by new.

So if better picture quality wasn't the whole story, what happened? To answer that, we need to look beyond the screen itself.

When I first began researching why manufacturers don’t start producing CRTs again, I naively imagined they might just need to secure some funding, dust off some old blueprints, and turn the lights back on at an old factory. But the reality is way more daunting.

"CRT production required massive specialized glass fabrication, vacuum tube assembly, phosphor coating, shadow mask or aperture grille alignment, electron gun manufacturing, high-voltage electronics, and precision calibration," explains Mark Vena, the CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research "Much of that supply chain has disappeared.”

Modern display manufacturing is built around very different technologies. So that means the factories, suppliers and expertise that once supported CRT production have largely all gone.

According to Orgitello, many of the specialist components required to build CRTs are no longer being made at all either. "Leaded CRT-grade glass isn't made anymore. The specialty plants closed or converted. Same for shadow masks, deflection yokes, and electron guns."

And for this reason, even repairs to existing CRT TVs can be difficult. "New deflection yokes are no longer produced; technicians have to salvage them from donor units,” Orgitello tells me. Deflection yokes are the coils that steer the CRT’s electron beam across the screen to create an image.

That means that if a company were to attempt to manufacture CRTs in 2026, they wouldn't simply be launching a new product. "You'd be rebuilding an entire industrial base," Orgitello says.

Considering the environmental regulations

One of the recurring themes that came up in my conversations with display experts was how technologies don’t just compete on performance. It’s just as much about cost, regulation, manufacturing and environmental impact. And that’s where CRT TVs run into serious trouble.

Even if someone managed to rebuild the factories, suppliers and specialist expertise needed to make them, another obstacle would be modern environmental regulations.

"Could it pass today's regulations? In the EU, almost certainly not," Orgitello explains. The problem comes down to the materials that made CRTs possible in the first place.

Those challenges extend far beyond Europe. Mark Vena describes CRTs as "a nightmare by modern product standards."

"They are heavy, fragile, power-hungry, high-voltage devices that often contain leaded glass and other materials that trigger regulatory, shipping, repair, and recycling challenges,” Vena says.

Few people understand display technology better than Gary Mandle. Now a consultant and owner of Outtahand Displays, he previously spent decades at Sony, where he worked as both an engineer and product manager during the CRT era.

"I would say there’s no chance of CRT returning,” he tells me “The reason is that the materials used in manufacturing are not very environmentally friendly. That's what killed CRT."

The materials list does read like a catalogue of substances that modern manufacturers generally try to avoid. "A CRT carries lead in the glass to inhibit X-ray emissions from exiting the glass envelope. The CRT gun uses cadmium, so it would also be a problem to manufacture, and the face uses phosphors, which were also very nasty,” Mandle tells me.

It's difficult to imagine any regulators enthusiastically welcoming the return of products built around materials like these.

But could engineers solve these problems?

Of course, engineering has overcome plenty of seemingly impossible challenges before. So what would happen if a company genuinely wanted to build a CRT TV today and had the time, money and resources to solve some of the biggest problems in making them?

"Could engineers solve this? Partly,” Orgitello tells me. He says that some elements would be relatively straightforward.

"The electronics around the tube are easy to modernize,” he says. But other parts would be much harder. "The know-how for glass and guns could be reconstructed at high cost."

But there are limitations here that have less to do with engineering and more to do with physics. "CRT depth grows with screen size (no flat 50-inch CRT is physically possible),” Orgitello says. And this is one of the reasons CRTs became so bulky. The larger the display, the deeper and heavier the tube needed to be.

Which means there were also safety concerns. "Very large screens require a thick glass face for safety since there is a vacuum inside the CRT. If the CRT were to implode, then the CRT gun could exit out the front of the face and hurt the viewer," Mandle explains.

Even if manufacturers were willing to tackle these challenges, Mandle says that the costs would be substantial. "The most difficult technical problem is building the CRT gun,” he tells me. “The most expensive part would be building the assembly line.”

"The TV industry is now built around flat panel scale economics,” Vena explains on this same point. Today's display supply chains support televisions, but they also support smartphones, laptops, tablets, cars, digital signage and all sorts of other products with a screen. And those enormous production volumes help drive costs down. Whereas CRTs would be operating in the opposite direction.

"CRTs would essentially be a boutique product with high tooling costs, low production volume, difficult shipping economics, and limited retail appeal," Vena says.

So while a surprisingly large audience of enthusiasts and collectors may be passionate about CRT TVs, passion doesn't necessarily translate into a viable manufacturing business. "That math is ugly, even if the enthusiast's passion is real,” Vena says.

The CRT experience isn’t dead

Despite all of this, CRT enthusiasts may not be entirely out of luck. Vena believes the future isn't likely to involve reopening CRT factories. Instead, it’ll be about recreating the experience using modern technology.

"The more realistic market opportunity is better CRT-like experiences through modern displays, FPGA gaming hardware, low-latency scalers, scanline filters, shader engines, and display modes optimized for retro content,” he tells me.

We're already seeing examples of this approach emerge, with specialist hardware, apps and display modes designed specifically to recreate the look and feel of CRT displays — even down to simulating the physics in some cases.

The collector market clearly demonstrates that demand for authenticity still exists. But, at least for now, the industry appears more interested in simulating CRTs than manufacturing them.

What CRT TVs teach us about technological progress

When I started researching this article, I assumed the story of CRT TVs was a fairly simple one. A new technology arrived, it was better than what came before it, people upgraded and the old technology disappeared. But after speaking to engineers and display experts, I realized the reality is far more interesting.

As Mandle explains, CRTs weren't immediately outclassed by the displays that followed them. "At the time, other technologies, such as LCD, were in their infancy, so CRT was always preferred since it didn't have color shifts when you viewed it at an angle, and of course, it had much better black performance,” he tells me.

Of course, modern displays have improved enormously since then. "LCD has improved by leaps and bounds since then. OLED is another technology that outperforms CRT. It has blacks even better than CRT, and no geometry issues since it's a matrix, not a raster. Then you have microLED on the horizon, which has even more improvements,” Mandle says.

So yes, in many ways, today's display technology is better. But that's only part of the story. What fascinated me most about CRT TVs is that they reveal something we often overlook when we talk about technological progress. Because we tend to focus on the products themselves and assume technologies live or die based on whether consumers want them.

But every technology actually sits on top of a much larger ecosystem of factories, materials, regulations, expertise, suppliers and investment. And sometimes that ecosystem starts to fall apart before interest in the technology does.

That's exactly what happened with CRTs. "Technologies don't usually die because consumers move on, they die because the inputs disappear," Orgitello tells me. "Specialty supply chains consolidate and shut down, regulators tilt toward the cleaner substitute, and capital and engineering talent flow elsewhere."

This felt like the real answer to my original question. Why don't we make CRT TVs anymore? Because enthusiasm can outlive an industry. The passion for CRT TVs remains, but the factories, materials, expertise and supply chains that sustained it do not.

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Welcome to the June 2026 edition of the Blu-ray Bounty. This is where we review the latest 4K Blu-ray releases each month, judging each disc on its video and audio quality, to see if they’ll make a worthy addition to your collection. If you’re new to Blu-ray Bounty, you can check out previous editions here.

We’re big fans of 4K Blu-ray here at TechRadar, and some of us are even collectors ourselves. As TechRadar’s TV tester, I use 4K Blu-ray to test the best TVs and the best soundbars, as it offers uncompressed video and audio for the best picture and sound you can get at home.

In last month’s May 2026 edition of the Blu-ray Bounty we looked at five discs, including the highly anticipated Fight Club, as well as Some Like It Hot, Wuthering Heights, Leaving Las Vegas and Point Blank.

This month, we’re looking at seven discs, including one that’s getting a lot of buzz as 'reference-level'. As always on the Blu-ray Bounty, we’re not talking about the movies themselves, just the disc's picture and audio quality.

We’ll be using our usual setup consisting of the LG G5, one of the best OLED TVs of 2025, the Panasonic DP-UB820, the best 4K Blu-ray player on the market, and the Samsung HW-Q990C soundbar system.

As I'm based in the UK, these releases are based on UK release dates, so don't be surprised if any of these titles are already out where you are, or if one of your picks isn't listed — it might just be coming to where you are later.

Speed Racer (Warner Bros.)

Speed Racer tells the story of Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), a young man who becomes a racecar driver, following in his older brother’s footsteps, in order to save his family's business. Based on the manga series of the same name, the movie also stars Christina Ricci, Susan Sarandon and John Goodman.

Speed Racer looks astounding on 4K Blu-ray. Where it really shines is in its color reproduction. Colors are bold, vibrant and punchy throughout, taking on an almost neon-like level of saturation, which perfectly suits the movie. Whether it’s the pulsing lights of the racetrack or the 1960s-inspired clothing and decor of the neighborhood, the colors seriously pop on screen. On the LG G5 I used, there was a gorgeous depth and richness to said colors.

Black tones during night races are inky, textures are incredibly crisp, especially in people's skin and hair, and even the cartoon-ish CGI of the crowd and cars on the track is slick and sharp. The disc also really pushes the boundaries on motion, with the swerving cars and constantly changing camera angles serving as a showcase for your display’s motion handling.

Sound-wise, this is a seriously impressive disc. The Dolby Atmos soundtrack is lively, engaging and ridiculously detailed. During the opening race, the bass of the Mach 5’s was powerful but tightly controlled, and the hum of passing engines through the wind was crystal clear through the HW-Q990C’s rear speakers.

There’s ample room in the Atmos mix too, giving every element a chance to breathe. The mapping of sound is impressive too. As Speed grinds his car on the edge of the track in the opening race, I heard the movement of this through the left rear channel clear as day, despite all the bass from the subwoofer, and the speech and other effects through the front channels.

EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert (Universal Pictures)

From Baz Luhrmann (director of the 2022 Elvis biopic) comes EPiC Elvis Presley In Concert, which features never-before-seen archival footage of Elvis’ early performances as part of his legendary Las Vegas residency, as well as archive interviews with Elivs telling his own story.

The disc has a DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack that sounds superb. While Elvis’ narration, made of clips from interviews, is clear, as is the audio of the behind-the-scenes studio sessions, it’s the live performances on stage that sound most impressive. The drums are punchy but beautifully intricate, giving the subwoofer a real workout. Elvis’ vocals are powerful, detailed, and delivered with real clarity. The bass is refined and clearly audible, and guitars are bright and clean. This is a perfectly balanced mix that sounds excellent, regardless of the track. Highlights include Polk Salad Annie and Burning Love.

While visuals aren’t the main feature of this disc, the restored footage looks brilliant. Textures are smooth and crisp, with close-up shots of Elvis’ face even picking out his stubble. Colors are bold and bright, perfectly capturing Elvis’ flashy on-stage costumes and his often colorful offstage outfits . There’s a nice punchy brightness to the picture as well, with highlights on bejeweled, sequin-encrusted costumes really glinting on screen. Naturally, there’s some film grain present from the cameras used at the time, but most shots have been cleanly restored.

Bullet In The Head (1991) (Arrow Video)

Bullet In The Head, directed by John Woo, follows Ben, Paul and Frank, three friends who flee Hong Kong after murdering a member of a rival gang. They become smugglers in Saigon, Vietnam, at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967. The movie stars Tony Leung, Jacky Cheung and Waise Lee.

Visually, this is a solid restoration from Arrow. While the movie still has the grainy, sometimes hazy look you’d expect of early-90s Hong Kong Cinema, textures have been cleaned up well, especially in skin and faces, with more intricate detail such as hair looking refined. Colors can appear bold, whether it's the red of Ben’s T-shirt or the brightly colored buildings in Saigon. Black levels are deep during night-time scenes, and there's some nice contrast during scenes in the market, or when the trio are at the Bolero club in Saigon.

There are three soundtrack options with this disc: Cantonese Mono and Dolby Atmos, and English Mono. The Atmos soundtrack is a more spacious extension of the mono, but it does add more volume and depth to the audio. Speech is clearer in the Atmos mix, and other sounds, such as punches and crashes during fight scenes, have more impact. Gunshots in shootouts have good clarity, and while they don’t quite utilize the rear channels as well as other movies I’ve watched, there’s still some nice power on display. Bass from explosions is also tightly controlled.

Body Heat (Criterion Collection)

Starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, Body Heat follows lawyer Ned (Hurt) and Matty (Turner), the wife of a businessman named Edmund (Richard Crenna) as Ned and Matty begin an affair and plot to murder Edmund in order to get his fortune and run away together. The movie was inspired by the 1944 movie Double Indemnity (which I reviewed for the November 2024 Blu-ray Bounty).

Visually, this is another top-notch restoration job from Criterion. Textures look realistic, particularly in skin and in finer details such as hair. As the movie has such a sweltering setting, sweat features regularly and really shows off the level of detail present. Colors are punchy, with more intricate objects such as a red matchbook on Ned’s desk really popping. There are a number of night scenes showing rich black tones, as well as strong shadows cast by bright lights across the character's bodies and faces.

The disc comes with both DTS-HD Stereo and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround soundtrack options. Opting for the 5.1 surround, speech is clear throughout the movie and there are some nice details present, such as the chirping of crickets, which come through the rear channels during some night sequences. The other main component of the soundtrack is the dramatic, string-led score which does a good job utilizing the full surround channels.

Avatar: Fire & Ash (20th Century Studios)

The third movie in the Avatar franchise, Avatar: Fire & Ash continues to follow Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) on Pandora, who must now face challenges from an aggressive, new Na’vi tribe. The movie also stars Sigourney Weaver, Steven Lang and Kate Winslet, with the former two appearing in all three of the current Avatar movies.

Avatar: Fire & Ash is visually impressive. The animation is slick, with crisp textures and detail such as the Na’vi’s braids and skin looking 3D-like. Colors are bold and vibrant, whether it’s the blue of the Na’vi themselves or the seas of Pandora and the rich reds of the warpaint of the Mangkwan. Environments are striking, with lush, green trees and fields, with textures in cliffs and rocks showing intricate detail. Night-time scenes show inky blacks and when fire is added to the mix, it shows the discs' strong contrast.

The Dolby Atmos mix included here is excellent for showing off a home theater system. Any sequences where creatures such as the Nightwraiths fly overhead delivers impressive height, with their flight paths accurately mapped. Gunshots have real weight to them, especially with automatic weapons, creating a real thud through both the soundbar and the subwoofer. Speech is clear throughout, even in the most chaotic battle scenes. During these battle scenes, whenever an arrow is fired, it’s extremely detailed, coming through the rear channels crystal clear. Like some other modern blockbusters I’ve tested, this is a great Atmos soundtrack.

Five Easy Pieces (Criterion Collection)

Five Easy Pieces tells the story of Robert Dupea (Jack Nicholson), a piano prodigy turned oil rig worker who returns home to his rich, estranged family and attempts to reconnect upon hearing about his father’s ailing health. The movie also stars Karen Black as Rayette, Robert’s girlfriend.

Criterion delivers another great restoration here. Colors really pop on screen, shown in people’s brightly-colored clothing. A scene at the bowling alley near the opening of the movie shows this, with almost every patron’s clothing looking vivid. Textures, such as the grime on the oil rigger’s faces and frown lines in Robert’s forehead, look lifelike and detailed. There’s plenty of film grain present and it’s more pronounced in some scenes than others (namely outdoor, daytime scenes), so cinephiles will be happy.

For audio, there’s only a mono soundtrack present. This won’t be an audio showcase for your home theater system, but speech is clear and other effects, such as Robert slamming himself against his car-seat, have some impact. The best part of this audio mix is whenever someone plays the piano, namely the scene where Robert plays Chopin’s ‘Prelude, Op. 28, No.4’, as it sounds bright, clean and detailed. This is a well-restored audio mix.

36 Hours (AKA Terror Street) (Hammer)

36 Hours (released in the US as Terror Street) tells the story of Major Bill Rogers (Dan Duryea), a US pilot who is framed for the murder of his estranged wife Katherine (Elsie Albiin) while he tries to visit her in London. He then has 36 hours to solve her murder so he can return back to the States.

This is a great restoration from Hammer. Textures have been cleaned-up well, making people and their clothing look incredibly lifelike. Contrast is strong throughout, with deep blacks, punchy whites and a full range of gray tones to create a dynamic image. There is the occasional shot where textures can appear fuzzy, but it's rare and considering the age of the movie, it’s surprisingly good-looking throughout. There is grain present, which will please cinephiles, but again there’s been a surprisingly thorough clean-up job here.

There are two options for soundtracks here: mono and DTS-HD 5.1 MA. The mono mix is louder and more direct, but the 5.1 mix has a warmer, cleaner sound that fits the tone of the movie. Dialogue is controlled and clean in all parts of the movie and the melodramatic score is bright and bold, using the rear channels to great effect. Other effects such as gunshots and punches have some solid impact to them as well.

You could easily mistake upcoming action game Blood Message for a first-party PlayStation title. Set in Ancient China, it blends exciting set-piece sequences with brutal combat and cutscenes with a high level of cinematic flair.

I went hands-on with an early slice of the game at Summer Game Fest 2026 and had the chance to exclusively chat with senior director of global publishing Jeff Hu, who describes it as a "dream" for developer 24 Entertainment.

"We are all gamers. We grew up with so many great titles," he begins. "To make a AAA game is every team member's dream, and, after many years experiencing other titles, we thought it would be a good time for us to try to make a game like that."

He explains that the overall direction was chosen because it is "the way that's best to tell this story," but still doesn't shy away from mentioning a few inspirations.

"We are all fans of so many great titles, like Uncharted, like The Last of Us," he says. "Different members have their own favorites, but we're all inspired by different great titles."

Universal appeal

Blood Message follows an anonymous soldier in the late Tang Dynasty, roughly 850AD, but Hu argues that its themes are timeless and will resonate with players around the world today.

"This story happened just in the Tang Dynasty, and this story is so magical," he explains.

"[The hero travels with his son] from the Chinese West to the East to deliver a very important message about their victory to the to the capital of the Tang Dynasty, Chang'an, so we can use different landscapes and let players experience different elements.

"We chose a very unique angle in that we chose a nameless soldier itself to tell this story, and also combine that with the emotional bond between father and son. There are so many universal emotions."

In between the action-packed chases, tense stealth sections, and bloody, all-out brawls, I really appreciated the unique aesthetic of the game's world. The deserts of China are rarely explored in video games, and I imagine its clay huts and lightweight robes will come as a surprise to many players.

Hu is careful to clarify that the game isn't intended to be a history lesson.

"We picked this story not because we're trying to make a Western audience learn something or understand something," he says. "We believe this is a good story to connect with human nature."

Still, he does reckon that audiences less familiar with the setting will "have a better understanding of ancient China" after fully "experiencing the story."

You might have to wait a while before diving in, though, as Blood Message doesn't have a release date yet. The team has confirmed that it will come to both PC and consoles.

• Conversation focus is being limited to three hours a month for some Meta glasses users
• For a longer 15 hours a month limit you'll need to pay for Meta One Premium
• The feature is handled on device, so it's unclear why it has been paywalled

The Meta Ray-Bans and other AI glasses can perform a slew of useful tasks thanks to their wearable hardware and digital assistant — but Meta has just announced that one of those features will be getting serious limitations as it introduces a paid subscription plan that will unlock more usage time.

Conversation focus was showcased at Meta Connect last year, and is essentially an audio mixer for your real-life conversations. When you switch the feature on — using the voice command "Hey Meta, start conversation focus" — the specs’ microphones will pick up the voice of the person you’re looking at, the AI will separate their voice from the background noise, and then your glasses’ speakers will play what they’re saying to you to amplify their speech and make it stand out.

It’s an impressive feature, and very useful if you struggle to hear people in crowded spaces — or are starting to become a little hard of hearing and want a voice boost much of the time — but this is the feature Meta is now starting to limit. If you only have the free account that you create when you set up your glasses in the Meta AI app, you’ll just have three hours of conversation focus a month (as spotted by The Verge).

If you want more hours you’ll need to sign up to a paid Meta One Premium subscription, which costs $19.99 per month. Notably this subscription doesn’t unlock unlimited conversation focus access; instead your limit is bumped up to 15 hours a month.

In addition to this, Meta One Premium will also give you access to more advanced Meta AI reasoning models through the app, and expanded access to image and video generation models.

Was this inevitable?

We know that unlimited free AI access isn’t sustainable. Every AI query has a data center and energy cost to AI companies like Meta, and eventually they'll need to recuperate those costs or risk serious financial struggles.

However, no matter how inevitable a Meta AI glasses subscription seemed, this isn’t how I imagined it would roll out — frankly it’s quite a bad look for Meta, and I hope it reverses course.

My frustrations with this change as a Meta AI glasses user are three-fold. First, having something that was previously free taken away is never fun, especially as features like conversation focus felt like they’d already been paid for via the purchase of Meta’s glasses.

If Meta One had instead locked a new more powerful AI model behind a subscription, or some powerful new tool, that would feel very different. Your glasses would still do everything you were told they could do at launch, but to get some serious upgrades you’d need to pay up — sure this wouldn’t feel all that amazing either, but at least Meta wouldn’t be seen to be taking a feature away and holding it hostage.

My next frustration is that it’s conversation focus specifically that is being taken away. As I've mentioned, this is something of an accessibility tool, and while I’m sure most users only activate it periodically if there’re in a very noisy bar or somewhere similarly packed, for some I can see conversation focus being a tool they rely on frequently if they have more general hearing troubles but aren’t quite ready for a more sophisticated aid.

The flip side, unfortunately, is that if conversation focus isn’t a tool everyone uses all the time it’s the one least likely to actually inconvenience most Meta glasses users, allowing the company to experiment with paid access to tools without upsetting a large section of their consumer base.

Finally, according to Meta itself, conversation focus is handled entirely on-device. Your Meta AI glasses can offer the function without an internet connection, meaning it shouldn’t be costing its data centers anything to process.

In a way, taking unlimited conversation focus usage away is like Meta limiting how many photos your glasses can take a month. All the hardware and software tech is on your device; it’s just being locked away in what seems like a classic case of corporate greed.

Now, the silver lining at the moment is that if you haven’t noticed any rate limits yet, or heard about Meta One through your specs, it’s likely that your glasses are still working the same as they always have. As explained in the help article, “Meta One is currently in limited testing and isn't available everywhere yet.”

Additionally, I’m hoping the fact that Meta One is still in testing means Meta won’t be afraid to reverse course, especially as this decision feels so nonsensical for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Or perhaps it’ll be forced to rethink things if its AI glasses rivals (including the incoming Android XR specs) boast similar features at a similar price with no such paywall or usage limit.

Otherwise, this feels like yet another unforced error for Meta in the smart glasses space. How can we now trust tha tMeta won’t paywall any AI glasses feature we’ve previously had access to?

Following the announcement of its more budget-friendly AI glasses — including a pair styled by Kylie Jenner — I hoped it might be getting back on the right track. This latest announcement has knocked my confidence, but the ball is still in Meta’s court — perhaps Meta Connect 2026 will see it properly turn things around.

PlayStation has announced that it will end the production of disc releases after more than 30 years of physical games, confirming that everything that you buy will be digital-only from January 2028 onwards.

There will inevitably still be some new games on sale in stores, but likely only empty cases containing printed download codes. It's devastating news for physical game collectors and those skeptical of digital ownership, but also likely to sting for all PlayStation fans.

There's nothing quite like the feeling of getting your hands on a physical game and almost everyone will have a favorite, not to mention fond memories of scrounging money to buy them or receiving them as gifts as a kid.

That's why I've asked every PlayStation gamer on the TechRadar team to look back on some of their favorite physical releases for a final, teary-eyed send-off.

Hidden secrets revealed

I’m all for great cover art, but the PlayStation case I’ll always remember is that of the original Metal Gear Solid from 1998. That’s because the back of it contained a crucial clue for the game that stumped me for an embarrassing amount of time.

“You should contact Meryl by Codec,” Colonel Campbell says at one point during the stealth classic. “Wasn’t her frequency written on the back of the CD case?” It took a few hours (possibly days) for me to realise that he meant the game’s physical case, where a tiny screenshot reveals that life-saving frequency.

As much as I enjoyed fighting Psycho Mantis and creeping around under cardboard boxes, it was this moment that made me doff my cap to the game’s designers — and it’s sadly the kind of dovetailing between games and the physical world that just won’t be possible from 2028.

Mark Wilson, Managing Editor, News

Please insert disc 2

I've been on one PlayStation or another for around 25 years. I've got fond memories of unwrapping physical releases, poring over manuals and physical maps of digital locations, and I'm genuinely emotional at the prospect of the era of physical releases, buying resold games cheaply, and owning your own damn games (not just the license) coming to an end.

Perhaps my favorite physical disc memory is playing through Final Fantasy 9 while sharing a controller with my friend. I was around nine years old.

The party suffered Beatrix's ultimate move, the screen went black... and up came the "Change to Disc 2" message. We freaked out - I think both of us had forgotten this was a multi-disc game.

Matt Evans, Senior Editor, Fitness, Wellness & Wearables

Pour one out for the creamiest PS4 cover

I have an entire bookshelf of PS5 and PS4 games, but there’s only one with cover art that looks like a guy drowning in… cream. (I have been reliably informed that I will get in big trouble for suggesting it looks like anything else, so I leave that entirely to your own imagination.)

I’m, of course, talking about The Evil Within 2, with its striking front that depicts troubled detective protagonist Sebastian Castellanos immersed in a sea of milky fluid. He looks so peaceful, eyes shut as if asleep and his hands clasped together almost in prayer — a perfect reflection of the game's dream-world setting and undercurrent of religious themes.

It’s the kind of cover art with layers that you can only truly appreciate if you have it in your hands. There’s a creepy monster looming just over his shoulder, reaching up to pull him deeper into the nightmarish stew, and the outlines of floating skulls to really emphasize the threat.

It tells you everything you need to know about the game inside: this man is in imminent danger, and you need to get him out.

Even so, my absolute favourite detail is one that most would miss. The artwork is entirely monochrome aside from Sebastian’s wedding band, which glows gold on his ring finger. A little symbol of familial warmth and hope among all the sterile, creepy white. It’s only fitting; this is a game about going through hell to save your daughter, after all.

Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor

Flushed to bits with Balatro Special Edition

Balatro was easily my favorite game of 2024, and even now I’ll dip in to play more — either to see how deep into a run I can venture, or to slowly chip away at Completionist++.

I picked it up digitally a little after launch, but when the Special Edition debuted with a physical disc and a handful of real cards from the game it was an immediate buy for me. Even if it meant I’d own it twice on PS5.

Admittedly the box is a little lackluster — the jokers are an odd selection, and considering it’s more of a collectible I would have loved a retro-style book insert to have been included — but I do love the cover art despite its simplicity, and I mostly saw picking up the game again as just a way to show the LocalThunk-made masterpiece some well-deserved extra appreciation!

(P.S. Bonus shoutout to the holographic cover art of Kingdom Hearts 2 on the PS2, that, combined with the Tetsuya Nomura-drawn art, was peak 2006-cool).

Hamish Hector, Senior Staff Writer

RIP Rockstar's iconic maps

Ironically, some of my favorite physical releases have been from one of the companies that’s being partially blamed for this disc-less future: Rockstar.

Rockstar’s move to not include an actual disc in the ‘physical’ release of GTA 6, instead just having a download code, means the biggest game of the generation, maybe even of all time, won’t really be having a physical release, and Sony’s announcement makes that seem especially bleak.

Buying a physical edition of a Rockstar game used to be a joy, as they often came with a fold-out map.

I used to love putting the disc in to install the game, then poring over the map, marvelling at the ever-expanding size of the titles and trying to figure out secrets and cool places to visit.

It was part of the experience, almost like you were preparing to vacation in the world. I remember doing it with the first ever GTA game on PC, right up to Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4, which, sadly, is likely to be the last time I open a physical Rockstar game...

Matthew Hanson, Managing Editor, Core Tech

Even the ugly covers can be winners

Ico is a truly gorgeous game. The art style is absolutely perfect as an accompaniment to leading Yorda through the game’s world and fighting off the shadow monsters trying to kidnap her. And the box art in Japan and Europe nailed its atmosphere to perfection.

I owned the original cardboard case, which featured this gorgeous sleeve, an inner case with Yorda contrasted against a black tunnel and a range of art postcards conveying stunning moments from the game. Any time I slipped it open and removed the disc to place into the PlayStation, it was like I was entering the game’s mysterious castle step-by-step and made it feel like a living artwork.

Which is why it will never not be funny to me that this is the artwork Sony used to promote the game in the US. Rather than the tender, minimalist puzzler you’re actually getting, it looks like it’s advertising a straight-to-video 90s horror about a haunted windmill.

It’s the kind of embarrassing thing you whip up when you first discover Photoshop, decidedly not the kind of thing you release to a market of 300 million people, and for that I will always find it highly amusing.

Josh Russell, Reviews Editor

The best things in life are freebies

Cyberpunk 2077 is my favorite physical PlayStation game I own.

Outside of clocking hundreds of hours exploring Night City, I love it because it came with so much more than just the game’s disc, meaning my copy of Cyberpunk 2077 is a real collectors item for fans of the beloved RPG.

I enjoy collecting video game artwork and this release came with crammed with postcards, stickers, a game map, and a world compendium full of important lore. There’s something just so satisfying looking through all that whilst a game downloads, you’ve got everything you need to know about Night City in there without needing to even get out your phone.

This is a sad day for those of us who love physical video game collectibles, and even a freebie as small as a stack of postcards can make you feel like you’re buying something special. Cyberpunk 2077 has truly gorgeous aesthetics and so I’m glad I was able to get my hands on some free artwork back when I bought the game.

It’s a shame that future games might not get the same treatment.

Lucy Buglass, Senior Entertainment Writer

The last of these?

Having missed out on picking up any special editions over the PS3 and PS4 generations, it's the PS5 where I have really been able to treat myself to some special, and now favorite, physical editions of games.

Chief among them are both the collector's editions of The Last of Us titles on PS5: the WLF Edition of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, and the Firefly Edition of The Last of US Part 1.

Not only are these spectacular editions in their own right with wonderfully arranged boxes and layouts, fantastic steel books and a host of physical goodies to peruse, they mean more to me because I couldn't get special editions of both when they first came around.

They're in a box right now due to an impending house move, but these will be front and centre in my new office shelving units when I get the chance to display them in all their glory.

Hopefully, Sony finds a way to keep collector's editions like these going, though a large part of me will be very sad that there's no actual disc inside...

Rob Dwiar, Managing Editor, Gaming & Streaming

Unboxing a beating

I’ll admit I’m not really a big collector of physical copies of games these days thanks to the ease of digital downloads.

This was different back when games used to come in cardboard boxes or stuffed DVD cases, and had things like maps or chunky manuals with extra lore in them. There is a caveat though, as throughout the PS3 and PS4 eras digital downloads for games often cost much more than their physical counterparts, leaving me with a small selection of boxed PlayStation titles — my favourite being Bloodborne.

There’s nothing more than the disc and a leaflet touting Until Dawn and The Order 1886 inside, but it’s the stark cover art that stands out, with the ‘hunter’ facing away from the viewer, saw cleaver and blunderbuss in hand, against a contrasting white-grey background.

To me this represents the grim, dark journey Bloodborne takes you on: a blood-soaked path that marked a distinct departure from the Dark Souls series while still feeling like a game only FromSoftware could nail.

The physical box gained an almost ritualistic feel for me. In the odd event that the disk wouldn’t be in my PS4, I’d have to take it out of the box with the cold, grim hunter on the front greeting me with the familiar feeling that I’ll have to slash, parry, dodge my way through Yarnham time and time again as Father Gascoigne gives me a pasting. How I hated it, how I loved it.

Roland Moore-Colyer, Managing Editor, Buying Guides

Still hanging on to this one

Without a shadow of a doubt, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is my favorite video game cover of all-time. It will forever sit at the forefront of my memory when reminiscing about the PS3.

Not only is the game itself an all-time great, but its cover art represents so much of the game’s excellence, with the very train sequence that it’s depicting later inspiring games like and Stellar Blade and even movies such as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (even though its director swears it's not, it definitely is).

It’s sad to say goodbye to physical games, and here’s hoping that the backlash forces Sony to rethink its choice — but I’ll never forget the Uncharted 2 cover art for encapsulating just how amazing the PS3 era of gaming was.

Isaiah Williams, Staff Writer, Computing

ChatGPT's new finance feature lets the AI chatbot take a look at any bank or similar accounts you care to open up for inspection. I was initially hesitant to try it out, but the tool only looks at the details of how you spend your money, and can't actually carry out transactions, so I agreed to let it analyze some of my accounts and offer its insights.

Finances is currently only available in the U.S. to Plus and Pro users on web, iOS, and Android. Setting everything up is as easy as using any other ChatGPT plug-in. You just select Finances in ChatGPT and then click Get Started then Connect with Plaid.

Finances uses Plaid to link to the accounts; you simply sign in and agree to let Plaid share the information. The service synchronized recent transactions and basically became an interactive, conversational database of my information. It's not that the AI can do things it couldn't before, but now you don't have to manually enter any finance details you want to ask it about.

ChatGPT looks at the receipts

At its suggestion, I asked ChatGPT, "How much did I spend eating out this year?" ChatGPT soon had a breakdown of my how much I had spent at various restaurants, including delivery, and broke down some of the patterns. It pointed out that it had gone up recently, which makes sense as the weather has became pleasant enough to walk into town more often to eat. It also identified a few spikes I could tell were around birthdays and family celebrations.

Next I asked, "What subscriptions am I paying for?"

That turned into one of the most practical moments of the experiment. ChatGPT gathered recurring charges across streaming services, software, and other monthly payments into one clear summary instead of leaving me hunting through statements. It also suggested reviewing whether every subscription still deserved a place in my budget.

"These subscriptions appear consistently each month, making them reliable recurring expenses.", it told me.

Financial chatter

Seeking a more detailed analysis, I asked ChatGPT, "What's changed in my spending this month?"

Instead of overwhelming me with every purchase, ChatGPT focused on the transactions that genuinely stood out. It noted a few large purchases at new locations, and asked if they were something I wanted more information on. I told it those were gifts, and the AI incorporated that fact into its response as not a new regular event but one that explained why overall spending had climbed this month.

"Those gift purchases are unusual compared with your recent history but they account for much of the increase, so your everyday spending has remained relatively consistent despite the higher overall total. Looking beyond one unusual month provides a more accurate picture of your longer term financial habits."

Using ChatGPT this way felt almost like the inverse of most financial software. Most budgeting apps expect you to learn their system first. ChatGPT let me ask questions however they occurred to me and then translated months of transactions into answers that were easy to understand.

That does not mean it replaces dedicated budgeting tools, and it certainly cannot make smarter financial decisions on your behalf. You still have to decide whether to cancel subscriptions, spend less on eating out, or save more each month. But I can see how it might make it easier for people who hesitate to look at their finances if they feel uncomfortable around spreadsheets. It didn't feel like math homework the way it often does.

Of course, it still relies on some trust in both OpenAI and Plaid, but as long as it's purely viewing and not actually touching the accounts, this could be a really useful, practical feature for ChatGPT users.

GMKTec has launched an updated version of its ultra-small mini PC, one small enough to fit in the palm of an adult hand.

The G5S is a replacement for the G5, which we reviewed back in July 2024, almost two years ago. And rather than an improvement, it definitely looks like a massive step backwards (albeit with the same chassis).

The N97 in its predecessor has been replaced by the N50985 CPU, which is not only slower but also uses more power and dissipates more heat. If that wasn’t enough, there’s 33% less RAM (8GB vs 12GB) and it is DDR4 (rather than DDR5).

Two steps back

The obvious reason for that two-step-backward move has to do with the impact AI has on the RAM. AI accelerators use a lot of HBM chips and these chips are expensive, which in turn causes the few RAM manufacturers to focus their resources on producing these.

This has had a knock-off effect on everything else with prices of NAND (for SSD), DDR5 down to DDR2 surging.

It is therefore no surprise that the new model has 128GB storage rather than 256GB on the previous model. Expect to pay around $169 for it and $272 for the 256GB version. It is currently only available in China but should reach the rest of the world before Black Friday.

When the the previous, superior version was tested, our reviewer gave it a 4.5/5 rating, saying “If space is limited, the GMKtec NucBox G5 is small enough to fit almost anywhere yet, unlike many micro PCs, this small machine is powerful enough to run a full copy of Windows 11 Pro, with more than enough clout for office, admin, and some multimedia processing.”

Also consider

Other models worth considering as an alternative to the GMKTec G5S.

We've tested and reviewed the best mini PCs you can buy right now.

My non-negotiable for any kind of trip is a good pair of headphones. Public transport without a way to zone out from my surroundings? Unthinkable. A good podcast, playlist or audiobook can make any tediously long journey pass in double-quick time.

Day-to-day, my over-ear cans are my playlist-deliverer of choice, and so far I've been lugging them around on my vacations too, but I've decided it's time to invest in some earbuds for travel. The main benefit of an in-ear option is that it's significantly more compact for packing, but in hotter climes, I've also been struggling with overheating ears (it's a privileged problem, but a problem nonetheless, okay?) — and I'm concerned about what the sweat and suncream is doing to my earcup padding.

Luckily, the talented TechRadar Audio team has been busy testing dozens of pairs of earbuds, and I have plenty of well-reviewed options to choose from — I've rounded up my top contenders below. All of these come highly recommended, but the top three are 5-star buys. Click the 'View details' button for more info about each one, and why I'm considering it. For more options, head to our general roundup of the very best headphones for travel.

Brilliant travel earbuds

Fable is shaping up to be an absolute belter of a role-playing game. From deep systems like reputation affecting everything you do and stylish combat to funny talking pigs, what I’ve seen so far suggests a splendid fantasy role-playing game (RPG) that will be absolutely worth the wait.

Seeing a sliver of the game set in only one town, Playground Games showed what it’s like to carve my own path in the world, what impacts I can have on the locale and the people there, and how it can all affect me as the player.

From what I’ve seen, it’s basically a life sim, town builder, economy sim, RPG — and pig-fate-decider sim — all in one.

Systems on systems on systems

The main thrust of what I saw at the Xbox event around Summer Game Fest 2026 was how deep and rich some of the games’ systems were in how you interact with places and folk, and how your actions have consequences.

This allows you to play your own way, impacting the way people live and also carving your own lifestyle that doesn’t rely on a binary good-bad system, making things more interesting.

In the gameplay I saw behind closed doors, there was a talking pig whose fate we could decide, for example. But this wasn’t a one-and-done affair, as whatever you chose has consequences: save him, and the butcher is out of pocket, so you’ll need to cover his costs if you can — or get a job to earn the coin, and so on. And each of these steps, whichever route you take, will impact how you're perceived by everyone involved: some will think you're virtuous, some will be annoyed, and so on.

This leads to you garnering an array of reputation qualities for both the overall area and its inhabitants. And it can get very detailed and complex — in a good way — given every single fully-fledged non-player character (NPC) will have their own perspective. So while you may follow a path that gets you in with some local businesses that then give you better rates, for example, other shop owners may have totally differing opinions and make your life difficult later on.

Thankfully, the reputation is entirely local, though, so if you go berserk in one town, they won’t immediately be on the phone to the next area over. But even if they did, you can still turn things around and change people’s perceptions, but it will take a lot of work to win them back…

But, perhaps weirdly, this excellent chain of reactions, reputation characteristics, and events can abruptly stop. For example, in the midst of wooing a potential partner and going through the systems you require, including becoming a homeowner, you can just press a button to own a house. Or if you need money to buy gifts in the same relationship system and process, you can simply walk into any blacksmith and earn money at the press of a button.

This juxtaposition was the only thing that really raised my eyebrows, as it felt jarring: one moment you’re deep in a hilarious system rabbithole, the next you’re holding one button to solve or part-solve a problem. I’m very keen to see more of that and the impact it may or may not have on the experience on a larger, less isolated scale.

But could the sword be mightier than the pen?

Speaking of seeing more on a larger scale, the same goes for combat; what I’ve seen whetted the appetite, but I only saw a flash.

It was wonderfully slick, swift, fantastical, and elegant — and exciting — for sure, but over far too quickly. I’d love to see more of the options available to players in terms of builds, classes, and skills, and how to team them with weapon choices and magic, and more. It was all over far too quickly in my preview.

Plus, given how deep and rich the systems and reputation mechanics are, it feels like that same depth is needed in other areas like combat, in order to ensure a cohesive experience and feel.

Still, however, the fact remains that Fable was absolutely one of the very best things I saw at all the games events going on in June, and it’s set to be an absolute blast to experience all its systems — even if I only got a glimpse of them.

I can’t wait to dive in and explore all the shenanigans you can get yourself into when the game launches on February 23, 2027, on Xbox Series X and Series S, PS5, and PC.

After having precious little new camera gear to review in the opening months of the year, 2026 has well and truly kicked into gear for us tech journalists.

The first quarter saw a smattering of niche compact cameras, including the Leica Q3 Monochrom, Instax Mini Evo Cinema and Ricoh GR IV. That's right: a black-and-white-only full-frame compact and a 3-in-1 instant camera that shoots video were the highlights.

That peculiar first quarter was followed by some more conventional photographer treats, such as the Sony A7R VI and Panasonic Lumix L10. I described the full-frame A7R VI as 'the perfect camera', and said the L10 was 'the prettiest Lumix in years', and a worthy alternative to the Fujifilm X100VI.

DJI launched a couple of standout five-star drones, the Avata 360 and Lito X1, while navigating both its US ban and some new competition, with Insta360 stealing the Pocket 4P's thunder by launching its fantastic dual-lens Luna Ultra.

Meanwhile, it has been an unusually quiet year for some of the big names thus far. Nikon, for example, is yet to announce a new camera in 2026, nor have we seen a new Fujifilm X.

I expect a steady stream of new releases throughout the latter half of the year, with heavily rumored models including the crop-sensor Fujifilm X-T6 and the Canon EOS R7 II. But here I'm going to look back at my five favorite cameras I've personally tested so far in 2026, in no particular order, with honorable mentions for a few others that have had the full TechRadar review treatment.

5. Panasonic Lumix L10

• Release date: May 12
• Rating: 4.5/5

Panasonic surprised us all during its Lumix 25th anniversary event by dropping the all-new Lumix L10 — and it was a real treat to review.

It's the spiritual successor to the Lumix LX100 series of premium compact cameras, inheriting a gorgeous 24-75mm F1.7-2.8 lens that's been refined to work with Panasonic's latest 26.5MP Micro Four Thirds sensor and the latest Real Time LUTs profiles.

That sensor isn't all that the Lumix L10 has in common with powerful cameras such as the Lumix G9 II — it also features Panasonic's reliable phase-detection autofocus with advanced subject detection and 5.7K video recording, albeit without sensor-based image stabilization.

There's real power under the hood, and a gorgeous design to boot. It's not quite as retro-feeling as the X100VI, but it isn't far off — and that zoom lens versatility is a real win. If you're looking for a versatile everyday compact camera, the L10 is a fabulous pick.

Read my in-depth Panasonic Lumix L10 review

4. Insta360 Luna Ultra

• Release date: June 10
• Rating: 4.5/5

Insta360 and DJI's rivalry got extra spicy this year when Insta360 launched its first vlogging camera, the dual-lens Luna Ultra, pipping the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P to the post. Cue lawsuits and counter lawsuits.

I've tested both compact vlogging cameras (though at the time of writing my DJI Pocket 4P review is under embargo), and they take this format to new heights. Both feature dual gimbal cameras with 20mm (1x) and 60mm (3x) lenses, and an extended 6x lossless zoom.

Each brand takes a different stab at the format; the Luna Ultra features a unique and genuinely useful detachable remote and screen, meaning you can see and control the camera from up to 20m away. That module also features a built-in mic, making solo vlogging so much easier. I enjoyed DJI's magnetic fill light, which is powered by the camera.

The DJI Pocket series has dominated this space for years with no real rival, but that's no longer the case. For me it will be hard to go back to a single-lens vlogging camera having tested both the Luna Ultra and Pocket 4P — they both get a mention here, because I expect them to be among the best-selling cameras over the next year.

Read my in-depth Insta360 Luna Ultra review

3. Ricoh GR IV

• Release date: Janauary 15, 2026 (announced August 20, 2025)
• Rating: 4/5

As a Ricoh GR III X user, I had been patiently waiting for the Ricoh GR IV, hoping that the latest-generation model would address a few of my issues with my beloved premium pocket compact camera. Sadly, the GR IV didn't deliver on several counts: it again lacks a built-in flash and tilt screen, nor does it have any real improvements in autofocus performance or build quality.

However, the GR IV came with surprising upgrades elsewhere, and raises the image-quality bar for such a truly tiny and pocketable camera. A new 26MP sensor and refined lens gave a small boost in resolution, plus a notable improvement in image stabilization performance. Its lightning-fast startup time further enhances the GR series' street photography chops, while battery life saw a welcome boost, and internal storage was increased.

With those upgrades came a price hike, and the GR IV costs much more than the GR III did, especially if you live in the US. However, there's still no real competition for a camera of this size and quality, and Ricoh has further expanded the range with HDF and Monochrome versions of the GR IV.

Read my in-depth Ricoh GR IV review

2. Oppo Find X9 Ultra

• Release date: May 2
• Rating: 4.5/5

This round-up isn't confined to cameras — I had the pleasure of traveling to China for the first time earlier this year to put the Oppo Find X9 Ultra's camera through its paces amid the stunning mountainous landscape of Yunnan province. Put simply, the Find X9 Ultra is the most versatile cameraphone I've ever used.

The flagship device is globally available, and costs as much as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, but that seemingly hasn't deterred fans desiring its five-camera array and top-spec screen, battery and chipset. The 1x main camera paired with the Hasselblad Master mode delivers especially stunning natural colors and RAW photos up to 200MP, while the class-leading 3x and 10x telephoto cameras each pack the largest sensors in their respective formats.

I shot over 2,000 photos with the Find X9 Ultra, and shared my gallery and overall impressions, which you can find in the link below. I also compared the smartphone to the Lumix TZ300 travel zoom compact, and felt that its 1x and 3x cameras were arguably even better quality, although the telephoto lenses are still no match for the new Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 S II professional lens.

The quality of smartphone telephoto cameras reached new heights in the X9 Ultra, and it has become my most-used camera this year. There's even a 300mm teleconverter lens accessory that further stretches that reach, and which performed admirably when I took it to a pro soccer game.

Read my in-depth Oppo Find X9 Ultra review

1. Sony A7R VI

• Release date: May 13
• Rating: 5/5

I've been reviewing cameras for over 15 years, so it takes something special to cause me to use the word 'perfect' — and that's what the Sony A7R VI is. It's a professional mirrorless camera with a stacked 66.8MP full-frame sensor and lightning-fast burst-shooting and autofocus performance, with an all-new higher-capacity battery bagging you more shots, and 8K video.

During my lengthy review period I shot everything from landscapes to wildlife and portraits, and the A7R VI can handle it all with ease. It's also a seriously well-designed camera, with a high-resolution EVF and multi-angle touchscreen, and is complemented by a rich selection of professional lenses for just about any use case.

In one sense, Sony has shot itself in the foot here — by giving the A7R VI such raw power and quality, it renders the pricier A1 II redundant for most users. The A7R VI can do 95% what the A1 II can do, for a much lower cost. I've never owned a Sony Alpha mirrorless camera, but the A7R VI has me seriously tempted, especially given that Sony has made my favorite lenses over the last 18 months. If I could keep a hold of a single new camera from 2026, the A7R VI would be it.

Read my in-depth Sony A7R VI review

Honorable mentions

We've tested plenty more cameras throughout 2026, and five other models I want to highlight are the Instax Mini Evo Cinema, Canon EOS R6 Mark III, Leica Q3 Monochrom, and DJI's Lito X1 and Avata 360 drones.

The Instax Mini Evo Cinema is probably the quirkiest of the lot, being a 3-in-1 Instax that shoots photo, video and prints onto Instax Mini film. The 'Eras' dial is its standout feature — it's a dial with 10 settings, one for each decade spanning the last 100 years that mimicks the look of the media of that time.

Canon launched its incredible EOS R6 Mark III full-frame mirrorless camera at the start of the year, and it went head to head with the Sony A7 V as a top all-rounder, with no real weaknesses for photo and video use.

Monochrome-only cameras made a return too. I tested the Leica Q3 Monochrom, which it shoots next-level black-and-white photos, while Ricoh followed up its GR IV with its first stab at this niche, the GR IV Monochrome, which sadly comes with a big mark-up over the color original. If you only shoot in black and white, these cameras should top your list.

Despite its US ban, DJI continues to lead the pack with new drones — we gave both the Lito X1 and Avata 360 five-star ratings in our reviews. The Avata 360 is a more versatile 360-degree drone than the Antigravity A1, while the Lito X1 is incredible value given that it has object avoidance and costs around half the price of the Mini 5 Pro.

I have a feeling that the second half of 2026 will deliver plenty more treats, though I'm curious about what Nikon and Fujifilm could do next. Which new cameras would you like to see in 2026? Let me know in the comments below.

Remedy Entertainment has hit the nail on the head with making an engaging and addictive sequel to Control, with Control Resonant. Gameplay from the original concept has been taken into Resonant and dialled up to 11, and that's heavily supported by Nvidia's technologies, enhancing the visual experience.

In my two hours playing, it didn't take very long for me to become fully immersed in not only our new protagonist, Dylan, and his incredible maneuvers and special attacks, but most importantly, in this case, the fascinating environments indoors and outdoors — and yes, a lot of this is thanks to the heavy lifting of Nvidia's ray tracing active during the demo.

Simply put, Resonant is an absolutely pleasant sight to the eyes, making every interior and exterior fight encounter blossom for greater immersion. It's a very colorful game, where enemy designs or attacks can shine bright in red (which isn't a surprise since the Hiss is mostly red), and I was blown away by everything on display.

Resonant takes a strong shift away from the third-person action-shooter aspect and dives into third-person fast-paced action-role-playing game (RPG) elements, and while my time with it was short-lived, I can't wait to see how its PC port handles later this year.

Resonant's ray tracing is amazing, but slightly heavy to run

It shouldn't come as a big surprise, but Control Resonant uses Nvidia's ray tracing technology and DLSS Ray Reconstruction, and the former is a huge demand for any RTX GPU.

Using an RTX 5090 at 4K with DLSS 4.5 Performance enabled and ray tracing preset on high, Resonant felt smooth in most playable combat sections of the demo — and while there was no evident frame rate counter, I suspect it was mostly at or above 60 frames per second (fps).

I'm a massive fan of hack-and-slash games like Devil May Cry 5 and the original God of War trilogy, where 60 fps during combat is effectively a must, which Resonant is quite similar to; the point being, I can tell when frame rates dip under 60, and there were certainly a few occurrences where heavier dips below that figure were noticeable.

However, this is an early build of the game, which is bound to be more polished once released, and high ray tracing presets still give the most powerful graphics card on the market a run for its money in any game (including Cyberpunk 2077 and Resident Evil Requiem).

Fortunately, DLSS 4.5 works wonders as usual. Using Performance mode on previous DLSS models wasn't ideal, as ghosting and poor image quality were clear to see. DLSS 4.5's Performance mode, on the other hand, features really sharp image quality that essentially outshines DLSS 4's Quality mode and can be compared to DLSS 4.5's Quality mode.

The downside of DLSS 4.5 is the performance loss (compared to DLSS 4), particularly on RTX 3000 and 2000 series GPUs, but considering how impressive Resonant is visually using ray tracing, it's worth using DLSS 4.5 Performance where possible.

Bear in mind, this demo wasn't using DLSS Frame Generation, and based on early system requirements, Resonant should run great on a wide range of hardware. There will be some systems that can't handle ray tracing or full path tracing, which should be expected, but even without those elements, it's still a very impressive game visually.

There's still plenty left for me to see in Resonant, a sequel that has taken its environments and locations to new levels entirely.

With that being said, I'm anticipating even more highly detailed areas to explore and enjoy using a less powerful but capable RTX 4080 Super for high ray tracing or full path tracing — and I'll certainly be playing when it launches on September 24, 2026, on PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC.

You've probably noticed the same handful of tasks eating your week: chasing invoices, answering customer questions, copying data between tools that don't talk to each other. Then "AI agents" started showing up everywhere, from tech newsletters to LinkedIn; you're left wondering whether any of it applies to a business your size. The honest answer is that it usually does, no coding skills required.

Maybe you've already tried a chatbot or a basic automation tool to cut down on repetitive admin. Both helped for a while, then hit a ceiling: chatbots answer a question and stop, while basic automation only runs the exact steps you set up originally. AI agent builders are built to close that gap, letting you create something that can finish a job from start to finish instead of stopping halfway.

What is an AI agent builder?

At its simplest, an AI agent builder is a platform that lets you design, deploy, and manage AI agents without coding them from scratch. The agents themselves run on large language models (LLMs) that can reason about a request, decide which tools to use, and carry out several steps toward a goal.

That's the part that separates an agent from a basic chatbot. A chatbot answers what you type into it. An agent can look up an order, update a record, and send a follow-up email from a single instruction, then report back once the job is done.

It helps to see the three side by side.

Most of the confusion around "agentic AI" comes from vendors stretching the word to cover all three. A genuine agent is the one that can act, not just answer. Plenty of products marketed as "agents" today are really just chatbots or workflow automations with a new label, so it pays to ask a vendor exactly what their agent can do on its own before you sign up.

How to build AI agents for business automation

Every agent builder, however polished, is made of the same basic pieces. You give it instructions in plain language or a visual flow. The platform connects those instructions to your tools and data through APIs, then handles the reasoning and orchestration behind the scenes.

Most platforms also add memory, so an agent can recall earlier steps in a task. They pair that with guardrails that limit what the agent is allowed to do without a person signing off first.

Builders generally fall into three categories. No-code tools use guided steps and templates built for people with no programming background. Low-code tools expose the underlying logic, so technical teams can adjust it without starting from zero.

Pro-code frameworks such as LangChain sit at the far end, handing developers full control over memory, tool access, and orchestration. IBM's research on enterprise builders suggests the right choice depends less on team size than on how much oversight the work needs once it's live. A small business automating a single email workflow rarely needs the same setup as a bank automating fraud checks.

Why should businesses consider using one?

The case for an agent builder comes down to time and reach. Agents complete actual work instead of just suggesting it. They do this continuously, without adding headcount.

A few concrete reasons businesses are adopting them:

• Faster from idea to working tool. Templates and guided builders mean a working agent can go live in days rather than months of custom development.
• Lower cost than hiring for every workflow. Consumption-based pricing on most platforms means you pay for what an agent actually does, not for a full-time salary.
• Non-technical teams can build their own. No-code builders put creation in the hands of the people who know the workflow best, not only IT.
• Scales without adding headcount. One agent can handle a large volume of routine requests at once, freeing staff for the work that actually needs a person.
• Agents finish the job, not just start it. An agent can complete several steps across different systems from one instruction, whereas a chatbot would simply answer and stop.
• It works for small teams too. You don't need an in-house engineering team to get value; many of the platforms below are built specifically for business owners who aren't developers.

The numbers back this up well. Gartner expects 40% of enterprise applications to include task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026, up from under 5% in 2025. McKinsey has estimated that generative AI, the technology underpinning these agents, could add up to $4.4 trillion a year to the global economy.

None of this happens automatically, though. A 2025 IBM study of 2,000 CEOs found that only 25% of AI initiatives had delivered the ROI leaders expected. Just 16% had scaled across the whole business, which says less about the technology than about how carefully it was deployed.

Common business use cases

AI agents tend to cluster around a handful of jobs. The same patterns show up whether you run a five-person shop or a five-thousand-person company:

• Customer service: Answering routine questions, processing refunds, and escalating complex cases to a human when needed
• Sales and lead handling: Qualifying inbound leads, drafting outreach, and scheduling meetings
• Finance and operations: Processing invoices, chasing approvals, and flagging anomalies in expense reports
• IT and HR support: Resetting passwords, answering policy questions, and handling onboarding paperwork
• Internal knowledge search: Pulling answers from scattered documents, wikis, and past tickets so staff stop hunting for information
• Marketing and content support: Drafting first versions of emails, social posts, or product descriptions for a human to review and publish

Smaller businesses tend to start with one, often customer service or lead handling, before expanding once the first agent proves its worth.

Choosing the right AI agent builder

The right platform depends heavily on your existing tools and your team's technical comfort. If your business already runs on Microsoft 365, Copilot Studio lets you build agents inside that ecosystem, with internal agent use bundled into Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and a standalone option for publishing agents outside it.

If your business lives in Salesforce, Agentforce builds agents directly on top of your CRM data, with a free Foundations tier to start and consumption-based credits beyond that. For broader, non-technical automation, tools such as Zapier Agents and Lindy let small teams connect an agent to email, spreadsheets, and thousands of other apps using plain-language prompts rather than code.

Larger organisations weighing governance more heavily often look at platforms such as IBM watsonx Orchestrate, which offers no-code, low-code, and pro-code paths in one place, with centralised oversight over what every agent is allowed to touch. Engineering-led teams that want full control, meanwhile, tend to build directly with open-source frameworks like LangChain rather than a packaged product.

As a general rule, the more deeply your business already runs on one ecosystem, like Microsoft or Salesforce, the more sense it makes to build your first agent inside that same ecosystem rather than bolting on a separate tool. Before you commit to any platform, it's worth getting clear answers to a short list of questions:

• Can it connect to the specific tools you already use?
• Does pricing scale predictably as usage grows?
• What happens when the agent gets something wrong?
• Who is responsible for reviewing that?

A few things to consider

Adoption is moving fast, but it isn't risk-free. Gartner predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 because of rising costs, unclear business value, or weak risk controls. Gartner has also warned of "agent washing," where vendors rebrand older chatbots or automation tools as agents without the underlying capability to match.

An agent is only as good as the data it can see, too. If your records are scattered across spreadsheets, inboxes, and three different apps that don't sync, an agent will struggle no matter how good the platform is. Clean, accessible data is the unglamorous prerequisite that most successful deployments get right before anything else.

Security deserves the same scrutiny you'd give any other system with access to your data.

It's also worth thinking about lock-in before you build anything substantial. Agents built deep inside one vendor's ecosystem, like a CRM or productivity suite, are usually harder to move later than ones built on an open framework or with clear data-export options. That's a reasonable trade-off for the convenience many platforms offer, as long as you go in with eyes open about it.

Start small. Pick one workflow with clear, measurable value. Run it in a sandbox or a limited rollout before expanding it further.

Keep a person in the loop for anything customer-facing or financially sensitive until the agent has proven itself. Revisit that oversight regularly, rather than setting it once and walking away.

FAQ

While many of us wouldn’t think twice about buying software from a global hyperscale software vendor, open source software (OSS) has flown under the radar as a majorly important part of the software landscape for decades.

Recent shifts in European attitudes, fuelled by geopolitical tensions and technological sovereignty concerns, has seen an increased focus on the desire to run open source software and back local vendors. A major advantage is the open nature of its development – anyone can inspect, modify and use it, and companies can distribute their own versions without the limitations and expenses of vendor lock-in.

It’s so important that around 70% of modern software stacks are estimated to rely on open source components in some form – EXANTE sees it as a plumbing system that keeps software stacks together.

But that very benefit could also be a disadvantage for corporate customers, because small groups of volunteers don’t have the same requirements as large corporations. While companies invest heavily in cybersecurity and resilience, visibility into open source software can be alarmingly low.

AI is making underfunding even more pronounced

Vibe coding has further complicated matters, with developers now able to write code more quickly and malicious actors leaning on those same AI coding tools to discover vulnerabilities and develop exploits.

Without the commercial funding that hyperscale software receives, it puts OSS in a more vulnerable position. But given the importance of OSS for companies looking to build their own software stacks, many are now starting to see backing projects as an integral part of managing their risks.

To discuss why the responsibility, or burden, of open source software sustainability is increasingly being picked up by enterprise customers instead of individual developers and contributors, I spoke with EXANTE CTO Richard Forss, who explained how AI is changing software development and cybersecurity strategies globally, and why businesses should treat it as critical infrastructure.

EXANTE is also the company behind the Gecko Fund – a new €1 million grant programme to support critical open source software projects used across trading and financial data systems with grants of between €10,000 and €150,000 available – and the company believes that financial and technical support for open-source projects is now more important than ever.

“We believe the industry that benefits from these tools should play a role in sustaining them,” Gecko Fund founder Anatoly Knyazev asserted.

• How broadly is open-source software used across fintech, and, namely, brokers? How exactly is it used?

Open source is the foundation of modern fintech and brokerage businesses, but almost nobody talks about it. If you looked under the hood of any brokerage platform, ours included, you would find that about 70% of the critical stack is open-source.

It powers the databases, operating systems, messaging layers, cloud infrastructure – the bits that quietly move millions of transactions a day. Clients never see any of it, which is rather the point.

The reason we all use it is simple economics. Software is built in layers, and there is no sense in any one firm rebuilding the foundations from scratch. We use shared, battle-tested components for things like market data processing and risk infrastructure, and we spend our own engineering effort on the parts that are actually ours.

It lets teams move quickly and solve complex architectural and engineering puzzles that would otherwise be out of reach.

• Why does the underfunding problem in open-source software exist, despite it being so widely used across the global economy?

Because it works too well to notice. Open source behaves like a utility, the plumbing in the walls, and nobody thinks about the plumbing until it bursts. Millions of organisations rely on these tools every day, and for years, almost none of them paid a penny towards keeping them alive.

More accurately, open source drives an estimated $8.8 trillion in global economic value. Yet, nearly two-thirds of the developers responsible for maintaining these widely adopted systems receive very limited financial support.

Hundreds of thousands of organisations – from startups to huge enterprises – benefit from these tools every single day, but the actual responsibility for maintaining them stays with a handful of volunteers.

Everyone relies on the infrastructure, but historically, almost no organisation has taken responsibility for paying for its upkeep.

• Why should businesses care if critical open-source projects are maintained by very small teams or individual developers?

Because it is a single point of failure hiding in plain sight. We spend enormous amounts of money assessing vendor risk and operational resilience, scrutinising suppliers, war-gaming outages, and then the whole edifice can rest on a library maintained by one or two exhausted people you have never heard of.

Our first Gecko Fund grant went to Kryo, an open-source data serialisation tool used all over the world in high-performance and trading environments. For years, it has been kept going by two people on two different continents, with no outside funding at all. They do excellent work – and that is, of course, not the problem. The problem is that it is two people. If one of them burns out, or simply does not have a free evening to patch a serious flaw the moment it appears, the consequences do not stay neatly within their project. They ripple out into regulated markets that have no idea they were depending on them.

• How is AI changing the risk profile of open-source software and cybersecurity?

AI has put its foot on the accelerator, and it is pressing down on both cars at once. On our side, it genuinely helps. It spots bugs, speeds up code review, catches things early. The problem is that the people trying to break in have exactly the same tools.

Bad actors use AI to scan open-source codebases, identify vulnerabilities, and launch targeted exploits much faster than before. The time between a flaw being discovered and an active attack being launched is continuously shrinking.

This puts intense pressure on underfunded maintainers to deploy fixes instantly. Since AI scales these threats so effectively, the security of the underlying open-source ecosystem has become a systemic priority.

• Which parts of the open-source ecosystem are most vulnerable to underinvestment today?

It’s not the famous projects. Mostly the dull ones. The risk lives in the deep, unglamorous code: I’m talking about the low-level libraries, the developer tooling, the APIs – developer tools that operate entirely out of sight. The components that never trend on anything and never will.

That is precisely why they go unfunded. They do not make headlines, so they do not attract sponsors or donations, and yet they are wired into thousands of commercial products.

It is the paradox of the whole industry. The more essential a piece of software is, the more invisible it tends to be. When one of those hidden libraries fails, it does not fail for one company. It fails for everyone at once.

• How do you think this gap can be bridged? What measures can businesses take to mitigate possible risks?

Stop calling it a hobby and start treating it as infrastructure, because that is what it is. The first thing any firm should do is the unglamorous work of auditing its own supply chain and understanding exactly which open-source components it actually depends on. Most have never properly looked. Once you know what you are standing on, you have to hold it up.

But money is not the only currency – firms can contribute engineering time, security audits, testing environments, or documentation. The goal is to make the relationship mutual: if your business profits from these tools, your business should help keep them safe.

• What infrastructural changes can be made to make open-source software more sustainable?

The corporate world needs to stop expecting critical infrastructure to be maintained by someone giving up their weekends. That is the change. Everything else follows from it.

It is starting to shift. There are sovereign technology funds now, government-backed efforts, industry groups forming around open-source standards. That is encouraging.

But finance, of all sectors, ought to be leading rather than waiting, because finance has more to lose than most if this plumbing fails. If we formalise how companies contribute and build proper structures for funding this work, then the people holding up the machinery behind global commerce might finally get the stable backing they need to keep the markets running. They have earned it several times over.

The final season of The Bear has finally dropped, and the return to the most stressful fictional kitchen in Chicago has inspired me to up my own culinary game. I have a relatively well-equipped kitchen, but once I started researching cheffy gadgets, I was surprised by the sheer breadth and volume of options available.

If there's a cooking task you want to achieve, there's almost certainly a bit of kit dedicated to it. I've even found a gadget specifically for removing the top of your boiled egg.

Below, I've rounded up my favorites, sticking (mostly) to genuinely useful-looking kit that I think will help me channel my inner Syd. There's a Microplane grater for mincing garlic and ginger, a handheld spice grinder for fresher flavors than you can achieve with pre-ground, and a mandoline slider for wafer-thin vegetable ribbons. I've also included the ultra-popular Meater digital temperature probe for perfectly cooked joints of meat. And just in case you're a massive fan of boiled eggs, I've also included that topper.

I'll start with my US picks, or you can hop down the page for UK links. And if you don't have particular culinary aspirations but know someone who does, any one of these would make a great gift for a keen cook.

US picks

UK picks

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is well underway, with the group stages already generating huge amounts of action for fans across the world.

It’s been widely highlighted how this is the biggest edition of the tournament so far, with an expanded roster of 48 teams doing battle in 16 venues across three countries. But with such a sprawling reach, the technology needed to power such a crucial tournament has never been more important - and that’s where Lenovo comes in.

As FIFA’s official technology partner, Lenovo has provided the technical expertise to keep the tournament running, and power some of the most exciting new innovations such as AI Refcam - I went to find out more.

An unprecedented challenge

“We were given a challenge which is unprecedented for the game,” Ken Wong - EVP and President, SSG, Lenovo, tells me in Miami.

“For anyone that is going to be a single point of contact for such a complex project, there will be a lot of questions…but after two weeks of operations, I think we have delivered what we promised.”

Wong highlights how the technology being built and delivered to FIFA is actually Lenovo’s own in-house hybrid platform and delivery platforms, so the company was confident about the capabilities it could provide - and then, Wong says, hand it over to FIFA, “to make magic happen.”

As Wong notes, “keeping the lights on is a given”, and Lenovo has deployed more than 350 engineers to World Cup sites, including the stadiums and its Technology Command Center in Miami, with the company providing around 17,000 devices to ensure a resolute and powerful backbone for all the tournament’s operations.

The technology has (at least at the time of writing) been one of the biggest success stories of the World Cup 2026, with fans around the world praising the immersiveness of the Refcam and realistic VAR avatars.

“It's not only about technology - without outcome it is meaningless,” Wong notes, with the company looking to provide a fan experience “like never before”.

“Our role is to make sure based on our understanding of the technology in the platform - how we can maximize the flexibility and outcome for our customer? Now it's up to FIFA to use it.”

The "power of AI"

I ask Wong if the World Cup 2026 can be a good use case for responsible AI deployment, boosting everything from the fan experience to broadcast quality to more effective ground logistics and operations.

“Customers are often so focused on, do I have the most powerful model - but more and more, when AI is moving from POC to production and scale, the more people understand the importance of data,” he says.

Any complex operation that involves a massive amount of data can be a vital learning experience, Wong says - naming building or facilities operations all the way up to smart city oversight as possible use cases which can be extrapolated from the World Cup use case.

Lenovo has even established sports as one of its focus verticals, with the company also partnering with the likes of Formula 1, the Olympics, NHL, Serie A and more.

“We have confidence that we can provide a great outcome, for other organizations within the sports industry, be it a stadium or fans experience, or a whole federation,” he adds.

So with the tournament still underway at the time of writing, Lenovo might be hoping, paradoxically, that its technology stays out of the headlines for the time being - as that will mean everything is working smoothly, with no errors or controversies.

“We are the technology backbone of FIFA,” Wong notes, “our AI is powering the World Cup! To me, the real meaning is that we're part of the great game, but also it is proven now that Lenovo technology can be applied to the most complex operation in the world.”