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BEST BUY LAPTOPS, TABLETS, WEARABLES
FROM IDG
GAME ON:
BEST GAMING
LAPTOPS
2018
OPEN SOURCE
INITIATIVE
TURNS 20
How it created a
bold new world
MAY 2018
REVIEW:
McAfee Total
Protection
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CONTENTS
77
NEWS
4 Biggest changes in Windows 10 Build 17093
11 Intel expects hard drives to disappear
17 Microsoft’s antimalware targets scareware apps
REVIEWS
19 LG gram 15 (2018)
28 Moto G5S Plus
37 HTC U11+
48 Apple HomePod
59 McAfee Total Protection
2 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2018
59
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CONTENTS
66
FEATURES
Open source turns 20 66
Five Chromebook hacks 70
BUYING GUIDE
Best gaming laptops 77
70
48
HOW TO
Find a Spectre fix for your motherboard 98
Check your PC’s CPU temperature 104
19
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Biggest changes in
Windows 10 Build 17093
Better GPU, HDR, and Bluetooth management are among the
changes coming to Windows 10. MARK HACHMAN reports
Microsoft sees a future without passwords in
Windows 10 Insider Build 17093, at least for
Windows 10 S users. The firm has quietly
worked to downplay passwords via PIN codes,
fingerprint sensors, and even facial recognition. But
actually killing them entirely within Windows 10 S is
one of the key changes coming with what may be called
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NEWS
the Spring Creators Update, code-named ‘Redstone
4,’ expected to launch in late March or early April.
The build, which is available now, also includes new
multi-GPU graphics settings, improved eye tracking,
quicker connections using Bluetooth, and clutter-free
printing, among others. Let’s take a look.
Windows 10 S takes a pass on passwords
Last October, one of the hidden features within the
Windows 10 Fall Creators Update was a mechanism
to eliminate passwords and replace them with an
authenticator app – but the feature didn’t actually
do anything. Now it does.
A password, of course, is the traditional way of
accessing Windows – but it’s a pain to remember and
change. Within Windows 10, Microsoft implemented
shortcuts of a sort, including a short PIN code or
logging in with your face or fingerprint via Windows
Hello. But setting those up required a password, too.
Now Microsoft is using its Authenticator App for
Android and iOS, which spits out an eight-digit code
every minute that’s uniquely keyed to your phone. It
might not replace a good, strong, unique password,
but an attacker would need to have access to a
(hopefully) secured phone as well as your PC. To set
up Windows Hello or a PIN, you’ll need to enter the
Authenticator code instead.
Though this is an Insider build – meaning that it
could eventually change – Microsoft implies this is a
permanent decision. “With the changes in this build,
your Windows 10 S PC will automatically make your
experience password-free,” Microsoft wrote in a blog
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post. What if you don’t own a smartphone? At this
point, we’re not sure.
Let Windows handle your multi-GPU setups
Many PCs, from the Surface Book 2 up through the
most powerful gaming desktops, use utilities from AMD
or Nvidia to manage which GPUs power selected apps.
Why waste the power of a GTX 1080 Ti on Microsoft
Edge when your integrated CPU can handle it instead?
Within Build 17093, you’ll have the option to enter
Settings > System > Display, go to the Advanced
graphics settings menu, then go app by app and select
which ones are powered by the ‘power saving’ GPU,
and which will use the ‘high performance’ option. If
you don’t wish to choose, the default option, ‘system
default’, will let Windows decide for you.
Each app will have the power to overrule Windows,
so if your game decides it needs the extra horsepower,
it’ll take it. But Windows will sometimes seize GPU
control from the Nvidia and AMD utilities, too.
Bluetooth pairing
happens nearly automatically
Pairing a new Bluetooth device is often a two-step
process: You trigger the device’s pairing process,
and then you initiate the process within Windows.
With the new Insider build, Microsoft has streamlined
one of the steps.
When a new Bluetooth device that’s actively trying
to pair moves within range, you’ll see a notification
slide out from the side of your Action Centre. Clicking
it will allow you to start the pairing process. The first
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device supported is Microsoft’s own Surface Precision
Mouse, but Microsoft promises more are on their way.
Edge adds ‘clutter-free printing’
Certain browser features, such as Edge’s Reading View,
attempt to de-clutter Web pages and format them in a
way to make them easier to read. Edge’s new clutterfree
printing does the same, just for printing. No one
really wants to print the ads that accompany most web
pages, so why should you?
Windows Defender is now Windows Security
Microsoft has reworked its Settings > Update & Security
page, renaming it Windows Security rather than
Windows Defender. It appears that you’ll still see a
‘Windows Defender Security Centre’, but Microsoft tries
A tweak to the Windows
Defender page has renamed
it Windows Security
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to do a better job of informing you of what areas it’s
defending within your PC.
As part of that proactive process, Microsoft will push
you harder to secure your PC. “Account Protection
will encourage password users to set up Windows
Hello Face, Fingerprint or PIN for faster sign in, and
will notify Dynamic lock users if Dynamic lock has
stopped working because their phone or device
Bluetooth is off,” Microsoft says.
Smarter HDR sensing is
included within Windows
More and more GPUs and displays are gaining
HDR capability, though the technology hasn’t quite
pushed into the mainstream. Windows is moving in
that direction, too.
Can your PC support HDR?
Windows will let you know here
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If you visit Settings > Apps > Video playback, you’ll
see a test video, together with a couple of options. If
Windows thinks your PC and display is HDR-capable,
you’ll have the option to configure and toggle on
HDR video, where applicable.
(By default, HDR video uses the full brightness
of your screen, so it consumes a little more battery,
Microsoft says.) You’ll also see the option for Windows
to adjust standard dynamic range (SDR) video to
account for ambient lighting, if your PC has the
appropriate sensors.
Eye tracking gains shortcuts
Not everyone will use Eye Control, an eye-tracking
technology which Microsoft pitches as an assistive
technology. One problem with Eye Control is the
laborious steps needed to do anything: You need to
focus on a particular icon, then use a precise mouse
control to line up the icon you need to interact with.
In Build 17093, a series of shortcuts, from to the
‘Start menu’ icon, to Timeline, and to Settings, are
available, as is a ‘pause’ icon. ‘Pause’ essentially
allows your eyes to wander around the screen and
focus on what you wish – a character’s face during
a streamed movie, for example – without making
Windows think you’re trying to click.
A prettier Game Bar
Microsoft really wants you to game and stream using
its Mixer app, so it’s given the Game Bar a makeover
to help you out. There are a number of new icons to
toggle off recording, mute your microphone, and more.
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Some of the shortcuts within the
revamped Game Bar are shown here
Microsoft still hasn’t set a date for the release
of Windows 10 ‘Redstone 4’ or the Spring Creators
Update, but it almost won’t certainly happen until after
mid- to late March. Microsoft should be wrapping it up,
but it appears it’s not quite done yet.
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Intel expects hard
drives to disappear
NEWS
Firm plans to replace local storage with Optane, and putting ‘bulk
storage’ SSDs into the cloud, writes MARK HACHMAN
Intel plans to hit the hard drive harder with its onetwo
punch of Optane and NAND solid-state drives
(SSDs) this year: the goal is to knock local storage
entirely out of the PC, and into the cloud.
The firm certainly has plans for its SSD business,
including adding 1TB and even 2TB capacity points to
products like its 760P SSD. But so does everyone else.
The more interesting question is what Intel will do with
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its nearly unique Optane technology, and how it will
convince users that it’s worth the investment.
Optane occupies a unique niche between a hard
drive and DRAM, and originally served as a caching
technology for hard drives or SSDs. The first Optane
memory gave way to larger, bootable Optanepowered
SSDs like the 900P SSD, at 280- and 480GB
capacities. Quick SSDs have become a preferred
upgrade for notebook PCs, but Intel has yet to
make Optane mainstream.
Intel hopes to begin changing that with the launch
of products like the Optane 800P, a rather small
58GB/118GB M.2 Optane SSD announced at CES.
It will begin shipping this month, according to Rob
Crooke, who oversees nonvolatile storage products for
Intel. In the future, Intel could even combine Optane
memory and SSD. This year, Intel will release Optane
within a DRAM form factor for the data centre, Crooke
said, a signal that Optane as a memory technology
will eventually make its way in to client PCs.
This matters because fast (but expensive) Optane
memory improves overall system performance, which
is becoming more critical as microprocessors top out
on clock speed. It’s an edge Intel can maintain over
chief rival AMD, which lacks competing technology.
If Intel manages to tie its chipsets, SSDs, and Optane
closer together, you’ll be buying more “Intel Inside”
than ever before, and may even be more reluctant to
buy components from other vendors. The only question
that we have – and that Intel declined to answer – is
how Optane will interact with the Spectre vulnerability
mitigations, which impact storage.
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On the right is Intel’s
new Optane 800P
SSD next to a Optane
Memory module
What’s in store for Optane
Part of Intel’s Optane’s advantage is that it has no direct
competitor, which gives Intel some flexibility on how
quickly it needs to move forward. Even after Intel and
Micron jointly developed 3D XPoint technology, which
Intel branded as Optane, Micron hasn’t yet released
its own 3D XPoint consumer products.
That still leaves Intel plenty to do to improve its
SSD and Optane technology, Crooke said. “You’ll see
us driving Optane technology to be faster, and closer,
and lower-power, and higher-performance, closer to
the CPU – and you’ll see us driving 3D NAND SSDs to
be bigger and denser and smaller and even removable
over time,” Crooke said in an interview.
Unfortunately, Crooke wouldn’t disclose what some
of those next steps will look like, such as the next
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capacity bump within the 900P family. (Anandtech
unearthed an Intel product change notification that
suggests 960GB and 1.5TB capacities are waiting
in the wings.)
One of the tricky things about Optane is that it can
be used as a bootable drive, as with the 900P or even
the 800P. But even at 118GB, the 800P probably is
too small for most laptop users to consider.
Our colleagues at PCWorld asked whether a way
around this would be to combine an Optane drive
and a more traditional SSD. “You could imagine that
might make sense for the future,” Crooke said. “It’s
even possible today, by combining two M.2 cards,”
he added. “What you’re talking about is just a simple
integration project. If the market needed that, we
would do that.”
Intel’s 900P uses
a PCi Express
interface for
increased
performance
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Further off, Intel may bring Optane memory to
client PCs as a supplement to traditional DRAM.
Though non-volatile Optane memory acts like flash,
storing data without active power, it’s slower than
DRAM. Optane in a DRAM form factor – Optane
DIMMs – will appear in the server market later this
year. Eventually, it could migrate downward to PCs.
“You could think of the enthusiast or workstation
market taking advantage of that,” Crooke ad.
The future: Moving SSDs to the cloud
Intel’s end goal, however, is to connect PCs directly to
the cloud. The only local storage on a PC would be an
Optane drive, ‘caching’ the most frequently used data
directly on the device. (We already have a version of
this on our PCs today, with a OneDrive On Demand
‘folder’ that Windows 10 PC users can use to save
and load data from the cloud.) Hard drives? Nope.
Eventually, Crooke said, hard drives will be replaced.
Here’s how Intel’s cloud-connected PC vision works:
Connecting to storage in the cloud via 5G has roughly
the performance of a SATA-based hard drive, Crooke
said. “And so if you can put Optane in front of a SATA
hard drive, with good performance, in theory you
could put that hard drive in the cloud,” he said.
Right now, Intel’s cloud-connected PC is little more
than a concept, since 5G technology isn’t expected
to be deployed until 2020. Users and PC makers alike
would have to be confident that end users would be
able to tap into 5G wireless virtually anywhere, Crooke
said. “There’s still a ways ago, but you can see where
this is going, from a technological point,” Crooke said.
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Intel’s cloudconnected
future
assumes pervasive
5G connections,but
that’s one angle
Intel’s modem
business is
working on
“What does that do for people? It makes for easier
platform migration, because you just log in from a new
PC, download your work, and you’re good to go,”
Crooke added. And it makes it easier to move to the
coolest new thing, removing an inhibitor to work with
the latest, coolest PCs.”
And that’s something Intel would like to see more of.
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Microsoft’s antimalware
targets scareware apps
Windows Defender takes an expanded role within Windows 10,
reveals MARK HACHMAN
NEWS
Windows Defender, built into every Windows
10 PC, is considered the bare minimum for
securing your PC from viruses and malware.
Microsoft recently announced that Windows Defender
has expanded its role into preventing ‘scareware’ apps
that use the hard sell to warn you of dangers to your PC.
The firm has always had an uneasy relationship with
optimization programs, which purport to clean up your
PC from unwanted junk, potential spyware, and more.
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“While Microsoft does not endorse the use of these
tools with Windows, we do not view them as unwanted
or malicious,” the company said in 2016.
At the time, Microsoft began blocking optimizer or
cleaner apps that didn’t spell out what they did, in part
to prevent customers from paying for something that
they didn’t understand. (Typically ‘cleaner’ apps will
scan your PC, uncover what they consider to be errors,
and offer a paid version to rectify the situation. But
‘innocent’ temporary Windows files were sometimes
swept up in the scan, to Microsoft’s annoyance.)
Now, Microsoft is cracking down even further.
Cleaner or optimization apps are fine, as long as
they explain what they are doing. But if those apps
use “alarming or coercive messages or misleading
content to pressure you into paying for additional
services or performing superfluous actions,” they’ll
be blocked, Microsoft says. Remember, you can run
Windows Defender and a third-party antivirus app
simultaneously, so each can be on duty.
Additional criteria that will trigger the removal
include notices that the paid offer will expire in
a limited time, or that no other errors (such as an
antivirus program) will clean up the problems.
This will mean fewer tech-support ‘calls’ to family
members. Scareware that preys upon the fears of less
technically savvy is disgusting. Yes, Windows isn’t
perfect, and there are utility developers who genuinely
improve Windows’ functionality and feature sets. But
those apps that vaguely warn of problems with your
PC, then offer to fix them for a price, can cause more
trouble than simply refreshing your PC.
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LG gram 15 (2018)
£2,279 inc VAT from fave.co/2BToJ4w
REVIEW
The quest to create a thin and light laptop that
delivers great performance goes on, and LG has
updated its Ultrabook with an 8th-generation
Intel chip, and more. Read on for our thoughts.
Design
It’s commonplace in the laptop market for new models
to come with the same design as previous generations,
with new internals, and that’s the case here.
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Overall there are only minor tweaks to the design so
you’d have to be eagle-eyed to spot the differences.
On the lid is a ‘gram’ logo instead of ‘LG’, the webcam
has been moved and power key looks a bit different.
The latter is because LG has added a fingerprint
scanner and another way to long into Windows.
Tweaks aside, the design of the LG gram 15 is
once again all about how much it weighs. We were
amazed at the previous model coming in at 1.08kg, a
staggering figure for a full-size 15in laptop. The 2018
model is a shade heavier but still an impressive 1.1kg.
For context, the MacBook Pro with Touchbar (£2,249
from fave.co/2BqsLjV) is 1.83kg and the Dell XPS
15 9560 (£1,279 from fave.co/2BprSb9) is almost
double the gram 15 at 2kg. There are some closer
rivals though, like the Lenovo Yoga 920 (£1,199 from
fave.co/2Bopfq8) at 1.37kg and the Surface Laptop
(£959 from fave.co/2BWcF2x) at 1.25kg.
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If you want an amazingly light full-size laptop, then
the LG is a front runner, and is available in smaller and
even lighter models too.
In order to save weight, LG eschews a solid metal
build like many of its rivals. Instead, it is made from a
‘nano carbon magnesium’ – an alloy that feels more
like plastic than metal, but is supposedly military-grade
and passed seven different tests. The reality is that the
laptop is flexible, especially the lid, but this is the tradeoff
to have the lightweight result. We like the gunmetal
grey finish that has a slight texture to it.
Once again, the bezels around the screen are very
small making the laptop look modern and sleek, but
also feel like a smaller laptop than a usual 15in model.
As mentioned earlier, the webcam has moved and is
now above the screen instead of nestled into the hinge
below. It’s a much more appropriate placement and is
so small you might not even notice it.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard on the LG gram 15 for 2018 is the same
as its predecessor, bar the fingerprint scanner now
embedded into the power key. It works well and is
much faster than typing a password.
Overall it’s a decent keyboard, but is nothing
special. It’s a full-size chiclet style keyboard with a
dedicated numberpad to the right. That will come
in handy for some but it does means the main part
is shifted to the left rather than being central, which
takes a bit of getting used to.
There’s nothing that gets on our nerves too much,
but bear in mind that some keys such as enter are quite
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small and the layout is US. At this price it’s no surprise
that the keyboard is backlit and you can choose from
two different levels of brightness.
Moving onto the trackpad which is the same as
before, so it’s a reasonable size, suitably responsive and
supports multi-finger gestures. It’s decent and we’re
pleased LG has fixed the issue we had before where the
trackpad would often confuse two-finger scrolling for
zooming – especially annoying when browsing the web.
Display
The display is one area that hasn’t had an upgrade, so
if you have last year’s gram 15 then the experience is
going to stay the same.
It’s a decent screen and this model is 15.6in,
despite the laptop being compact and insanely light
as we’ve detailed. It’s still Full HD (1920x1080, 141ppi)
and although you might want 4K at this price, it’s not
massively needed and will only drain the battery faster.
The display is an IPS panel
so offers good viewing angles
and whatever you’re doing on
the gram 15 looks crisp and
colourful. It’s also touch sensitive
which we find more useful on a
laptop these days, especially
for scrolling – the
feature just
isn’t ideal here
with the bendy lid.
There are only really a
couple of small downsides
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here and that’s the reflective coating and the fact
it’s maximum brightness is 255cd/m 2 which is fine
for indoor usage but needs to be a lot higher for
harsher conditions.
Performance
One of the headline upgrades here is the inclusion of
a new Intel 8th-generation processor. The LG gram
15 Z980 comes with a Core i7-8550U, which runs at
1.8GHz and can Turbo Boost up to 4GHz. Not only
is it faster than the previous generation but it jumps
to quad-core and eight threads. The slightly cheaper
model mentioned earlier has a Core i5-8250U instead.
Once again you get 16GB of RAM (2x 8GB) – it’s
faster DDR4 2,400MHz, too – but now the LG gram 15
comes with a 1TB of storage which is double last year.
That’s plenty of space for most people and comes in
the form of two 512GB SSDs (M.2 SATA).
As you can see in our benchmark results, the new
model provides decent gains over last year’s laptop.
3DMark Skydiver
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Geekbench 4
PCMark 8
The jump in Geekbench 4 is particularly impressive,
although the Yoga 920 with the same chip scores even
higher. Still, you’re getting desktop-esque performance
here from a mobile chip.
As this is a business-focused laptop, it’s no surprise
that you can’t do any full-on gaming with it. You’re
limited to Intel HD 620 which is the same as before. In
3DMark Sky Diver, the score improves by a reasonable
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REVIEW
amount but it’s still not enough to be noteworthy.
Really, the specifications here are aimed at performing
well and more mundane tasks without using much
power – hence the big difference in the regular clock
speed and Turbo Boost – so look for a laptop with
discrete graphics if gaming is important to you.
Battery life
Last year’s gram 15 put out a great battery performance
of 12 hours. A key statistic when looking at a laptop
designed for travelling, when you’ll be away from
power sources with which to charge the device.
This year LG has managed to fit an even bigger
battery inside – 72Wh up from 60Wh – and claims the
15in model can last up to 16.5 hours (the 13.3in model
a whopping 22.5 hours). That’s impressive, especially
when you consider that the laptop is only marginally
heavier than before and batteries aren’t exactly light.
In our usual video loop test with the screen
brightness set to 120cd/m 2 (60 percent in this case),
the LG gram 15 lasted a remarkable 15 hours and 48
minutes. Nearly four hours longer than its predecessor
is a huge improvement. However, some cheaper rivals
that are only a little bit heavier can outdo the gram 15.
For example, the Microsoft Surface Laptop can manage
16 hours in the same test, while the Lenovo Yoga 920
goes even further at 16 hours 45 minutes.
Connectivity
It’s commonplace for thin and light laptops to come
with next to no connectivity these days, but that’s
not the case here. Like the previous model, LG has
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ensured you get lots of physical ports so you don’t
get frustrated with having to use various adaptors or
even changing your accessories.
To this end, the gram 15 has three USB 3.0 ports,
full-size HDMI, microSD, headphone and USB-C. This is
similar to the previous model, though the latter is now
used for Thunderbolt 3 meaning you can transfer data
much faster or even use it to connect a 4K display.
LG also includes a USB-C to Ethernet adaptor and
the USB-C port isn’t needed for charging with keeps it
free. Instead, LG opts for a traditional DC connector.
There are stereo speakers rated at a combined
3W and they’re pretty poor, which isn’t a surprise for
a chassis like this. You’ll want to make use of the DTS
Headphone X port, which provides a surround sound
like experience.
Verdict
The LG gram 15 might look and feel the same
as before but comes with a number of upgrades
including 8th-generation Intel, more storage, a
fingerprint scanner and Thunderbolt 3. It’s amazingly
light and offers excellent battery life too. However,
all of this comes at a very high price (especially in the
UK) and you can get similar packages at much lower
cost with laptops like the Microsoft Surface Laptop
and Lenovo Yoga 920. Chris Martin
Specifications
• 15.6in (1920x1080, 141ppi) IPS LCD touchscreen
• 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-8550U (4GHz boost) 4 cores,
8 threads
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• Windows 10 Home 64-bit
• Intel HD Graphics 620
• 16GB 2,400MHz DDR4 RAM
• 1TB M.2 SSD (2x 512GB)
• 802.11b/g/n/ac dual-band
• Bluetooth 4.1
• 3x USB 3.0
• 1x USB-C/Thunderbolt 3
• HDMI
• Ethernet (via included USB-C to RJ45 adaptor)
• Kensington Security Slot
• Micro-SDXC card slot
• Stereo speakers (2x 1.5W)
• HD webcam
• Dual mic
• 3.5mm headset jack with DTS Headphone X
processing
• Tiled backlit keyboard with numberpad
• 72Wh lithium-ion battery non-removable
• 358x229x8-15mm
• 1.1kg
• 1-year parts and labour warranty
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Motorola G5S Plus
£259 inc VAT from fave.co/2nh34ub
Long has the Moto G line of budget smartphones
been considered excellent. Not just at Tech
Advisor but worldwide, we’ve come to expect a
lot of phone for not a lot of money when the latest
one comes out. There are only two real differences
between the older G5 Plus and this newer G5S Plus
– the larger screen and dual cameras.
Thankfully, the G5S Plus continues the trend
and is the best Moto has ever made. It costs a little
more than you might expect, but the extra money is
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REVIEW
worth it for a phone that packs dual cameras, decent
battery life with fast charging, a sleek design and
offers superb performance.
Design
We prefer the design of the G5S Plus to the rest of
the G5 family of phones, including the G5S. The
antenna lines are more prominent, but look better
than the older design where you could see the gaps
between the parts used.
Now, you have a unibody metal finish that feels
far more premium than the price tag might suggest
and is a far cry from the plastic builds of older Moto
G phones. The G5S Plus has smart chamfered edges
to the design that make it feel premium as well as
easier to hold. While not the slimmest phone, it is
easy to hold though approaching uncomfortable in
one hand given the larger 5.5in screen.
It has relatively large top and bottom bezels, but
that is to be expected for the price. They don’t go to
waste though, with a decent sized fingerprint sensor
at the bottom and a front-facing camera and flash at
the top. The rear is plain save for a circular camera
bump that houses dual cameras and a flash, with the
Motorola logo sitting in a small indent where you
might roughly lay a finger while holding the device.
The plastic Moto G phones were great, but this
aluminium feel is much better.
Display
The G5S Plus has a larger screen than the G5 and G5
Plus at 5.5in. It is a 1920x1080 Full HD IPS LCD with
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REVIEW
401ppi and a regular 16:9 aspect ratio. It’s protected by
Gorilla Glass 3 for drops and scuffs, but it’ll still smash
like most other phones if you aren’t careful.
The screen is pleasingly vivid and bright for an LCD
(as opposed to a more expensive OLED panel) and
content looks great. There is not a lot of compromise
here, even on a phone that costs double.
Text, videos and games looks great, with punchy
colour reproduction though if you scroll quickly, text
does blur somewhat until you stop. This is particularly
noticeable with black text on a white background, but is
a trait present in all displays of this type and price.
Processor, storage and RAM
The Moto G5S Plus has a Qualcomm Snapdragon
625 processor, a mid-range chip that is known for its
excellent power efficiency. It delivers excellent battery
management alongside above-average processing
speeds for most people. This is preferable to the
weaker Snapdragon 430 in the G5 and G5S, and the
boost in power in the G5S Plus is incredibly welcome.
In our tests gaming, multitasking, video streaming
and photography were excellent, with only a hint of lag
here and there – to be expected on a Snapdragon 625,
but nothing that limits usability.
The phone comes with a just-passable 32GB internal
storage, but with the option to expand up to 256GB
with a microSD card. This version has 3GB RAM, more
than enough for most tasks bar high intensity games.
There is another version available in some regions with
64GB storage and 4GB RAM, though that will affect the
price asked.
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REVIEW
Cameras
The most noticeable upgrade on the G5S Plus is the
dual cameras. For the first time on a Moto G series
phone, you can take portrait style bokeh effect photos
– a feature on Moto’s £700 Z2 Force on a phone that
costs £259.
The sensors are both 13Mp with an aperture of
f/2.0. They product excellent shot in full daylight,
but struggle in low light with detailing and colour
reproduction. As long as your stick outdoors and are
a casual phone photographer you won’t mind, but
you should buy the G5S Plus if you are looking for the
best possible camera experience on a phone.
The front-facing 8Mp camera is also patchy at best,
but fine for Snapchat selfies and Skype video calls.
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Geekbench 4
Performance
Our benchmarks returned the results we expected. The
internals on the G5S Plus are identical to the older G5
Plus, but thankfully the larger display of the G5S Plus
doesn’t affect performance – the results are identical.
We’ve compared the G5S Plus to the current Moto G
family of phones (confusing names and all), alongside
the Moto Z2 Play with the Snapdragon 626 and HTC
U11 Life with the 630. The differences are negligible,
and you’re not losing out by choosing the G5S Plus.
Connectivity
You get NFC for mobile payments via Android Pay
which is great, plus Bluetooth 4.2 and ac Wi-Fi
connectivity. Battery life is also good with the 3,000mAh
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GFXBench
Manhattan
GFXBench T-Rex
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non-removable battery which is fast charge compatible
with the included TurboCharger. The fingerprint sensor
is also excellent, fast and responsive. We like that you
can lock your phone with a touch of it too, a feature not
seen on many other handsets.
There’s even a built-in FM radio, something budget
phones have more often than flagships these days.
It’s a slight shame to see the older Micro-USB
connector on the phone rather than the new USB-C
standard, but it’s not a reason not to buy the G5S Plus.
Software
The phone ships with Android Nougat 7.1, but given
the relatively unchanged nature of Moto’s Android
skin, it shouldn’t be long before the phone receives
an update to Android Oreo – though this isn’t
confirmed at the time of writing.
The skin over stock Android is thoughtful and
unobtrusive. No changes are made unnecessarily
unlike with other budget manufacturers like Honor.
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You can use the fingerprint sensor to unlock and lock
the phone, or in settings make it a navigation button
to swipe and push to do all sorts of different actions. It
takes some getting used to but is good if you want to
get rid of the on-screen navigation buttons.
Apps sit in the drawer that is a swipe up from
the home screen like on Google Pixel phones, while
notifications and settings are all familiar and nicely
unchanged. Using the Moto G5S Plus is a fresh,
uninterrupted Android experience.
Verdict
The Moto G5S Plus is not only the best Moto G
smartphone ever, it’s the best phone under £300
you can buy today. Yes, it is slightly more expensive
than the G5 or the Nokia 5, but what you gain in
build quality, photography and performance are well
worth the extra spend.
It costs roughly half what the OnePlus 5T does and
you don’t lose an awful lot by spending this much less.
It’s also a better buy than the smaller, cheaper but
underpowered Moto G5S. Henry Burrell
Specifications
• 5.5in (1920x1080, 538ppi) IPS LCD capacitive display
• Android 7.1 Nougat
• Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 625 processor
• Octa-core 2GHz Cortex-A53 CPU
• Adreno 506 GPU
• 3/4GB RAM
• 32/64GB storage, microSD up to 256GB
• Fingerprint scanner (rear mounted)
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• Dual 13Mp rear-facing cameras (f/2.0, autofocus, dual-
LED dual-tone flash
• 8Mp front-facing camera (f/2.0, LED flash)
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 4.2
• A-GPS, GLONASS
• Micro-USB 2.0
• Non-removable lithium-ion 3,000mAh battery
• 153.5x76.2x8mm
• 168g
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Worldmags.net

HTC U11+
£699 inc VAT from fave.co/2rJmXOY
REVIEW
As expected, HTC is back with some new
smartphones including a bigger and better
version of the U11 flagship. It’s onwards and
upwards for the firm following its deal with Google.
Design
As you’d expect from a ‘Plus’ version of any phone,
the U11+ is a bigger version of the U11. It’s got a
bigger screen, of course, but there are a few other
design bits and pieces that are new.
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The device still has the same design language
with HTC’s ‘Liquid Surface’ curved glass at the back.
This time round there are two colours to choose from
starting with Ceramic Black, which to our eyes in
real life looks more like chrome/silver.
A Translucent Black option, as teased ahead of
the launch, is a little more interesting. It’s a smokey
grey sort of colour and means you can see some
components underneath the glass – namely a coil
of metal that is used for NFC.
It’s a bit like having a window on the side of your
gaming PC rig, but without all the neon lights.
We prefer the translucent option but the sad news
is that it’s not coming to Europe, at least to begin
with, so fingers crossed for it to come
later. This is despite teasing it off on
the official site.
The U11+ looks stylish but not
everyone will enjoy the larger and heavier
size (188g is pretty hefty), or the way
the back of the phone gets covered in
smudges and fingerprints very easily
once again – it’s also a bit slippery.
You might have noticed that the
fingerprint sensor has been moved to the
back of the phone. This is to make way
for a different size screen.
HTC has upgraded the waterproof
rating so the U11+ gets IP68, which is the
highest you’ll find on a phone meaning
you can dunk it in up to 1.5 metres of
fresh water for up to 30 minutes.
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Edge Sense is still a feature, so squeezing is
another way of interacting with the device. There
are pressure sensors in the sides of the device in
the lower half that trigger certain commands.
Display
As mentioned, the fingerprint scanner has been moved
to the rear to allow for a screen similar to some rivals.
The U11+ has a 6in screen, with an 18:9 aspect ratio
and a Quad HD+ resolution (2880x1440).
One of our complaints with the U11 was the more
standard display which wasn’t as exciting as rivals,
so an 82 percent screen-to-body ratio is much more
competitive. The U11+ will support HDR10 but via a
firmware update.
Overall the screen looks good, although LCD isn’t
everyone’s choice over AMOLED. It’s crisp and bright
so you need to decide if 6in is the right size for you.
Processor, memory and storage
The U11+ still has a Snapdragon 835 processor and
although there’s a version with 4GB of RAM and
64GB of storage, we’ll get the 6/128GB model as
standard in the UK which is great news.
It makes the price tag and value for money even
better and there’s still a microSD card slot should you
really need to add more. Most users won’t with online
backup services like Google Photos, though.
Like any top-tier smartphone, we’ve found
performance to be silky smooth. We’ve had no issues
waiting for apps to load, multi-tasking and the like. As
you can see, it benchmarks with the best of them.
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Geekbench 4
GFXBench Manhattan
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GFXBench T-Rex
JetStream
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Audio
HTC is once again pitching its phone at audiophiles,
with a range of different features including USonic
noise cancelling headphones in the box. The U11+
also supports 24-bit playback, has an LDAC and
offers Qualcomm’s aptX HD codec for Bluetooth.
There’s no headphone jack, which is a shame, but
the USonic have USB-C and there’s also an adaptor
included for traditionalists. The phone also has
BoomSound Hi-Fi Edition which the firm claims is
30 percent louder than its smaller brother thanks to
the additional space. It’s a decent option for those
into audio but it can’t quite beat the LG G6 and
V30 phones with their dedicated DACs.
Cameras
HTC has opted for the same impressive 12Mp UltraPixel
3 camera as the U11. However, there’s a change at the
front from 16- down to 8Mp – the U11+ front camera
has an 85-degree field of view and the HDR Boost
feature found on the back.
Both cameras are of a high standard and you’ll
get decent selfies from the front camera for starters.
Although the main camera might not have a second
lens for fancy tricks, it does take no nonsense quality
shots in a range of conditions.
We’ve found it easy to use, with quick auto focus
and crisp results. You can jump into the Pro mode if
you want to fiddle with settings but the U11+ does
a great job of providing pleasing shots by simply
pointing and shooting. As you can see from the test
images opposite, detail is excellent, even in shadows,
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Landscape
colours are natural
and exposure is good.
The U11+ is great
in low light, too,
making it seem like
the conditions weren’t
bad. This is partly
due to the optical
image stabilisation
which keeps
everything steady.
Low light
Battery life
Another advantage of a larger handset is space for a
bigger battery. The U11+ has a pretty huge 3,930mAh
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battery inside, around a third larger than most regular
flagships. HTC is claiming up to 25 hours of talk time
and more than a day of usage.
As alluded to, the coil you can see on the
translucent model isn’t wireless charging. It’s NFC so
you’ll charge via USB-C and there’s Quick Charge 3.0
support so you can top the battery up, er, quickly.
We’ve found battery life to be strong with the U11+
comfortably lasting a day of even heavy usage.
Software
As you’d expect, the U11+ comes with Android 8.0
Oreo which is the latest version of Google’s mobile
operating system.
HTC Sense is the firm’s custom user interface
over the top, but like many these days it’s not as far
removed from stock compared to how things used
to be. The interface has things like HTC’s news feed
instead of Google and supports both Amazon Alexa
and Google Assistant.
There’s also HTC’s Sense Companion, which on
the whole we find more annoying than it is useful
– especially on top of services like Google that are
already pretty polished.
The U11+ comes preloaded with a few apps,
some of HTC’s own like Viveport as well as the likes
of Facebook and Instagram. You can uninstall the
ones you don’t want, though.
With such a large screen, HTC has considered the
user and has made it so you don’t have to reach the
top to pull the notification bar down. You can swipe
anywhere, which is a relief.
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HTC Sense
Companion
Another feature on the U11+ is a shortcut wheel
called Edge Launcher, which you can summon with
Edge Sense. Apps and quick settings can be added
to this and it can be moved around for convenience.
It also shows the calendar at the top and it’s one
of the most useful thing we’ve experienced with Edge
Sense. You’ll just need to set it as the action in the
Edge Sense setting as the default is camera.
You can do plenty of other things with Edge Sense
such as power on/off, take a screenshot, open and
close the notification draw and even toggle your Wi-Fi
hotspot. You can also switch to an advanced mode that
allows for two functions, the second accessed via a
squeeze and hold.
There are also in-app uses for Edge Sense such as
snoozing alarms, writing a new email or zooming in
on a map. Generally, though, the regular method for
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these things is better with Edge Sense trying to solve
a problem that doesn’t really exist.
Edge Sense is good if you can find something
you like to use it for. However, for many it will be
something you try for a while then forget about.
Verdict
The U11+ will be too big and heavy for some but
it’s a decent effort from HTC. It’s cheaper than rivals
and has some top-notch specs including 128GB
storage as standard. It also has decent cameras, IP68
waterproofing and an 18:9 screen. It’s just a shame
there’s no headphone jack, Edge Sense remains
something of a gimmick, and we don’t get the alluring
translucent model in the UK.
It’s a worthy upgrade to the U11, however there are
some cracking phones to choose from at lower price
points including the OnePlus 5T and Google Pixel 2,
which has a feature similar to Edge Sense. Chris Martin
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Specifications
• 6in (2880x1440, 538ppi) Super LCD6 capacitive
display
• Android 8.0 Oreo
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor
• Octa-core (4x 2.45GHz Kryo, 4x 1.9GHz Kryo) CPU
• Adreno 540 GPU
• 4/6GB RAM
• 64/128GB storage, microSD up to 256GB
• Fingerprint scanner (rear mounted)
• 12Mp rear-facing camera (f/1.7, 1.4µm, Dual Pixel
PDAF), phase detection autofocus, OIS, dual-LED
dual-tone flash
• 8Mp front-facing cameras (f/2.0, 1080p, HDR,
panorama)
• 802.11ac Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 5.0
• A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS
• USB 3.1 Type-C
• Non-removable lithium-ion 3,930mAh battery
• 158.5x74.9x8.5mm
• 188g
REVIEW
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Apple HomePod
£319 inc VAT from fave.co/2rRVNWv
The HomePod is Apple’s smart speaker that’s
controlled using Siri and designed primarily for
high-quality music playback. It’s taken its sweet
time to arrive, but arrive it has and our ears have
decided that it was worth the wait.
Naturally, this isn’t merely an AirPlay speaker. With
Siri built in, you can use it for many other tasks – just as
you can with Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant.
From checking the weather and sports scores to setting
reminders, alarms and timers, Siri is a pretty capable
assistant. It can also control all your HomeKit devices,
such as lights, heating and switches.
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As you’d expect, the HomePod is very much an
Apple product. It’s designed to work within the Apple
ecosystem and it does this exceptionally well. And
if you’re already well established in this world, the
HomePod is a great addition.
Design
Whether in grey or white, the HomePod is a beautifully
designed speaker. It’s larger in all dimensions than the
Echo 2, a little smaller than the Harman Kardon Allure
and roughly the same as the Sonos One.
If you heard it before you saw it, you’d be surprised
at just how compact it is. We love the seamless fabric
which surrounds the HomePod, feels spongy to the
touch and looks as if it’s been 3D printed.
On top is a glossy plastic disc which lights up
when Siri talks and hides touch sensitive volume
controls. Tap the centre to play/pause, double tap to
skip to the next track and triple tap to skip back to
the previous one. Tap and hold to invoke Siri. It’s all
completely intuitive, especially if you’re already used
to controlling music playback with a button on your
headphone cord. The captive power cable is slightly
unusual, but aside from the worry it can’t be easily
fixed if it gets damaged, it’s not a deal breaker. It’s
not hugely long but should be long enough to reach
a nearby power socket.
Setup is quick and easy. As with recent iPads,
you just hold your iPhone near the HomePod and it
appears on the screen. A few taps later and it’s ready
to go: Wi-Fi passwords, Apple ID and preferences
are all sent wirelessly from your phone.
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Which music services
does HomePod support?
If you don’t have an Apple Music subscription and
haven’t already used the three-month free trial you’ll
see the option to try it out. Otherwise, it’s £9.99 per
month or you can choose to get your music from
another source.
Siri can also play music you’ve purchased
from iTunes or music stored in your iCloud Music
Library. There’s also Beats 1 radio, which doesn’t require
an Apple Music subscription, plus the thousands of
podcasts available from Apple. If you already have
a Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, Deezer or Amazon Music
subscription (or another service) you can play this
through the HomePod via your iPhone using AirPlay.
You can then ask Siri to control playback, such as
pausing or skipping to the next track. What you can’t
do when playing music this way is to ask Siri to play
a specific album, song or playlist. Until there’s proper
integration with another streaming service, Siri won’t
be as useful as with Apple Music where you can say
“Hey Siri, add this song to my favourites” or “Hey Siri,
play party music from the 1980s”.
Apple wants HomePod owners to use Apple Music,
which should come as no surprise to anyone. Amazon
and Google both make their devices work best with
their own streaming services, too.
Of course, you can play any audio you like through
the HomePod as long as it’s via AirPlay. That means you
can select the HomePod when you’re watching Netflix,
iPlayer, YouTube or even when making a phone call –
the built-in mics let it act as a hands-free speakerphone
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(and the quality and experience is very good). If you
have a supported Apple TV, you can choose the
HomePod as the audio output, again via AirPlay.
What’s missing?
The HomePod doesn’t have an aux in (or out) and
there’s no Bluetooth. So it lacks the flexibility of some
other smart speakers. While anyone in the household
can ask Siri to play music, set a timer or do other tasks,
they won’t be able to play music from, say, Spotify on
their Android phone.
There’s no voice recognition in the sense that Siri
doesn’t know who’s making requests. Once you set
up a HomePod, it pulls information from the Apple ID
you used. Siri therefore knows contacts from only one
account, making the ability to send text messages and
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make phone calls useful only to one person. You can
change the Apple ID associated with the HomePod,
but this isn’t something you can do on the fly: you
can’t ask Siri to “switch to Miriam’s account”.
You can share to-do lists and calendars, though,
but only one person can use the HomePod to check
what the traffic is like to “work”. Everyone else will
have to specify the location when asking, so there are
workarounds for some things.
Apple is late to the smart speaker game, so rivals
already have a range of devices, including those with
screens, such as Amazon’s Echo Spot. It’s possible
Apple will broaden the range of HomePods in a similar
way to offer both cheaper, smaller devices as well as
a potential Echo Show equivalent where it could take
advantage of its FaceTime video calling service.
Later in 2018, you’ll be able to use a pair of
HomePods to create stereo sound. Alternatively,
you’ll be able to place them in multiple rooms around
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the house and either play music in sync or tell Siri to
play a track on a specific HomePod.
For now, there is but one HomePod.
What can Siri do on the HomePod?
If you’ve used Siri a lot on your iPhone or iPad, you’ll
already know what to expect from the HomePod as
the assistant has – as far as we can tell – the same
capabilities. Most people will use it to ask for music
and control playback, but you can also ask for the
news headlines (a new feature added to iOS recently,
too), a weather forecast, unit conversion, general
information (“How tall is the Shard?”) and more.
In the UK, the HomePod will default to the BBC
headlines, but when you first ask for the news, Siri
will tell ask if you want to switch to Sky or LBC.
With Apple Music, Siri can tell you the name of
the song, album and who played the bass on that
track. Some information is pulled from web sources
including Wikipedia while other data comes from
Apple Music itself.
The HomePod works as a home hub, too. This
means it can control your HomeKit devices and also
allow you to control them remotely from your iPhone.
If you don’t own any HomeKit devices you’re in the
fortunate position of being able to buy only those
which support it. Many early adopters of smart home
gadgets will find their lights, switches, thermostats and
sensors aren’t HomeKit compatible which means Siri
won’t be able to control them.
HomeKit-compatible devices can also be more
expensive than those which don’t support it.
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You can ask Siri to send a text message or call
someone. And if you need to use another service, say
WhatsApp, you simply say “Send John a message
on WhatsApp” or even “Send Matt a WhatsApp
saying ‘Do you want to meet for dinner at 7.30?’”. For
reminders, Siri will add your request to your Reminders
app on your phone. Unlike Alexa, it won’t give an
audible reminder from the HomePod at the time you
set: you’ll just get a notification on your iPhone.
Apple needs to work on Siri’s speech, though. Its
pronunciation and intonation aren’t nearly as good as
the Google Assistant or Alexa: it sounds more robotic
and less lifelike than its rivals.
A while back, Apple opened up Siri to app
developers so they could allow users to control
aspects with the assistant. The launch of the HomePod
could prompt some to add Siri to their apps which
could bring ‘native’ control for music services such
as Spotify. It remains to be seen whether that will
happen or not, though.
Performance
You’re probably most interested in sound quality, as
this is a speaker after all. The good news is that it’s
the best sounding smart speaker we’ve heard. By a
clear margin. It’s room-filling loud, with no distortion
at all even at high volume. Bass is excellent, and
much louder and deeper than you’d ever expect
from something this small.
As it’s circular, the main woofer sits horizontally
inside and fires upwards. At the bottom, an array of
seven tweeters ensure mids and highs are projected in
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all directions. And their location means sound will also
be reflected off the surface you’ve put the HomePod
on. Cleverly, an on-board Apple A8 chip uses the array
of six microphones to listen to the environment and
adjust the sound automatically to optimise it for the
HomePod’s location.
This happens automatically and invisibly, so it isn’t
possible to hear a ‘with’ and ‘without’ processing
to check for audible differences. Nevertheless, the
HomePod does indeed sound great pretty much
wherever you put it: on a shelf, a side table or on the
kitchen worktop.
Bass is also monitored and controlled by the A8
chip to ensure distortion is kept in check. While mids
and highs sound the same on various surfaces and in
different locations, bass does seem to be affected.
When placed on a thick wooden kitchen worktop with
ceramic tiles, the HomePod’s bass sounded much more
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muted than when it was sat on a small table in the
lounge, further from a wall. In the latter location, bass
was considerably louder.
Regardless of position, the motor-driven woofer
delivers bass frequencies which many rival smart
speakers simply cannot produce. The Amazon Echo, for
example, struggles with tracks such as Fractal’s Itvara
and bass is largely absent.
Not so on the HomePod. In our lounge, it coped
effortlessly with the sub-bass with power that you’d
associate with a much larger speaker.
We’ve listened to just about every genre and
the HomePod does a great job with all. If you want to
demo the HomePod, pick a simple track with strong
vocals and a deep bass line. Diana Krall’s Peel me a
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grape, for example, sounds utterly crisp and clean
where every nuance of her voice and piano can be
heard. The accompanying double-bass is similarly
strong, but without overpowering the sound of the
bassist’s fingers plucking each string.
On busier, more complex tracks the HomePod’s
processing still manages to create a soundstage
in which instruments have decent separation and
vocals are clear. The live version of The Eagles’ Hotel
California is particularly enjoyable with the bright
notes from Don Felder’s 12-string guitar ringing out.
On occasion, treble is a little harsh.
Play Calvin Harris’ This is what you came for and
the electronic cymbals are a little crashy, and
Rhianna’s voice quite piercing – exacerbated at higher
volumes of course. However, that’s the exception and
for the vast majority of tracks the HomePod simply
sounds great.
Siri performance
A smart speaker must be able to hear you when
music is playing loudly, and thanks to some nifty
beamforming technology, the mics can pick up your
voice across the room. Siri responds quickly when you
call, and if your command is quick – “Hey Siri, turn it
up” – it won’t even pause the music.
If you’re actively using your iPhone, Siri will respond
on that rather than the HomePod, but in general, it’s
the speaker that responds first. Sometimes, Siri will
pop up on the phone, then immediately hand off to
the HomePod. It’s impressive how it can hear you over
the music, but a couple of times during our testing the
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device failed to respond when speaking at a moderate
level in a quiet room. It could be down to a conflict
between the iPhone and HomePod, but we’re hoping
it’s just a wrinkle that will be ironed out soon.
Verdict
Even as a first-generation product, the HomePod feels
polished in its design, the way it sounds and how it
operates. However, Siri’s voice is a little too robotic
compared to its rivals and you’re limited to Apple’s
music services for deep integration with Siri. The
HomePod can control your smart home gadgets, but
only if they’re compatible with HomeKit. All of which
means that if you’re happy to live in Apple’s ecosystem
the HomePod is a great purchase. Jim Martin
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REVIEW
McAfee Total Protection
£49 inc VAT from fave.co/2BUCJed
McAfee is a long-time name in the world of PC
security. These days the company sells four
security products for home users: McAfee
Antivirus Plus, Internet Security, Live Safe, and Total
Protection. This review is looking at McAfee Total
Protection, which along with other McAfee products,
recently got an upgrade. McAfee says the new Total
Protection packs improved anti-malware protection,
and a uniform interface on both PC and Mac.
Total Protection comes at a variety of price points
depending on how many devices you want to license.
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For a single device you’ll pay £49, add another £20
and you get Total Protection for five devices, and for
£79 you’ll get coverage for 10 devices. McAfee only
licenses a maximum of five True Key password/identity
manager installations per subscriber, however, even if
you pay the price to cover 10 devices. Live Safe comes
with the same limit on True Key, but offers unlimited
device installations.
Total Protection’s interface is well designed, but
at the same time I found it a little confusing. Some
information is stored in the left rail, for example, while
others are in the main panel, and still others are in both
spots at once. At the top of the window you get five
tabs: Home, PC Security, Identity, Privacy, and Account.
There are also icons for alerts, tips, and settings in the
top-right corner.
Home is your basic dashboard with a green check
mark or red alert to let you know whether your PC is
protected. It also includes quick links for running a
PC scan, setting up True Key, checking application
updates on your PC, and removing cookies and
trackers from your browsers. Above those basic tiles
there’s also a carousel with various information such
as how many web connections McAfee has blocked
– for Windows 10 users that can be a lot – and how
many files have been scanned.
PC Security is a deeper dive into your PC’s
status. The left rail features at-a-glance information
such as whether the firewall and real-time scanning
are active. The main panel of this tab, meanwhile,
features four small tiles that are similar to what we
saw under the Home tab, with options to run a
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Total Protection’s interface
security scan, application updates, virus updates,
and to browse McAfee’s history. The carousel,
meanwhile, prompts you to activate features related
to PC security such as checking that your third-party
applications are up to date.
Identity consists of three basic things: the True Key
identity manager, a file shredder for deleting sensitive
files, and McAfee Web Advisor. The latter is a separate
download that is supposed to protect you from online
threats by warning you about problems before you
encounter them. It includes ‘misclick protection’
to block malware or prevent landing on a phishing
site via a bad link, typo protection that addresses
mistyped URLs of popular websites, for example
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Google.co.uk versus Gooogel.co.uk. If you’re a novice
or casual PC user, Advisor could be a helpful tool, but
advanced users could find it more of an annoyance
than anything else.
Privacy includes parental controls, another tile to
remove cookies and trackers from your browsers, a
file vault to secure sensitive files with encryption and
a password. There’s also an interesting Threat Map
tile that lets you see the top threats in the world or in
your corner of the global network, including malware,
malicious hacker IP addresses, and other information.
Finally, Account contains your account information,
including the time remaining on your subscription.
Overall, McAfee packed a lot of information and
features in Total Protection, and it’s all well organized,
though splitting information between the left rail and
the main panel is a little confusing. Total Protection’s
rotating carousel also feels like space that could be
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McAfee Total
Protection’s File Lock
feature integrates with
Windows File Explorer
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REVIEW
put to better use. It takes up so much of the interface
while the essential tools are restricted to small tiles at
the bottom of each tab.
Another quibble is that McAfee opens a second
window to carry out almost any operation, from
running a scan to digitally shredding files. Total
Protection has such a large window by default, it
would be better if everything just happened there.
The only exception to that rule might be File Lock,
which integrates with File Explorer.
Perhaps a single-window approach would
add complexity to the app’s navigation or reduce
responsiveness, but multiple windows adds to that
feeling of wasted space.
The app also won’t amaze you with slickness or
design. It’s very understated, but that’s probably a
good thing in a security suite, which should be part
of your PC’s plumbing. Things can get messy without
it, but you’d rather not have to think about it too
much when it’s working.
McAfee does have pop-up notifications that
appear now and then, and Total Protection’s carousel
does take up too much space to promote True Key
and Web Advisor. Overall, however, McAfee stays
out of your way while you work.
Performance
Both A-V Comparatives and A-V Test took a look at
McAfee and its security protection performed very well.
A-V Test found malware and zero-day attack detection
was 99 percent in June during testing with 202 samples.
Malware detection was 100 percent from more than
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Total Protection’s
Identity tab
10,000 samples, and there were no false detections for
websites or legitimate software downloads.
A-V Comparatives, meanwhile, found that
McAfee had seven false positives during a real-world
protection test, but it also detected 100 percent of all
329 malicious test samples. Malware defences were
really good during an online scan, at 99.4 percent,
while offline detection was low at 78.8 percent.
There were also 9 false alarms during these tests of
nearly 38,000 samples.
When we ran Total Protection through our usual
Handbrake and PCMark 8 tests, we found McAfee had
a minor impact on performance. Handbrake completed
its job of transcoding a 3.8GB high definition video file
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REVIEW
in one hour, 18 minutes, and 24 seconds. The standard
time for our Windows 10 test PC without any extra
programs running is one hour, 15 minutes, and 30
seconds. That means the PC took slightly longer than
usual with McAfee running, but for a home user, that
difference won’t have a massive impact.
PCMark 8, meanwhile, got a score of 2,527 with
McAfee running, and 2,532 without. That’s a small
drop in performance and unlikely to be noticeable
to most users.
Verdict
McAfee is a solid choice for PC protection, and the
impact on your PC resources should be pretty minimal.
The price points are okay, but you can find better value
elsewhere. The McAfee desktop application needs a
little work to make it more intuitive, and to optimize
its design. Ian Paul
System requirements
• Microsoft Windows 10, 8.1, 8, and 7 (32- and 64-bit)
• macOS X 10.11 or later
• Android smartphones and tablets 4.1 or higher
• Apple iOS 9 or later
• Internet Explorer 10.0 or later
• Firefox
• Google Chrome
• Safari (Mac and iOS OS Only)
• Internet Connection Required
• 2GB RAM for Windows 7 and above
• 500MB free drive space
• 1GHz Processor
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Open source turns 20
IAN PAUL reveals how Linux, Raspberry Pi, Chromium and more
are influencing PCs
Open-source software runs something in your
life even if you don’t realize it. Raspberry
Pi fans take advantage of it. Linux and BSD
open-source servers run our websites and corporate
networks, as well as in-flight entertainment units
and computer kiosks. Open-source software sits at
the core of Android phones. Even popular browsers
are open-source, including Mozilla’s Firefox, Opera,
and the Chromium project, which feeds into the
not-so-open-source Chrome browser. Open-source
software such as Linux is so critical to developers that
Microsoft even integrated it into Windows 10 with
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows.
The term that helped define all this technology was
born 20 years ago. Notions of ‘free software’, where
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users could view a program’s source code, already
existed thanks to the efforts of Richard Stallman and
the Free Software Foundation. But on 3 February,
1998, the initial members of the Open Source Initiative
gathered to coin and adopt the term ‘open source’,
and the Open Source Definition published a few days
later helped create a mass movement around the
notion of exposing software’s source code.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds soon embraced the term
– the Linux Foundation’s work revolves around opensource
code. Over time, open source has even slowly
expanded to include hardware as well as software.
Open-source software is now a foundational element
of our computerized world thanks to the efforts of
numerous organizations, independent developers,
and regular users. In honour of the twentieth
anniversary of open source, here are highlights.
Open-source operating systems
When it comes to open-source software and PCs, one
major project comes to mind: Linux, also known as
GNU/Linux. Other examples such as the BSD variants
(like FreeBSD and OpenBSD) exist, but Linux and its
various distributions stand out.
Linux operating systems were once considered
unfriendly to novice users, but those days are long
gone. Most people start with the user-friendly
Ubuntu, currently at version 17.10. But there’s also
Debian, which Ubuntu is based on (yes, there are
distributions based on other distributions), and
hundreds of other options, as this Distrowatch
list details (fave.co/2BWSm56). If you want to try
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The Pop! OS desktop is the
same as the standard Ubuntu
GNOME desktop, but with
some aesthetic tweaks
something newer, System76, a Linux-focused hardware
vendor, recently came out with a custom distro called
Pop! OS (fave.co/2BYe48w).
Open-source software
Open-source software has evolved to the point that
there’s a viable replacement for almost everything
you’d like to use. One intriguing open-source
product is Syncthing (fave.co/2BradQh), a cloud
sync service that you control.
You can even run non-open-source software
inside open-source applications. You can run
Windows in a virtual machine on a Linux box, for
instance – a great option for people who need to
run certain Windows applications but don’t want
to use Windows as their daily driver.
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Running games inside a virtual machine won’t give
you a great experience, but take heart: More and more
games are rolling out Linux support – a movement
that owes a great debt to Steam’s push toward Linux
gaming. Purists should note that neither Steam nor
most of these games are open-source, though –
they simply run on Linux.
Open-source hardware
You can also get hardware dedicated to Linux builds,
such as the System76 Galago Pro ($959, around £690,
from fave.co/2BWULwE), but this hardware is rarely
open-source like the software running on it. In some
cases you might find hardware schematics available to
the public, but the components that go into it – like
the CPU and GPU – are almost always proprietary. The
Raspberry Pi mini-PC (£32 from fave.co/2BXqBZZ), for
example, uses a closed-source ARM chip at its heart.
Nevertheless, the pint-sized PC board has been a
champion for open source software since its debut, and
we’re enamoured with it here at Tech Advisor.
Over the past 20 years, the people who make open
source software have helped to create a bold new
world and enabled some of our most important online
infrastructure. Here’s to the next 20.
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FEATURE
Five Chromebook hacks
A few tweaks and additions can turn these laptops into
indispensable tools. IAN PAUL reports
Chromebooks may be impressively versatile, but
a good Chromebook hack helps it break out of
its browser-based confines and try new talents
on for size. Top of the list, of course, is the ability to
install a full Linux desktop operating system via the
Crouton project. But there’s a lot you can tweak or add
to multiply a Chromebook’s powers. Some of these
features require you to install Linux, but many do not.
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Here are five Chromebook hacks that will improve
your user experience and make these laptops even
more powerful.
1. Steam streaming
Just as everyone knows you can put Linux on a
Chromebook, it’s probably common knowledge that
you can install Valve’s Steam to play games. The
problem is only a few Chromebooks come with a GPU
that can run big-time PC games. Enter Steam’s local
network streaming. Using this feature, your full-time
gaming PC runs the game you want to play, but you
interact with it on your Chromebook.
Valve gets around device limitations by recording
a game’s video stream and sending it to your lowerpowered
device. Then your gameplay inputs (controller
or mouse and keyboard) are returned to the gaming PC
over your home network. It sounds a little unreliable,
but it’s amazing how well this works. Don’t be afraid to
try your most resource-intensive games, either.
The one wrinkle is that Steam’s fantastic feature
needs a few tweaks to work correctly. That’s because
Chromebooks close certain ports by default that
Steam needs for streaming. Those ports remain
closed even when you’ve got Linux running on your
box via Crouton. Many sites around the web that can
show you how to open these ports via command line
magic, but these particular instructions are based on
a post by developer Brian Smith.
The goal is to create a Bash alias with all the
instructions. Then all you have to do is type in a
simple word or phrase, and the ports you need will
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open with a few taps. To do that, jump into your Linux
chroot on your Chromebook, open a terminal and
type in the following:
echo “alias steamStream=’ sudo iptables
-A INPUT -p udp – dport 27036 -j ACCEPT;
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p udp – dport
37804 -j ACCEPT; sudo iptables -A INPUT
-p tcp – dport 37804 -j ACCEPT; sudo
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp – dport 27036
-j ACCEPT; sudo iptables -I INPUT -p udp
– dport 27031 -j ACCEPT; sudo iptables
-I INPUT -p udp – dport 27036 -j ACCEPT;
sudo iptables -I INPUT -p tcp – dport
27036 -j ACCEPT; sudo iptables -I INPUT
-p tcp – dport 27037 -j ACCEPT;’” >>
~/.bash_aliases
Now every time you want to open your ports, fire
up the terminal in Linux, type steamStream into the
command prompt, hit Enter, then start Steam, and
you should see a Stream option next to any games
installed on your Windows gaming rig. If you forget
to run your alias before opening Steam, you’ll have to
relaunch the program to see the streaming option.
2. Chrome Remote Desktop
We’ve covered this before, but it’s hard to beat
Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop for getting
free access to your primary PC when you’re on a
Chromebook. You can use this feature if you’re on the
other side of the house or the other side of the country.
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The only thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need
to make sure your Windows PC isn’t set to go idle.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to access your machine
using this method. Once you’ve installed the Chrome
Remote Desktop Chrome app on both PCs, it’s just a
matter of opening Remote Desktop on your Windows
machine. Then press Get started under My computers,
and follow the instructions.
As part of the initial setup process you’ll need to
install Chrome’s Remote Desktop Host controller and
set a PIN. Once that’s done, open Chrome Remote
Desktop on your Chromebook, click Get started
under My computers, select the name of the Windows
computer you just set up, enter the PIN, and you’re in.
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3. Voice dictation
For those suffering from repetitive strain injuries or
who would rather not type all the time, using a voice
dictation app for document creation can help. There
are several options for using voice dictation with
Chromebooks, but two that I tried and liked were
Google’s built-in dictation for Google Docs and the
free Chromebook app VoiceNote II.
To use the feature on Google Docs, open a word
processing document, and go to Tools > Voice typing
in the menu. A small window with a microphone will
open to the left of the document area. Click that and
start dictating your document. The only problem with
Google’s solution is that it was a little on the slow
side in my tests. When you need to dictate offline,
VoiceNote II is a good choice. This Chrome app takes
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dictation very well. It’s not the best at doing edits such
as properly interpreting what you mean by saying
“delete” or “backspace”, but for the most part it works.
4. Night Light
Like Apple and Microsoft
have done, Google added a
night light feature to Chrome
OS. This feature allows you
to tone down the screen
temperature at night by
reducing the amount of blue
light coming off the screen.
Blue light is associated with
daylight, and toning it down
is supposed to help your
body release melatonin to aid
in falling asleep after a latenight
YouTube session. Google has yet to make this
an official feature, but enabling it on a Chromebook
is easy enough. All you have to do is drop into the
flags section, where you can find many interesting and
experimental features for Chrome and Chrome OS.
Open Chrome and in the address bar type
chrome://flags/#ash-enable-night-light and
hit Enter. Next click Enable, and restart your machine.
Tap the control panel area in the lower right corner of
your shelf. You should now see a new Night Light icon
between the help and lock symbols.
Whenever you want to go into night mode – it’s
best to do this at or a few hours after sundown – just
tap that icon. To turn off the feature tap it again.
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If you want to schedule Night Light’s active hours
or adjust the colour mix for the feature, go to Settings
> Device > Displays > Night Light. By default, Night
Light doesn’t have any scheduling, but you can tell
your PC to turn on Night Light from sunset to sunrise
or set a custom time.
5. Share files between Chrome OS and Linux
We’ve already covered how to use Crouton to install
Linux on your Chromebook. It’s an easy way to get
a second operating system on your laptop for those
times you really need a full desktop – like when you
want to play Civilization VI on the couch using Steam
in-home streaming.
One of the handy features that Crouton has is that
by default you can share files between your Linux
install and Chrome OS via the Downloads folder. This
folder has the same contents regardless of which
operating system you’re in. If you have a file or folder
in Linux that you need to drop to Chrome OS or vice
versa, just put it in the Downloads folder on either
side and you’re all set.
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Best gaming laptops
BUYING GUIDE
Know what to look for and which models rate highest. GORDON
MAH UNG reports
Picking a gaming laptop today isn’t as easy as it
was five years ago when a ‘real’ gaming laptop
meant 5kg of back-breaking hardware to haul
around. With major advances in laptop video cards and
CPUs, you can now get great gaming performance from
laptops ranging from light to super heavy and from
super expensive to budget.
The problem these days: too many choices. A luxury
problem, to be sure.
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Still, you need to know how to navigate this bounty.
In this guide, we’ll not only name the best gaming
laptops currently available, we’ll also highlight what
to look for when buying a gaming laptop.
The ‘best’ screen for a laptop
When you buy a gaming laptop, one of the most
important decisions you’ll need to make regards the
screen. After all, what you get on day one is what
you’re stuck with until you junk the device. You can,
of course, run an external monitor but then, what’s
the point of a laptop?
Display size
The size of the screen dictates the size of the laptop
itself, and thus weight. You can’t, for example, get
a 17in gaming laptop that’s 2kg, so think long and
hard about whether you’re willing to take the weight
penalty in exchange for the screen real estate.
If the laptop is going to be your only gaming
machine, having a 17in screen might be ideal. This
is very much a matter of personal preference.
Screen resolution
The buzzword today is ‘4K’ and it delivers sharper
photo viewing, though that doesn’t mean it’s for
everyone. In fact, for a lot of people, it’s not a musthave.
While photos might be sharper, anything not
using the panel’s native resolution of 3840x2180 will
look softer. That means games running at lower than
4K resolution won’t look quite as sharp unless you
exponentially increase the graphics power of the
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laptop. If you’re running at 1920x1080 resolution
because your GPU can’t hit 60fps at 4K, that feature is
moot. For many gamers, 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 is
far more optimal.
IPS vs. TN vs. OLED
The panel technology is also a key feature. IPS (in-plane
switching) generally produces much greater colour
accuracy and superior off-axis viewing, but tends to
lag in response times, which can lead to blurring. TN
(twisted nematic) panels, on the other hand, can offer
far higher refresh rates and usually better response
times than IPS, but can look washed out. A middleground
technology that’s appearing more often is
VA (vertical alignment). VA is sometimes alternately
BUYING GUIDE
The MSI GS63VR features a
4K resolution panel but not
enough GPU to really drive
it for today’s games
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BUYING GUIDE
referred to as ‘wide viewing angle’ technology. (Many
assume this to spec to be IPS, but it’s not). In our
experience, we’ve found VA panels to run the gamut
from being worthy competitors to IPS to being worse
than the better TN panels. The Gigabyte Aero 15 that
we recommend above has a good VA panel.
Generally, if colour accuracy is important, go IPS
(a trademark of Sharp), and if you want the fastest
response times go for a gaming-oriented TN panel.
With the variability of VA, we recommend you check
feedback from reviewers and users.
The wildcard in all this are OLED-based panels.
OLED panels have been used in phones for years but
have recently migrated to larger screens in laptops.
IPS, TN, and VA all use LEDs behind the screen or
along the edges. ‘Black’ is produced by a shutter-like
mechanism that blocks light from coming through. As
you can imagine, there’s usually some light leakage,
which means the black tends to be grey. OLED panels,
however, don’t rely on edge- or backlighting and
instead each pixel generates its own light. To produce
black, it just switches the light off. This amounts to truly
stunning contrast ratios and vibrant colours. OLEDs
also boast fantastic response times too. The negatives
include smaller screen sizes (we haven’t seen anything
larger than 13 inches yet), higher cost, and lack of
support for variable refresh rate.
G-Sync and FreeSync
Okay, we called this section G-Sync and FreeSync, but
the reality is, when it comes to beefy gaming laptops,
it’s a GeForce GPU world. And that means it’s a G-Sync
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AMD’s FreeSync
technology helps
reduce screen tearing
world. In a nutshell, Nvidia and AMD’s respective
variable-refresh-rate technologies help synchronize the
monitor and the GPU to greatly reduce screen tearing.
Variable refresh rates can make gaming at 40fps far
smoother to your eyes than a screen without it.
The first variable-refresh-rate panels for laptops
maxed out at 75Hz, which was only marginally better
than the standard 60Hz. More recently, we’ve begun
to see laptop panels that can push 120Hz. This means
smoother and sharper gaming. It even helps smooth
out everyday tasks such as scrolling a browser page
or Word document.
The downside of high-refresh rate panels is the
technology it’s available on: TN. As we said earlier, TN
generally looks less vibrant and less accurate than IPS.
Off axis is generally inferior too. Which is right for you?
If it’s primarily a gaming laptop – go for a high refresh
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rate and G-Sync (or FreeSync if you can find a laptop
that supports it with a Radeon GPU). If you tend to
also push pixels in Photoshop or do any colour-critical
work, skip variable refresh for an IPS panel.
Keyboard and trackpad
A new trend in gaming laptops is the offset trackpad,
which is more conducive to gaming than a deadcentre
trackpad. The concept is sound but anyone
who actually cares about PC gaming will just plug in a
mouse. The worst thing about that offset trackpad is
when you try to use it for non-gaming purposes.
As far as keyboards go, the most important gaming
feature is n-key rollover. This means the keyboard
physically scans each key separately. If you wanted
to, you could press 20 keys and they’d all register as
each is independently wired. That probably sounds
Razer was the first
manufacturer that
we know of to use an
offset trackpad as an
ad hoc gaming ‘mouse’
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excessive but keyboards that lack this feature can suffer
missed keystrokes, which not only ruins gameplay but
also hurts in everyday tasks. Anyone who has used an
Adobe product that might require a left-Alt, left-Shift,
left-Ctrl, plus two more keys to do something may have
run into the limitations of non-n-key keyboards.
Other keyboard considerations include LED
backlighting (which adds ambiance but does nothing
for gameplay) and mechanical keys versus membrane.
Mechanical keys are excellent – but are available on
only handful of laptops that usually weigh a ton.
BUYING GUIDE
Storage
Having your games load from a solid-state drive (SSD)
instead of a hard drive significantly cuts down on load
times. But beyond that, we haven’t found it to matter
much whether it’s a fast NVMe PCIe drive or a slower
SATA SSD. What does matter more today is the size of
the SSD rather than the interface it uses. With games
now topping 50GB/s and some touching 100GB/s, a
once spacious 256GB SSD will feel too small with just
four games installed.
So when speccing out that gaming laptop, be
mindful of just how much total storage you have. If you
go for laptop with a small SSD and large hard drive
combo, expect to install your games to the hard drive.
If the laptop will have an SSD only, choose a minimum
of 512GB with 1TB preferred.
RAM
When laptop makers spec out gaming laptops, one of
the levers they use to try to convince you to buy their
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product is upping the amount of RAM. It’s not hard to
find gaming laptops with ‘upgraded’ configurations
that go from 16GB of DDR4 to 32GB.
While having an adequate amount of RAM is
important for gaming, today’s games typically top out
at 16GB of RAM and sometimes can run fine with just
8GB of RAM. Anything more than 16GB (our standard
recommendation) is usually a waste of money.
You might want to blame laptop and PC makers for
cynically using an erroneous spec to manipulate the
public, but the blame actually lies with the average
buyer. PC makers have told us for years they only overspec
RAM because the public thinks more is better.
Besides the amount of memory, a couple other
important, but not critical, questions to ask is what
clock speed and what mode. Modern CPUs let you
run RAM in sets to increase the memory bandwidth.
If one shotgun barrel is good, two is better right?
Not necessarily. If your laptop runs integrated
graphics, then yes, having dual-channel memory
helps a lot. But true gaming laptops today run
beefy discrete graphics cards with their own pool
of dedicated, and much faster, GDDR5 RAM.
We’ve seen instances of gaming laptops using
a single memory module, which hobbles system
bandwidth but actually has very little impact on actual
gaming performance. The same can be said of RAM
clock speed. DDR4/2133, which runs at 2,133MHz,
is the typical speed today, with PC vendors offering
upgrades of DDR/2400. We recommend bypassing
the upgrade and instead putting that money into
more storage or a fatter GPU.
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Intel’s chips such as this Kaby
Lake dominate laptops today
CPU
There may be real competition between AMD and
Intel when it comes to gaming CPUs in the desktop,
but in gaming laptops, the world is still very much
99.9 percent Intel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing
as Intel’s laptop CPUs are excellent. Still, there are a
few things you need to consider about the CPU for
your gaming laptop.
First, the issue of cores is far simpler here than
on desktops. There’s no option for 16-core CPUs,
and outside of the odd-duck laptops that use 8-core
desktop CPUs, your options are limited to quad-cores.
With Intel’s current 7th-gen chips, you get four cores
with Hyper-Threading for a total of eight threads in
the Core i7 chips. Step down to a 7th-gen Core i5,
and Intel turns off the Hyper-Threading so it’s four
physical cores only.
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Although it’s still up for debate, we believe the vast
majority of games people play today don’t need more
than four cores. Yes, there are times when having more
than four cores can yield better performance, but most
gamers will be fine with a quad-core Core i5 chip.
Unfortunately for the budget-conscious, PC makers
typically don’t let you buy a high-end graphics card
with a low-end CPU. Most PC makers will configure the
midrange CPU with mid-range graphics.
Of the current 7th-generation Kaby Lake CPUs,
your choices for a gaming laptop are the Core
i7-7700HQ, the Core i7-7820HK, and the Core
i7-7920HQ. Again, all three are fine, with each step
up getting you only marginally more performance. The
sweet spot for budget buyers is the Core i7-7700HQ
or the Core i7-7820HK.
As for Intel’s 8th-generation CPU, it hasn’t been
confirmed but many anticipate the company will
introduce 6-core CPUs that consume 45 watts by 2018.
Still, the takeaway for you is to not get too hung up
on the CPU for a gaming laptop. Any decent quad-core
is more than enough for gaming purposes and your
money is better spent on what matters more: the GPU.
GPU
The single most important piece of hardware in a
gaming laptop is undoubtedly the GPU. For AMD fans,
the situation is as sad as it is in CPUs: It’s an Nvidia
GeForce world. As with CPUs though, the good news
is that the dominating products are top-notch. The
hardest part will be deciding just how much GPU you
need. Our general advice is to buy as fast a GPU as you
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can afford and are willing to heft. Generally, the faster
the GPU (or GPUs), the larger and heavier the laptop.
For any serious gaming, it’s easy to ramp up from
the entry-level GeForce GTX 1050 to the midrange
GeForce GTX 1060, and then to the high-end
GeForce GTX 1070 and GTX 1080.
The following chart might help you understand
what kind of performance to expect. These results
for GeForce cards reflect the graphics section of
Furturemark’s FireStrike test. Although the CPUs vary,
this test focuses almost entirely on the GPU.
We think the GTX 1050 is a good 1080p GPU if
you’re willing to play on medium settings. To hit high
in some games, you’ll need to lower the resolution
BUYING GUIDE
How much GPU does your laptop need? That’s for
you to decide. 3DMark FireStrike Extreme is a good
general measurement of graphics performance
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BUYING GUIDE
to 720p. The GTX 1050 Ti nets you 1080p with some
games on high. Step up to a GTX 1060, and you’re in
solid ground for 1080p gaming at very high to ultra
with frame rates around 60fps.
If you need to feed your high-refresh panel, then
the GeForce GTX 1070 is the answer as it can push
120fps in many games at 1080p. Or if you want to just
play on a screen that’s got a higher resolution, say,
2560x1440, the GTX 1070 works for that too.
The GTX 1080 is the current top dog and should
be considered for 1440p gaming on ultra at greater
than 60fps, or to push a wide-aspect-ratio monitor at
higher refresh rates. And SLI? Yes, that yields great
performance, but the huge caveat is that many games
no longer support SLI so it’s mostly a bragging point.
Our chart also includes some older GPUs in the
mix to indicate just how much they’ve aged. A GTX
980 is still quite serviceable but the 980M version
has clearly lost its lustre.
One last thing we want to point out from our chart:
you’ll note the large performance gaps between some
of the same GPUs, such as the two GTX 1080 cards or
the two GTX 1070 cards. The disparity is the result of
the vendors’ respective cooling strategies as well as
varying chassis size. In the case of the Razer Blade Pro,
it’s a fairly thin laptop for a GTX 1080 card. The MSI
GT73VR it bumps against is thick and heavy and allows
MSI to clock the GPU up quite a bit.
We see the same with the Alienware 15 R4, which
cranks up the GTX 1070 to very high speeds (and you
can hear it too) whereas the HP Omen 17 keeps the
clocks more conservative and the fans quieter.
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BUYING GUIDE
Asus’ ROG Zephyrus GX501
and its GTX 1080 Max-Q
GPU is a breakthrough in
performance while being
exceptionally thin
Decoding Nvidia’s Max-Q
The only other wrinkle to consider in picking out a GPU
is Nvidia’s new ‘Max-Q’ technology. Cynics will say
Max-Q is Nvidia’s way to market what should have been
a GeForce GTX 1075 as a ‘GeForce GTX 1080 with
Max-Q’, while more forgiving people will see it as an
initiative to push thinner, lighter gaming laptops.
In a nutshell, Nvidia has taken its GeForce GTX
1080, GTX 1070, and GTX 1060 and tuned down
the clock speeds so they consume less power and
generate less heat. Other than that, they are the same
GPUs with the same amount of RAM, same memory
bandwidth, and same CUDA core count.
We found in testing that a GeForce GTX 1080 with
Max-Q would perform between a GeForce GTX 1080
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BUYING GUIDE
and a GeForce GTX 1070. Occasionally it would match
a GTX 1080, but most of the time, it was, well, more
like a GeForce GTX ‘1075’.
We haven’t yet formally reviewed a GeForce GTX
1060 or GTX 1070 with Max-Q but in testing a new
Gigabyte Aero 15X with a GTX 1070 with Max-Q puts
we found it right where we expected – something akin
to a GeForce GTX ‘1065’.
If you want all-out performance and don’t care
about the weight and size, we recommend you go
with a standard GeForce card in a thicker laptop. If
you’re looking for something thinner, lighter, and
quieter, then take a hard look at Max-Q laptops.
External graphics support
The next area you should think about is the burgeoning
support for external graphics in gaming laptops.
Customers of Alienware have long enjoyed this with
its relatively inexpensive (and proprietary) Graphics
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Akitio Node
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Amplifier technology, but many new laptops support
external graphics cabinets using Thunderbolt 3.
These cabinets let you plug your laptop into a
more powerful discrete GPU to give your laptop
more graphics grunt. The Akitio Node (£316 from
fave.co/2Bvryb6) is one such Thunderbolt 3 cabinet
that’s helped usher in lower prices. Although
external graphics are primarily desired by users who
run on integrated graphics, a gaming laptop with
Thunderbolt 3 support could come in handy when
the GPU inside gets too old to play the latest games.
BUYING GUIDE
Battery life
The last topic we’ll cover is battery life. The best way to
understand battery life on a gaming laptop is to accept
that it’ll be horrible for all things gaming.
The minute you crank up a GPU on a gaming laptop
to play a game, you’re basically limiting yourself to an
hour or an hour and a half of battery runtime. Period.
And in some cases, far less than that.
The only reason to consider battery life on a gaming
laptop is if you want to use your laptop unplugged for
non-gaming purposes. In that respect, you’ll find a lot
of variance, with some – such as Gigabyte’s Aero 15
– offering decent battery life, albeit with a trade-off in
gaming performance.
Best 17in gaming laptop
Alienware 17
Price: £2,449 from fave.co/2BtkOdv
The arrival of Nvidia’s Pascal-based mobile GPUs
transformed high-end gaming laptops. These days,
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BUYING GUIDE
getting desktop-equivalent performance is just the
natural course of things, and you no longer have to
pay through the nose for it, either.
Our current pick for best gaming laptop is the
Alienware 17, with a GTX 1080 mobile GPU and a
17.3in 2560x1440, 120Hz G-Sync panel. Prices start
at £2,449. For that chunk of cash, you’ll get smooth,
high-frame-rate gaming at a previously unprecedented
level. Our review unit posted frame rates over 150fps
with everything maxed out in Middle-earth: Shadow of
Mordor, and over 100fps in Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Even though it’s not as portable as other gaming
laptops sporting Nvidia’s new Max-Q mobile GPUs,
Alienware gives you full 1080 performance at all
times, with a better and more consistent frame rate
than those lighter notebooks.
Alienware 17
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The Alienware 17 has a couple of other drawbacks
besides size: its fans are loud, and its battery life is
average. But these things shouldn’t dissuade people
in the market for a true desktop replacement.
Best 15in gaming laptop
Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501
Price: £2,499 from fave.co/2BXE3Ns
BUYING GUIDE
Some gamers might take issue with the Asus ROG
Zephyrus GX501. They will consider its GeForce
GTX 1080 with Max-Q to be compromised –
offering performance that’s ‘just’ halfway between
a GeForce GTX 1080 and a GTX 1070.
But what we see is revolutionary performance
for a relatively lightweight machine. This class of
Asus ROG
Zephyrus GX501
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BUYING GUIDE
performance, frankly, used to require at least 4kg of
laptop with the thickness of a phone book. The GX501,
on the other hand, is not much thicker than a MacBook
Pro 15 and weighs 2.25kg. Throw in the 120Hz 15in
G-Sync panel and you have top-notch performance in a
laptop you might actually bring with you on a trip.
Not surprisingly, the GX501’s main compromise
is battery life. Such is the trade-off when you stuff
desktop-calibre hardware into a laptop. At least with
the GX501, your gaming rig is a lot more portable.
Best budget gaming laptop
Dell Inspiron 15 7577
Price: £899 from fave.co/2C2jiQO
Not long ago, playing a game at higher resolutions
and higher graphics settings on a laptop meant
Dell Inspiron 15 7577
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shelling out big money. That’s changed in the past year.
For less than £1,000, you can get a gaming laptop that
will play at 1080p, such as Dell’s gaming version of the
Inspiron 15 7000, which offers a quad-core i5-7300HQ,
8GB RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 graphics
in its £899 base configuration.
It’s a lot of muscle for the price. This system can
handle today’s games on High at 1080p (in Rise of
the Tomb Raider, this Inspiron ran at over 50fps), and
it can definitely play popular titles such as League
of Legends, Dota 2, Rocket League, CSGO, Team
Fortress 2, and Overwatch.
Best portable gaming laptop
Alienware 13
Price: £1,349 from fave.co/2BXSv83
BUYING GUIDE
Nvidia’s Pascal GPUs haven’t just put the traditional
beefy gaming laptops on par with desktop machines.
They’ve also made it so the term ‘portable gaming
laptop’ is no longer an oxymoron. Put a GeForce GTX
1060 into a laptop and you have a capable machine
that can survive away from a wall socket – and won’t
break your back while carrying it, either.
Now, at 2.6kg, the Alienware 13 is a little heavy for
its size, but it’s worth toting around those grams. The
model we reviewed packs a gorgeous OLED 2560x1440
display, a quad-core i7 processor, and a VR-capable
Nvidia GTX 1060 for flawless 1080p gaming. Yes, you
can play at 2560x1440, too, if you crank down some of
the settings, or buy an Alienware Amplifier (£179 from
fave.co/2BtRFiv) and pop in a beefier video card.
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BUYING GUIDE
Alienware 13
Its extra weight comes from its incredibly sturdy
and solid chassis, built to withstand hot climates and
gamers who react physically to the highs and lows
of gameplay. For some, that will be a drawback. But
it’s hard to hold the Alienware 13’s design against
it, especially after experiencing the pure luxury of
its OLED screen: Gaming on it makes the best LCD
panels seem pixellated and washed out.
While performance is a hair under rival machines
like the MSI GS63VR, the difference is almost negligible
– just one or two frames less per second in our
Tomb Raider and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
benchmarks. If you can splurge on this version of the
Alienware 13, we say do it. From its slick design to
its performance, battery life, and OLED display, it’s
exceptional in every metric we usually examine.
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BUYING GUIDE
Acer Predator 21X
Best money-is-no-object gaming laptop
Acer Predator 21X
Price: £8,999 from fave.co/2BXSv83
We’d never recommend that a normal person buy
Acer’s over-the-top, insanely cool Predator 21X),
but if you’re among the filthy rich and looking to
treat yourself check this out. With a curved 120Hz
G-sync panel, two GeForce GTX 1080 GPUs in SLI, a
mechanical keyboard, and an overclockable Core i7
chip, it’s nigh-impossible to make a bigger impact than
this limited-edition gaming laptop.
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HOW TO
How To: Find a Spectre
fix for your motherboard
Such a crucial patch should be easier to find, writes BRAD CHACOS
Operating system patches alone can protect
against the nasty Meltdown flaw affecting Intel
processors, but fixing Spectre – Meltdown’s
nasty sibling, which affects all CPUs – requires firmware
updates for your hardware. Those firmware fixes
are finally starting to appear after Intel’s first round
of Spectre patches were yanked for causing system
instability and potential data loss. Stable patches for
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HOW TO
6th-gen Intel Skylake CPUs are now available, and
both Intel and AMD are working on CPU microcode
updates for other chips.
Installing Spectre fixes aren’t so easy, though,
especially if you’re using a computer you’ve built
yourself, or one from a boutique PC builder that uses
off-the-shelf parts. You can’t download CPU firmware
patches directly from Intel or AMD; instead, you need
to download them from your motherboard’s provider,
such as Asus, Gigabyte, or ASRock. You’ll need to know
your motherboard’s model number to find the correct
firmware for your device, too, and Windows doesn’t
make that easy to find.
It’s a mess – but we can help you find and install
Spectre CPU firmware fixes for your DIY PC.
Find a motherboard’s Spectre firmware fix
First things first: before you can download your
DIY PC’s firmware update, you need to know what
motherboard you’re using. If you don’t know that
information off-hand (or don’t have your motherboard’s
packaging stashed away somewhere) then download
HWInfo (fave.co/2BX4gfb), free software beloved by
DIY enthusiasts for revealing nitty-gritty aspects of
your computer’s hardware.
After installing and running HWInfo, close the
system summary window that provides an overview of
your key system specs. In the main HWInfo interface,
click Motherboard in the left-hand navigation pane.
Details about the hardware then appear in the main
pane. You’re looking for the ‘Computer brand name’
entry, which lists your motherboard’s model.
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HOW TO
BIOS updates for the Gigabyte AX370-
Gaming 5 are located in the downloads
section of the board’s support tab
With that information in hand, look for your
motherboard’s model in your search engine of choice.
The manufacturer’s page for it should appear near the
top of the results; that’s the link you want. (For example,
I’d want the AX370-Gaming 5 page on Gigabyte’s
website for this PC.)
Here’s where things get tricky. You’re looking for the
latest available BIOS for your motherboard, which some
manufacturers hide in a support page, others hide in a
dedicated ‘downloads’ or ‘drivers and tools’ tab, and
yet others hide in a ‘downloads’ or ‘drivers and tools’
section of the support page. Keep poking around until
you find the appropriate area.
Most motherboard manufacturers list available BIOS
versions in chronological order, with the newer updates
at the top. Each should be listed with a version number
and a release date. As I’m writing this on February 8,
2018, AMD hasn’t released any CPU firmware patches
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HOW TO
Clean,
descriptive
BIOS update
notes are
always
welcome
yet, and Intel only just released the first round of ‘fixed’
Spectre patches yesterday, for 6th-gen Skylake CPUs
alone. Any Spectre-related motherboard BIOSes will
be dated 8/2/2018 or later, in other words. Earlier
BIOS updates that include CPU microcode fixes are the
buggy version Intel yanked. You don’t want those.
If you’re lucky there will also be release notes
explaining the changes in each BIOS version. If you
see a BIOS version from after 8 February that says it
includes CPU microcode updates (or similar verbiage),
that’s the one you want to download. If you don’t see
an update available, you’ll have to manually check
again in the future. (Hey, I said this is messy.)
Don’t hold your breath for a motherboard BIOS
update if you’re running an older system, though.
Thus far, many motherboard manufacturers and
system providers have only promised to release fixes
for PCs with modern Skylake, Kaby Lake, or Coffee
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HOW TO
Lake processors – 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-generation
processors released since mid-2015 or so. Older
computers and motherboards may never get
Spectre-proof CPU microcode.
Install the Spectre CPU fix
Fortunately, installing a Spectre CPU microcode
update for your motherboard BIOS is much more
straightforward than finding it. Start by downloading
the BIOS, then unzip the files (right-click > Extract all)
onto to a blank flash drive.
Before you update your BIOS, back up your
computer. Updating your BIOS isn’t as fraught with
danger as it was in years past, but you’re still tinkering
with the very backbone of your computer. If something
goes wrong – say, if the power goes out while you’re in
the middle of the process – Bad Things can happen. It’s
better to be safe than sorry.
All sorts of free backup options exist, but paid-for
Windows backup software offers more features, fewer
limitations, and generally better interfaces. Either
works, though. You probably don’t want to use a new
online backup service, however, as the initial upload of
your data to their servers can often take several days.
They’re a solid option for regular backups though. You
really should be backing up your data regularly in this
era of rampant ransomware and flawed CPU firmware.
From here, all that’s left to do is install the updated
BIOS. The process varies from motherboard to
motherboard and manufacturer to manufacturer, but in
general, you’ll need to reboot your PC, watch for the
motherboard’s splash screen, then press the designated
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HOW TO
An example of
BIOS options
button to enter the BIOS. (Some motherboards,
including the Gigabyte board I’m using, include an
option to boot directly into a firmware flashing tool
on the splash screen.) From there, you’ll need to find
your motherboard’s firmware update tool – sometimes
called a flashing tool – and point it toward the BIOS
update stashed on your flash drive.
Updating your BIOS should only take a few minutes,
but be very careful to not to shut off your PC while it’s
going on, even if you’ve backed up your data and have
a spare Windows image handy. When the update runs
its course, your PC will reboot, and you’ll be able to use
it normally, but now with those helpful Spectre exploit
protections in place directly in your CPU firmware.
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HOW TO
How To: Check your
PC’s CPU temperature
Here’s how to monitor your computer’s CPU temperature, and
lower it if needed. BRAD CHACOS reports
Is your computer’s CPU too hot? If your PC starts
spontaneously shutting down, locking up, or acting
sluggish during intense tasks, overheating could be
the issue. Keeping tabs on your CPU temperatures is
crucial when you’re overclocking your PC’s processor,
too – you don’t want to accidentally push the
performance pedal too far to the metal.
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HOW TO
Bizarrely, Windows doesn’t offer any way to check
your computer’s CPU temperature. You could dive
into your system’s BIOS to find the information, but
that’s a lot of hassle to find a simple sensor reading.
Fortunately, several free programs exist that make it
easy to see your processor’s temperature.
Check your CPU temperature
The fastest, easiest way to check your CPU temperature
is the aptly named Core Temp (fave.co/2C0SFLW).
Be mindful during installation, though. Like many
free programs, it tries to install bloatware unless you
uncheck some boxes during setup.
Once you’ve installed Core Temp, opening it
shows a no-frills look at the current state of your
processor, including an average temperature reading
at the bottom of the window. If you want even more
detail, click the Show hidden icons button in the
system tray located at the right edge of your Windows
taskbar. You’ll see a temperature listing for every
individual CPU core in your computer.
Core Temp’s Settings menu allows you to tweak
exactly what you’ll see in the system tray, and how
you’ll see it, but the default configuration makes it
dead-simple to see if your CPU is overheating or
performing as expected.
Core Temp isn’t the only option though. HWInfo
(fave.co/2BX4gfb) is an in-depth system monitoring
tool that provides deep details about every piece of
your PC’s hardware. If you choose to run it in sensorsonly
mode, scrolling down to the CPU section – the
dedicated section, not the CPU temperature portion
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HOW TO
NZXT’s Cam monitoring software
of the motherboard listing – reveals current temps and
other nitty-gritty details.
NZXT’s Cam software (fave.co/2BWxgUc) is another
popular option with a diverse skill set. Its slick interface
is easier to read at a glance than those on most other
monitoring tools, and the program shows all sorts of
useful info about your CPU, graphics card, memory, and
storage. Cam also includes an in-game FPS overlay and
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HOW TO
overclocking tools, among other features. You can use
NZXT’s Cam mobile apps to keep tabs on your software
when you’re away from your PC, too.
Open Hardware Monitor (fave.co/2BYR9ds) and
SpeedFan (fave.co/2BXKoZm) are other well-regarded
monitoring tools that can track system information.
You’ve got options. But for simply checking your
computer’s CPU temperatures, Core Temp’s
straightforward focus can’t be beat.
Finally, note that if you’re running an AMD Ryzen
system, you may see two different CPU temperature
readings. You want the ‘Tdie’ reading, depending
on how the program you’re using displays the info.
It’s a measurement of the actual heat on the die. The
alternative ‘Tctl’ reading is the control temperature
reported to your cooling system and sometimes
includes a temperature offset to ensure universal fan
speed behaviour between the various Ryzen chips. Any
of the programs above that list a single temperature
account for the offset already.
Is my CPU too hot?
The maximum supported temperature varies from
processor to processor. Most of the free monitoring
software mentioned above lists the information as
‘Tj. Max’. That stands for the temperature junction, or
the highest operating temperature of the hardware. If
you don’t see the information for some reason, search
the CPU World website (fave.co/2BXKwbi) for your
CPU’s model number to find the information. Every
program listed above displays your processor’s model
number, so it’s easy to find.
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HOW TO
But that’s the maximum temperature – the point
at which your processor freaks out and shuts down
to avoid damage. Running anywhere near that hot
regularly is bad for the long-term life of your hardware.
Instead, follow this general rule of thumb regarding
CPU temperatures under load.
Under 60°C: You’re running great.
60- to 70°C: Still running fine, but getting a bit warmer.
Consider cleaning the dust out of your PC if CPU
temperatures continue to creep up over time.
70- to 80°C: This is hotter than you want to run unless
you’re pushing an overclock. If you’re not, definitely
check to make sure your fans are working and there
aren’t dust bunnies clogging up your system’s airflow.
80- to 90° C: Now we’re getting too hot for long-term
comfort. Check your hardware for broken fans or dust
build-up, and if you’re overclocking, dial back your
settings – especially the voltage if you’ve tweaked
it. One notable exception: We sometimes see more
powerful laptop processors hit the low 80s during
gaming sessions when plugged in, at which point they
start throttling back performance. This is expected,
but if temperatures cross 85° C, be concerned.
Over 90°C: Danger, Will Robinson.
How to lower your CPU temperatures
If you’re regularly encountering high CPU temperatures,
there are some steps you can take to try and
fix the issue. First, clean out your PC. High CPU
temperatures are often caused by years of dust and
grime built up inside a PC, clogging fans and crucial
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HOW TO
air pathways. You can pick up a bottle for around £8
from fave.co/2BYSy3I. While you’re at it, check to
make sure all your fans are working, and that none
of the vents in your PC are blocked.
Hopefully that fixes the issue. If not, more intensive
steps are in order. The thermal paste that transfers
heat from your CPU to its cooler might have dried
out if you’ve had your PC for a few years. That can
cause temperature spikes.
Removing the old thermal paste with rubbing
alcohol and a applying fresh layer can potentially help
lower temperatures by a large amount. You can find
small syringes of thermal paste by respected brands
such as Arctic (£3.95 from fave.co/2Brl2SB) and
Noctua (£6.95 from fave.co/2BZUOYD) online.
If all that doesn’t help, your cooling solution
simply might not be capable of keeping up with
your CPU’s heat output, especially if you’re
pairing a stock cooler
or a modest third-party
cooler with higher-end
chips – and doubly so
if you’re overclocking.
Buying a new CPU cooler
may be in order.
The Cooler Master
Hyper 212 (£27.99 from
fave.co/2BYeprN) is a
solid, affordable air cooler.
With its larger heatsink
and fan, it’s a solid step
up over stock AMD and Intel CPU
Cooler Master Hyper 212
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HOW TO
120mm Corsair H80i v2
coolers. Moving up in size and price, the Noctua
NH-D14 (£67.49 from fave.co/2BtKHKc) is one of
the most effective air coolers ever to hit the streets,
but its large size might block memory access or not
even fit in smaller cases.
Closed-loop liquid cooling solutions (CLCs)
provide far cooler temperatures than air coolers with
minimal hassle. The 120mm Corsair H80i v2 (£84.99
from fave.co/2BsB8LK) is a great entry-level CLC, but
if you plan on overclocking, consider moving up to the
Corsair H100i v2 (£108 from fave.co/2C0W90Y) and
its larger 240mm radiator, which can accommodate
even fierce overclocks.
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