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Manufacturers are continually working on ways to entice consumers into upgrading to a newer model, but that’s not it. In recent years there have been actual hardware developments and new trends in modern laptops that when looked at together can make for a compelling argument. We’ve experienced some of these leaps and that’s what inspired the idea for this article. In addition to year-on-year tweaks to make the latest laptop models more attractive, many technologies that used to be reserved for high-end models have permeated to the mainstream, including much better displays and resolutions, improved hardware efficiency and battery life, and overall better build quality even on lower price points....

Wooting is a company that is best known for making highly-customizable analog mechanical keyboards. But what is an analog keyboard, exactly? A device that seeks to bridge the gap between controllers and keyboards by allowing users to experience the same smooth, gradual movement that a joystick can provide. This technology has its quirks – which we’ll get to later – but overall, it holds a lot of promise for gamers that don’t want to sacrifice the precision of a normal keyboard just to use a controller....

It took a couple of years, but Rockstar finally added ray-tracing support to Grand Theft Auto 5 on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The consoles are now more than two years into their lifecycle and are no longer “next-gen,” but that doesn’t mean that games can’t benefit from the extra horsepower. Most folks play with the graphics set to “Performance” mode, especially in multiplayer. To get nice shiny reflections, you need to switch to “Fidelity” by going to the pause menu....

For a vast majority of gamers, the 12700KF is a more sensible choice because at just $370 you’re essentially getting i9-12900K performance for nearly a 40% discount. That saving is important for a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s money you can save or spend elsewhere in your new build, and in the fight with the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, AMD claims their high-end gaming solution is at least 40% cheaper when factoring in the cost of the CPU along with the entire platform....

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed....

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed....

That’s not to say the Galaxy S6 is without problems. The design, while sleek and sexy, is quite slippery, and the use of glass on the front and back of the handset makes it susceptible to damage when dropped. It’s also not water resistant, unlike its predecessor, which is a disappointment for those that enjoy underwater photography or gaming while in the shower. This is where the Galaxy S6 Active comes in....

This workload uses a trace of importing an image collection to Windows Live Photo Gallery from a USB stick (68 images totaling 434MB). Recording starts at the beginning of importing pictures and ends when thumbnail images appear. During the trace, Windows Live Photo Gallery copies images from the USB stick to the Pictures library, indexes them and creates thumbnails. The 840 Pro and Vertex 450 have been tied for the best results in this test at 30....

On paper, the Sapphire GPro X080 and X060, are only marginally different from AMD’s Radeon RX 6700M and 6600M, respectively. All four are in the mid-range performance category. Sapphire launched the X080 with an inflated MSRP of €750 ($850) but it quickly jumped over the €1,000 hurdle. A month ago, it was around €1,200, but it plummeted down to €765 ($865) in early February and has stayed there since. Also read: GPU Availability and Pricing Update: February 2022 Meanwhile, the X060 launched at €550 ($620) but was brushing up against €900 until recently, when it slipped down to €700 for a week, and then fell again to €500 ($565), where it’s held steady....

The first Sugo (the SG01) launched back in 2005 and impressed us by cutting the 65L capacity of Silverstone’s FT02 down to only 22L while still accommodating the era’s high-end gaming hardware. The company has since built on that success with over half a dozen iterations. The SG01’s initial successor arrived in 2009 as the remarkably compact 10.8L SG05, which sparked a do-it-yourself Mini-ITX revolution alongside other enclosures of its kind as gamers set out to cram increasingly powerful systems inside cases the size of a shoe box....

It should be noted that we are comparing the Founder Edition GTX 1060 6GB to the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X 3G and although they are both operating at the stock clock frequencies, partner cards often draw more power. As a result, the GTX 1060 3GB card consumed five watts more in The Witcher 3 benchmark. Again, when testing with Call of Duty Black Ops III we find that the 3GB MSI card used five watts more than the 6GB Founders Edition....

A report by Dr. Web antivirus shines a light on apps that supposedly let users earn money by performing various tasks. They are advertised as pedometers, good habit-builders, and various health applications that reward people if they hit achievements, such as the distance they walked, if they followed a health routine, and so on. Those who reach these goals receive virtual rewards in the form of tickets or coins, which can be increased by watching ads....

The Indilinx (IDX110) Barefoot SSD controller chip is supported by a 64MB cache meant to improve small write performance and eliminate any ‘stuttering’ issues. The OCZ specification for the Agility 120GB drive states that the read performance will be “up to” 230MB/s and the write 135MB/s. The claimed read and write performance are lower than that of the Vertex, and again this is something we will be looking into once we begin benchmarking....

At CES 2020, Sony announced a new sub-division titled Sony Mobility Inc., whose primary focus was to produce electric vehicles. The initial prototype shown was the Sony Vision-S, a four-door sedan with a top speed of around 150 MPH. Details were scarce until earlier this year when Sony revealed a second prototype –an SUV called the Vision-S 02. It retroactively renamed the first model to the Vision-S 01. Recently, Sony and Honda disclosed a partnership to produce electric vehicles, some of which may be autonomous, and release them to the public in 2026....

With the launch of Gran Turismo 7 creeping upon us, Sony decided that now is a good time to hype up one of its longest-running console sellers by featuring it in the next State of Play. Sony’s Content Communications Manager Brett Elston noted that the upcoming streamed event would have more than 30 minutes of never before seen Gran Turismo 7 footage. Gran Turismo has long been one of Sony’s shiniest exclusives....

The Xperia 1 IV’s crown jewel is the rear camera array consisting of a 16mm ultra-wide f/2.2 aperture lens with a 124 degree field of view, a 24mm wide-angle f/1.7 aperture lens with 82 degree field of view and an 85-125mm f/2.3-2.8 aperture telephoto lens with a field of view between 28 degrees and 20 degrees (85mm and 125mm, respectively). The telephoto is a true optical zoom lens, the first of its kind in a smartphone....

Connectivity wise you get all the high-end stuff you’re used to, including Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Category 4 LTE, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and A-GPS+GLONASS. I had no trouble getting any of these wireless features to work during my testing, which is always a good sign. As the Xperia Z3 Compact packs the very same SoC as the Xperia Z3 - the MSM8974AC - it was no surprise to me to find identical performance in everyday usage....

However, you’ll probably want to spend a little more than that if you intend to play at 1080p or so, with the GTX 660 and HD 7870 being our recommended minimum with 48 and 45fps. At 55 and 56fps, the GTX 660 Ti and HD 7950 Boost are probably the best value for most gamers, with both costing a little over $200. Disabling HBAO+ should produce up to a 10fps boost, and we suggest doing so when playing with a lower-end card, particularly if it’s not from Nvidia....