APC - March 2024

AUS $11.95 INC GST NZ $13.90 INC GST PRINT POST APPROVED: 100000179 ISSN: 0725-4415 Best Tech of 2024 What’s new, what’s hot and what’s coming next! YOUR EXPERT GUIDE TO TODAY’S TECH #530 MARCH 2024 OPTIMISE YOUTUBE 14 expert tips that'll improve how you watch every video LABS TESTED NVIDIA 40 SERIES SUPER CARDS BECOME A CHATGPT MASTER Create your own AI assistant Supercharge ChatGPT with plugins & prompts Step-by-step advice + secret tips Upscale your old photos Make them bigger and sharper FOR FREE SAMSUNG GALAXY S24 ULTRA Superphone for power users EXPERT OPINION: APPLE VISION PRO

WELCOME | EDITORIAL MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 3 Oh we do love the annual CES show. Except that it’s on right at the start of January. It’s easily the busiest week of the year, and coming out of our holidays it’s a rather abrupt halt to the holiday bliss. And yet, we go and we love it. This is where we see the gear and the technology that’s absolutely definitely going to shape the rest of the year. We had a full team on the ground at CES in Las Vegas, which included many compatriots from other Future Publishing titles. Collectively this team covered the show, and we’ve got the whole shebang here in this issue starting on page 50. As always, there’s a delightful mix of the predictable, the surprising, and the ridiculous. What’s not ridiculous is the incredible rise of AI. It’s still astonishing that it arrived and evolved so quickly, and watching from the sidelines it’s easy to be overwhelmed. But AI exists, and is being used by increasing numbers to enhance many aspects of work and personal life, with Microsoft’s Copilot leading the charge for regular PC users. So, as we will continue to do, we’ve put together a tutorial that shows you how to put it to work. It really is quite magical and once you jump in and have a play you’ll quickly discover the immense real world benefits it brings. Go on, have a go, you won’t be disappointed. Our tutorial starts on page 64, and our focus this month is on getting started with ChatGPT. Another area where AI has been put to good use is enhancing old photos. We’ve got a guide for doing that on page 98. This application is particularly well suited to working with old film photos, and the whole process is most enjoyable and satisfying. There’s much more in this issue of APC, but sadly there’ll be no more after this issue from our Joel Burgess. This is his last issue with us after almost ten years, as he’s now completed his environmental science degree and is off to make the world a better place in another field. We wish Joel all the best, and thank him for the great many reviews he’s done, as well as his presence in many other parts of the magazine. We’ve filled his big shoes already, so APC keeps on keeping on. Thanks for everything Joel! See you all in a month! All the big 2024 tech reveals Showtime “Another area where AI has been put to good use is enhancing old photos. We’ve got a guide for doing that on page 98.” Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR) www.futureplc.com Chief executive Jon Steinberg Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford Chief financial and strategy officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. 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SUBSCRIPTION ENQUIRIES (02) 8227 6486 www.techmags.com.au future@crmaus.com.au Editorial Editor: Ben Mansill ben.mansill@futurenet.com Senior Journalist: Shaun Prescott Senior Journalist: Joel Burgess Senior Journalist: Chris Szewczyk Group Art Director: Troy Coleman Contributors Jon Bailes, Rowan Campbell, David Crookes, Barry Collins, Tim Danton, Jason England, Andrew E. Freedman, Jon Honeyball, Robert Irvine, Rick Lane, Rob Mead-Green, Lauren Morton, Nick Peers, Ian Osborne, Mark Anthony Ramirez, Matt Safford, Noah Smith, Henry St Leger, Tom Sykes, Chris Szewczyk, Momo Tabaari, Jarred Walton, Mark Williams, Darren Yates Photography All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected Advertising auadvertising@futurenet.com Management Managing Director: Neville Daniels Commercial Director: Chris Ferguson chris.ferguson@futurenet.com Printed in Australia by IVE Distributed in Australia and NZ by Are Direct ISSN 0725-4415 Future Publishing Australia PO Box Q1179, Queen Victoria Building, NSW 1230 Corporate Web: www.futureplc.com Email: apcmag@futurenet.com Web: www.apcmag.com

WELCOME | FREE DOWNLOADS 4 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Your free full-version apps as a thanks for reading APC. These exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 04/03/24 to 21/04/24. Exclusive downloads ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2024 POWERFUL BURNING SOFTWARE TO BURN FILES, MUSIC AND MOVIES. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2024 is a powerful disc burning software for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. The software quickly burns files, audio and video to all recordable disc types but also specialized media such as BDXL or M-Disc. The built-in disc ripping auto-detects track names and easily turns audio files into custom audio discs complete with individually designed covers and inlays. Playlists can be auto-generated during ripping for easy playback in the desired song order. The program can also finalise discs to make them playable on older retail players or car radios. DISCLAIMER Future Publishing is not the licensor of the exclusive software or any documentation included with it. Rather, Future is merely a distributor of the software, and your use of the software is subject to any accompanying third-party licence terms. You must carefully read and comply with any such third-party licence terms, together with all instructions and README files that come with the software. Accordingly, to the maximum extent permitted by law, all software is provided by Future ‘as is’ and without warranty either express or implied, and Future will not be liable for any damage that you may incur as a result of using any software downloads. You should back up any important system and data files before using any downloaded software. We recommend that you do not use the exclusive software on a production machine. Nothing in this disclaimer excludes any warranty that may be implied by statute, which may include the Trade Practices Act. While we have taken all reasonable steps to check the software downloads for viruses, we cannot guarantee that it is free from viruses or other harmful code and you should check each download using a virus scanner complete with the latest antivirus updates before use. Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives AUDIALS VISION 2024 SPECIAL EDITION ENHANCE VIDEOS WITH THE POWER OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Transform blurry footage into crystal-clear, high-quality masterpieces with the help of AI. The future of video editing is AI-driven, resulting in videos that stand out from anything you’ve seen before. Audials AI technology surpasses the image enhancement capabilities of modern TVs. It harnesses your PC’s power to optimise every detail in the video, producing perfect, brilliant textures and colours. Rediscover your favourite movies! Even blurry footage can be upscaled to 4K quality by AI, offering a choice between fast AI models for instant results or the highest quality settings that masterfully optimise each pixel. ASCOMP GUARDIAN OF DATA 3.0 ENCRYPTION OF SENSITIVE FILES WITH AES. Security doesn’t always have to be complicated: thanks to Guardian Of Data, you can encrypt your documents directly from the context menu of Windows Explorer! To make encrypted documents available to your colleagues, business partners or other recipients without them having to install Guardian Of Data first, the software offers the creation of self-extracting files. This allows you to send multiple files as an encrypted archive even over insecure channels, without worrying that the data could fall into the wrong hands!

ISSUE #530 MARCH 2024 CONTENTS This month in APC Best Tech of 2024 What’s new, what’s hot and 50 what’s coming next! ChatGPT Masterclass Make AI work for you Want to get more from the best-known AI service on the planet? Barry Collins shows you how to make AI work for you. 64 Tweaking YouTube to remove the annoyances YouTube has become a frustrating experience. APC reveals expert ways to improve your viewing for free. 72 6 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 33 29 35

30 INSIDE Technotes 08 News What’s been going on in tech 10 Tech brief Chatbots that sound just like us 12 End user Disney’s $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games is all about “play, watch, shop and engage” 13 Random access A decade in technology: How different was consumer tech ten years ago? 14 Tech talk Nvidia’s 40-series Super models 15 Two bits How Nvidia RTX Remix is bringing new life to old games 16 Trade chat Is Intel’s roadmap for real? 17 One more thing Jon Honeyball’s first drive of a Tesla isn’t an entirely appy experience 20 A-list The best products on the market 24 Head to head Microsoft Clipchamp vs Premiere Rush 23 The list The best webcams 26 Gadgets Techy toys and trinkets The Lab 29 HP Spectre Fold 30 AMD Ryzen 8700G 4/5 and 8600G 33 WD Black SN770M PCIe 4 SSD 34 TP Link Archer BE800 Wi-Fi 7 Router - 35 D-Link Aquila Pro AI M30 AX3000 Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 36 Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 38 TP Link Tapo P100M mini-smart plug 38 Samsung Portable SSD T5 Evo Labs features 39 Nvidia RTX 40 super cards Software 44 Vivaldi 6.5 Features 72 YouTube tweaking guide 50 Best tech of 2024 (CES report) 64 Become a ChatGPT master 00 A vision to behold – history of electronic displays pt 5 48 Apple Vision Pro PC Builder 80 System news After CES 2024, Mark Williams sees a brighter, more colourful and cheaper future ahead of us. 81 Market watch A sampling of PC systems currently available 82 Blueprints Value- and performance-driven hypothetical builds How to 86 Quick tips 88 Expert tips for Windows 89 Make Office better 90 Take control of your internet 92 Master the new Apple TV app 94 Total shell recall 96 Do more with your smartphone 98 Upscale your old photos 100 Build a Pi Pico electronic piano Downtime 102 Gaming reviews High-performance playtime 106 Game changer Shadow of Mordor 110 Retro How Grand Theft Auto stole hearts 114 Chip chat The less than serious news page “Much of how the Tesla works is quite different than a normal vehicle. I’m not saying it’s bad, it just doesn’t fit into the immediate vocabulary that you have when getting into a rental car.” Jon Honeyball - One More Thing page 17 Turn to page 18 now to find out how SUBSCRIBE NOW & SAVE OVER 40% MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 7

We all know about, and are maybe tired of, artificially intelligent computing right now. AI tools to make you productive, workplace AI subscription services, AI operating systems. AI buses, AI plants, and so on. We all think we know it’s the future, but we don’t know what that future looks like. Despite this, polling druids Gartner’s latest premonition is suggesting that AI PCs will represent 22% of all personal computers in 2024. Looking Gartner for answers, it’s clear that a definition for AI hardware is well-established: ‘AI PCs [are] PCs equipped with dedicated AI accelerators or cores, neural processing units (NPUs), accelerated processing units (APUs) or tensor processing units (TPUs), designed to optimise AI tasks on the device [...] without relying on external servers or cloud services’, it wrote in the press release. Said tasks, it says, will be the bane of all our wretched lives: generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). This is something that we do understand: generating text, images based on human prompts, which we’ve seen a lot with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard AI chatbots. Gartner believes that the technology, which is already in full swing with Windows 11’s Copilot, Galaxy AI on And they probably will. Tech bosses are desperate to make AI PCs happen AI ASSISTED SUPER RESOLUTION FEATURE COMING TO WINDOWS 11 UPSCALING FOR ALL THE CARDS. Even if we don’t get a Windows 12 release this year, the Windows 11 24H2 update is shaping up to be a big one. With AI all the rage, and both AMD and Intel integrating AI specific hardware into their latest CPUs, AI assisted applications are definitely going to appear thick and fast. Microsoft is developing an interesting one, by introducing an AI assisted super resolution feature that’s likely to appear in the 24H2 update. A user on the website formerly known as Twitter, posted a couple of screenshots from the Windows 26052 preview build. They reveal Microsoft is working on a new feature it calls Automatic Super Resolution. Enabling it allows you to ‘Use AI to make supported games play more smoothly with enhanced details’. TECHNOTES Everything you need to know from the month in tech © Lenovo, Microsoft 8 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Samsung smartphones as well as Google Pixel 8 devices will make AI-enabled phones 22% of all ‘basic and premium’ smartphone shipments in 2024. Though Lenovo may now be developing an AI OS, The Register reported back in October 2023 that the President of its Multinational Devices Group Luca Rossi couldn’t specify examples of tasks that an AI PC produced by the company could accomplish faster than regular computing hardware. What they do know is that AI is merely the chasing of a trend, something that’s gone beyond an arms race to become a very small pond, and other tortured metaphors. Gartner’s Senior Director Analyst Ranjit Atwal opts for the diplomatic ‘ubiquity’, saying that it will ‘will pose challenges for vendors in differentiating themselves from competitors, making it harder to create unique selling points and drive increased revenues.’ Most of this is corporate-speak, but if we’re looking for a motivator for AI PCs, or AI in general, ‘increased revenues’ works, as Q4 2023 saw the PC sector return to (ever so slight) growth after eight solid years of decline.

TECHNOTES | NEWS TAIWAN ACCUSES CHINA OF ‘CHEATING’ AND ‘STEALING’ CHINESE CHIPMAKERS ACCUSED OF STEALING TECHNOLOGIES. Taiwan’s diplomat in Washington, Alexander Yui, has levelled serious accusations against China for attempting to rival Taiwan’s semiconductor industry prowess through dishonest means. In an interview with Reuters, Yui dismissed the notion that China’s chip sector could soon rival Taiwan’s, especially in production of chips on leading-edge nodes. China’s ambassador in the U.S. denies any wrongdoing by Chinese companies. Yui accused Chinese chipmakers of circumventing standard practices of innovation and instead resorting to dishonest methods to advance their capabilities. “They do not really follow the rules,” Yui told Reuters. “They cheat and they copy, etc. They steal technology.” Yui said. A representative from the Chinese embassy in the United States described the allegation as lacking in common sense and being motivated by spite. © Cablemod, Google, MSI ASUS AND MSI COMPETE OVER OLED MONITOR BURN-IN WARRANTY LENGTHS UP TO THREE YEARS OF COVERAGE NOW OFFERED. It came to light that Asus extended its OLED monitor warranties in February, offering a 2-year burn-in cover for the first time. We don’t know whether it is a coincidence or if MSI has found an opportunity to one-up its rival, but a day later it was announced that MSI OLED monitors are set to benefit from a new 3-year burn-in warranty. Now it’s your move: Asus, Gigabyte, LG, Samsung, etc. MSI describes the plight of OLED monitor buyers clearly and succinctly. “While OLED panels have become the preferred choice for high-end gaming, the OLED burn-in issue has consistently been a major concern for all users,” it says on its new blog. Indeed, we know APC readers are concerned by this issue. CABLEMOD RECALLS ITS 16-PIN GPU POWER ADAPTERS FIRE HAZARD HAS CAUSED OVER $74,500 IN PROPERTY DAMAGE CLAIMS. The Nvidia 16-pin (12VHPWR) power connector has already caused many meltdowns since the launch of the GeForce RTX 4090. Even third-party adapters can’t save it, as Cablemod has officially issued a recall on the company’s popular 12VHPWR angled adapters. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission entry, Cablemod has sold around 25,300 units of the brand’s 12VHPWR angled adapters, in various models and forms, and the recall includes all of them. Note, though, that recall is just for the adapters, as Cablemod claims its angled cables are still fine. The recall applies to purchases from February 2023 through December 2023. The reason for Cablemod’s recall is that the adapters, not unlike the 12VHPWR cable itself, can come loose and cause overheating or melting of the 16-pin connector on the graphics card. ANDROID AND CHROMEOS TO RECEIVE DEEPER INTEGRATION GOOGLE IS FINALLY SETTING UP AN ANDROID-FOCUSED ECOSYSTEM. Google is reportedly working on better integrating Android devices and ChromeOS. Hints of this move were discovered by industry expert AssembleDebug, who recently dove into the files of Google Play Services version 24.06.12. After activating several internal flags, he discovered two new features are currently in development plus certain sections will be renamed to better fit the changes. Device Connections will be renamed to Devices & Sharing, and there is a new option called Cross-Device Services. Tapping the section for the first time allows users to choose the Android phones and Chromebooks they want on their cross-device network. There doesn’t appear to be a limit to how many gadgets you can have connected at the same time. MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 9 MICROSOFT AXES WORDPAD AFTER 28 YEARS OF DUTY. CORTANA GOES TOO. WIN 95 STALWART REMOVED FROM NEW WINDOWS 11 CANARY BUILD. Months after its announcement, Microsoft finally released a new Windows 11 Canary Build with WordPad scrubbed from existence. Microsoft described WordPad as a ‘Deprecated Feature’ indicating it is no longer in development, and therefore the software-making giant will no longer include it in subsequent Windows 11 releases For many years WordPad was the go-to free word processor that you got with the operating system, actually dating back to the Windows 95 era. It is also preferred by many to create or edit simple rich text documents. But there is another word processor recommended in its place. Microsoft said on Friday, “We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.” The Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26020 will also be removing Cortana, an unsurprising move as Microsoft is pushing Co-Pilot AI to be more than just an assistant, making it a must-have for keyboard makers to have a Co-Pilot key, and this key will be included on its resurrected peripherals lineup.

TECHNOTES | TECH BRIEF 10 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 When you’re talking to Siri, Alexa or the Google Assistant, you could be forgiven for thinking that they sound a bit flat. Whether it’s sharing the excitement that your dinner delivery is nearby, or breaking the bad news that thunderous showers are expected, voice assistants all sound like emotionless robots. But all that could be about to change. OpenVoice is a new proof-of-concept AI tool that, its creators claim, can clone any voice with only a few seconds of reference audio. What really sets it apart from previous attempts at voice cloning is that it’s significantly more flexible, as different speech characteristics can be easily tweaked. For example, you can instruct the AI to make the voice sound happy, sad or even terrified. Or if you want to go for a could do the voice models as good as the previous two.” Voice breaking So how is it done? The trick is to break the “reference” clip into its different components. “Flexibility here means after you control the voice, you have flexible control of styles like the accent, like the emotion and the intonation,” said Qin. “To enable such level of detail control is very difficult, because that will require a huge dataset to train it and a very, very large model to learn it.” Luckily, then, Qin and his colleagues were able to use around 100,000 clips of audio training data – and that appears to have been enough to figure it out. What makes OpenVoice so powerful is that the AI breaks apart a voice clip into these different characteristics, and applies AI to each element independently – similar to how AI art tools can apply the overall artistic style of Van Gogh to any picture, not merely paintings of sunflowers. The researchers have also discovered that treating these different characteristics separately can deliver clever results. For example, using OpenVoice it’s possible for a synthetic voice to retain the tone with which a text is being read, while making it possible to swap out the text being spoken entirely. In fact, using this technique, it is even possible to change the language being spoken, while having the voice still sound as though it is being read by the same person. The results, which can be heard on the OpenVoice website, literally speak for themselves. While the generated voices aren’t perfect, they are almost perfect – and certainly a step change in capability from what was previously possible. “I believe by enabling the customisation of voices, the voice interface will gradually become a fundamental infrastructure that are the building blocks of entire AI applications.” If OpenVoice does become the next big thing, you can remember that you heard it here first – in whatever accent or language you choose. different regional appeal, you can even switch the voice’s accent – perhaps making a previously American voice sound more British, Australian or South African. The hope is the technology will improve how we interact with AI tools such as chatbots, such as those made by parent company MyShell, to make them appear more lifelike. “The voice-cloning model enables very flexible content creation, and the design of human-computer interfaces,” said Zenghi Qin, an MIT researcher who led the project. “So, this could be a very important part in the future of artificial general intelligence.” “Language, vision and voice are [the] three most important modalities in artificial intelligence in the future,” added Qin. “There are some pretty good opensource projects in the language models and vision models [categories], but nobody Chatbots that sound just like us Voice cloning breakthrough will make AI assistants sound less synthetic. “What makes OpenVoice so powerful is that the AI breaks apart a voice clip into these different characteristics, and applies AI to each element independently – similar to how AI art tools can apply the overall artistic style of Van Gogh to any picture, not merely paintings of sunflowers.” © Getty

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OPINION | END USER 12 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Last month Disney purchased a US$1.5 billion stake in Epic Games – the company responsible for Fortnite and Unreal Engine 5 – and thanks to the former it’s nowadays extremely wealthy: Epic Games is worth US$32 billion (Disney is worth US$178 billion). Fortnite has become a global phenomenon in gaming. More importantly, it’s an amazingly pliant marketing tool whose use value lies entirely in its receptiveness to no holds barred cross-promotion. Crossovers abound, ranging from previous Disney brand collaborations, chiefly Marvel and Star Wars, through to pop icons like Ariana Grande and Blackpink. To call it an interactive ad is both truer than calling it a “game” and also oversimplifying what Fortnite is. It’s nowadays a platform or, in the parlance of tech doyen-speak, a metaverse of sorts. It acts as the launcher for other games (most of which are designed expressly for the purpose of promoting other games or media) and in October it even hosted a holocaust museum. The games industry, like the rest of the entertainment industry, nowadays vies for engagement as the most consequential measure of success and profitability. Put in those terms, Fortnite has inarguably made Epic Games the “Disney” of the games industry. Fortnite is exactly what Disney has in its crosshairs; the stake was purchased with a view to developing a Disney-centric virtual world that, in Epic CEO Tim Sweeney’s terms, will “interoperate” with Fortnite. “The new persistent universe will offer a multitude of opportunities for consumers to play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more,” so reads the spin. “Play, watch, shop and engage” neatly sums up the way so-called culture is delivered in the 21st century. Disney banks on the paying public’s willingness to keep reinvesting their passions and money into the same tired properties because the very reasons those properties ever came into existence – curiosity, experimentation with form – have been stricken from the lexicon of the culture industry. Risk is anathema, and thankfully the modern terrors of the world, chiefly climate change and accelerating inequality but much, much more, are not only symptoms of late capitalism but also reasons a consumer might want to take refuge in the 20th Star Wars film rather than something more challenging or gratifying. Disney’s accelerated dominance in the culture of the 21st century is a symptom of the complete banalisation of art under the conditions of late capitalism. Anything a boardroom or investors panel can get within pissing distance of is immediately a product to “play, watch, shop and engage” in. Where the games industry is concerned, it’s a process that is slowly destroying the western cohort, or at least its workforce: just under 20,000 game developers were laid off in 2023. Compare the output from American and European studios from the past three years with that of Japanese studios: the former is a wasteland of tired service games (basically engagement farms) resented by their audiences, or they’re superhero adaptations (often both at once). Japan is making videogames that people buy, play though, and love. It’s not “bad” that Disney has bought a stake in Epic. It’s just the most conspicuous example yet that western corporate entertainment – popular culture – doesn’t even try to hide its priorities anymore. It is not designed to please you: it’s designed to lure you in with the iconography of your youth, and then charge you extortionate V-Bucks for an Elsa skin. It thinks you’re an idiot. Big entertainment convergences bank on their audiences not knowing that there’s anything better, writes Shaun Prescott. Disney’s $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games is concerning Shaun Prescott is an Australian editor for PC Gamer, GamesRadar and PLAY, and writes for APC, TechRadar and more.

OPINION | RANDOM ACCESS MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 13 This will be my last Random Access column and issue of APC. I’m moving into a role in environmental policy to help keep the planet from being iceless in the next hundred years. I’ve been writing with Future Australia since 2014, and while nine years really isn’t that long in the scheme of things; a decade in technology throws up a lot of change. When I started (around issue 411 of APC) Netflix was yet to hit Australian shores, something that will seem hard to believe these days where you can barely find a free to air TV station amongst all the content providers on your television. This lack of available dramatic content meant that movie piracy was in its heyday and there was a range of torrent sites and a number of companies attempting to claw back losses however they could. HTC and Microsoft were reasonably high profile players in the smartphone scene, which seems a little comical these days. Many of us still didn’t have NBN yet, with only around a million premises with access. 4G mobile connectivity was still pretty new and the second VR tech revolution was nothing but an exciting novelty sitting some way off in the future. The first laptop I reviewed had a 4th Generation Intel Core i7-4710HQ quad-core CPU that could boost to 3.5GHz and offered a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M. This system could play Fallout 4 at about 60fps using FullHD Ultra settings, but it only got 30 or so fps on more demanding games like The Whicher 3 or GTA V. These gaming laptops still used hard disk drives or tiny SATA SSDs and weighed over 3 kg if you carried the power brick. 2.8K resolution was king, you had to live with 60Hz refreshing rates and we were still on Windows 8.1. In 2015 we had the first rumblings of AI with Google releasing its Deep Dream neural network that you could run images through to get unusual visual effects in real time. Today AI is writing essays, dictating and making a huge impact in industries from healthcare to defence, so it’s perhaps the most dramatic change I’ve seen during my time. Drones were still just taking off and smartphone cameras only had one lens. Dyson had just released its first cordless vacuum cleaner, and many predicted the end of relevance for Moore’s Law, which had roughly applied since the 1950s. Perhaps one of the biggest flash in the pan tech releases was the hoverboard, perfectly timed for christmas in 2015. Our office had an ongoing circuit set up around the desks where the APC team raced for bragging rights. 3D printers were making just about anything and Microsoft’s HoloLens looked like the promising tech of the future. Tesla released its Model X in the US and was even making headway on Autopilot (which still isn’t quite the full self-driving dream that was promised). It’s nice that my final review was of one of the first laptops with a foldable screen: The HP Spectre Fold 17 (that’s on page 29). There’s no signs of slowing for laptop development and I couldn’t think of a better time to pass on the torch. What’s happened in the 119 issues of APC that I’ve been a tech journalist on. A decade in technology: How different was consumer tech ten years ago? Joel Burgess is one of the senior journalists on APC magazine and apart from being the resident laptop, monitor and fitness tech geek, he’s also pretty into surfing his local Sydney beach breaks when he’s not in front of a screen.

OPINION | TECH TALK 14 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Nvidia’s RTX 40-series Ada Lovelace GPUs have had a rocky reception, mostly on account of their significantly higher generational prices, reduced memory interface widths, and reliance on DLSS 3 frame generation to make performance look better. It’s all reminiscent of the RTX 20-series, which had similar complaints. Just like the 20-series, Nvidia will trot out a mid-cycle refresh in the form of new Super models. The RTX 4070 Super has specs that put it close to the existing RTX 4070 Ti. It features 56 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs) and 7,168 CUDA cores – just seven percent below the 4070 Ti and 22 percent above the RTX 4070. More importantly, it inherits the $1,119 MSRP of the RTX 4070, which gets a price cut to $999. The memory is the same 12GB of 21 Gbps GDDR6X, with a 220W TGP (total graphics power) rating – 20W more than the 2070. RTX 4070 Ti Super comes next, combining the Ti and Super suffixes to offer a new experience for Nvidia GPU names. The good news is that the 4070 Ti Super fixes one of the major issues we had with the RTX 4070 Ti, as it leverages the AD103 GPU and offers a 256-bit memory interface and 16GB of VRAM, with 33 percent more bandwidth. Otherwise, it’s only a minor upgrade, with 10 percent more shader cores. It takes over the same $1,499 price point as the RTX 4070 Ti, which will get phased out. Like the 4070 Ti, the Super variant will only be offered from Nvidia’s add-in card partners – no Founders Edition. The base TGP remains 285W. Lastly, the RTX 4080 Super uses the same AD103 GPU as both the vanilla 4080 and the 4070 Ti Super, and still be limited to a 256-bit memory interface and 16GB of GDDR6X memory. It gets a bump in shader counts from 76 SMs in the 4080 to the full 80 SMs in the 4080 Super. It also has memory clocked at 23 Gbps, another boost that will be phased out once the Super variant arrives. Given the lack of massive changes, the TGP remains at 320W as well. The RTX 4080 Super hits the streets here in Australia with an RRP of $1,870. I can’t help but feel disappointed with the 4080 Super, as I hoped to see a cut-down AD102 implementation and 20GB of memory. Still, all three cards represent modest improvements in price and performance. We’ve already seen several of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series drop below their official RRPs, and the new Super variants may push prices lower. The RTX 4070 still needs to go lower, as the 4070 Super will theoretically offer about 20 percent higher performance for nine percent more. When I spoke to Nvidia, it said that retail prices don’t have to follow the RRPs. Overall, the 40-series Super announcement delivers what you’d expect from a mid-cycle refresh. Anyone who already owns a 40-series GPU will be fine, but if you were on the fence about upgrading before, the new models may entice you. At the same time, we’re one year closer to the next-generation Blackwell RTX 50-series GPUs. Consumer models will likely arrive in 2025, though whether Blackwell will deliver major improvements in performance and value remains an open question. Nvidia RTX 40-series Super models take the runway. Sort of Super “We’ve already seen several of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series drop below their official RRPs, and the new Super variants may push prices lower.” Jarrod has been described as an AI by people he meets at parties.

OPINION | TWO BITS MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 15 For many years, modders have helped to reinvigorate older titles with things as diverse as graphical improvements, expanded content and things like new weapons or physics improvements. At the best of times, modding is a challenging and timeconsuming task even if you have access to the game’s source code. It’s made more difficult if you need to access and work with locked files, old APIs, and restrictive 32-bit code. To make this process easier, Nvidia has been working on its free RTX Remix modding platform. It allows modders to give older games complete makeovers with modern rendering techniques, including ray tracing and DLSS, with the help of AI. The toolkit was initially announced back in September of 2022. It was used to create Portal with RTX. The original Portal is regarded as one of the best games of all time and it looked amazing back in 2007, but Portal RTX wouldn’t be judged harshly by 2024 standards. The next logical step is to adapt Half Life 2, and that’s exactly what is happening. If used properly, many of our older, beloved games could be made to look like something brand new. It’s designed to streamline the entire process, making it easy (relatively) to mod any of thousands of DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 games with fixed function graphics pipelines. RTX Remix is built on Nvidia’s Omniverse, which is a platform for developing 3D workflows and applications. It allows modders to import game assets into RTX Remix and convert them into commonly used USD (Universal Scene Description) files. These can then be modified or replaced in commonly used 3D apps including Unreal Engine and Blender among others., RTX Remix includes generative AI texture tools. It can analyse the original textures from classic games and upscale their resolution by up to 4X with physically accurate results. Things like walls, grass and water all see dramatic improvements. It is important to note that RTX Remix is not a tool that should be used willy-nilly. A part of the appeal of many older games is the atmosphere they created. I used Half Life 2 above as an example of how a game could be made to look stunning, but I’d say HL2’s biggest strength was the way it portrayed City-17 as a dystopian and dreary police state. I really hope the HL2 RTX developers manage to Those Half Life 2 headcrabs look better than ever. Nvidia’s RTX Remix will help breathe new life into old games Chris Szewczyk has been elbow deep in PCs since before the turn of the millennium, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. integrate all that RTX goodness, without losing that oppressive atmosphere. As for a couple of games that I’d love to see get the RTX Remix treatment, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would be at the top of my list. But how about the original Crysis? Imagine that with a full set of texture and ray tracing upgrades. I think there was a meme floating around for a few years relating to that. Could it make a comeback? Have at it, modders! If there’s one company in the world that knows a thing or two about AI, it’s Nvidia. On a related note, it is launching Chat with RTX. It’s essentially a lighter local version of the large language models like Chat GPT that we’re becoming familiar with. It works by pointing it to. txt, .pdf, .xml and .doc files to learn from. I’d like to ask my RTX 4060 to give me the RTX 4090 4K benchmark results if only to see if it has an inferiority complex.

OPINION | TRADE CHAT 16 APC MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2024 “What initially seemed like an insane development roadmap turns out to be standard Moore’s Law fare involving a die shrink every two years.” By the time you read this, Intel will have rolled out a whole new roadmap, the next waypoint on its journey to renewed technological dominance. Except I can’t help but notice that the company hasn’t come close to delivering on its existing roadmap. You know, the one that has Intel delivering five new chip production nodes in four years? It was February 2021 that Pat Gelsinger returned triumphantly to the helm of Intel. It was a winning narrative. Intel had lost its way after years of marketingbiased leadership. At last, an engineer was returning to the top job – and not just any engineer, but a former Intel devotee who’d joined the company aged just 18 in 1979 and worked his way up through the firm to become CTO, only to be forced out by those evil marketing suits in 2009. Well, Gelsinger has now been in the top job for three years, and we are rapidly approaching judgement day. Of course, the whole ‘five nodes in four years’ thing was a bit specious to begin with. Those five new nodes included Intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, Intel 20A, and Intel 18A. At best, that list only contains three truly new nodes, arguably only covering two. Intel 7, of course, is a rebranded version of the 10nm node that predated Gelsinger’s return to the company, so that’s not new. Intel 4, therefore, is the first genuinely new node, with Intel 3 a revision thereof. Intel 20A is the next actual new node, and 18A is, again, a tweak of 20A. So that’s Intel 4 and Intel 20A as the two new nodes, thus what initially seemed like an insane development roadmap turns out to be standard Moore’s Law fare involving a die shrink every two years. The problem is that it’s debatable if Intel is going to manage that. The company just about managed to keep things on schedule and get its new Meteor Lake CPUs out the door in 2023. But when you take a close look at Meteor Lake, you’ll find that only one chiplet out of five inside the package is built on Intel 4. Meanwhile, Intel had to refresh Raptor Lake on the desktop using old Intel 7 silicon, which surely wasn’t part of the original plan. To keep on track, Intel needs to sell chips produced on not only the revised Intel 3 node, but also the new Intel 20A node. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but it definitely doesn’t look promising right now. Intel put on a brave face at CES, reaffirming its commitment to ship the next-gen 20A Arrow Lake desktop CPU architecture later this year, though probably only the CPU tile within the package will be on 20A. Intel also said that Lunar Lake for laptops will arrive this year, again on 20A. So, the first Meteor Lake laptops are barely on sale, and already Lunar Lake chips are arriving this year? That scheduling looks so rushed, of course, because Meteor Lake arrived very late. It seems clear that Intel 4 is proving problematic, but somehow Intel 20A is going to arrive on schedule, and itself be revised and improved in time to allow for 18A chips to go on sale in 2025? I find that tricky to compute. Is Intel’s roadmap for real? The slipping schedule Jeremy has a black leather jacket just like Jensen’s.

OPINION | ONE MORE THING MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 17 For my recent trip to CES in Las Vegas, I decided to f ly to Los Angeles, pick up and rental car and drive over. I have had too many bad experiences at LAX to trust it with a connecting f light, and it’s simply quicker to drive. Looking at Hertz’s rental options, there was one obvious choice: the Tesla Model Y. This was a prime opportunity for me to try the platform. I had never driven a Tesla but several of my friends swear by them, and I’m very aware of the almost religious love that they have amongst their fanbase. I arrived at LAX after a pleasant f light and took the bus to the rental lot. Within minutes I was sitting in the car. And this is where things started to unravel. On zapping the QR code, the app reported: “Add Vehicle Error. Account incompatibility detected, we’ll be adding support for it soon.” Oh well, I thought, I just need to drive the thing from A to B, so I all I need right now is the route. Cue much stabbing at the screen, and some muttered obscenities, until I finally found the GPS. I typed in my hotel name and the GPS plotted the route, telling me I had to stop for about 20 minutes halfway along to charge. I won’t review the car for you; it’s perfectly pleasant to drive and I wouldn’t have any issues replacing my 11-year-old Audi A3 with one when the time comes. But what was rapidly becoming clear to me was that much of how the Tesla works is quite different than a normal vehicle. I’m not saying it’s bad, it just doesn’t fit into the immediate vocabulary that you have when getting into a rental car. My first battle was with the auto steer function. It seemed to become annoyed with me for looking at the central screen, and disactivated it in a major huff telling me it wouldn’t work for the rest of the journey. But the reason I needed to peer at the screen was because much of the information is in a tiny font. After a couple of hours, the battery charge was getting low so I pulled into the suggested stop. Supercharging was seamless and I give it an extra ten minutes beyond the required time for luck. As soon as I pulled away, the car said I would need more. So, I stopped again some 30 kilometres later, and gave it another top up. And then another, because it quickly decided that wasn’t enough either. I arrived at Las Vegas with 10% left in the battery, but after being up for some 24 hours I had given up caring. Over the course of the week, I got to understand the user interface. My initial frustrations started to fade away. But I became firmly convinced that the car desperately needs a “I am new to Tesla” mode which gives a simplified UI, and possibly a 60-second walkthrough of all the things that are different from a normal car. Such things matter for a rental vehicle, especially when you are at the end of an 11-hour flight. In the meantime, caution is needed when you have a product that is so significantly different to the established mainstream, especially when you invite tired customers to climb aboard after a transatlantic f light. Getting the formatting wrong in Word is one thing. Controlling a car is quite another. Jon Honeyball’s first drive of a Tesla isn’t an entirely appy experience. The risks of being radical “Much of how the Tesla works is quite different than a normal vehicle. I’m not saying it’s bad, it just doesn’t fit into the immediate vocabulary that you have when getting into a rental car.” Jon Honeyball could do with a fast charge after CES.

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TECHNOTES | THE A-LIST 20 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 The A-List Apple MacBook Pro 16in (M3) STUNNING CREATIVE POWER A reasonable processor upgrade to device with an impressive screen and unparalleled battery life. The new M3 3nm processors is more efficient, so you’ll be able to run the same tasks as the M1 using half the power draw, which helps battery life. From $4,299, apple.com/au Razer Blade 15 A SUPERBLY ENGINEERED GAMING POWERHOUSE Right now there’s just not another better value gaming unit around. It’s miraculously thin considering the beefy components inside, thermals are very well managed and the Razer Blade 15 manages to extract very good performance from its GPU without undue throttling. There are many variants and options, and they’re an outstanding buy if you find one on sale.From $3,899, razer.com/au-en Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 BUSINESS CLASS Fight past Lenovo’s opaque pricing – another flash sale, really? – and you’ll find a slim, powerful and long-lasting laptop for a competitive price. With a wide range of available configurations, all based on Intel’s 13th generation Core chips, this is our top choice for all sizes of business. From $2,086, lenovo.com Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED ASUS AND INTEL TEAMED UP TO BUILD A MACBOOK AIR KILLER A compact and budget friendly Ultrabook that’s the best available device for many on-the-go professionals. Compared to the MacBook Air 13, it has an additional HDMI and USB-A port, an SSD that’s roughly twice as fast, and the screen is brighter and offers rich OLED contrast. $2,099, au.store.asus.com ASUS VIVOBOOK PRO 16X OLED This 2023 update has some impressive features for the price and is a surprisingly powerful creative workstation with a stunning screen. $3,199, asus.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR The MacBook Air M2 looks like a standout to us. A powerful and quiet ultraportable with an unbeatable battery life and a great pro display. From $1,799 apple.com/au MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO 9 APC rates the Intel model highly, the SQ3 model less so. With Intel, you get a solid upgrade to the world’s leading detachable tablet laptop. $1,547 microsoft.com LENOVO LEGION 5I PRO (16IN) A great-value gaming laptop that’s extracts the most from its powerful components. We really love the keyboard, too. $3,899 lenovo.com/au ACER NITRO 5 The budget gaming laptop king returns with another explosive device for those on a shoe-string. A well rounded budget laptop at an unbeatable price. $1,599 store.acer.com ASUS ROG STRIX SCAR 18 It’s expensive, but if you want an 18in laptop that delivers all-out power this is the no-compromise 3.1kg beast to buy – it packs quality everywhere. From $4,599 asus.com/au DELL LATITUDE 7340 This 1.1kg laptop offers terrific battery life and, if you choose the better non-touchscreen (look for 400 nits of brightness in the specs). $2,475 lenovo.com/au ACER TRAVELMATE P6 Not the most powerful due its 11th gen Core chip, but a great 14in screen and keyboard, superb battery life and competitive price lift it above rivals. $2,179 acer.com HP DRAGONFLY G4 It’s not the fastest machine you can buy, but otherwise this 1kg masterpiece is as close as you’re going to get to the perfect business laptop for executives. From $2,950 hp.com MICROSOFT SURFACE LAPTOP GO 2 Runs cool and quiet, and has up to 30 percent better battery life than its predeccessor, all in a beautifully designed form. From $1,199 microsoft.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR 15 An awesome plus-size MacBook Air with great battery life and graphical performance. GPU performance and battery life are the standout perks here. From $2,199 apple.com/au HP PAVILION 14 This slim 1.4kg laptop is a superb choice for anyone on a tighter budget. it struck an excellent balance between speed and battery life – around ten hours. From $949 store.hp.com THE ALTERNATIVES THE ALTERNATIVES THE ALTERNATIVES THE ALTERNATIVES Premium laptops Gaming laptops Business laptops Everyday laptops The best products on the market, as picked by our editors. Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au

TECHNOTES | THE A-LIST MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 21 Professional monitors Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 The best big-screen Chromebook we’ve tried, with a bright 15.6in Full HD display with decent black levels and surprisingly rich colours. And it’s a good specification for the price, with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD in tow. $1,179, asus.com/au Apple iPad Pro 12.9in Blurring the boundaries between laptop and tablet like never before, the M2-powered iPad Pro 12.9-inch is every bit as fast as we expected – and the Liquid Retina XDR display is simply phenomenal. From $1,899, apple.com/au MSI MEG 342C QD-OLED Quantum Dot technology combines with an OLED self-emitting panel to offer brighter, more efficient and more colourful visuals than your average OLED screen. $1,799, msi.com Eizo ColorEdge CG319X As the price indicates, this monitor is for heavyweight creatives who demand the best in every discipline: HDR video editing, print layouts, professional photography and more besides. With superb coverage and accuracy across all spaces, plus a built-in calibrator, it justifies the investment. $7,199, eizoglobal.com Epson EcoTank ET-2810 Don’t expect flashy features, but do expect fast print speeds, high-quality prints, scans and copies, plus phenomenally low running costs – even after you’ve exhausted the 6,000 pages’ worth of bottled ink that comes with it. $399, epson.com.au Lenovo Flex 3i Chromebook This isn’t the most powerful Chromebook, but students need reliability more than power – especially if they’re only really using it for homework, note-taking, and perhaps the occasional bit of Netflix. $367, lenovo.com/au Lenovo IdeaPad Duet The Chromebook answer to Microsoft’s Surface tablets, this is a seriously versatile device – albeit not the speediest (although we never found it to be painfully slow while carrying out everyday tasks). For this price, and with a 16hrs 14mins battery life, the Duet is a great choice. $297, lenovo.com/au OnePlus Pad The OnePlus fully justified its place in our luxury tablet Labs thanks to its outstanding build quality, slick performance and stunning 17-hour battery life. It’s the best Android option outside of Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs – and it won’t do nearly so much damage to your wallet. From $749, amazon.com.au Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra This 14.5in tablet offers a size and versatility that even the iPad Pro can’t match, with its high price more than justified by the quality of Samsung’s AMOLED panel, speakers and productivity software. $1,999, samsung.com Eizo FlexScan EV2480 Businesses in particular will love this easy-to-roll-out 24-inch monitor, with its exceptional five-year warranty, USB-C port for easy docking, excellent viewing angles and delicious whites. And it has the best OSD around. $619, eizoglobal.com Dell S2721DS The Dell S2721DS is a solid and affordable QHD monitor that’ll suit general users and casual gamers alike. It boasts a gorgeous 27-inch 1440p display, a 75Hz refresh rate, and a vivid IPS panel that hits 99 percent of the sRGB color gamut. $319, dell.com.au BenQ PD2725U By no means a cheap 4K 27-inch monitor – unless you compare it to the Eizo – but it marries all-round quality with ease of use thanks to a puck that allows you to quickly move between settings. You can even daisy chain a second Thunderbolt 3 monitor for a monster setup. $1,399, benq.com Asus ProArt PA279CRV Asus’s new 4K productivity panel delivers near pro-levels of performance and precision, though its HDR capability is inevitably limited. What you get is Asus’s usual high levels of build quality, plus extras, including essential HDR support and a stand that includes rotation into portrait mode. $799, asus.com HP OfficeJet Pro 9012e So long as your print volumes aren’t huge – the running costs mount up – this is a superb all-in-one for home office usage. It’s fast, robust, prints double-sided and produces strong all-round results. $228, canon.com Brother MFC-J4540DW Home workers will love this inkjet all-in-one. It combines an incredible range of features with all the connectivity you need and extreme ease of use. Output quality is fine, it offers the best cloud support around and the high-capacity ink pack could keep you going for years. $329, brother.com Chromebooks Tablets Everyday monitors Home office printers

TECHNOTES | THE A-LIST 22 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Synology WRX560 Its quad-band Wi-Fi smashed-through our performance tests managing 791.5Mbps up close, 375Mbps two rooms away and an amazing 216.7Mbps down the garden. $419, synology.com/au TP-Link Deco XE200 There are cheaper Wi-Fi 6E meshes, but the XE200 wins for its superb download speeds, excellent coverage and the fact that older clients reap benefits of 6E, not just new ones. And a two-pack should be enough for most premises. $1,299 (2-pack), tp-ink.com QNAP TS-130 An above average CPU and RAM combo, solid features and affordable price make the QNAP TS-130 worth considering. Alternatively there’s the two bay TS230 which features the same CPU, with 2GB of RAM, dual drive bays, and an extra USB port on the front for a modest ~$50 price increase. $199, qnap.com G Data Total Security A suite for power users with a host of useful features that offers formidable protection against viruses. US$49.95, 1 device, gdatasoftware.com NordVPN NordVPN provides consistent and fast speeds, serious security, great support for video-streaming services and some cost-effective subscription rates. $59 per year, nordvpn.com Bitwarden Bitwarden has a huge advantage: it’s free. It isn’t as slick as some paid-for rivals, but it can sync passwords across all devices for no extra charge. Free, bitwarden.com Asus ROG Rapture GTAX16000 The most splendid, overpowered router on the market. But, it’s silly money and aspirational to most users. Ultimately, though, it’s currently the highest-spec consumer router available. $999, asus.com/au Netgear Nighthawk RS700S Make no mistake – you won’t get stunning speeds out of this Wi-Fi 7 router today. But if you must buy a router now and want future-proofing, this is a solid choice. But honestly, we would recommend that you wait. $1,499, netgear.com TP-Link Deco X20 The Deco X20 makes it possible to upgrade your home network to Wi-Fi 6 for the price of some standalone routers. The HomeCare functions are also a great bonus for households where lots of devices are fighting over the bandwidth. $227 (2-pack), tp-link.com Asus ZenWiFi AX The interface and design certainly aren’t the prettiest (the charcoal version is straight out of the 1980s), but if you’re after strong performance, great features and plenty of expansion potential, the ZenWiFi AX is a compelling prospect. $939 (2-pack), asus.com/au Asustor Nimbustor AS5304T This is a hugely powerful four-bay NAS that will be overkill for most people – not just due to its speed but also its slightly intimidating user interface – but techies and gamers should investigate the Nimbustor AS5304T for both its speed and flexibility.$679, asustor.com Synology DiskStation DS1522+ At $1,199 it’s not cheap but factoring in the software means it’s great value. Though some internal silicon may lack headroom, this is still a well-featured, expandable NAS with fantastic software. The best part is the DSM software. $1,199, synology.com Wireless routers Mesh Wi-fi NAS servers Security software AVAST ONE ESSENTIAL The only product in our tests to score a 100% protection rating for blocking all malicious files, this reliable choice is our pick of the free AV tools and includes a free if limited VPN service. Free, avast.com MCAFEE+ ADVANCED A high-end choice with high-end features and support for an unlimited number of devices. Good value for the first year, but watch out for renewals. $139.95, individual, unlimited devices, mcafee.com/en-au PROTONVPN ProtonVPN provided one of the best free offerings of all the VPNs in our group test, including unlimited data, but upgrade to benefit from even faster speeds and many more options. Free, protonvpn.com SURFSHARK A strong rival to NordVPN, especially if you’re willing to commit to its two-year contract. It’s fast, cheap and a fine choice for people who like to switch to US streaming services. $79.61 for one year, surfshark.com DASHLANE A manager that’s ideal for beginners, and it even builds in an unlimited (if basic) VPN service. Note you may prefer to buy the Family plan ($60 per year) as this extends the service to six people. $55.99 per year (Premium), dashlane.com 1PASSWORD 1Password is targeted at users who are looking for the last word in security. It even offers a Travel Mode that may ease your mind if surrendering your phone to customs officials. $54.99 per year (individual), 1password.com THE ALTERNATIVES THE ALTERNATIVES THE ALTERNATIVES Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au

MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 23 The best webcams THE LIST LOGITECH C922 HD PRO Unless you want specific features, there is no better value than this. Its sharp 1080p images, paired with a wide field of view and great autofocus, make it a fantastic video-conferencing choice. Low-light performance is great; the noise levels don’t shoot through the roof if you turn off a few lights. Most of the settings can be adjusted through Logitech’s Camera app, and streamers will appreciate its compatibility with ChromaCam background replacement. $99, www.logitech.com ELGATO FACECAM Elgato’s webcam is positioned as a premium camera for streamers who aren’t quite ready to invest in more expensive options, such as a DSLR camera, but are still looking for the best picture they can get. The Facecam offers uncompressed video at 1080p/60fps, which is a pretty huge deal and means you have final video output with less artifacting. Out of the box, the picture quality of the Facecam is great and the latencies are low, while the Camera Hub software lets you adjust your camera settings with ease. $245, www.elegato.com DELL ULTRASHARP WB7022 This is one of the best 4K webcams you can buy. On top of offering 4K at 30fps, you’ve got HDR support and even AI-powered auto framing. As expected, UltraSharp’s support for 4K recording delivers impressive detail over your standard 1080p webcam. It works well in poorly lit or overexposed rooms – just note that if you’re only using this for work calls, the webcam’s picture quality might be nerfed by apps like Meet or even Zoom and their aggressive video compression. $299, www.dell.com RAZER KIYO PRO The Kiyo Pro improves on Razer’s previous webcams, with a slightly different approach to handling lighting in dark spaces. It ditches the ring light in favour of a sophisticated light sensor to tackle the gloom. The Kiyo Pro’s other improvements include HDR (off by default), 1080p resolution at 60fps, a wide-angle lens, and omnidirectional microphone. It’s a feature-packed webcam for streamers. Night-time or darker rooms is where the Kiyo Pro truly shines – it’s one of the best low-light webcams we’ve ever used. $179, www.razer.com What exactly do you want from a webcam? How about something that makes you look your best, no matter how dimly lit your bedroom or home office? Just be aware that there are webcam horses for specific streaming courses. The best webcam for live streaming isn’t necessarily the same as the best option for remote working. Many of these webcams support HD and 4K up to 60fps, for instance, but the latter in particular adds to the price tag, and might be overkill for daily office duties. LOGITECH STREAMCAM Designed for – you guessed it – streamers and other content creators, you can rotate this on its three-axis clip for portrait mode. The mount can also be angled face-down up to 90 degrees for keyboard and mouse movements, while an extra mount allows screws for more complex arrangements. It shoots in 1080p at 60fps, and the Capture 2.0 software automates most settings. $149, www.logitech.com 3 2 5 1 4 “A premium camera for streamers who aren’t quite ready to invest in more expensive options” “Note that if you’re only using this for work calls, the webcam’s picture quality might be nerfed by apps like Meet or even Zoom”

TECHNOTES | HEAD TO HEAD 24 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 There’s probably a reason for the explosion in popularity of YouTube and the rise of multi-core PCs with GPUs happening at around the same time. Sure, you can shoot and edit video on a smartphone, but for a really professional-looking job, nothing beats getting your footage onto a fast SSD and viewing it on a big screen. To make your edits, you’re going to need software, and there’s a lot available, from the market-leading Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony’s Vegas Pro with their monthly subscriptions, to pay-once options, and free apps. It’s the last category that has become especially interesting, as there are some capable apps available for absolutely nothing, such as the mighty DaVinci Resolve from Blackmagic design – the makers of some fearsome cinema cameras who use the software to bait users into their ecosystem – and apps like Shotcut and Lightworks that are good for beginners. Then there are the more humble options; Microsoft Clipchamp The biggest benefit of Microsoft Clipchamp is that you probably already own it. The app was integrated into Windows 11 in 2022, but was developed by an Australian company back in 2014. There are two versions of Clipchamp: one that runs in your browser, and a desktop app. The latter, available from the Windows Store if it’s not already installed through an update, offers the standard cookie preference setting, so appears to be a web app rather than standalone, but it works offline once you’ve got it installed. The web version works in Edge and Chrome, but throws an error if you try to use it in Firefox – as Edge is Microsoft’s own browser, and is based on the Chrome rendering engine, this makes sense, but is a little disappointing. At least it’s not Edge exclusive, and is also available as an installable web app on a Chromebook. Although Clipchamp is free, there are some premium features, such as 4K export, cloud backup, and additional visual and the perfect thing for quickly cutting together something to amuse your friends on Instagram. Windows 11 comes with such an option: the ambitiously named Microsoft Clipchamp, which has a premium version with a monthly subscription if you find it useful. Creative software powerhouse Adobe also gets in on the act with a few options, the Adobe Express free editor that runs in your browser, and Adobe Premiere Rush, which operates as a desktop app. Both are good for getting straight to the business of editing your video clips, which you can drop straight into the apps from your PC. They offer a classic timelinebased editing interface, and can export your edited movie into a variety of formats. You can change the speed, apply color filters, and overlay effects such as transitions and titles. There’s also the ability to separate the audio track from the video, and alter it or add music. Here’s how these two titans of free video editing software stack up. Microsoft Clipchamp vs Premiere Rush MICROSOFT CLIPCHAMP | PRICE Free/$11 a month ADOBE PREMIERE RUSH | PRICE Free Ian Evenden finds there can be only one video editing winner. As it’s bundled with Windows 11, it’s easy to get up and running with Clipchamp.

VERDICT TECHNOTES | HEAD TO HEAD MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 25 audio effects that you can unlock with a subscription of $11 a month. If your video project uses subscription features, your video will be watermarked on export. All the basic video editing tools are included with the free version, however, and the timeline-based interface will be familiar if you’ve so much as looked at a video editing app. There are collapsible panels on either side of the preview window, which is an efficient use of space, as it allows a widescreen video clip to be as large as possible. The interface is touch-friendly, and there are keyboard shortcuts to zip between tools and views. Alongside the standard method that sees you drag clips onto the timeline and dictate how they overlap and interact, there’s an AI option that will create a movie from the raw materials. Once you’ve imported your clips into their tracks – you can point it to a folder or add them one by one with the mouse – you choose a style (or styles), a format, and a length of time, then a music style (there are royalty-free tracks), and let it do its thing. If you’re the more hands-on type, or just don’t like the result of the automatic edit, then you can use various templates, as well as recording directly from your webcam to add a picture-inpicture commentary to your video – useful if you’re showcasing game footage or a software tutorial. Clipchamp is a great place to start with video editing, especially as it’s probably already on your PC. While its AI editing may not produce the results you’d expect for exposure, coloru temperature, saturation, and more, and an ‘Apply to All’ button will copy your colour tweaks to clips in your project. The actual editing interface has a maximum of seven tracks on its timeline: three for video and four for audio. The tracks automatically align and keep in sync, but it can be confusing that newly imported videos go straight into a primary track, and that extra video tracks are found above the primary one, while audio tracks are below. Once you’ve got that quirk set in your mind, you can drag between tracks, split, and duplicate happily. In contrast to Clipchamp, Rush can export a 4K video without watermarking or asking for a subscription. While either app will do a great job of editing and exporting a 1080p video, Clipchamp has the edge in the interface department, so will be attractive to those making social media posts, but the 4K export capabilities of Rush will appeal to anyone with higher resolutions in mind. Microsoft Clipchamp Bundled with Windows 11, easy to use interface – though advanced features locked behind a subscription. Adobe Premiere Rush 4K without a sub, plenty of presets and manual options. Interface doesn’t have the refinements of Microsoft’s app. from doing things by hand, it’s faster, and you can always edit it later. You also don’t have to use it – the templates and effects in the free version are a good choice if you want to learn about video editing. Adobe Premiere Rush Adobe has a lot of experience in making video editing apps, and alongside the subscription-based Premiere Pro, there’s the cut-down Premiere Elements you can get for a one-off payment, and the Adobe Express free online video editor. Premiere Rush is an interesting addition, as it’s a lightweight app that runs on mobile and desktop, and you can sync your work across devices via the Creative Cloud service, which means setting up an account via the CC Starter Plan, which also nets you 2GB of cloud storage. Once you’ve installed the app, the interface is similar to Clipchamp and many other video editing apps. There’s a large preview window, a timeline at the bottom, and bars to either side. Rush puts its media bin at the left, so you can drag clips onto the timeline easily, and all the graphics, transitions, and color presets on the right. One thing it doesn’t do as well as Clipchamp is that the presets use an image of a road to show their effect rather than a grab of the clip you’re working on. The Microsoft app has the better interface, both in the spread of its tools and the way its filters are displayed. You can create your own presets too, or take manual control with a bank of sliders It does 4K for free, but it’s not as refined as Microsoft’s effort.

GADGETS The gear we’re lusting after $549 | teenage.engineering Teenage Engineering is rightly famous for the design of its music-making devices and its second-gen EP-133 KO II sampler is no exception. Designed to make it easy to record vocals, instruments and the sounds around you, the new EP-133 KO II then enables you to turn those sounds into samples, patterns and loops that can be arranged using the new, more powerful sequencer. From there, you can easily add a curated selection of built-in drum, bass and keys to help finesse your musical masterwork, along with pressure-sensitive Punch-In 2.0 effects. But whether you’re a pro musician or just a wannabe, there’s no denying the EP-133’s KO II’s stunning looks with its super segment hybrid display and big, bold, beautiful buttons. Get one of these and you could be the next Ed Sheeran. Oh hang on, forget we said anything… The EP-133 KO II is a sampling powerhouse. 26 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Teenage Engineering EP–133 KO II

TECHNOTES | GADGETS INSTA360 ACE PRO $728 | store.insta360.com Insta360 have a great reputation on the action camera scene, and now the Ace Pro brings some great AI tech to the table. The camera boasts a 1 /1.3-inch sensor and a Leica Summarit lens, and is capable of 4K 120fps video and 48MP photo. The 5nm AI chip ensures great low-light image quality while the 360° Horizon Lock ensures ultra-smooth shots. The camera is waterproof up to 10m (up to 60m with a Dive Case), you get a generous 2.4in flip touchscreen, and the fast charge facility means you can get shooting again as quickly as possible. BOOKARC FLEX $79.95 (Black and White) AUD$99.95 (Chrome) twelvesouth.com.au When working from home we’ve discovered two hard truths. Built-in laptop sceens are too small, and there is never enough desk space. The first problem is easily solved with a 32in widescreen and HMDI cable and Twelve South have us covered for reclaiming that deskspace with their simple and elegant BookArc Flex. It’s basically a cradle that holds your laptop vertically so you can tuck it behind your monitor or just to the back of the desk to free up clutter. Black, white and chrome versions are available that’ll vibe with any decor. OPTIMUS PRIME FLAGSHIP ROBOSEN $1,799, ambertech.com.au Ever wanted to live out the childhood fantasy of owning a Transformers toy that can transform itself? Now you can, thanks to the robotics company Robosen, which has delivered a series of voice-activated (and officially licensed) Transformers with auto-convert capabilities. Fan favourites Bumblebee and Grimlock are among the figures on offer, though we imagine that Autobots leader Optimus Prime will be the most in-demand character. Simply say “Hey Optimus Prime” to get the big fella’s attention, signalled by a response in Peter Cullen’s unmistakable voice. Need more display space, but don’t want it to taking up the entire width of your desk? Well, Mobile Pixels’ Geminos could be just the thing you’re after. Rather than use an ultra-wide display, or place two monitors side by side, the Geminos arranges its two Full HD (1920x1080) displays vertically with the lower one boasting a touchscreen (although, unfortunately, that capability will only work with Windows). Both displays also have 60Hz refresh and 250 nits’ brightness. The Geminos also comes with 2x USB-A, 2x USB-C, 2x HDMI and an Ethernet port as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a 1080p webcam. One of the included USB-C ports offers 65W of passthrough charging for your notebook, too. $1,499 | mobilepixels.us Mobile Pixels Geminos MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 27

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. Independent reviews Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage. That means identifying the best products from multiple perspectives – the best performance, best value and best features and, ideally, the products that offer the best mix of these three attributes. As a matter of policy, reviews published in APC are not shared with product-makers prior to print. We will contact vendors under certain conditions; for example, if we have a problem testing a product that seems to indicate it may be faulty, or to invite a vendor to clarify how a particular feature works. If an APC reviewer has any potential conflicts of interest involving a brand, the review will always be assigned to another writer. Labs testing APC strives to conduct the most rigorous, objective scientific tests and benchmarks we can so as to make our reviews as unbiased as possible. We use a variety of tools and programs for this, including many freely available benchmark suites for assessing media encoding, general system performance including storage read and write speeds, gaming and battery life. CPU Intel Core i9 12900K Motherboard Asus Maximus Z690 Apex Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition RAM 2x16GB G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-6000 Power Supply Corsair AX1000 Storage Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB Case Thermaltake Core P8 Cooling Cooler Master Flux PL360 AIO Operating system Windows 11 Pro 22H2 APC EDITOR’S CHOICE When a product scores 4.5 out of 5, it carries the Editor’s Choice Award. These are products that exceed expectations and deliver a quality experience up there with the very best. APC HIGHLY RECOMMENDED You will see this award if a reviewed product has scored four out of five stars. It means most people can expect satisfying performance from the product, and that we would use it ourselves. APC TESTBED THE CURRENT APC TESTBED USED IN THE LABS FOR BENCHMARKING ALL COMPONENTS. THIS TESTBED IS UPDATED AS NEW AND RELEVANT TECHNOLOGY COMES ON STREAM. 29 HP Spectre Fold 30 AMD Ryzen 8700G and 8600G 33 WD Black SN770M PCIe 4 SSD 34 TP Link Archer BE800 Wi-Fi 7 Router 35 D-Link Aquila Pro AI M30 AX3000 Dual-Band Wi-Fi 6 36 Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 38 TP Link Tapo P100M mini-smart plug 38 Samsung Portable SSD T5 Evo Expert reviews and recommendations to help you buy with confidence REVIEWS 28 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024

LABS | HP SPECTRE FOLDABLE 17 MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 29 We’ve had foldable screen technology on phones for a couple of years now, but the flexible tech has now arrived on laptops and while it’s still absurdly expensive, it’s interesting enough to at least be aware of. $8,499 just isn’t a price point that many people are going to be able to justify for a 2-in-1 laptop with a 12th Gen lightweight Intel U processor, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe SSD. Even if this pricey device does have a 17-inch screen in a laptop that can fold into a laptop with the same footprint as something with a 12-inch form factor, there’s arguably not enough on offer to warrant that daunting price. If we consider the display in isolation it’s pretty impressive. There’s 500 nits of brightness in this generously sized 2560 by 1920 pixel screen and it combines with the deep blacks of the foldable OLED panel to give a truly excellent viewing experience. The large 17-inch display looks more like a computer monitor than a detached laptop screen since it’s controlled by an included stand-alone Bluetooth keyboard that you can set up as far away as you want. This makes it more like a highly portable desktop-like system and with 99.5% DCI-P3 coverage you could actually do very decent all the basic office processing tasks and even some light photo editing, but the HP Spectre Foldable 17 is more like the Surface Laptop Go than a Macbook Pro. If you want something different you can orient the screen in profile and bend it in the middle to sit it up like a laptop with a screen on both the top and bottom halves, but it’s only going to be useful for specific tasks like reading long web pages or something like coding. If space is a little tight you can also rest the bluetooth keyboard on top of the bottom half of the screen when in this laptop position, which turns the bottom half of the display off and will save a chunk of power. While this mode is unlikely to be frequently used, it’s the kind of thing that’s perfect for planes or a cafe where space is tight… so it’s a worthwhile feature. Drawing on it is fine, and the webcam, audio and keyboard are all easy to use and work well. If it was half the price, it would get a serious look in as the best 2-in-1 contender, but you might just have to wait a couple of years for this tech to come down a bit before you pull the trigger. professional image and video work on it if needed. If you were excited about the thought of a foldable desktop-sized screen to work from anywhere on, there are a couple of caveats that are worth pointing out. First is that the screen comes with a pretty simple rear kickstand that means the screen has to sit on the table and point up, which detracts a little from the desktop monitor feel. The other factor is that since the whole computer system sits just behind the screen, it’s a pretty low power offering that will struggle a little on more demanding creative tasks. Sure, you’ll still be able to do SPECS W11 Home; 17-inch OLED display at 2560 x 1920 pixel resolution, Vesa HDR 500 True Black, 99.5% DCI-P3; Intel Core i7-1250U CPU; 16GB RAM; Intel Iris Xe GPU; 90Wh battery ( 11h 40min 1080p media playback); 27.7 x 37.6 (or 19.2 folded) x 0.85cm (2.14 folded); 1.62kg. HP Spectre Foldable 17 PRICE $8,499 WEB hp.com/au-en BENCHMARK RESULTS HP Spectre Fold 17 Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 PCMark 10 - Overall (score) 4,573 5,480 Cinebench R23 - CPU (multi-threaded) 4,356 10,886 Geekbench 5 - Multi-core (score) 5,734 9,152 3DMark Time Spy (score) 1,161 8,283 Battery life - 1080p video playback (h:min) 11:40 07:38 Peak CPU temperature (ºC) 91 80 CrystalDiskMark Read (MB/s) 6,817 6,189 CrystalDiskMark Write (MB/s) 4,401 4,945 VERDICT Promising laptop tech that works well but needs refinement and a price cut Joel Burgess Is the new bendable laptop from HP one to hold or fold?

LABS | AMD RYZEN 7 8700G | AMD RYZEN 5 8600G 30 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Gaming without a graphics card AMD Ryzen 8700G and 8600G APUs. In case you haven’t noticed, graphics cards are pretty expensive. If that puts you off PC gaming, then AMD has something for you. Its Ryzen 8000-series APUs include the most powerful integrated graphics ever. They’re positioned to challenge entry level graphics cards, meaning you might not even need a graphics card for 1080p gaming today. They also include a dedicated AI engine – which is a first for AMD. It’s been over a year since AMD announced its Phoenix range of laptop processors. They took their time to come to market, but we did get an idea of what to expect from a desktop APU by looking at devices like the Asus ROG Ally. Though ostensibly a handheld, it’s capable of functioning as a desktop replacement when docked. If a power-restricted APU in a handheld can do that, its unleashed potential in a desktop form factor sounds pretty exciting. The range consists of four models. The top-of-the-range eight-core Ryzen 7 8700G with its 12 compute unit Radeon 780M graphics is joined by the six-core Ryzen 5 8600G with 8CU 760M graphics. The other two models are very much budget options, though they’re still interesting thanks to their Intel-like hybrid designs. The six-core Ryzen 5 8500G and four-core Ryzen 3 8300G include a mix of Zen 4 cores and smaller Zen 4c cores. They lack GPU grunt though, due to their 4CU Radeon 740M graphics. For now, it looks like the 8300G will be an OEM only model. We’ve tested the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G. Allow us to preview the benchmarking section and state that: Yes, real 1080p gaming with integrated graphics is absolutely possible. Chris Szewczyk BENCHMARKS AMD Ryzen 7 8700G AMD Ryzen 7 8600G AMD Ryzen 7 7700X AMD Ryzen 7 7600X Intel Core i5-14600K AMD Ryzen 5 5700G Cinebench R23 Multi thread Score 17,587 13,618 19,565 15,172 24,249 13,989 Single thread Score 1,804 1,761 1,969 1,926 2,072 1,471 Blender 3.3 Junkshop Samples per minute 77.54 60.06 85.59 68.26 101.63 64.95 Handbrake Video Encoding 4K 10-Bit HEVC to 1080p FPS 81.4 67.2 90.8 76.1 110.6 61.1 7Zip Billion Instructions per second 112.81 89.51 127.44 101.54 128.81 97.72 PCMark Essentials Index score 10,707 10,590 11,495 11,467 11,243 N/A HWInfo CPU package power Peak 88 85 144 128 184 86 Idle 22 19 26 25 14 12 HWInfo CPU temp peak 79 76 90 87 87 70 gaming average 46 45 59 54 41 43 3DMark Time Spy Extreme GPU index 3,266 2,810 N/A N/A 776 1,558 Overall index 3,661 3,130 N/A N/A 906 1,784 F1 22 Avg fps - High preset 70 62 86 77 17 35 Min fps - High preset 60 53 78 68 15 31 Far Cry 6 Avg fps - High preset 40 34 64 57 12 24 Min fps - High preset 36 30 55 51 10 21 Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Avg fps - High preset 39 32 63 50 8 20 Min FPS - High preset 26 17 25 22 6 15 Warhammer III Avg fps - Medium preset 49 42 N/A N/A 6 22 Min fps - Medium preset 40 36 N/A N/A 5 15 “The range consists of four models. The top-of-therange eight-core Ryzen 7 8700G with its 12 compute unit Radeon 780M graphics is joined by the six-core Ryzen 5 8600G with 8CU 760M graphics. ”

LABS | AMD RYZEN 7 8700G MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 31 The 8700G is outwardly similar to its Ryzen 7000-series siblings. It’s built around the Zen 4 architecture, but it is a different beast. Most especially, it uses a monolithic die as opposed to the chiplet design of regular 7000-series CPUs. It also incorporates a dedicated XDNA AI engine, but the major selling point of 8000-series APUs are their integrated graphics. The Radeon 780M graphics of the 8700G is powerful enough to play pretty much any current game at 1080p, especially if you enable AMD’s upscaling technologies. The 8700G is the top chip in the range. It’s built with TSMC’s 4nm node. Its eight cores and 16 threads should deliver a capable level of single and multithreaded performance. It includes 16MB of L3 cache, a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz and it has a 65W TDP. The Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 7 7700 include 32MB of L3 cache, while having 300MHz and 200MHz higher boost clocks respectively. That will cost the 8700G some performance in head-to-head matchups. The XDNA Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is an interesting addition. Local AI processing is only going to explode over the coming years. It is underutilised for now, but in the years to come it could become a must-have feature. The major selling point of the 8700G is its graphics capabilities. It includes the top-of-the-line Radeon 780M integrated graphics. It’s the most powerful integrated graphics solution ever seen on the desktop. It’s based on the RDNA 3 architecture with 12 CUs giving it 768 shader cores clocked at up to 2.9GHz. Integrated graphics performance is where the 8700G shines, and shines brightly. Our small selection of games shows the Radeon 780M IGP of the 8700G is enough to play graphics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t install a discrete graphic card later on. However, if you are planning to buy a GPU at the same time as a new CPU, go with one of the Ryzen 7000-series options instead. While I’m happy to shout about the gaming performance of the 8700G, I’m less impressed with its all round CPU performance. While it’s a great day-to-day chip thanks to its excellent power efficiency and undemanding cooling requirements, it’s just not a compelling option if you’re primarily looking for a CPU for productivity or creativity purposes. It may not be the all-round wonder chip I hoped it might be, but I’m thrilled to see AMD offer affordable options for longsuffering casual PC gamers. It’s fantastic for gaming, but the 7000-series chips make more sense unless you need integrated graphics performance. these games at 1080p – and not at minimum settings either. What this does prove is that less demanding games, including online shooters or MOBA titles will run buttersmooth on the 8700G. Consider enabling AMD’s suite of technologies including FSR and Fluid Motion Frames where available. They’ll help you to hit that all-important 60 fps threshold. At default settings, the lower clock speed and halved L3 cache of the 8700G is quite apparent compared to the 7700X. But, don’t forget that 8000G-Series CPUs have a TDP of 65W, which limits performance compared to the 105W TDP of 7000X-series processors. That’s easy enough to partially offset if you enable AMD’s PBO though. You’d buy a chip like the 8700G if you intend to make use of its integrated SPECS AM5 socket; 8-cores/16 threads; 4.2GHz base clock, 5.1GHz boost clock; 16MB L3 cache; Radeon 780M integrated graphics; 65W TDP. AMD Ryzen 7 8700G PRICE $539 WEB www.amd.com VERDICT The Ryzen 7 8700G is a genuine 1080p gaming option, but it loses too much performance to 7000-series chips for it to be considered a true all-rounder. Chris Szewczyk 1080p gaming with integrated graphics. For real. “You’d buy a chip like the 8700G if you intend to make use of its integrated graphics, but that doesn’t mean you can’t install a discrete graphic card later on.”

LABS | AMD RYZEN 5 8600G 32 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 If you care little for 4K with ray tracing and just like to enjoy a bit of gaming in your spare time or online with friends, the Ryzen 5 8600G could be exactly what you’re looking for. The 8600G is an affordable six-core variant of AMD’s exciting Phoenix range of desktop APUs. It’s based on the Zen 4 architecture, with a monolithic 4nm die. It comes with a base clock of 4.3GHz, a boost clock of 5.0GHz and a 65W TDP. Apart from having half the L3 cache, it’s not dissimilar to the Ryzen 5 7600 and in fact its base clock is a surprising 500MHz higher, though the 7600 has a 100MHz higher boost clock. The key feature of the 8600G is its graphics capabilities. It includes RDNA would eat up a good chunk of that gap. The low temperatures and power consumption levels of the 8600G are a bright spot. It’s a solid option for a small form factor or media PC. But the real highlight is the 8600G’s gaming performance. It’s good enough to make the claim that it can play games at 1080p with medium settings. If your threshold for ‘playable’ is 30fps on more demanding titles. Enabling FSR gives the 8600G a big performance boost. Let’s not forget we’re talking about a $379 APU here. To get this kind of performance for so little money is really quite extraordinary. There’s nothing stopping you from installing a discrete GPU at any time. However, if you are planning to install one at the same time as a new CPU, a 7600 or any one of a number of Intel 12th, 13th or 14th Gen options will deliver superior all round performance. Gaming included. In the end, our general conclusions for the 8700G apply here. The 8600G is a chip you should buy if you plan to make use of its integrated graphics. If not, there are better options. But if you care little for high core counts, the 8600G will make for an excellent general purpose processor. The differences between modern CPUs are hardly noticeable if you’re more into internet browsing with a hundred open tabs, consume social media, play YouTube videos or work from home. The $379 8600G will gobble it all up with ease. The Ryzen 5 8600G is a fantastic option for gamers on the tightest of tight budgets. Its combination of very good gaming performance, excellent value for money, power efficiency with the bonus of AI functionality make it the only option in this price range with such capabilities. 3-based Radeon 760M integrated graphics, with eight CUs activated. Its 512 shader units is enough for it to be considered a 1080p gaming option. It obliterates its predecessors. The 8600G includes AMD’s XDNA Neural Processing Unit. As you’ve no doubt seen and read, AI is all the rage and local AI processing will surely become more relevant as the software ecosystem matures. Sadly, I didn’t have a Ryzen 5 7600 on hand to test with. The 7600X has a higher 105W TDP and double the L3 cache, so it’s expected to be faster. Still, the 10-15% difference between the 8600G and the 7600X is not too drastic given the TDP difference. Enabling PBO on the 8600G SPECS AM5 socket; 6-cores/12 threads; 4.3GHz base clock, 5.0GHz boost clock; 16MB L3 cache; Radeon 760M integrated graphics; 65W TDP. AMD Ryzen 5 8600G PRICE $379 WEB www.amd.com VERDICT If your budget is tight, the Ryzen 5 8600G cannot be beaten. You’ll get the ability to play just about any game at 1080p, albeit at lower settings. Chris Szewczyk The chip of choice for gamers on the tightest budgets. “The real highlight is the 8600G’s gaming performance. It’s good enough to make the claim that it can play games at 1080p with medium settings.”

LABS | WD BLACK SN770M PCIE 4.0 M.2 SSD MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 33 Honestly, that strapline is perhaps the best summation this journalist has ever written for a product. Western Digital’s Black SN770M is designed with one thing in mind: to massively expand your handheld device’s storage. Yes, we’re talking Steam Decks, Asus ROG Allies, and the numerous new devices launching at CES and Computex this year. The handheld PC has arrived, this time with more graphics and minuscule amounts of internal storage. We bet SSD manufacturers are counting their lucky stars regarding the latter. Here we have Western Digital’s WD Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD, and it is seriously tiny. It’s the M.2 2230 form factor, and comes in at 29.97 x 22.1 x 2.29mm. It’s also available in capacities ranging from 500GB all the way up to 2TB, and to be honest is impressively priced too, ranging from $239 for the 1TB variant, to $439 for the 2TB model. A 500GB version will also be sold, but there’s no Australian price for that at this time. As for performance, it holds its own. WD has it listed at sequential reads of 5,150 MB/s and 4,900 MB/s. In our testing all of our SSDs in an Asus ROG Maximus Dark Hero motherboard, with a chunky aluminium heatsink, plus thermal padding. So then, that silly super-hot PCIe 5.0 drive sat under the motherboard heatsink? Maximum temperature, 78 C. It’s hot compared to the Samsung PM981 (PCIe 3.0’s) maximum temperature of 66 C. But the WD Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 drive? 89 C. That is phenomenal, and just in this testing environment, not large file transfers or access procedures. Then there’s installation. Have you seen how fiddly it is to install an SSD like this into a Steam Deck? It’s easier to splurge for a ROG Ally, but even so, it’s worth bearing in mind. WD’s SN770M is an SSD of many faces. It’s affordable, performs well, and is an impressive feat of engineering. On the other hand, it’s hot as heck, and actually installing it in a Steam Deck is a bonafide spec-ops mission. It’s unique, and we kind of love it for it. testing CrystalDiskMark 8 topped that, clocking 5,222 and 4,968 respectively. AS SSD was a little less forgiving, clocking 4,550 and 3,818 on sequential read and write, but nonetheless is well within parameters for a solid PCIe 4.0 drive. Access times also performed at the top tier level, clocking in a svelte 0.017 ms for both read and write, even pipping the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 12000 on the Write access. We suspect that this is down to the design of the drive itself. Given the compact nature of this thing, having both the memory controller and a single NAND chip sat so close to one another should minimise read and write request times considerably, as the drive doesn’t have to go searching as far as some of the other drives in our test-bed, giving it an advantage over longer SSDs. However, this thing is scorching, again no doubt down to the limitations of that size element. Let’s be clear, PCIe 5.0 drives are considered hot, so hot that JEDEC recommends each has an active heatsink included by design. You’ll likely see either massive heat pipes on them or some form of passive cooling solution. In our case, we’re Form Factor: M.2 2230; Interface / Protocol: PCIe 4.0 / NVMe 1.4; Flash Memory TLC 3D NAND; Sequential Read: 5,150 MB/s; Sequential Write: 4,900 MB/s; Random Read: 740K IOPS; Random Write: 800K IOPS; Endurance: (TBW) 600; Warranty: 5 Years. WD Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD PRICE $239 (1TB); $439 (2TB) WEB westerndigital.com VERDICT Solid pricing, impressive performance, impeccable engineering but incredibly hot and challenging to install. Zak Storey Tiny package, big speeds, massive temperatures. BENCHMARK RESULTS 1TB WD Black SN770M PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD 2TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 12000 PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD 1TB Samsung PM981 OEM PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD AS SSD Sequential Read / Write (MB/s) 4,550 / 3,818 8,970 / 9,948 3,020 / 2,444 AS SSD Random 4K Read / Write (MB/s) 67.31 / 264.00 86.65 / 289.12 51.88 / 193.69 AS SSD Access Time (ms) 0.017 / 0.017 0.017 / 0.037 0.076 / 0.019 CrystalDiskMark Sequential QD32 Read / Write (MB/s) 5,222 / 4,968 12,353 / 11,598 3,465 / 2,390 CrystalDiskMark Random 4KQ1 Read / Write (MB/s) 90 / 294 89 / 310 65 / 201 Max Temp Under Load (C) 89 78 66 Sequential Read MB/s per $ (MB/s) 47.91 47.51 26.86

LABS | TP-LINK ARCHER BE800 34 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 We were seriously impressed with our first Wi-Fi 7 kit – TP-Link’s recent BE22000 mesh – even though it was eye-wateringly expensive. It redefined wireless speed to the point where we were getting faster transfers than a 2.5Gbps wired Ethernet connection... and that was using a Wi-Fi 6E laptop, meaning there’s headroom for more! Now, here’s TP-Link’s SOHO-oriented, Wi-Fi 7 BE800 Archer router, can it surprise us again? The first thing you notice is that the BE800 looks like a small-footprint Dell Office PC from 10 years ago... only bigger. At the front there’s a large, matrix LED display which displays customisable emojis, the time, the weather plus, buttons for Wi-Fi and LED on and off and one-touch WPS connection. At the rear are (like the BE22000) four 2.5GbE ports, two 10GbE WAN/LAN ports, a 10GbE optical port and a USB 3.0 port – that’s incredibly fast stuff! Set-up is simple using the TP-Link Tether app and a QR code. The app clearly displays the network status and offers a free, basic security scan to identify basic threats to the router and its network(s). However, 6GHz network, even though it could still see its sibling Deco’s 6GHz network. Unfortunately, this non-sensical foible is not uncommon with laptops’ Wi-Fi adapters and their drivers and numerous online threads suggest little rhyme or reason why some vendors’ laptops are arbitrarily disabled from working with certain network tech – check before buying. We switched to an Asus ROG laptop and registered 1,513Mbps up close, 380Mbps two rooms away and 80Mbps 15m away, down the garden. At close range, that’s the fastest peak speed we’ve ever seen but there’s significant performance drop-off as you get further away. At $999, it’s expensive, but we’ve seen premium Wi-Fi 6E routers cost much more. It’s the cheapest Wi-Fi 7 router we’ve seen – and the fastest we’ve tested – but the severe decline in performance at range tells us that many people would be better off buying cheaper alternatives that offer less peak speed but similar or superior performance in other rooms. advanced protection for web browsing, intrusions and IoT devices requires an annual $100 subscription to TP-Link’s Security+ service. There are also basic parental controls for content filtering and bedtime but, again, you need the premium subscription to use SafeSearch, YouTube monitoring, setting daily time limits and ‘Offtime.’ This is a shame as the likes of Asus and Synology offer this (and more) gratis. Still, the app provides QoS, client blocking, Guest Network and IoT network creation (with device isolation) plus VPN client and server options. The USB port facilitates filesharing, media server configuration and Apple’s Time Machine backup. Accessing everything via web browser provides additional information plus the usual, standard Wi-Fi settings. But, what of performance? The promise of tri-band, 19,000Mbps theoretical speeds had us salivating. We ran our usual, three tests in our Sydney weatherboard cottage – which see us download large video files from a wired Synology NAS to our Dell XPS 15 Wi-Fi 6E-equipped laptop, but found that the laptop wouldn’t see the Archer’s fast, SPECSSPEED Wi-Fi7 19,000Mbps CONNECTIVITY 4 x 2.5GbE LAN, 2 x 10GbE WAN/LAN, 1 x 10GbE SFP+ WAN/LAN, USB-A 3.0 | Basic parental controls, QoS optimisation. TP-Link Archer BE800 PRICE $999 WEB www.tp-link.com/au VERDICT It’s massive, expensive and fast. But the rapid drop-off in performance at range is an issue. Nick Ross  TP-Link returns with another Wi-Fi 7 router. “The first thing you notice is that the BE800 looks like a small-footprint Dell Office PC from 10 years ago... only bigger.”

LABS | D-LINK AQUILA PRO AI MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 35 We won’t lie, we twitched a bit when D-Link’s Aquila Pro AI AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 Smart Mesh System turned up: it gave us flashback’s to 2022’s hateful D-Link EaglePro AI Smart Router which was one of the most infuriating, not-fit-for-purpose, half-baked, technological turds any company had dumped on the market in years. The good news is, that it didn’t take long to establish that the new Aquila system was a very different beast. First off, the two nodes look genuinely stylish. Whether you think they look like spaceships, Pokémon, or some modern objets d’art, we can all agree that they’re better than the spiky mecha-spiders that ordinarily infest the router industry. They’re even made from eco-friendly, post-consumer recycled plastic. Secondly, setting everything up with D-Link’s app and QR codes worked really well and the first node actually found the second node very quickly (last time we almost needed a new window). The hardware itself is either mature or old-school, depending on how many modern routers you’ve seen lately. There’s a Gigabit WAN port and four Gigabit LAN ports, a WPS one-click connect button and nothing else – not even a USB port. Performance is dualband based with one 2.4GHz channel and one 5GHz channel offering a theoretical throughput of 3,000Mbps. We ran our standard tests which involve downloading large video files to a Dell XPS 15 laptop from an Ethernetconnected Synology NAS in a Sydney weatherboard cottage. Up close, it managed a respectable 678Mbps, two room away (by the second node) this dropped to a slightly disappointing 304Mbps while outside, 15 metres from use ‘Health’ settings to let you block access to the internet at various times – especially bedtime. The app’s advanced mode, strangely, isn’t mobile optimised, but it provides access to features like QoS and all the standard router tools. The two-node mesh kit costs $360 and you can buy a three-node kit for $576. It’s relatively simple to use and represents reasonable value for a nice-looking, mesh system. You can certainly get better performance, features and value from the likes of MSI’s RadiX, Asus’ TUF and Synology’s routers, but they’re all a touch more complicated and ugly. Consequently, while we can’t say that this D-Link kit is an outright winner, it’s a respectable, middle-of-the-road Wi-Fi mesh that few undemanding users will find fault with. the first node, it managed 40Mbps. These scores won’t set the world alight, but they’re fine for a family watching UHD videos on multiple screens. All configuration and features are accessed via D-Link’s new Aquila Pro app (using the desktop web browser lets you upgrade firmware and that’s it). There’s a helpful video that provides an overview of the key features. These include accessing the well-laid out network map, managing connected clients, setting up a Guest Network and configuring parental controls. The latter allows you to link devices with people, pause the internet, set an access schedule and manually block access to (up to) 24 websites. You can also set-up voice controls for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant and SPECSSPEED Wi-Fi 6 3,000Mbps CONNECTIVITY 1 x Gigabit WAN, 4 x Gigabit LAN, Parental controls, QoS optimisation, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant. D-Link Aquila Pro AI PRICE $360 (2-pack) WEB www.dlink.com.au VERDICT It looks good and works well. If you want an uncomplicated family mesh Wi-Fi kit, it’s a decent buy. Nick Ross  Will D-Link banish the ghosts of its Ai routers past? “We can all agree that they’re better than the spiky mecha-spiders that ordinarily infest the router industry.”

LABS | SAMSUNG GALAXY S24 ULTRA 36 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Samsung is marketing the Galaxy S24 Ultra as the AI phone to beat in 2024. From the Circle to Search feature to discovering what plant is growing in your garden to Chat Assist translating messages in other languages, the Galaxy AI features all aim to simplify your life. But: the Galaxy S24 Ultra costs $250 more than the S23 Ultra, while replacing that phone’s 10x optical camera with a less powerful but sharper 50MP 5x telephoto lens. So is this a mis-step or AI-assisted brilliance? Galaxy of AI features First, let’s consider Circle to Search. This is a Google initiative that will be rolled out to other phones, and it aims to make search easier if you see something in a photo. A long press of the home button allows you to circle the object or subject with your finger, and the corresponding search results page will pop up as an overlay. For example, I saw conversation is displayed on the screen. It even works in third-party apps such as WhatsApp, matching Google’s Pixel phones, saving you the hassle of copying and pasting messages into another translation app. I’m also thrilled that the Galaxy S24 Ultra can make sense of my messy and disorganised S Pen-scrawled notes thanks to Notes AI. The autoformat feature adds appropriate bulleted headlines and short descriptions, resulting in a cleaner list. It looks like a professional personal secretary wrote it all up. The final useful Galaxy AI feature is the Voice Recorder app. Much like the one in Google’s Pixel phones and third-party services such as Otter.ai, it can transcribe recordings, label individual speakers and even summarise everything into a TLDR-styled bullet list. It’s an invaluable tool for meetings. Zoom controversy Despite ditching the 10x optical zoom, the S24 Ultra has a formidable set of camera specs. There’s a main 200MP camera (with 60% larger pixels), 12MP ultrawide camera, 10MP telephoto lens with a 3x optical zoom and a 50MP telephoto camera with a 5x optical zoom. While Samsung says the S24 Ultra delivers the same optical-quality performance as its predecessor, the truth is more nuanced. At 5x zoom, the S24 Ultra is the clear winner over the S23 Ultra due to its overall brighter composition and warmer colour temperature. Things get more interesting at 10x zoom, because the S24 Ultra leans on the larger sensor of its 5x telephoto camera and new image processing to try to match the S23 Ultra’s 10x optical range. It’s close, but the S23 Ultra still pulls ahead on detail. The difference becomes even more obvious once you further increase the zoom. With video recording, however, the S24 Ultra’s 5x telephoto camera matches the detail captured by the S23 Ultra’s 10x a photo posted by a friend on Instagram of a car that I didn’t recognise. With Circle to Search, I selected it while still in the app and it showed me search results of what it could be. Built into the Samsung keyboard, Chat Assist can help you craft a message using the right tone. Think of it as an assistant who can tailor your messages so you sound professional when typing emails to the boss. It works, but I had to chuckle at how formal it made me sound. I can’t imagine using it much. Live Translate is a different matter. This turns the Galaxy S24 Ultra into a translator during phone calls and supports 13 languages. I tried it with a colleague who speaks Spanish and quickly noticed that you have to be as basic, formal and slow as possible, as the AI needs time to understand what’s being said and then translate it to the appropriate language to the person on the other end of the line. This latency can be confusing, but I like how the translated Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra SPECS T-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC ;12GB RAM; Adreno 750 graphics; 6.8in 120Hz AMOLED screen, 1,440 x 3,120 resolution; 5G; 256GB/512GB/1TB storage; quad 200MP/50MP/10MP/12MP rear cameras; 12MP front camera; Wi-Fi 7; Bluetooth 5.3; NFC; 5,000mAh battery; USB-C 3.2 Gen 2; Android 14 with One UI 6.1; Samsung S Pen; 79 x 8.6 x 162mm (WDH); 233g; 1yr warranty. Genuinely useful AI, seven years of updates and unparalleled hardware make this our top choice for the most demanding users. PRICE 12GB/256GB, $2,199 WEB samsung.com

VERDICT LABS | SAMSUNG GALAXY S24 ULTRA MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 37 telephoto camera. Both are excellent video cameras due not only to their zoom but also manual controls that let you fine-tune the settings. On the main camera, details remain plentiful, colours are vivid and its HDR performance nicely evens out highlights and shadows. The 12MP ultrawide camera has the same 120° field of view and quality levels as before, capturing eye-catching, bright scenes, but I prefer the S24 Ultra’s portraits due to its warmer handling of skin tones, along with how the background blur is intensified. By comparison, the S23 Ultra’s portrait mode shots appear muted. It’s a tough call against the iPhone 15 Pro Max: while I like the higher contrast look of the S24 Ultra’s portrait mode, the iPhone’s colours and blurring effect are more realistic. AI camera boost Arguably the biggest gains for the camera relate to the Galaxy AI editing tools. To start, there’s Edit Suggestion. Its most notable option is to remove reflections from glass surfaces, which can be a painstaking process when done manually. With Edit Suggestion, I simply tapped the option and, after a few seconds of analysing the photo, the reflection was gone. Taking a page out of Google’s playbook, the S24 Ultra gains its own Magic Editor tools to manipulate photos with its Generative Edit. In this mode, you can select a subject and then reposition or resize it anywhere in the photo – and the phone fills in the blank spaces with generative AI. The end result is highly convincing, even if it takes a few seconds to complete. Generative Edit can also take crooked photos and make them straight, realistically filling blank spaces in the image. But I think I’ll use the new Instant Slow-mo feature more than the rest combined, because it can convert any video I record and turn it into a slow-motion clip. and multicore tests respectively, easily exceeding its predecessor (2,091 and 5,511). It even beats the A17 Pro powering the iPhone 15 Pro Max in the multicore test (2,890 and 7,194). Even more impressive is its graphics performance, setting records with 3DMark’s Wild Life Unlimited test. Its 20,627 score is over 2,000 better than the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max trails in at 15,399. Games that support ray tracing take obvious advantage, with Diablo Immortal producing smooth frame rates despite the extra demands. It also remained cool during my extended Diablo sessions, thanks to improved thermal control that features a vapour chamber almost double the size of the S23 Ultra’s. The new Snapdragon chip works wonders for battery life, too. In our rundown tests, the S24 Ultra kept going for 16hrs 45mins compared to 10hrs 3mins for the Pixel 8 Pro and 14hrs 2mins for the iPhone 15 Pro Max. That’s despite Samsung keeping the same 5,000mAh battery as before. There’s only one disappointment, which is that charging speeds remain the same: 45W wired, 15W wireless. With the former, the phone goes from zero to 71% in 30 minutes. Ultra good Although I would have liked more updates to One UI, which is little changed, it’s arguably more important that Samsung now promises seven years of security and OS updates, matching Google’s offering on the Pixel 8 series. This, together with the Galaxy AI features, a marked increase in processing power and battery life, plus the minor but all-round improvements in the hardware, make this a big upgrade over the Galaxy S23 Ultra. My only disappointment is that the camera feels like it has stayed still – with the zoom, it’s arguably gone back a step. But unless you were constantly shooting at 10x zoom or higher, there’s no doubt this is now the premium phone to beat. It’s hard to tell the difference with real slow-mo (which the camera can, of course, shoot). Design tweaks There’s a reason I’ve focused so much on software, as the hardware is little changed from the S23 Ultra. Most notably it ditches the Armor Aluminium frame for a titanium one, which increases durability and lightens the phone by 10g. Samsung has also reduced the size of the bezel at the bottom of the display, but perhaps the biggest visible change is the choice of colours. I’m particularly taken by the titanium violet option. The S24 Ultra also marks the end of the era for curved screens. I always liked this sleek aesthetic, but Samsung says it meant the S Pen was more likely to slip over the edge. When not in use, the S Pen tucks neatly away in a slot at the bottom of the phone. The screen itself gets some minor upgrades. It now peaks at 144Hz, and Samsung promises a peak brightness of 2,600cd/m2, but as ever our testing couldn’t reach these heights. Still, its 1,353cd/m2 when displaying HDR content was a fraction higher than the 1,225cd/m2 of the S23 Ultra. Other than that, it’s as you were – and that means a gorgeous AMOLED panel with a ludicrously high resolution. Turbo boost All versions of the Galaxy S24 series are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The S24 Ultra is one of four phones this month to feature the chip, and Samsung has squeezed the most out of it: for example, it scored 2,308 and 7,283 in Geekbench 6’s single-core With truly useful integrated AI features and a stunning camera, this is the the new top dog. John Velasco “All versions of the Galaxy S24 series are powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and Samsung has squeezed the most out of it” HOW THE GALAXY S24 RANGE COMPARES Galaxy S24 Galaxy S24 Plus Galaxy S24 Ultra Starting price $1,399 $1,699 $2,199 Screen size 6.2in 6.7in 6.8in Storage options 256GB, 256GB ($1,599) 256GB, 512GB ($1,899) 256GB, 512GB ($2,399, 1TB ($2,799) Rear cameras 50MP/12MP/10MP 50MP/12MP/10MP 200MP/12MP/10MP Optical zoom 3x 3x 5x Front camera 12MP 12MP 12MP Battery 4,000mAh 4,900mAh 5,000mAh Dimensions 71 x 7.6 x 147mm 76 x 7.7 x 159mm 79 x 8.6 x 162mm Weight 167g 196g 232g

LABS | TP-LINK TAPO MINI SMART WI-FI PLUG | SAMSUNG PORTABLE SSD T5 EVO 38 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Samsung Portable SSD T5 Evo TP-Link Tapo Mini Smart Wi-Fi Plug PRICE $30 WEB www.tp-link.com/au PRICE $999 (8TB) WEB samsung.com VERDICT Big capacity and speedy, but at a huge price premium. Matt Safford Roomier and faster than a portable hard disk. Just how useful can this energy-monitoring smart plug be? With rated read and write speeds of only 460MB/sec, the Samsung Portable SSD T5 Evo was never aiming for speed awards. Instead, it’s about capacity: with 2TB, 4TB and 8TB versions, it’s even roomier than most portable hard drives. It has the advantage of being more durable and drop-resistant than such drives, too. Samsung adds some reassuring toughness to the T5, even if it steers away from calling it a rugged SSD. There’s no official rating, but Samsung claims the rubberised outer shell gives “extra protection against external shocks”, while a thick metal band on one end means you can clip it to a carabiner. Samsung ships the T5 Evo with a long, removable USB-C to USB-C cable measuring about 40cm. No USB-C ports? Then you’ll need to buy a second cable, as Samsung doesn’t ship an adapter in the box, which is stingy. Just ensure you buy one that’s at least rated to this drive’s 5Gbits/sec USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface. Samsung also offers its free Magician software, which has long been the gold-standard SSD suite for monitoring and performing maintenance on your drives. In CrystalDiskMark, it scored 442MB/sec sequential reads and 395MB/sec writes. Compare that to the Samsung T9 Portable SSD, which returned speeds closer to 2,000MB/sec. Who should buy the T5 Evo, then? Its 8TB top-end capacity may well find niche appeal among videographers who need lots of solid-state space on the go. And its semirugged design gives extra reassurance that it will survive a few bashes. TP-Link’s Tapo Mini Smart Wi-Fi Plug is a diminutive device that, unlike many other smart plugs, isn’t a nuisance to its plug-socket neighbours – it’s not thick, just a little long at the top. It’s also not prone to half-hanging out of a wall when supporting a heavy secondary plug. Set-up is simple via TP-Link’s Tapo app and a QR code (if you can’t reach the QR code when plugged in, there’s a spare sticker in the box). Things can be complicated by its ‘Matter’ smart home compatibility triggering other network hardware and apps into recognising a new smart device and offering multiple ways to manage it. To this end, Google Home’s immediate insistence on managing it was a simple task but it still took a few seconds for the Tapo app to subsequently acknowledge this and register it. Once found, Tapo updated the firmware and offered to set a schedule to do so automatically. What we were left with was an app that easily let us turn the device on and off; measure (and log) its live runtime and power usage; set an on/off schedule according to either a precise time or sunrise and sunset (or offsets thereof); operate by timer; and set an ‘Away’ schedule which randomly turns it on and off between certain times when you’re, say, on holiday. It can also be operated by Alexa and Google Assistant. At $30 it’s cheap and cheerful for domestic use and potentially very useful for minor industrial and academic applications. It’s a great little gadget. SPECS 2TB/4TB/8TB external SSD USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 interface up to 460MB/sec sequential read/ write; AES 256-bit hardware encryption; 40 x 17 x 95mm (WDH) 102g 3yr limited warranty. SPECS 2.4GHz Wi-Fi | Matter compatible | Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. VERDICT A great little device to make dumb appliances smart and track energy use. Nick Ross 

LABS | RTX 40 SUPER GRAPHICS CARDS 40 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 The original RTX 4070 was one of the better releases of the Ada Lovelace RTX 40-series generation. It offered a leap in intergenerational performance, DLSS 3 with Frame Generation, excellent performance per watt and its price was more on the acceptable side, that’s if spending near enough to $1,200 sat right with you. It didn’t for many. The RTX 4070 Super lands at the same RRP means you get a decent improvement in performance for the same money. In isolation, that makes the RTX 4070 Super a more compelling option than the already quite good RTX 4070, for the same amount of money. The RTX 4070 Super gets arguably the most significant specification upgrade of the but rather industrial look of the card too. It gives the impression that it’s built to last. Performance wise, we were perhaps hoping for some results to match that whopping 20%+ increase in shader power over the RTX 4070, but the average performance increase is more like 10-15%. Still, that’s not bad at all, and it’s easily enough to put it well clear of the AMD RX 7800 XT, albeit that card is getting consistently cheaper over time. The only real obstacle for the RTX 4070 Super is its non-Super sibling. Stocks of the latter are expected to dry up fairly quickly, but with some falling under $900, it’s hard to look past that. That won’t last forever, and in time the RTX 4070 Super will fall to those levels, at which time, it may end up as the best card of the entire RTX 40 generation in terms of frames per dollar and performance per watt. It’s still a relatively pricey affair, but it sits near enough to the sweet spot of this generation. Add to that Asus’s supremely quiet running and it’s easy to recommend spending the extra $70 or so dollars on it over the base RTX 4070 Supers. three newly released Supers. It still includes the AD104 GPU, but it gets an upgrade from the 5,888 shaders and 36MB of L2 cache of the 4070 non-Super to 7,168 shaders and 48MB of L2 cache. That’s more than a 20% increase and it puts it closer in specification to the end-of-life RTX 4070 Ti, making the latter all but irrelevant. It gets a mild 20W increase in TDP, up to 220W. The boost clocks of both the Super and non-Super are the same at 2,475MHz. The Asus TUF RTX 4070 Gaming OC that we have on hand for our review increases that clock to an impressive 2,565MHz. Our sample was able to hold a little higher than this, at 2,690Mhz under a sustained load. The Asus RTX 4070 Super TUF is outwardly similar to many of the TUF cards we’ve had in our hands over the last few years. It’s a little more compact than the cards with the really big TUF coolers but this smaller version (though it still takes up three slots) is easily enough to tame the 220W TDP of the RTX 4070 Super. It is a very quiet and cool running card, hardly being audible at any stage of our testing. We like the subtle SPECS 7,168 CUDA cores; 2,565MHz boost clock; 12GB GDDR6X 21Gbps memory, 504.2GB/s memory bandwidth; 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1x HDMI 2.1; 220W TDP, 1x 16-Pin power connector. Asus TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Super OC PRICE $1,249 WEB www.asus.com VERDICT THe RTX 4070 Super is the highlight of this round of Super releases, and this Asus TUF makes it even better. Chris Szewczyk The best of the Super bunch. “The RTX 4070 Super gets arguably the most significant specification upgrade of the three newly released Supers.”

LABS | RTX 40 SUPER GRAPHICS CARDS MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 41 The RTX 4070 Ti Super is the second of Nvidia’s RTX 40-series Super refresh cards. While all three deliver healthy spec and performance upgrades, interestingly, the RTX 4070 Ti Super is the only one of the three that makes use of a higher tier GPU. The 4070 Ti Super includes the AD103 GPU, that’s the same as that found in the current RTX 4080 and soon the RTX 4080 Super. Though it doesn’t receive an increase in shader count as large as the RTX 4070 Super did, the use of the AD103 GPU means it gets a welcome memory subsystem upgrade. Thankfully, its TDP remains unchanged at 285W, while it’s priced at $1,499, the original price of its non-Super sibling. That means you get more performance, more memory, and essentially more graphics card for the same money. The original RTX 4070 Ti was a generally capable card, particularly when the benefits of DLSS 3 and Frame Generation were added into the mix. But while capable, we felt it didn’t quite do enough at its price point to earn an unequivocal recommendation. Its 192-bit bus and 12GB of VRAM just didn’t feel like it belonged on a $1,499 card. The Super refresh addresses that weakness. The RTX 4070 Ti Super’s 256-bit bus with 16GB of VRAM is the ability to game with lots of eye candy with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation at 4K and suddenly $1,499 looks fair. It must be noted that it costs about half of the formerly mighty RTX 3090, while handily beating it. The RTX 4070 Ti Super could have been even better had Nvidia decided to increase its shader count and L2 cache amount by a little more. That would have put it closer in performance to the RTX 4080. Are we nitpicking? Perhaps, but the RTX 4070 Ti’s 8,448 CUDA core count seems a little too far away from the 9,728 of the RTX 4080. All things considered, the RTX 4070 Ti comes recommended. It stands up well to its competition and the RTX 4070 Ti was already one of the better RTX 40-series entries. You’re getting a card that’s better, for the same money. What’s not to like about that? memory spec we wish the original RTX 4070 Ti had. We have MSI’s RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X on hand. It’s an attractive card priced at the base $1,499 RRP with a boost clock of 2,610MHz, matching the Nvidia reference specification. We must note that MSI’s Ventus had an issue with its launch BIOS that cost it a reported 5% of performance. We retested with a newer BIOS, but if you’re not comfortable upgrading it yourself, you’d best look at other entry level options. That aside, it’s a solidly built card with three fans, a full length backplate and a subtle mostly silver plastic shroud free of RGB. The Ventus 3X is not a tall card at 120mm, making it a little more case friendly. It’s still long at 308mm though. High refresh rate 1080p and 1440p gaming is a breeze with the RTX 4070 Ti Super. Throw in the benefits of excellent performance per watt, 16GB of VRAM, Nvidia’s AI and creative tools, plus the SPECS 8,448 CUDA cores; 2,610MHz boost clock; 16GB GDDR6X 21Gbps memory, 672.3GB/s memory bandwidth; 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1x HDMI 2.1; 285W TDP, 1x 16-Pin power connector. MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X PRICE $1,499 WEB www.msi.com VERDICT MSI’s BIOS glitch aside, the RTX 4070 Ti Super delivers a welcome upgrade over the RTX 4070 Ti for the same money. Chris Szewczyk A solid upgrade with a superior spec, but MSI’s Ventus has an asterisk. “Throw in the benefits of excellent performance per watt, 16GB of VRAM, Nvidia’s AI and creative tools, plus the ability to game with lots of eye candy with DLSS 3 and Frame Generation at 4K and suddenly $1,499 looks fair.”

LABS | RTX 40 SUPER GRAPHICS CARDS 42 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 The RTX 4080 Super was the last of Nvidia’s Super cards to launch. Though it’s easily the fastest of the three, it’s arguably the least exciting, even if it’s hard to complain about a card that’s faster than its non-Super counterpart, while costing less. The RTX 4080 Super is essentially an RTX 4080 with a cherry on top. It includes the fully enabled AD103 GPU, with all 10,240 shaders unlocked. But while the RTX 4070 Super received a relatively large increase in shader count and the RTX 4070 Ti Super got more shaders and a memory system upgrade, the RTX 4080 gets the least exciting upgrade, with just an extra 512 shaders and a slight increase in boost and memory clock. An upgrade to the faster the AD102 GPU – even if it stuck with its original $2,219 price – would have been much more exciting. Zotac’s RTX 4080 Super Amp Extreme Airo is definitely a premium card. It’s got a 60MHz factory overclock, a massive 3.5 slots worth of cooling capacity, and a full-length metal backplate. Plus, the RGB under a heavy load. It’s nothing alarming by any means, but there are better options if noise minimisation is critical for you. The RTX 4080 Super isn’t much of an upgrade over the RTX 4080, but the point isn’t really to compare the two. It’s much more relevant to users of older cards. It utterly destroys the RTX 3090. If you take that in isolation, the RTX 4080 Super is a hell of an upgrade for any user coming from any RTX 30-series or older card. While it’s a very powerful card, RTX 4080 Super is one of the less impressive members of the RTX 40-series’ Ada generation. If only because it’s still too expensive for what it is. We’d presume premium RTX 4080 Supers will fall well under $1,999 in the months ahead, and if so they’ll become a very solid option for a gamer that wants to build a rig and have it play every game for the next few years. As for the Zotac Amp Extreme Airo, adding $150 for a cool running and high performing option is an acceptable if tougher recommendation given that cheaper pricing is the RTX 4080 Super’s highlight. light bar running across the top of Zotac’s IceStorm 2.0 cooler is one of the best implementations seen on any RTX 40-series card. Other interesting features include an RGB header for controlling an external strip and dual BIOS with performance and quiet modes. Operationally, the Zotac is definitely capable. It was able to maintain an average boost clock of 2,764MHz, which is well above its officially rated 2,550MHz. Compared to the RTX 4080, it’s only about 5% better at 4K. That’s not an exciting gain, but faster is faster, and it will appeal to those upgrading from older generation cards. Don’t forget the AMD competition either. If you don’t care so much for ray tracing performance or DLSS 3, the 7900 XTX is a formidable competitor. The cooling capacity of the Zotac is very good, with a peak recorded temperature of 65°C after about 10 minutes of operation. Not bad at all for a 320W card. If there’s a weakness, it’s that the card is quite audible SPECS 10,240 CUDA cores; 2,610MHz boost clock; 16GB GDDR6X 23Gbps memory, 736.3GB/s memory bandwidth; 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, 1x HDMI 2.1; 320W TDP, 1x 16-Pin power connector. Zotac Gaming RTX 4080 Super Amp Extreme Airo PRICE $1,949 WEB www.zotac.com VERDICT The RTX 4080 Super is a better RTX 4080 for less money, while this Zotac option is just able to justify its price premium. Chris Szewczyk Zotac’s premium challenger takes things up a notch. “While it’s a very powerful card, RTX 4080 Super is one of the less impressive members of the RTX 40-series’ Ada generation.”

LABS | RTX 40 SUPER GRAPHICS CARDS MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 43 BENCHMARKS Zotac RTX 4080 Super Amp Extreme Airo MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X Asus RTX 4070 Super TUF Gaming OC Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7900 XTX RX 7900 XT (reference) RX 7800 XT (reference) 3DMark Time Spy Extreme GPU index 14,430 11,923 9,994 15,572 12,686 8,953 Overall index 13,340 11,943 9,871 14,145 11,943 8,981 3DMark Port Royal Index Score 18,571 15,473 12,916 16,951 10,993 10,172 Cyberpunk 2077 1080p Avg fps 96 87 72 67 58 43 1% Low 70 67 57 52 45 33 1440p Avg fps 63 55 44 44 41 27 1% Low 51 45 37 35 28 21 4K Avg fps 31 28 20 22 18 13 1% Low 24 21 16 17 13 10 F1 22 1080p Avg fps 149 147 126 156 128 101 Min fps 111 128 117 112 119 91 1440p Avg fps 115 97 83 125 85 67 Min fps 101 86 77 104 78 60 4K Avg fps 65 49 42 67 43 34 Min fps 54 48 37 54 39 30 Far Cry 6 1080p Avg fps 146 148 137 147 133 132 Min fps 122 130 119 119 107 59 1440p Avg fps 136 134 122 136 132 119 Min fps 117 120 112 117 108 107 4K Avg fps 95 86 74 102 89 71 Min fps 87 77 66 91 39 65 Tiny Tina's Wonderlands 1080p Avg fps 237 198 165 220 164 143 1% Low 173 131 115 154 128 36 1440p Avg fps 174 153 129 163 141 108 1% Low 134 117 80 128 116 68 4K Avg fps 93 81 68 89 77 57 1% Low 76 65 58 76 62 47 Metro Exodus Enhanced 1080p Avg fps 146 139 137 145 140 109 1% Low 91 82 76 90 86 70 1440p Avg fps 136 120 102 127 105 80 1% Low 87 71 69 77 73 55 4K Avg fps 83 70 57 73 57 45 1% Low 57 49 43 53 25 35 Red Dead Redemption 2 1080p Avg fps 181 165 154 169 150 135 Min fps 111 93 61 91 66 107 1440p Avg fps 159 138 118 154 121 111 Min fps 46 73 53 74 77 87 4K Avg fps 103 88 74 107 79 71 Min fps 45 46 36 66 40 50 Warhammer III 1080p Avg fps 203 178 154 225 179 143 Min fps 156 136 126 189 140 107 1440p Avg fps 143 123 101 165 122 96 Min fps 110 95 79 122 91 71 4K Avg fps 78 66 50 87 64 49 Min fps 60 51 39 68 47 36 Thermals Peak temperature (°C) 67 68 63 68 62 74 Average temperature (°C) 65 66 61 66 59 71 System Power Peak (Watts) 434 313 264 470 391 295 GPU Power Average (Watts) 326 280 221 342 310 258 GPU frequency Average clock speed (MHz) 2,764 2,664 2,690 2,658 2,245 2,124

SOFTWARE | WINDOWS 44 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024 Vivaldi is one of the most innovative browsers, with each new release making significant changes – rather than the small updates you get in Chrome and Edge. In 2023, it finally introduced an iOS app (tinyurl.com/ APC530viv) and has now returned its attention to its desktop version. The main new feature in Vivaldi 6.5 is the Sessions Panel, which adds yet another option to the browser’s sidebar. This lets you save your open tabs as a ‘session’, then start a new session with a clean slate. Unlike pinned tabs, saved session tabs don’t use any system memory in the background. To use the feature, click the new online store in your work-related workspace – it will be automatically moved to the correct one. Another welcome change allows you to sync your browsing history across your devices. This means pages you viewed in the Vivaldi app on your PC can easily be revisited on your phone or tablet – and vice versa. To enable this option, click the Settings cog, choose Sync and sign into your Vivaldi account (if you aren’t already). Select ‘History’ to sync your browsing history – as well as bookmarks, passwords and open tabs, if you want to sync those too. All your data is end-to-end encrypted, so nobody but you can access it. Sessions button on the sidebar – this looks like a clockwise arrow surrounding a circle – then click the plus button at the top of the Sessions Panel. Enter a name for your session, specify whether it should include workspaces (themed groups of tabs) or only tabs in the current window, and click Save. You can then double-click the session to restore its tabs, edit its contents to remove specific pages or delete the whole thing. Vivaldi has improved the Workspaces feature, to help you keep your groups of tabs better organised. You can now set up rules so that if you open a page in the wrong workspace – for example, an Vivaldi 6.5 WEB vivaldi.com NEEDS Windows 10 or 11, macOS or Linux Web Browser 1 Vivaldi’s new Sessions feature creates backups of your saved sessions once an hour and stores them for three days. To keep these backups for longer, click the Automatic Session Backup button and choose five or 30 days. 2 Vivaldi 6.5 offers a new way to see which tabs you’ve synced between your PC and mobile device. Click the Window button on the sidebar to open the Windows Panel, then choose Synced Tabs to view a list of all your synced pages. 3 You can now sync your Vivaldi browsing history across your PC and mobile devices, as well as your bookmarks, passwords and tabs. Click the Settings button on the sidebar, choose Sync and log into your Vivaldi account. 4 Vivaldi also now lets you create rules for your workspaces, so tabs always open in the correct space. Select ‘Tabs’ in the Settings box, click Add New Workspace Rule, then assign specific URLs to the relevant workspaces. 1 3 2 4

SOFTWARE | WINDOWS MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 45 DUPLICATE CLEANER AllDup 4.5.58 WEB tinyurl.com/APC530dup NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 AllDup is one of the best free programs for removing duplicate files from your PC. The latest version adds useful options to its Search Results tab to make it easier to manage the duplicates it finds. The Select menu now lets you choose ‘Select all corrupted image files’ (see screenshot) to select damaged copies of images that are cluttering your hard drive. Another new option lets you select only files of a certain age, so you don’t accidentally delete recent items – or old but important ones. Click the Select menu, then ‘Select by date’ and choose either ‘older than’ or ‘newer than’. Specify the number of days and whether to judge a file’s age by the date it was created or when it was last modified. Additionally, you can now stop Windows Security needlessly slowing AllDup’s scans. Click the Options tab, then the plus button below ‘Exclude from monitoring by Windows Defender’. IMAGE VIEWER IrfanView 4.65 WEB www.irfanview.com/ NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 This excellent free image viewer is frequently updated with new features, yet remains easy to use and less than 5MB in size. IrfanView 4.65 introduces a longawaited dark mode, which you can activate by clicking Properties/Settings in the Options menu and selecting Viewing, then ‘Enable Dark mode’ (see screenshot). An interesting addition to the Edit menu lets you apply effects to the parts of an image outside of a selected area, rather than within it. This is useful for adjusting backgrounds without affecting the subject – choose ‘Use inverted selection’ to enable the option. IrfanView has also improved the ‘Custom/fine rotation’ tool in its Image menu. Previously, to rotate an image to the desired angle, you needed to experiment with different degrees. Now you can just draw a straight line with your left-mouse button, then press your right-mouse button to apply the rotation. “AllDup is one of the best free programs for removing duplicate files from your PC. The latest version adds useful options to its Search Results tab to make it easier to manage the duplicates it finds” Should I pay for? Choose the right version of software BurnAware Premium WEB www.burnaware.com FREE TRIAL Seven days PRICE $29.95 per year or $89.95 lifetime licence NEEDS Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11 BurnAware is one of the few remaining programs for creating your own CDs and DVDs, and recently released version 17.2. The disc-burning software offers free and paid-for editions, so you can download the one that best suits your needs. The Free edition of BurnAware can back up data and ISO files to disc, and burn audio and video content to CD, DVD and Blu-ray. It also lets you erase rewritable discs so you can use them again. However, it’s only available as a 32bit download, so you may find it slow on higher-specced PCs. BurnAware Premium is much more powerful and versatile, with a 64bit version and lots of additional features. These include an Audio Grabber for ripping tracks from music CDs, an ‘Unpack ISO’ tool for extracting files from disc images and a Span Disc option that can split large files and folders across multiple discs. You can also use the Copy Disc feature to copy the content of one CD, DVD or Blu-ray directly to another (see screenshot). All these tools are accessible from the home screen and open in their own windows, which have clearly labelled menus and toolbar buttons. This makes it easy to perform specific tasks, as you’re not distracted by irrelevant options. Sadly, the steep price means it’s difficult to recommend BurnAware Premium. A one-off purchase of $30 would be reasonable value, but we don’t think it’s worth paying that amount every year. The free version of AnyBurn (www.anyburn. com) offers most of the same features. OUR VERDICT: DON’T PAY FOR IT BurnAware is a great program, but with fewer people now ripping and burning discs it should offer more features for free rather than restrict them to its expensive Premium edition – or at least reduce its price. “A one-off purchase of $30 would be reasonable value, but we don’t think it’s worth paying that amount every year.”

FEATURE | APPLE VISION PRO APPLE VISION PRO Words: Britta Smith Apple’s Vision Pro far exceeded Britta Smith’s expectations, but will it be worth that exorbitant price tag? EXPERT VERDICT There are several elements of the Vision Pro that stand out, but nothing will quite prepare you for the brilliance of the all-encompassing micro-OLED display that transports you to an entirely different world – or worlds, as is perhaps a fairer assessment. In my ten years as a technology journalist, nothing has rendered me speechless quite like this device did in my experience with it. There are two individual lenses within the Vision Pro, behind which the 3D display system offers up 23 million pixels – more than the equivalent of a 4K TV in each eye – and the detail presented is nothing short of phenomenal. The familiar apps are mere centimetres from your face and there wasn’t so much as a pixel out of place, with sharp and crisp lines making up the rounded icons we’ve come to know and love from Apple’s interface. The apps are only the beginning, however, with the true scale of what Vision Pro is capable of presented to me in an interactive spatial experience with a dinosaur. In what is almost impossible to describe, the detail of the dinosaur’s scaled skin a matter of what felt like millimetres from my eyes is as vivid in my mind today as it was when I first experienced it. With each groove, ridge and slight variation in colour all creating such a magnificently realistic picture, I had to remind myself several times over in those brief minutes with the tyrannosaurus that dinosaurs had in fact not returned from extinction to consume me. DISPLAY 46 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024

Judging the performance of the Vision Pro properly from a demo wouldn’t be possible, but from my experience so far, it has everything it needs to be exceptional. It was incredibly smooth and consistent; stuttering is a word that does not exist in its vocabulary. Virtual reality headsets have significantly improved over the years, moving from devices that more often than not caused motion sickness – especially when used for more than a few minutes – to much faster refresh rates on the displays, allowing them to deliver a more fluid experience overall, but Vision Pro is on a different level. It offered such a smooth performance that motion sickness was never on my radar and the only side effect I had following my briefing was trying to digest what I had just experienced. Even turning the Digital Crown to move between the virtual world and the real world was a gentle and natural feeling, gliding between the environments seamlessly. There were very few things I disliked about Vision Pro, but FaceTime was one. The digital persona of someone in the Apple Park offices several hundred metres from my demo was impressive, but the overall FaceTime experience with this person was much more impersonal than what you get on iPhone and iPad. More like talking to a robot than a real person, with unnatural and awkward smiling and laughing from the digital persona and some lag too. Put it this way, I wouldn’t choose FaceTime on Vision Pro over iPhone as yet. FEATURE | APPLE VISION PRO PERFORMANCE MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 47

If the incredible detail in the displays don’t do enough to impress, the quality of the materials used in Vision Pro will certainly play their part in convincing you this headset is worth the cash. There is absolutely no denying how expensive Vision Pro is, but every element of its build oozes luxury. Yes, it could certainly be said the design is remarkably like a pair of exceptionally premium ski goggles, but everything from the aluminium alloy casing with its rounded edges, Digital Crown and capture button, to the soft-to-touch material Light Seal, delivers the kind of quality you would expect in designer goods twice the price. The Light Seal – setup individually per user with an iPhone in a similar process to setting up Face ID – secures comfortably around your nose and eyes to ensure not a single ray of light from the real world beams through. Audio straps attach from the Light Seal to the ribbed material Head Band that holds the device in place and is adjusted with the Fit Dial on the right of the headset. There’s also an optional additional strap that goes across the top of your head to take some of the 450g weight, but in 30 minutes of continuous wearing, I didn’t find it remotely uncomfortable or heavy. I may say different after watching a three-hour film, but the charging lead for the smooth aluminium battery pack was the only element of the build I found slightly irritating, and even that was actually grounding at times. FEATURE | APPLE VISION PRO BUILD & COMFORT 48 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024

While the design, displays and gesture controls are achievements in themselves, Vision Pro’s greatest victory so far, is content. Apple didn’t focus on gaming, but it didn’t have to because whether it’s watching back Spatial Video, sitting in the centre of 180-degree 3D 8K videos with Apple Immersive Video or transporting you to incredible places within the Environments mode, the content is mind-blowing. From watching a tear-jerking Spatial Video of a child’s birthday party and witnessing how realistic – and therefore special – the experience could be for loved ones far away, to the Environments mode that took me to the edge of a blissfully calm lake in Mount Hood, the potential here is unhinged. Avatar 2 in 3D was absolutely exceptional on Vision Pro, and the Cinema mode makes you feel like you’re in the best seat in the house with no distractions. That’s nothing compared to sport and concerts however. My demo took me right behind the hoop at a basketball game to next to the piano at an Alicia Keyes concert, before launching me under water with sharks and onto a tightrope hundreds of metres in the air. Add to all those experiences that Disney is a partner for Vision Pro, allowing you to watch Disney’s fantastic library of films in 3D and with such incredible detail, and you have a device that may not sell as many units as iPhone, but that will change the world of computing as we know it. Just like the Macintosh did 40 years ago. FEATURE | APPLE VISION PRO One of the Vision Pro’s greatest triumphs is that it doesn’t require additional controls to interact with the VisionOS interface. All you need is your eyes, your hands, and getting accustomed to a light pinch and drag gesture. What was perhaps the most surprising about these elements of Vision Pro was how quickly the interface responded and the app icons ‘popped’ when glanced at, to how natural the gesture became after seconds, whether swiping through photos or moving things around the spatial environment. It’s incredibly disappointing things in the real world don’t subtly bounce when I look at them now, or move when I pinch and drag. The 12 cameras and five sensors within the Vision Pro are remarkable at tracking your eyes and hands. The only time I noticed gesture control not being recognised properly was when my hands were too close together in my lap, meaning the cameras and sensors weren’t able to see the movements clearly. There is an initial setup process but it’s a matter of minutes. For eye calibration you follow dots around the Vision Pro’s screen a couple of times, while hand calibration involves holding both hands up for a few seconds. What’s notable is how subtle the pinch and drag gesture could be and how minor a glance needed to be for the Vision Pro to register. The VisionOS interface is also exceptionally familiar instantly. How a brand new device, brand new interface and a brand new category could feel immediately natural was surprising. EYE-TRACKING & GESTURE CONTROL IMMERSIVE VIDEO CONTENT MARCH 2024 APC MAGAZINE 49

We pick the 37 standout products and new technologies from this year’s CES. 50 APC MAGAZINE MARCH 2024