PC Magazine

CONTENTS

AUGUST 2021

COVER STORY

INTEL VS. AMD

The battles for CPU
supremacy won and lost along
the way can tell us a lot about
the future of silicon.

WHAT’S NEW NOW

HANDS ON WITH
MACOS MONTEREY:
IMPROVEMENTS
ABOUND

Apple levels up FaceTime, maps,
and privacy, and much more.

INGENUITY MARS
HELICOPTER SMASHES
RECORDS ON ITS
NINTH FLIGHT

NASA deemed this the chopper’s
most challenging trip yet.

DONATE YOUR
VOICE TO HELP THE
FUTURE OF SPEECH
RECOGNITION

All about The Mozilla Common
Voice project.

Photo credit: (top image) Apple; (left image)Nasa; (right image) Mozilla

REVIEWS Fitbit Luxe

CONSUMER Durabook S14I
ELECTRONICS Chegg

Fitbit Luxe
Sennheiser CX
True Wireless
Valve Index VR Kit

HARDWARE

Durabook S14I
Mushkin Gamma

SOFTWARE
& APPS

Chegg
Bitdefender
Premium VPN

COMMENTARY SASCHA SEGAN

CAROL MANGIS What the Heck Is Up
With OnePlus?
First Word: Which CPU Will
Reign Supreme? OLIVER RIST

READER INPUT Is DaaS the Killer App
for Hybrid Work?
Your Comments

TIPS & HOW TOS

HOW TO INSTALL
A VPN ON YOUR
ROUTER

Router VPNs protect any
device connecting through
them.

THE BEST SHOPPING
APPS TO COMPARE
PRICES

Are you getting a deal when
you click ‘add to cart?’

HOW TO MANAGE
YOUR GOOGLE
PRIVACY SETTINGS

Dig into Google’s account
dashboard to see what the
company knows about you.

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

FIRST WORD

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

We’ve been covering personal computing
here at PCMag for many years (since
1982, to be exact). And in that time,
we’ve witnessed and reported on a lot of
technology competition—but very little has rivaled
the battle of the chips, between Intel and AMD.

Which CPU It’s been a virtual seesaw of CPU superiority
Will Reign between the two makers, with behemoth Intel
Supreme?
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drives innovation—and I think there’s little doubt
that it does—these two companies should probably
thank each other for at least some of the technical
gains each has made in the past couple of decades.
And the battle is far from over (if it ever actually
does end).

Our cover-story writer, PCMag Hardware Analyst
Tom Brant, has taken on the task of chronicling
the epic battle. This wasn’t a simple task—he
researched, talked to analysts, and did his own
analysis over a period of several months. But the
resulting story lays it all out, discussing
milestones, reversals of fortune, and how
computing might be evolving as a result.

[email protected]

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

READER INPUT

YOUR COMMENTS

The (Un) CAN CRYPTOCURRENCY
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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

WHAT’S NEW NOW Photo credit: Apple

APPLE

Hands on With
macOS Monterey:
Improvements Abound

BY EDWARD MENDELSON

The public beta of macOS Monterey, released by Apple in early July,
doesn’t look surprisingly new. Exceptions include Safari, which gets a
dynamically resizing tab bar and other conveniences, and FaceTime,
which gets a background-blurring portrait mode and screen-sharing features.
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conveniences everywhere and may wonder how you managed without them.

This is because Apple’s annual updates to the Mac Either install it
operating system tend to have a regular rhythm. on a Mac that
Massive updates arrive on even-numbered years: Big you don’t
Sur, for example, the 2020 update to macOS that was absolutely
need or don’t
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hardware. Updates in odd-numbered years, such as install it at all,
Monterey, look more or less like the previous version because things
but come with under-the-hood improvements that may
do more for you than dazzling interface changes. By will always
contrast, Microsoft has released few major updates to go wrong.
Windows 10 over the past couple years—though
Windows 11, which also recently entered public beta,
breaks with that pattern in a major way.

As always with beta versions of operating systems, and
especially with early betas, you shouldn’t install the
Monterey beta on the Mac you use for work. Either
install it on a Mac that you don’t absolutely need or
don’t install it at all, because things will always go
wrong—and Apple makes it extremely hard to
downgrade to a previous version, especially on an Apple
Silicon Mac. Expert users may want to create a separate
volume on their hard disk and install Monterey into it
while continuing to use Big Sur on an existing volume,
but I strongly recommend against trying this, at least
until a later release of the public beta.

I’ll divide this preview into Monterey’s visible, in-your-

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improvements. First, the visible ones. The most
technically spectacular feature, called Universal

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arrives, it will let you drag your cursor to the edge of the
screen and then drag it onto an iPad sitting next to it.
You can work on your iPad (modifying a photo, for
example) and then drag your work back to the Mac. In
Apple’s it-just-works tradition, this feature won’t
require any setup.

VISIBLE NEW FEATURES
You can see other visible changes now. For example, when you start up Safari
and open a few tabs, you’ll see that the old, familiar tabs now look like buttons,
with the current page getting a larger button than the rest, and with a three-dot
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visit a few sites, you’ll notice that the toolbar and tab bar change color to be
more consistent with the color scheme of the page in the current tab, so you’ll
get a black tab bar when you visit washingtonpost.com but a brown tab bar
when you visit washingtonacademy.org. As in Google Chrome, you can collect
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than Chrome’s, because you can save and organize tab groups in Safari’s
sidebar. Firefox users need to install an extension to get similar functionality.

A new Quick Note feature works system-wide but is especially useful in Safari.
You can use a keyboard shortcut, a screen hot corner, or menu shortcuts to
create a note that gets saved to the Notes application. If you’ve selected
something on-screen, the selection goes into the Quick Note, and if you’ve
selected some text in a page in Safari and added it to a Note, the selection is still
highlighted when you return to the same page later. It may not be immediately
clear that if you want the highlight to stop appearing on the page, you must
delete it from the note, but that gives you an idea of how deeply integrated
Quick Note is with the rest of the OS.

Apple’s macOS
Montery features
a new Google-
Earth-style 3D
globe, more fun
than useful.

One visually impressive feature is a Google-Earth-style 3D globe in the Maps
app, but that’s more fun than useful. What’s really useful in Maps is a
360-degree street view for selected cities, as in Google Maps, which appears in a
picture-in-picture window in the corner of the Maps window but can expand to
full-screen. Apple’s transit map is clearer than ever and will include what Apple
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Apple makes a big deal of improved FaceTime features. A new “spatial audio”
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caller’s voice seems to emerge from their position in the FaceTime window. And
a “wide spectrum” mode lets your mic capture all the sounds in the room, which
Apple points out can be useful for music lessons. The Mac version of FaceTime
gets the Portrait mode that’s already on iOS, which blurs the background of the
picture. FaceTime takes its cue from Zoom by providing a grid view, with each
person in a call appearing in a separate tile.

A new SharePlay to the Mac feature lets you use your Mac to display content
from another device in the same way you can use AirPlay to display content to a
TV. Someone at Apple has decided that it’s really good to share, so web content
that someone shares with you via Messages is accessible from Safari’s sidebar,
and news stories that someone shares with you are clickable in the News app.
This same open-handedness extends to movies and TV shows sent over

Messages that appear in your Apple TV app. If you decide that your friends are
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in a new Shared with You tab.

One welcome visibility feature makes things less visible when you want to
concentrate. A Focus option is similar to Windows 10’s “Focus assist” feature
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Not Disturb,” blocking text messages and optionally sending a canned reply to
any messages that arrive when it’s turned on. Even better, you can set this
option on your Mac or iOS device and have it apply to all your other devices.
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especially active thread that you’re not participating in.
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Passwords tab in System Preferences. Instead of navigating to the Keychain
Access app or Safari’s Preferences pane, you get a one-stop list of passwords,
complete with optional warnings about compromised or reused passwords.
Otherwise, System Preferences seems to have no surprises—or, at least, none
jumped out at me.
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Monterey, with even more power, including easy access to scripting features

formerly available (but more awkwardly) through the Automator app or by
writing AppleScript apps, as only expert-level users can do. Shortcuts propagate
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for a shortcut, you can add them to the top-line menu or Services menu. I’m
impressed by how easy it is to create a basic Shortcut, but don’t expect the
process to be intuitive. You need to spend some time studying Apple’s prebuilt
examples. For example, I wanted to create a shortcut that calculated a yearly
cost by multiplying the number in the clipboard by 12. If you’ve had no
programming experience, you may not realize that you can’t simply display the
result of the calculation. You have to create a variable with the result and then
navigate a few menus in order to create an alert that displays it.

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac, you can use Live Text in photos, a feature
pioneered by Google Lens that lets you select text in a photo and send it by a
message or, if it’s an address, look it up in Maps. I’m deeply impressed by how
fast and accurate Apple’s OCR is, even on distorted images. Monterey makes
Apple’s Translate feature available system-wide, so you can select text in an
image, right-click, and choose Translate from the pop-up menu.

NEW HIDDEN FEATURES
Now for a few almost-invisible features. The Mail app enhances privacy by
hiding your IP address when a message loads remote content—a common trick
used by spammers and advertisers to see whether you opened a message. When
you install Monterey, it asks whether you want to enable this feature. If you
don’t enable it when installing, you can always switch it on from Mail’s
Preferences.

You can now erase
all the data on your
Mac instantly,
including
fingerprint data.

When it’s time to sell your Mac, or if you want to start fresh with a new
installation of the OS, the System Preferences app now includes an Erase All
Content and Settings option on the top-line menu to erase all your data,
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Environment and erase the disk. Instead, after accepting multiple warnings,
you let the System Preferences app wipe your data instantly. It performs this
trick by irreversibly clearing a hidden decryption password that macOS applies
by default to your disk, so that when the password is cleared, no one can read
the data on your disk. Windows 10 has always had a similarly Reset with
Remove Everything option among its Settings, but the new Mac option
works instantly.

HOW RELIABLE IS THE BETA?
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workhorse machine. For me, almost everything worked quickly and smoothly
except for one crash in the Shortcuts app when I was trying to create a new
shortcut. I’ve created about a dozen Applescript-based apps over the years, and
I use the freeware Wineskin Winery app to run Windows apps on a Mac. Almost
everything worked perfectly out of the box. Monterey warned me that I will
need to rewrite an app that used the Python programming language, because
Apple will exclude it from a future macOS version—but this was only a warning,
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One app that I’m working on, which runs a Windows-based self-contained
Flash applet (the kind that still runs even in operating systems without support

for Flash in browsers or the Flash Player) under the Wine emulator, crashed in Photo credit: Apple
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may have been the only developer who encountered them.
A MORE SECURE, MORE CONVENIENT MACOS
The security and convenience features that Apple built into Monterey are
impressive, and we at PCMag.com expect to recommend the upgrade to
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ironed out the inevitable bugs and third-party vendors will have updated their
apps. If you’re already living and working in Apple’s universe, macOS Monterey
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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

WHAT’S NEW NOW

SPACE

Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
Smashes Records on Its
Ninth Flight BY STEPHANIE MLOT

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

I n early July, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter completed its ninth and most
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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

WHAT’S NEW NOW Photo credit: Mozilla

VOICE TECHNOLOGY

Your Voice Can Help Shape
the Future of Speech
Recognition

BY S.C. STUART

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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

Oliver Ris COMMENTARY

Is DaaS the Killer App for
Hybrid Work?

It seems that hybrid work, the “new normal,” Oliver Rist is the
might be pushing desktop as a service (DaaS) Executive Editor of
into the rank of front-and-center business tool, Business at PCMag.
up from the minor curiosity it was only two years He can be reached at
ago. That notion is due to some sudden and oliver_rist@pcmag.
formidable market movement, most recently com.
from Microsoft.

Microsoft has had a virtual desktop service for a
while—Azure Virtual Desktop, formerly called
Windows Virtual Desktop. A rumor recently
mongered by Mary Jo Foley, the queen of
Microsoft leaks, has it that Microsoft will be
announcing yet another DaaS development next
week during Microsoft’s Inspire virtual
conference. The new service will probably be
called Cloud PC, and instead of supplanting Azure
VD, it’ll be its own product aimed at general
businesses and available as part of a Microsoft
365 subscription. Azure VD is designed to let its
customers use Azure’s glut of services, not those
from Microsoft 365, so there’s room for both.
Also, why have one vaguely named platform when
you can have two?

Microsoft’s not alone. Back in March, another
rumor was hawked by The Register. The gist:
Alibaba Cloud was already testing a DaaS service

Oliver Ris of its own, and that the company is looking to @ OliverPRist
make its service available in both Windows and
PDF26 ÀDYRUV $QG WKDW¶V DOO VHSDUDWH IURP 'DD6
solutions that already exist, a list that includes
not just Microsoft but also Amazon WorkSpaces,
Citrix Managed Desktop, and VMware Horizon,
to name just a few.

SO WHAT’S DAAS, AND WHY IS IT
DIFFERENT FROM VDI?
The basic concept of DaaS is pretty
straightforward. If you’ve explored using
virtualization to run Windows on a Mac, then it’s
a similar concept, just managed by someone else
up in the cloud-o-sphere. For businesses, the tech
¿UVW VWDUWHG LQ WKH GDWD FHQWHU DQG XVHG
virtualization servers to push desktops to users.

This is called virtual desktop infrastructure
(VDI). You sit at your desk and log into your
desktop just as you would any other networked
app, but instead of an app showing up, it’s your
whole desktop, complete with all your apps—and
you’re already signed into them, too.

The idea is that the hardware you need to run
VDI on the client side is much cheaper, because
you’ll use $250 thin clients instead of $1,000-
plus PCs and notebooks. IT also has a much
easier time managing centralized desktops from a
security and patching angle than when they’re
GLVWULEXWHG WKURXJKRXW WKH ṘFH ZLWK ; DOZD\V
strolling through an airport somewhere.

'DD6 LV MXVW WKH FORXG YHUVLRQ <RX SD\ ; SHU
desktop (user) per month, and those users can
VLJQ LQWR D IXOO\ FRQ¿JXUHG GHVNWRS WKDW¶V EHLQJ

Oliver Ris VHUYHG DQG PDQDJHG E\ D [ ,7 VWD̆ $QG WKRVH Your users
users are logging into their very own desktops, will be able to
WRR QRW WKH VDPH SUH FRQ¿JXUHG RQHV HYHU\ WLPH configure their
<RXU XVHUV ZLOO EH DEOH WR FRQ¿JXUH WKHLU RZQ own settings,
settings, including text size, wallpaper, and including text
browser shortcuts, and that’ll be persistent every size, wallpaper,
time they log in.
and browser
DaaS had been a slow adoption prior to the shortcuts.
SDQGHPLF EHFDXVH LW R̆HUHG DOO WKH VXSSRVHG
EHQH¿WV RI 9', EXW DOO WKH VDPH SUREOHPV WRR
and with an even nastier network issue—namely,
the interwebs. And just like VDI, its cost isn’t
easily discernible.

The cost of VDI turned out to be much higher
than businesses expected. The idea was to deploy
cheap thin clients and then decrease IT man-
hours by serving up centrally managed VMs to
that low-cost hardware. In real life, though, VDI
ran into several cost issues, not the least of which
was licensing. Vendors such as Microsoft were
selling their VDI platforms with a per-user license
and then double-dipping by charging another
per-user fee for the desktop OS and sometimes
the apps, too.

The idea of an easier management time for IT
didn’t work out either. Turns out, no one told app
vendors about VDI, so a lot of mainstream
software had trouble working with it. That meant
help desk calls increased, and along with that,
IT costs.

And all that’s before we get into the network
issues. VDI vendors consider 100 to just under
200 milliseconds worth of latency to be

Oliver Ris ‘acceptable’ in a VDI scenario. But if you’ve ever The pandemic
actually tried to work on a desktop that needs has made this
200 milliseconds to respond to your mouse clicks, tech a perfect
you’ll remember wondering whether your PC was
built by druids. To keep that latency under remote work
control, IT folks started serving up VDI from solution on
multiple geographic locations so servers could be paper, and
as close as possible to users. That’s pricey.
So that’s a lot of holes in VDI’s bullet-riddled vendors want
to cash in.
ERG\ :K\ LV 'DD6 JRLQJ WR EH GL̆HUHQW" %HFDXVH
the pandemic has made this tech a perfect remote
work solution on paper, and vendors want to cash
in. That tends to make them smarter.

WHY DAAS MIGHT BE THE KILLER APP

FOR HYBRID WORK
The pandemic has taught IT guys one thing:
Managing remote workers at home can be a skull-
fracturing migraine. There are too many variables
IT can’t control, so when users call with
problems, it’s next to impossible to help them.

1HWZRUN FRQQHFWLRQV DQG D ELJ EXFNHW RI GL̆HUHQW
home network routers are problems made worse
by users moving from their work-issued laptops
to their personal devices. That opens IT up to an
ocean of possible hardware clients they know
nothing about. Now tack on all those shadow IT
teams that have signed their workers up for apps
IT doesn’t even know about, and you’ll
understand why your support people are hiding
under their blankets all day.

Now, picture DaaS. Basically, it’s VDI managed

E\ DQ DOZD\V RQ WKLUG SDUW\ ,7 VWD̆ <RX GRQ¶W
need to worry about which devices your users are
working on as long as they meet a list of basic
hardware requirements. Security and access are

Oliver Ris handled on the DaaS vendor side and so is the You need a fat
app list—no more shadow IT headaches, because internet pipe
if it’s not on the list of apps in the DaaS catalog, to work DaaS
IT isn’t responsible for it. And with vendors like
0LFURVRIW R̆HULQJ 'DD6 ZLWK D SUH VHW DSS right, and
license, you can actually hold out hope for that’s difficult
VRPHWKLQJ VHPL FRVW H̆HFWLYH WRR
Yes, the network is still a problem. You need a fat to deploy
internet pipe to work DaaS right, and that’s across home
GL̇FXOW WR GHSOR\ DFURVV KRPH XVHUV 7KHQ DJDLQ
most broadband connections are fat enough to users.
handle at least one or two DaaS clients, with some
VoIP calls and other home tasks thrown in, too.
Gaming and video-streaming might be problems,
but that’s still a wait-and-see issue, because DaaS
vendors are getting smarter about deployment.

Again taking Microsoft as an example, the
company has more than 60 data centers around
the globe, and it’s combining those with edge
computing to serve up Azure VD right now. All
those locations place Azure VD clients very close
to most users, so latency issues are minimized.
Vendors are also getting smarter about local
caching and bandwidth management.

BUT REAL LIFE DOWNSIDES REMAIN
So you can expect DaaS to work better than it
ever has by year’s end. But will that be enough?
There are still several gotchas for which the
vendors’ marketing machines haven’t given a
clear answer. The big one is security.

Sure, all your clients are in one back-end fabric,
which means managing endpoint protection and
identity management is easier. It’s also more
secure from the perspective that the DaaS vendor

Oliver Ris can build a blockade laced with virtual barbed Drop a ransom-
wire and Dobermans to keep the bad guys out. ware scenario
But if a bad guy does get in—and experience tells on that, and

XV WKDW RQH RU PRUH RI WKHP GH¿QLWHO\ ZLOO²ZHOO you’ll have CFOs
that’s going to be…bad. Now they have access to and IT guys
the DaaS server, which could mean they’d have taking long
access to every client simultaneously. That’s baths with
“could,” not necessarily “will,” but depending on
your cloud app and storage architecture, they their toasters.
might have your services and data, too. Drop a
ransomware scenario on that, and you’ll have
CFOs and IT guys taking long baths with their
toasters.

As with anything even semi-new, the key is going
to be going slow and smart. First, you test, then
you jump. And that testing needs to start with
cost. How much is DaaS going to cost, and I mean
down to the nickel, versus how much your
standard IT support costs in a permanent new
normal? If you’re wondering how much hybrid
work is really going to cost, using DaaS is going to
have a big impact. Question is, which way?
Facing $100+ per user per month is a DaaS
probability; then again, it could be a standard
remote-access support price, too. So you’ve got to
be very smart about why you’re investing that
money and make sure you’re getting some ROI
above what you’re doing now.

The architecture is going to matter, too. Network
latency is part of that, and you’d think that’s the
DaaS vendor’s issue, but it’s also going to be your
problem. The vendors will need to worry about
the wild and wooly internet, but that last hop
onto your users’ home routers is going to be on
you. That needs to be tested, and if someone’s on

Oliver Ris an unacceptably slow connection, you’ll need to Bottom line:
¿JXUH RXW ZK\ DQG ¿[ LW %RWWRP OLQH (YHQ LI WKH Even if the
DaaS dollar numbers add up, you won’t be able to DaaS dollar
roll this out whole-hog. One user group at a time
will be the name of the game, so for quite a while, numbers add
you’ll have both DaaS and standard remote work up, you won’t
IT problems at the same time.
be able to
Security? I think that’s simply going to be an roll this out
ongoing risk as with everything else in the cloud, whole-hog.
DQG \RX¶OO HLWKHU WDNH LW RU \RX ZRQ¶W (YHU\ 'DD6
vendor is going to trumpet support for a long list
of regulations, so compliance probably won’t be
DQ LVVXH %XW \RX¶OO QHHG WR ¿JXUH RXW D WLHUHG
protection architecture that keeps not only your
clients safe but your data, too; and you won’t be
able to do that with all your eggs in a single
vendor’s basket. That means more than one cloud
and more cost.

From where I’m sitting, though, all my naysaying
is about solvable problems. VDI is a proven
technology, so the foundation for DaaS is sound.
(YHU\WKLQJ HOVH LV MXVW D PDWWHU RI WLPH

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

Sascha Sega COMMENTARY

What the Heck Is Up
With OnePlus?

O nePlus used to be a bit like Apple. Sascha Segan is the
Regimented, focused, and broadly lead mobile analyst
charismatic, the phone maker revealed for PC Magazine. His
its devices bit by bit and always controlled its commentary has
message. But as we’ve been chronicling in recent also appeared on Fox
months, the company’s communications are now News, CNBC, CNN, and
all over the place. various radio stations
and newspapers
Some of OnePlus’ recent attempts to broaden its around the world.
appeal have worked out well. The low-cost Nord
line vastly boosted OnePlus sales in the US. (Our
review of the Nord N200 5G determined that it’s
pretty good.) With the new Nord 2, which won’t
be sold here, OnePlus is experimenting with the
Mediatek Dimensity 1200 chipset’s customization
package, which may provide better performance
than similarly priced Qualcomm processors.

But you might not know that OnePlus is
developing interesting products, because it’s lost
control of its story. After merging some
RSHUDWLRQV ZLWK LWV VLVWHU ¿UP 2SSR WKH
company delivered a muddy, confusing narrative
DERXW KRZ WKRVH FKDQJHV ZLOO D̆HFW SKRQHV IURP
ERWK EUDQGV $QG D WUDGHPDUN ¿OLQJ IRU D 2QH3OXV
3DG²SUHVXPDEO\ WKH FRPSDQ\¶V ¿UVW WDEOHW²LV
fueling plentiful discussion without a word from
OnePlus’ publicity team.

Sascha Sega Now the company also has to contend with an @saschasegan
AnandTech story showing that the OnePlus 9 Pro
has been throttling popular applications,
including Chrome and Twitter, for the sake of
heat and battery management. This makes
benchmark results a bit out of whack, depending
upon which app you’re using to test.

Several industry experts—Adam Conway from
XDA, Andy Boxall from Digital Trends, and Cam
Bunton from PocketLint—have pointed out that
this is more a communication issue than a
technical one. As the AnandTech story observes,
no actual phone users noticed this. There haven’t
been complaints that the OnePlus 9 Pro is slow—
just the opposite.

As Boxall tweeted: “I revisited the OnePlus 9 Pro
the other week, and at absolutely no time did I
think “ohh, so slow.” I did, however, think “ohh,
so fast” at least once, and comment on the
excellent battery life.Throttling here is a problem
only if you endlessly run benchmark tests.”

OnePlus could have gotten out ahead of this
inevitable discovery with the message that
“OnePlus stops apps from draining your battery
for no reason.” Or it could have had a toggle for
Extreme mode vs. Optimized mode and defaulted

WR 2SWLPL]HG²2QH3OXV IDQV ORYH WKDW VWX̆
Instead, it gave XDA’s Mishaal Rahman a rather

VWL̆ UHVSRQVH DERXW KRZ WKH RSWLPL]DWLRQ ³KHOSHG
to provide a smooth experience while reducing
power consumption.”

I can’t help but feel that an earlier OnePlus might
even have taken the opportunity to change the

Sascha Sega conversation on benchmarking phones entirely. It Keeping up
could point out that synthetic mobile benchmarks good messag-
haven’t represented the full picture of user ing keeps the
experience for quite some time; note that Android
LV EHKLQG :LQGRZV LQ R̆HULQJ UHDOLVWLF fans happy,
application-based benchmarks; and say that the 9 which in turn
3UR R̆HUV D ³EXUGHQOHVV´ UHDO ZRUOG H[SHULHQFH
maybe with some charts of web page loading raises its
times. But so far, OnePlus is not doing any of profile over
those things. competitors.

:LOO WKLV D̆HFW 2QH3OXV¶ VDOHV" 7KH FRPSDQ\¶V
fandom has always been a big part of its success.
Keeping up good messaging keeps the fans happy,
ZKLFK LQ WXUQ UDLVHV LWV SUR¿OH RYHU FRPSHWLWRUV
such as Motorola, TCL, and ZTE. In the hyper-
competitive budget mobile market where its Nord
phones live, a bit of mystique can go a long way,
and its absence could hurt OnePlus’ bottom line.

Meanwhile, OnePlus founder Carl Pei is making
earbuds under his new Nothing brand name, and
trying to recapture the classic OnePlus magic,
trickling out a feature or a detail at a time. “Will
you cover the price of the new earbuds as a
VWDQGDORQH VWRU\"´ KLV 35 WHDP DVNHG PH <HV
we did.)

That’s old-school OnePlus, stretching out the
story to grab news cycle after news cycle. But at
the same time—they’re earbuds. I can’t get that
excited about earbuds. Do earbuds have fans as
SDVVLRQDWH DV SKRQH IDQV" , EHW WKH\ GR ,¶P MXVW
not one of them.

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

REVIEWS

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PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

REVIEWS

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

Sennheiser CX True
Wireless: High-Quality
Audio BY TIM GIDEON

M any of the true wireless earphones we test these days are built with
noise cancelation or exercise in mind. That’s great, but you typically
pay a premium for active noise cancelation or a fully waterproof,
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approach. They lack a wide array of extra features and stick to the basics—
namely, audio quality. They support high-quality AAC and AptX Bluetooth

codecs, which is uncommon in this price range, and Sennheiser CX
they let you customize the sound signature via app True Wireless
with adjustable EQ. That makes the Sennheiser CX
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wireless option, especially if you’re shopping on a Rich, bass-forward
strict budget. sound with high-
frequency definition.
SIMPLE BUT STYLISH Adjustable EQ. Water-
Available in black or white, the CX True Wireless resistant build.
earpieces look streamlined and simple, with a slightly Excellent battery life.
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your ears or taking them out of the case. sound signature. EQ
could offer more
Touch-sensitive outer panels on either earpiece control precise control.
the various basic functions. A single tap on either
controls playback or answers calls, a double tap controls BOTTOM LINE
track navigation (left ear for backward, right ear for Sennheiser’s
forward), a triple tap summons your mobile device’s audiophile-friendly CX
voice assistant, and a long hold adjusts the volume (left True Wireless
ear for down, right ear for up). earphones offer good
battery life and high-
quality audio
performance for a
refreshingly affordable
price.

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and a single status LED on the front panel. The
included USB-C-to-USB-A charging cable connects to
the USB-C port on the back panel. Four pairs of silicone
eartips in various sizes are also included.

The earpieces have a modest IPX4 rating, which means Photo credit: Sennheiser worldwide
they can withstand light splashes or misting but

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course for most true wireless pairs that aren’t sports-
focused, and the modest protection should still be
enough to handle sweat or light rain. The rating
doesn’t apply to the charging case, so don’t get it wet,
and make sure earpieces are dry before docking them.

Photo credit: Sennheiser worldwide

Sennheiser’s Smart Control app for Android and iOS works with all of the
company’s headphones, including the CX True Wireless. Rather than a typical
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the audio balance. You can switch to a typical fader-based EQ, but both the
curves and faders have only three bands (bass, mids, and treble) rather than the
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sidetone (how much of your own voice you hear during phone calls) adjustment,
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useful readouts, such as which codec you’re currently listening through and
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The earphones are compatible with Bluetooth 5.2 and support AAC, AptX, and
SBC Bluetooth codecs. Sennheiser says the earpieces can last up to 9 hours per
charge with about 18 more hours of use in the charging case. These are excellent
numbers for true wireless earphones, but your results will vary with your
volume levels.

CX TRUE WIRELESS PERFORMANCE
It’s possible to create a very secure in-canal seal with the earpieces without
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wondering why the audio sounded so muddy, with overwhelming bass and
dulled high-mids. This wasn’t in line with what Sennheiser headphones usually
sound like, so I took the earpieces out and put them back in with a stronger

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experience, but if they sound dull, you should try adjusting the earphones
physically before playing with the EQ.

On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the
earphones deliver powerful thump and don’t distort at high, unwise volume
levels. At more moderate levels, the bass depth is still strong with reasonably
matched high-frequency presence.

Bill Callahan’s “Drover,” a track with far less deep bass in the mix, gives us a
better sense of the general sound signature. The drums on this track get some
added thunder with strong bass boosting without sounding unnaturally heavy.
Callahan’s baritone vocals are rich in the low-mids with a reasonable amount of
treble edge to keep things somewhat crisp. This is a bass-forward sound
signature, but the vocals, acoustic strums, and higher-register percussion still
get plenty of high-mid detail.

On Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild,” the kick drum loop gets
some added thump from the bass-forward sound signature, along with enough
high-mid presence for its attack to retain its punchiness. The vinyl crackle and
hiss in the background also move forward a bit in the mix, while the sub-bass
synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with solid depth. There’s plenty

Photo credit: Sennheiser worldwide

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when the earpieces are properly sealed in your ears. register brass,

Orchestral tracks, such as the opening scene from John strings, and
Adams’ “The Gospel According to the Other Mary,” get vocals get
added bass depth that doesn’t sound muddy. The
higher-register brass, strings, and vocals get enough enough treble
treble presence to retain their place in the spotlight. presence to
Again, if the earphones sound less crisp than they retain their
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spotlight.
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Memos app on an iPhone, we could understand every
word we recorded. There was some typical Bluetooth
distortion in the mix, but the mic’s signal is relatively
strong, and on a decent mobile connection, anyone you
talk to should be able to hear you clearly.

AFFORDABLE AUDIO-FIRST EARPHONES
Sennheiser’s CX True Wireless earphones manage to
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$150 wire-free models, thanks to strong sound quality,
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support. We wish the EQ were a little less simple, but
it’s still a big step up from the many models that don’t
provide any audio adjustments. In this price range,
we’re also fans of the Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro
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noise cancelation, and the JBL True Wireless Flash X
earphones ($170), which are fully waterproof and better
suited for exercise. If you can spend more, we’re also
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the best true wireless audio quality for the price. For
$130, though, the CX True Wireless earphones are a far
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wireless in-ears with a focus on quality audio.

PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I AUGUST 2021

REVIEWS

CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

Valve Index VR Kit: Most
Impressive VR Headset Yet

BY WILL GREENWALD

A t $999 for the full headset, controllers, and base stations package, the
Valve Index is an expensive PC-tethered virtual-reality (VR) system.
The headset itself, while capable, doesn’t do much to rise above the
competition besides delivering a smoother 120Hz refresh rate. The controllers,
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immersive feel than other VR controllers we’ve tested. They’re the stars of the