When Amazon announced its 2026 range of Kindles on October 1, I balked at the prices, particularly for the entry-level model. Then again, I should have expected it, given the current cost of components. The days of Kindles being the affordable ereader are long gone now.

Yet the 2026 entry-level Kindle does go some way in justifying its higher price compared to its predecessor thanks to all new hardware that includes new colors — now also in an aluminum chassis that gets you double the storage (32GB) — as well as a thinner and even lighter design. The power button being moved to the right edge is also a welcome change that made my colleague Lance Ulanoff especially happy.

The design changes also include the screen now lying flush with the bezels and the display offering better contrast that improves text sharpness. However, I noticed a tiny bit of light bleeding on the top edge of the screen when reading in dark mode, which Amazon has acknowledge is a flaw, and the slim bezels don't offer enough space for the thumb to rest, thus triggering accidental page turns.

The page-turn speed here hasn't visibly improved over the 2024 model, but general navigation has. Amazon says the 2026 base Kindle is 30% faster than the previous model and, while that's hard to measure, I can attest that many other functions on the latter, like opening books, accessing the Kindle Store and going through settings, and are definitely faster.

That's all that's new here, though, which is why I said the 2026 Kindle only goes 'some' way in justifying its cost. At launch, when I began my testing of this Kindle, there were no new software features to distinguish it from previous generations. However, Amazon released a new firmware just a couple of days before the publication of this review that has made a small change to how some books appear in the library tab — all titles within a series are now grouped together. This software update has also been rolled out to the previous Kindle generation, so you really aren't missing much if you don't upgrade... except for the slight increase in speed and the new screen.

There is still no warm light or auto-adjusting brightness for evening reading, and neither is there any waterproofing, not even on the aluminum version which has a screwed on back panel rather than the plastic one's pop-off option.

Yes, the rear panels can be removed now to allow users to change the battery when needed, in compliance with EU regulations, but I haven't seen any official battery packs being sold as yet. Battery life, however, is lackluster compared to the Kindle Paperwhite (both 2024 and the newer release) — it's practically half, which makes the aluminum Kindle especially harder to recommend over the 2026 Paperwhite as the prices aren't all that different.

So while I can appreciate that a new Kindle would cost more, I'm struggling to find value in it, more so because the Kobo Clara BW comes with waterproofing and warm light temperatures at a similar price to the plastic 16GB Kindle, albeit in a now two-year-old device.

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: price & availability

• First announced October 2026
• Available in major markets, including the US, UK and Australia
• List price from $149.99 / £134.99 / AU$279

With a starting price of $149.99 / £134.99 in the US and the UK for the ad-supported 16GB plastic Kindle, it's still a cheaper option compared to the 2024 release of the Kobo Clara BW that retails for $159.99 / £149.99. However, you get a few more features with the latter that the new 2026 release of the entry-level Kindle still doesn't get you — namely, warm light and waterproofing.

If you don't want the ads, then you need to tack on another $20 / £15 to that cost, which shifts the price dynamic between the Kindle and its Kobo counterpart.

In Australia, only the ad-free version of the Kindles has always been available and the starting price is now AU$279, which is AU$10 more than the Kobo Clara BW.

The 32GB Kindle Aluminum (yes, that's what Amazon is calling it in the US and is the model sent to TechRadar for this review) is ad-free by default and will set you back $189.99 / £169.99 / AU$299. Given the 2026 Kindle Paperwhite costs just another $10 / £15 / AU$50 (with ads in the US and UK), I'm struggling to see the value in the shiny new aluminum Kindle.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: specs

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: Design & display

• Shiny, new hardware, including fresh colors and a new aluminum model
• Thinner, lighter and more compact than before
• Gorgeous new display with better contrast and sharper text

I might have been disappointed with the 2024 edition of the base Kindle, saying it wasn't really an 'upgrade' just because it came in a lovely new color, but that's not the case with the 2026 release. This time, the entry-level Kindle truly is a worthwhile upgrade — at least in terms of hardware. Nearly everything about it is brand-spanking new and I love it.

The most obvious difference between the previous Kindle generations and the 2026 model(s) is the new chassis. Now available in two finishes — plastic and aluminum — and lovely new colors (Ube and the usual Graphite for the former, Alpine Sky and Seaglass Green for the latter), there's more choice where the base Kindle is concerned.

The other point of difference, and not just between generations but also between the two finishes, is that the aluminum version comes with 32GB of storage (like the Signature Editions of the Paperwhite and Colorsoft) and is ad-free by default in the US and the UK.

While I personally didn't mind the power/sleep button on the bottom edge of the Kindle, now having it just below the top right corner is a good move, putting the cheapest Kindle in the new range on a similar design footing as the current Kindle Scribes.

The flush screen on both the plastic and metal Kindles makes it look modern and more premium, although the thin side bezels triggered numerous accidental page turns during my testing. I also noticed a small amount of light bleed on the top edge of the review unit sent to me, visible in dark mode. This has been discussed on Reddit and Amazon has acknowledged there is a flaw and is ready to exchange any units with such issues.

Impressively, though, the screen and the aluminum body aren't fingerprint magnets, which is my biggest relief compared to, say, the 2024 edition of the Kindle Paperwhite that showed off every oily smudge on the front and back.

Another hardware difference — and a first for Amazon — is the replaceable battery. On the plastic model, the rear panel just pops open, but you will need tiny hex screwdriver to remove the aluminum panel if you ever need to change the battery. This is accordance to EU regulations, but I am yet to see official replacement batteries being listed on Amazon. It's early days yet, and a Kindle battery typically lasts about 10 years, so I'd expect to see official listings down the line.

In comparison, though, Kobo's 2024 ereaders — namely, the Libra Colour, Clara BW and Clara Colour — have even better repairability, with screens and motherboards also replaceable. So if longevity is important to you, Amazon still has a way to go to impress its Kindle users.

As much as I love the new colors, the star of the show here is the upgraded display. The entry-level Kindle finally gets the E Ink Carta 1300 screen tech that the 2024 model missed out on.

Admittedly it still lacks warm LEDs, which is disappointing, but despite that it's the sharpest display on the entry-level Kindle that I've seen to date. It also boasts better contrast where blacks are blacker, even the background in dark mode, and that gives text better clarity overall.

Alongside the lack of warm hues for the frontlight, the entry-level Kindle still doesn't have waterproofing, which is probably for the best at least for the plastic model where the rear pops right off to access the battery. However, it would have been nice if Amazon had deigned to provide at least one of these missing features on the aluminum version to justify the higher price tag, especially since there are hardly any new software features to speak of here.

Design & display score: 4.5 / 5

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: Software

• Books in a series are now grouped together in the Library tab
• Additional wallpapers are nice
• Not much else is new with the latest software release

If you've been using an older Kindle, you'll be intimately familiar with navigating around the 2026 release as well. At the start of my two-week testing of the new Kindle, seemingly nothing had changed with the release of the software version 5.20.1.0.1. However, just a day before this review was published, Amazon released firmware 5.20.1.02 and the only new feature here that I've come across is books in a series being grouped together in the Library tab.

There is, however, a caveat here — only items purchased or borrowed from the Kindle Store (or from Kindle+, previous Kindle Unlimited) are arranged this way. If you've sideloaded books in a series via, say, the Send To Kindle platform, they will still appear as individual titles.

This latest firmware at the time of writing has also been rolled out to the 2024 11th-generation Kindle, so this new feature will also be available on the older model.

I do appreciate that Amazon has added more wallpapers now, some which debuted on the 2025 releases of the Kindle Scribe. You can still choose to show the book covers if you don't want to cycle through the wallpapers when the device is sleeping.

The lack of significant new features on the Kindle is not a bad thing, although it would have been nice to have something different — perhaps reading stats like Kobo offers. However, the Kindle UX remains very simple to navigate around even if you're a first-time user — there is just the home screen and the library tabs, with the rest of the features and settings accessible by swiping down from the top edge of the screen.

I still find the home screen to be too wound up in Amazon's ecosystem and looks quite cluttered compared to Kobo's homepage setup, but it at least makes it easy to find your next read if you source your content from the Kindle Store. In the same vein, if you are a Prime member or have a Kindle+ subscription, you'll be able to find something new right from the homepage based on your previous reading habits.

Audible support is no longer restricted to select countries at launch, like it was for the 2024 Kindles. Meaning if you're in, say, Australia, you can absolutely listen to Audible audiobooks by pairing the Kindle to a set of wireless headphones or earbuds (or even a Bluetooth speaker).

WhisperSync will continue narration on any Alexa-supported speaker too if you prefer to move on from using the Kindle, like when you're perhaps fixing dinner and, in a similar vein, if you ever change your Kindle to a newer device, your entire library is already available the moment you sign into your Amazon account (something I wish Kobo would offer).

• Software score: 4 / 5

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: Performance

• Excellent reading experience
• General navigation is faster compared to previous generation
• Same battery life as previous model, which is disappointing compared to the Paperwhite

New hardware aside, the overall performance from the 2026 Kindle is also better, making it a true upgrade that I was expecting to see in 2024. Amazon, however, hasn't revealed whether there's an upgraded processor under the hood but I suspect there would be, even if it's a small update.

While page-turn speed is more or less the same on the 2024 and 2026 Kindles, all other navigation and functionality happens just that much quicker on the latter, including ebook load times. Even automatic screen refreshes are so quick that I barely registered most of them — similar to what I experienced in my 3rd-generation Kindle Scribe (2025) review.

This speedy performance adds to the excellent reading experience, where the darker background in both regular and dark mode adds better contrast and makes text look sharper.

That said, I personally find 6-inch ereaders too small, and prefer the 7-inch or 8-inch ones — the sweet spot in terms of screen real estate, not too small and not too large. If you prefer larger fonts, you'll end up turning pages more often and that will then eat into the battery life of the Kindle.

And that has not changed from the 2024 model. Battery life is still up to 6 weeks according to Amazon, based on just 30 minutes of reading per day. That is doable, if you leave Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off, switch off the frontlight completely and don't keep browsing the Kindle Store or doing anything else except read.

In my testing, where I read for 4-5 hours a day for two weeks, had Wi-Fi always on and screen brightness set to level 7 in regular mode (relatively low), I had to charge the Kindle every 2 to 3 days, which got a little annoying considering the 2024 Kindle Paperwhite I have gives me double the battery life.

Charging the battery is quick, though, with the device going from 11% to full in just about an hour when plugged into a 25W USB-C outlet and using a good-quality C-to-C cable. Three attempts at topping from 10% or 11% battery gave me the same results.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Amazon Kindle (2026)?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Amazon Kindle (2026) review: Alternatives

The 2026 edition of the base Amazon Kindle is good — a very worthy upgrade. However, its price might make you stop and think. So if you're keen on alternatives, I would consider the 2026 Kindle Paperwhite better value than the Kindle Aluminum, for example. I haven't tested the new Paperwhite yet, but from the existing crop of tried and tested models, the below two options are my top picks and are still some of the best ereaders you can buy.

How I tested the Amazon Kindle (2026)

No matter the circumstances, I generally read for at least a few hours a day, so it wasn't much different when it came to testing the 2026 Kindle. I used it for two and a half weeks, reading every single day for 4 to 5 hours.

While I already have an Amazon library accessible on any Kindle as soon as I sign in, I also used the Send To Kindle app to add a few more titles for good measure. Most of the titles I read on the 2026 Kindle were borrowed from Kindle+ though. This also allowed me to try out audiobooks on the device. I paired the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones to the Kindle and also a JBL Charge 5 speaker for this purpose.

During testing, I changed screen brightness regularly to see how much affect it had on battery life, while also noting how browsing the Kindle Store affected the same. I also made a note of how much battery was lost when the device was sleeping.

Unfortunately I couldn't find the right screwdriver to access the battery under the Kindle Aluminum sent for this review, so I can't speak to how easy it would be to swap out an old pack for a new one.

Read more about how we test

[First published October 2026]

The Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC is simply a fantastic version of an already world-beating wireless gaming headset. While it shares an awful lot with the ‘original’ Audeze Maxwell 2 that launched earlier this year, the addition of genuinely excellent active noise cancellation (ANC) means that it offers an enhanced experience compared to its brethren.

The design and build remain very similar to that older model, with the big, weighty earcups sitting comfortably over your ears while the leather headstrap keeps things secure. Controls are also nearly identical, bar the addition of the ANC button on the front of the left cup. It’s a sturdy and robust build which gives great confidence, but if you’re in any way wary of weighty sets, then the Maxwell 2 ANC might be a bit much for you — it’s a chonker at 19.75oz / 560g.

However, the heft is unequivocally worth it in my opinion: when it comes to performance, the Maxwell 2 is absolutely fantastic. The non-ANC Maxwell 2 is my pick for the best-sounding gaming headset money can buy right now, and the ANC variant sounds just as brilliant in all scenarios across different platforms.

The ANC itself is a welcome addition and a genuinely impressive one, blocking out all exterior noise in my testing, as well as offering a transparency mode. The quality of the ANC makes it perfect for busy environments, or just achieving maximal immersion in your games.

This is up there with the absolute best in the premium ANC business — like the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni and Nova Elite I tested in recent months — and I can’t recommend it more if it fits in your budget.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Price and availability

• List price: $429 / £429 / AU$699
• Chunky increase in price over the non-ANC model
• Priced alongside competitors from the likes of SteelSeries, but above other wireless contenders

The Maxwell 2 ANC is more expensive than its ‘regular’ counterpart: it’s $100 / £90 / AU$130 more. With only a few features that are different from its non-ANC brother, its value proposition will be called into question.

For that price, it’s above the likes of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni (a direct competitor to the Maxwell 2), which is a headset with excellent ANC and one I really would recommend as well.

More broadly, you can still get models such as the brilliant Turtle Beach Stealth Pro 2 headset for comfortably less, and other planar magnetic driver gaming headsets like the wired Asus ROG Kithara are cheaper still (though aren’t quite like-for-like).

As a result, the Audeze Maxwell 2 is a premium headset package, and the combination of its awesome planar magnetic driver audio and the great ANC makes it a sizable investment in the gaming headset market — though still much less than the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite. If the best gaming audio and ANC are both must-have features for you, then the Maxwell 2 ANC will still offer what you want and earn its price tag.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Specs

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Design & features

• Robust build with a great feature set that builds on predecessor
• A little heavier than the non-ANC headset
• Weaker battery life

The Maxwell 2 ANC gives great confidence with its build. It feels robust, solid, and able to withstand a knock or a drop (something I can attest to), and a lot of that comes from its weightiness. Some folks might immediately associate ‘heavy gaming headset’ with ‘bad,’ but I really think that is a grave misconception and something drilled into us by the marketing of other brands.

In reality, the design and build are so nicely done that it offsets the weight, and the comfort too — largely down to its new memory foam cushions and ventilated leather head strap — means that I’ve never really noticed wearing the Maxwell 2 ANC for even the longest sessions.

In terms of on-board controls, the left cup houses the volume dial, the game-chat mix dial, an audio jack, a USB-C port, a mic port, and the new ANC button. The right cup has the mic mute switch and the power button, which also doubles up as the Bluetooth pairing button. Simple. The dual microphone is very welcome, and means you can deploy the Maxwell 2 ANC for entertainment and music, and still rely on something for comms, without plugging in the detachable boom mic.

Small improvements are also present and welcome. One of which is that the wireless dongle is much shorter than the lollipop stick found with the non-ANC model, and makes for a much tidier look on the front of a PS5 or PC. The head tracking features provided by Embody Immerse Gaming Hive and Dolby Atmos Rendered compatibility are fun and a novelty, though they still feel a little niche for me.

The most notable thing in the features of the Maxwell 2 ANC, however, sadly, is that the battery life has taken a dive compared to the regular Maxwell 2. While the non-ANC version could get you 80-odd hours of use, the ANC version is limited to about half of that with ANC off, and 35 hours with ANC on.

It’s perfectly serviceable and still provides you with comfortably more than a full day, but it is a shame the difference is so massive.

Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC: Performance

• Incredible audio quality across all games
• Excellent ANC performance that doesn’t kill bass
• Comfortable to wear, plus a really solid mic

The Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC is simply fantastic when put to the test. The gaming audio it provides is every bit as good as the audio I love from the regular Maxwell 2.

No matter what I’ve been playing, the Maxwell 2 ANC provides thumping combat sounds, beautifully crisp environmental audio, and rich, rounded soundtracks. It’s a joy to use as a media and entertainment pair of headphones too, with music singing clearly into my ears. Planar magnetic driver audio really is something else.

Backing this up is the microphone combo, which ensures I’m clear and crisp with my teammates even in the most frantic of online multiplayer battles.

Key to the audio sounding so good all the time is that the main USP of the headset, the ANC, doesn’t kill bass like almost every other ANC I’ve tried in my years of testing.

This means that you really are getting uncompromising audio, and some very effective ANC too; it’s excellent for immersion, and even in a busy household with a few people, I’ve been unbothered by external noise. This is undoubtedly aided by Audeze’s SLAM (Symmetric Linear Acoustic Modulator) tech, which is proven to assist in bass performance.

The weight of the headset doesn’t impact the performance of the Maxwell 2 ANC from a comfort perspective either. It might be heavier than other headsets, sure, but it’s never been uncomfortable on my head, even in the longest of sessions. I've almost come to prefer it over lightweight models you totally forget you’re wearing.

Elsewhere, I will say that by default the Maxwell 2 ANC can be quite quiet, which was a mild annoyance, though easily solved on PC or PS5 by manually adjusting the volume. The companion Audeze app on desktop and mobile has also been handy, facilitating firmware updates and allowing for EQ tinkering.

All in all, the Maxwell 2 ANC has all that is great about the non-ANC variant and adds excellent ANC. If you have to have the latter and are eyeing up the best version of the best-sounding headset, then this is the one to get.

Should I buy the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also consider...

If the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC doesn’t feel like it’s going to hit the mark for you, then these are the two alternatives I’d look to right now.

How I tested the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC

• Tested over the course of a few months
• Compared with other headsets, including the non-ANC version
• Used across PS5 and PC games, on mobile, and for music, work, and entertainment

I’ve used the Audeze Maxwell 2 ANC as my go-to PS5 headset for a few months now, playing the likes of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Tom Clancy's The Division 2 and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 with friends online, as well as regularly using it on my PC when not using my SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni headset — a competing headset that has been great for comparison.

On my Acer Predator Orion 5000 gaming PC (supplied by Acer), I’ve tested the Maxwell 2 ANC not only with everyday usage like work calls, music, and TV, but also with games like Cyberpunk 2077, Frostpunk 2, Crusader Kings 3, and a preview of a game or two under embargo.

First reviewed July-October 2026

Read more about how we test

These sites have built a business model of letting users discover people’s personal data, and because this data is mostly collected from public sources, the model is permitted.

Data removal platforms are the antidote to data broker sites that aggregate personal information. With these platforms, you can scan numerous data broker sites for your information and, if discovered, send automated deletion requests. I’m reviewing one such data removal service, ClearNym.

It isn’t as popular as some of the best data removal services we've tested, but it’s a notable name in this niche. Read on to learn what it offers and how it compares to the competition.

ClearNym: Plans and pricing

ClearNym offers distinct pricing plans for individuals and families, with the latter being discounted. The personal plan costs $30 per month and unlocks data removal from 336+ broker sites, weekly rescans and re-removal, and phone number/house address exposure monitoring (you’ll be alerted if either information is found on a public site).

The Family plan costs $50 per month and unlocks the same features as the personal plan, but for 5 users. Instead of each family member paying $30 per month for the personal plan, a steeply discounted $50 per month subscription covers up to 5 members (it’d have been $150 if each member paid individually).

There’s also an Extended plan that offers data removal for 10 users. For $100 per month, this plan also lets users send custom removal requests to data broker sites not included in ClearNym's native coverage.

ClearNym offers 45% discounts off the monthly price if you pay annually. For example, instead of paying $30 per month for 12 months, summing up to $360, for the personal plan, an annual subscription costs $198. Paying for 12 months upfront reduces the price significantly, so I’ll advise doing so if you can afford to.

It also helps that ClearNym offers a 14-day free trial to test its features before paying. If unsatisfied during the free trial, you can cancel the subscription without getting billed. Even after paying, there’s a 28-day window to request a refund (the 14-day free trial is included in this window).

ClearNym: Setup

ClearNym doesn’t take much effort to set up. Anyone can visit the official website and create an account. It offers a free trial that includes a few data removal scans.

After signing up, enter your information (full name, email address, or phone number). You also need to enter a location (to help narrow the search results), and ClearNym will run a deep scan on 336+ data broker sites. The scan usually takes a few minutes, but can be longer depending on the volume of data discovered on the sites.

Once the scan completes, ClearNym shows the number of sites the data was discovered on. In my case, I entered a random name (William Smith) and chose a random location (Atlanta, Georgia). Unsurprisingly, ClearNym found 1,950 profile matches.

You may be wondering why I didn’t use my actual name. The thing is, I’ve used so many data broker sites for tests and reviews that they're probably tired of receiving my deletion requests. A scan for my credentials turns up so little data that it won’t be an effective way of demonstrating how good data removal platforms are at their job.

With data discovered, the next step is sending removal requests to all identified data broker sites, but there’s a catch. ClearNym requires formally starting a free trial to send removal requests, and payment credentials are needed to activate the free trial. You won’t get billed until 14 days after activating the trial; you can cancel it anytime before the 14th day.

Even after paying, there’s an extra 14-day window to request a refund, but this requires some back and forth with ClearNym’s sales team. Canceling the free trial is much easier if you aren’t satisfied with what you see.

ClearNym supports both automated and manual removal requests, although the latter is reserved for users on the Extended plan. Automated removal requests are sent quickly to any site among the 336+ brokers covered by ClearNym. You can monitor the progress of each request from your dashboard, and you’ll be alerted by email once any request gets successfully processed.

As an Extended subscriber, if you spot your data on a broker site that’s not under ClearNym’s network, you can initiate a manual removal request; this involves ClearNym’s experts drafting a custom request on your behalf. Custom requests take longer to process and may not always work, but they’re worth a try.

ClearNym: Ease of use

ClearNym offers a simple-to-navigate interface defined by minimal colors and clearly highlighted menus. Features are arranged neatly on the left side, and the main dashboard lies on the right, with clear icons to navigate your way through. From signing up to initiating and monitoring removal requests, I had no complaints about ClearNym’s ease of use.

ClearNym: Security and privacy

ClearNym doesn’t just offer data removal. It also offers dark web monitoring, where data breach databases are scanned for your personal information, and you’ll be alerted if there’s any match. ClearNym has also said it’ll soon add a VPN to its suite. Combined, these tools help maximize your online privacy and security.

ClearNym: Support

ClearNym doesn’t offer a detailed self-help resource center like many rivals. I did find a large collection of user guides, but they were mostly about how to opt out of data broker sites, with ClearNym positioned as the easy option. I didn’t find detailed guides about ClearNym’s features.

On the bright side, ClearNym offers direct support via email and telephone. Subscribers can contact the support team and get quick responses to their inquiries.

ClearNym: Competition

ClearNym has many rivals, with Incogni being a notable name I’d like to highlight. Incogni has broader coverage, with 420+ sites compared to ClearNym’s 336+. It also offers custom removals for hundreds more sites.

I’ll say Incogni is a better option if your goal is removing personal information from data centers en masse. However, ClearNym is better for targeted removals from specific sites that aren’t covered natively.

ClearNym: Final verdict

ClearNym is a reliable data removal platform, particularly for custom deletion requests. The family plan is affordable relative to competitors and helps maximize online privacy. It doesn’t have the most comprehensive security features outside of data removal, but it’s really good at this core function.

I recommend ClearNym more for family than individual use because of the highly discounted family bundle ($50 per month for 5 users compared to $30 per month for the Personal plan).

If you’re after a big-screen tablet with a premium design, a huge battery, and a price tag that won’t bankrupt you, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro makes a compelling case as one of the best tablets on the market.

It also arrives with an initially puzzling spec configuration. The Pad 5 Pro is the successor to the Oppo Pad 3 Pro, which landed in 2025 with a smaller screen (12 inches) and 12GB of RAM. This time around, however, Oppo has increased the tablet's screen size but slashed its RAM capacity to 8GB.

That means the Pad 5 Pro has a lower power ceiling than its predecessor for multitasking and resource-intensive productivity tasks, but Oppo has almost certainly made this decision as a result of the ongoing global RAM shortage, which is pushing up memory prices. Had the Pad 5 Pro been equipped with 12GB of RAM, it would almost certainly be significantly more expensive.

And it’s not all bad news for the Pad 5 Pro's power credentials, as its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset can handle pretty much everything you throw at it. The Pad 3 Pro, by contrast, uses a still-powerful but older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chipset, so what you lose in RAM, you gain in CPU power.

The tablet's 7:5 aspect ratio display also makes the Pad 5 Pro a great productivity companion. The ColorOS 16 interface has excellent multitasking tools, and I love the ability to use the tablet as a screen for your laptop.

I also enjoyed holding the tablet vertically and reading articles, with its 144Hz refresh rate allowing for smooth scrolling, and the screen's bezel providing a place to rest my thumb.

With the Pad 5 Pro back in landscape, the expansive screen was great for my PUBG: Mobile sessions and streaming videos. Plus, with eight speakers built into the slender frame, the Pad 5 Pro has surprisingly good audio.

Then there’s the whopping 13,380mAh battery that’ll give you multiple days of use from a single charge with moderate use, and a solid two days with more intensive activity.

As big-screen tablets go, then, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro has a lot to offer that makes it easy to recommend.

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Price and availability

• The Oppo Pad 5 Pro costs £699, less than the 13-inch iPad Air (M4)
• Available in the UK and Europe with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro costs £699, making it slightly more expensive than Apple’s entry-level iPad 11-inch (2025) (£429), but comfortably cheaper than the firm’s iPad Air 13-inch (2025) (£949) and Samsung’s 12.6-inch Galaxy Tab S12 Plus (£1,399). Its closest competitor, price-wise, is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus (£689).

At £699, the Pad 5 Pro also costs £200 more than its predecessor. Sure, it has a bigger screen, a larger battery, and an updated chipset — but as mentioned, it also has less RAM. You're still getting decent bang for your buck, but last year's Pad 3 Pro was a better value proposition overall.

At the time of writing (October 2026), Oppo is running a £100-off promotion on the Pad 5 Pro, taking the asking price down to £599. At that figure, it's a steal.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is currently available in the UK and Europe. If you’re reading this review in North America or Australia, then bad news: this tablet is not currently sold in your region.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is available in a single configuration: 8GB RAM with 256GB of storage, and Wi-Fi only. Unlike Apple’s iPads and Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs, there is no cellular option here.

If you want to enhance your experience, Oppo offers case and stylus accessories for the tablet. The Oppo Pad 5 Pro Smart Keyboard case (£299), as the name suggests, provides you with a full QWERTY keyboard and stand in a similar design to Apple’s Magic Keyboard.

The Smart Case (£29.90) provides front and back protection and an origami-style folding flag for various stand orientations.

Meanwhile, the Oppo Pencil 3 Pro (£79.90) comes with 16,000 levels of pressure sensitivity — more than the Apple Pencil series — and an industry-first felt tip for a realistic writing-on-paper-like experience.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro: Specs

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro boasts a number of key spec upgrades over its predecessor — but it's also saddled with a notable downgrade.

Oppo’s increased the screen size to 13.2 inches, and the display resolution gets a bump too, with the LCD screen now offering a 3392 x 2400 (3.4K) pixel resolution, 315 ppi, and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits.

Battery capacity is now a meaty 13,380mAh with 80W fast charging, while Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset runs the show. There’s 256GB of storage too, plus eight speakers and two microphones, all packed into a supremely slim 5.94mm body.

The downgrade comes in the RAM department. The Pad 3 Pro packed 12GB of RAM, but for the Oppo Pad 5 Pro, you’re getting just 8GB. For a tablet that’s supposedly offering a PC-level experience and plenty of AI productivity tools, this is a disappointment, but not a deal-breaker.

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Design

• Slim, premium design that looks great
• Just one color option, but Mocha Brown works
• It’s almost 100g heavier than the 13-inch iPad Pro

In the battle of the big-screen tablets, there’s not much to choose between the Apple, Oppo, and Samsung slates in terms of design.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is a great-looking and feeling premium tablet. Its flat edges mimic the latest iPad design, while its ultra-slim profile means it slips seamlessly into a bag.

At 5.94mm thick, the Pad 5 Pro is certainly slender, but it’s not as svelte as the pricier iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) or Samsung Galaxy S12 Ultra, which are both just 5.1mm slim.

This isn't a particularly big issue, although at 672g, there’s some weight behind this supersized slate: the Pad 5 Pro is almost 100g heavier than the iPad Pro 13 (M5) and its predecessor, the Pad 3 Pro. A lightweight, compact tablet this is not.

Oppo claims the all-metal unibody is designed to feel "as natural and effortless to hold as a magazine." While it’s certainly heavier than the T3 magazine I had to hand, I did enjoy holding the tablet during use. There are no sharp edges, and so long as you’re okay with the weight, it’s comfortable in the hand.

I especially liked using it in portrait when reading articles, and while the bezels around the screen might appear to be on the large side, they provided an accommodating space for my thumb to rest.

Oppo has continued the single-color trend it employed for this tablet’s predecessor, with the Pad 5 Pro available in just one hue: Mocha Brown. Now, brown isn’t the first color that jumps to mind for a tablet, but I must say it looks smart here. Plus, a single color choice at least means a simpler buying journey.

There’s a front-facing camera positioned along the landscape edge of the screen, which is the premier position for video calls when in a protective case or keyboard stand, while a pill-shaped island on the rear houses the 13MP rear snapper and flash.

The only buttons on this tablet are a power key and two volume buttons, while a USB-C port provides wired charging and data transfer access.

On the rear, you’ll also find three pogo pin connectors, allowing you to connect the tablet to the optional Smart Keyboard accessory. And on the top edge, there’s a subtle oval indentation to guide you when magnetically attaching the optional Oppo Pencil 3 Pro stylus to the slate when not in use.

Oppo’s also managed to pack eight speakers into the Pad 5 Pro, four on each short side, and there are two microphones to pick up your voice during video calls.

There’s no fingerprint scanner either under the display or built into the power switch, with Oppo instead opting for face unlock smarts.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Display

• Huge 13.2-inch, 3.4K display
• Great for multitasking, gaming, and video streaming
• Supports HDR for Netflix and Prime Video, plus Dolby Vision

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro's display measures a whopping 13.2 inches, making it bigger than Apple’s largest iPad Pro. This supersized screen ensures you have plenty of real estate for your apps, games, videos, and work tasks.

Oppo has stuck with an LCD panel for the screen here, which will likely help keep overall costs down, but it does mean you don’t get the same deep black levels as you do with Samsung’s AMOLED screens.

Resolution isn’t an issue, though, with the 3.4K panel offering a pixel density of 315ppi — that's much higher than you'll get on the pricier iPad Pro (265ppi) and Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra (239ppi).

Oppo uses what it calls the “A4 golden ratio” for the screen — specifically, it's a 7:5 screen aspect ratio that makes reading articles, checking documents, and reviewing presentations very comfortable.

The adaptive refresh rate up to 144Hz means scrolling, swiping, and sliding around the interface and apps feels fluid; great when you’re moving through long documents or fast-moving comment sections.

Fire up a streaming service, though, and 16:9 and 21:9 videos result in large black bars above and below the action. Still, this isn't deal-breaking for the experience, and with HDR for Netflix and Prime Video, along with Dolby Vision support, content looks great.

The Pad 5 Pro's large screen size means it’s an excellent tablet to use away from home, especially when on the move for work. It’s easy to run apps side-by-side without them feeling cramped, and I enjoyed using Oppo’s O+Connect software with my laptop to enable the Pad 5 Pro as a second display.

Plus, the plentiful display real estate was beneficial when I fired up PUBG: Mobile, giving me an expansive view of the battlefield and plenty of space for the on-screen buttons and HUD.

With a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, I was able to use the Pad 5 Pro outside without much in the way of reflections or glare. In direct sunlight, you might struggle to see the screen a little, but positioned on a sun lounger in the shade, this tablet works nicely.

• Display score: 4.5 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Software

• ColorOS 16 provides excellent customization and multitasking
• AI tools are included, but usefulness varies

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is an Android tablet at heart, with Oppo’s own ColorOS 16 interface laid on top. And Oppo says the tablet will get an upgrade to ColorOS 17 in November 2026.

The good news is Oppo’s UI is a highly accomplished offering these days. It’s pretty close to stock Android, while offering extra layers of customization and features on top. The result is a tablet that’s enhanced by the software Oppo makes.

If you like to fine-tune your experience, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro has plenty of options in the Settings menu, but you don't need to dive into them. This tablet also works great out of the box with the default settings.

And, mercifully, Oppo has kept pre-loaded applications to a minimum, with just a handful forced on you from the off — apps such as Netflix, WPS Office, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The good news is these can be uninstalled easily if you’d rather not have them.

I like how easy it is to get two (or three) apps side by side on screen — tap the three dots at the top of the screen when in an app, select Split View, and you're away. Coupled with the big screen, this multitasking functionality makes the Pad 5 Pro an excellent productivity machine that students and mobile workers will find intuitive and helpful.

And as I mentioned briefly in the display section, productivity can be further enhanced with O+ Connect, which allows you to sync your Mac or Windows laptop to the Pad 5 Pro to use it to transfer documents, mirror displays, or act as a second screen. It works wired and wirelessly, so you don’t need to remember cables every time.

Considering how slim the Pad 5 Pro is, it’s not a huge ask to slide this tablet into your bag with your work or study laptop, giving you excellent flexibility.

There are AI tools on board too, including the now-familiar Circle to Search feature, but Oppo also has AI Smart Circle. When using the optional Pencil 3 Pro, pressing and holding the stylus on the screen will highlight content, allowing you to annotate, save, or share it.

From there, you can access additional AI tools, including AI Painter (which helps you enhance images you find). The tools work and can be fun to use, but their mileage will vary depending on your use cases.

• Software score: 4.5 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Performance

• A mixed bag of specs, but enough power for most
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and 8GB of RAM
• Comfortably handles three apps on screen at the same time

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro performance specs are a bit of a mixed bag. First, the good: you get Qualcomm's latest, top-of-the-line chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

That means plenty of raw power under the hood and enough smarts for various AI workflows, whether you’re a Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or other LLM user.

What’s less impressive is the amount of RAM you get. With its predecessor, the Pad 3 Pro (there was no 4 model), you got 12GB of RAM. On the Pad 5 Pro, however, Oppo has downgraded this capacity to 8GB.

We can’t be too cross with Oppo, though. There’s a global shortage of RAM, which in turn is pushing up prices, and its scarcity is leaving manufacturers in a tricky position when it comes to balancing power and price.

I suspect if Oppo did include 12GB of RAM in the Pad 5 Pro, its asking price would be much higher, and to be fair to the tablet, it handled everything I threw at it with ease.

I cranked up the graphical settings on PUBG: Mobile and was able to successfully log some Winner Winner Chicken Dinner victories, while 4K video streaming from Disney Plus, Prime Video, and Netflix all worked well and looked great.

Hours of gaming, long video calls, prolonged typing of this review using the Smart Keyboard Case, and TV series binges (series two of The Gentleman, anyone?) were all taken in stride, too.

If you’re looking to complete overly complex graphical or AI tasks, though, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro may start to struggle, so consider a more powerful (and likely pricier) tablet if you fall into this category.

For those of you who do a lot of gaming, the Pad 5 Pro has Oppo’s Game Assistant, allowing you to direct maximum performance to the game you’re playing, with toggles to enhance graphics and framerate too.

And a quick word on this tablet’s eight-speaker setup. They sound great for their size, considering they’re packed into the Pad 5 Pro’s slender frame, offering rich audio and great stereo performance. They’re not going to beat a quality pair of Bluetooth headphones, but they’re more than capable for most use cases.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Battery

• Huge 13,380mAh battery
• Multi-day use from a single charge is easily achievable
• 80W fast charging, but you’ll need to provide the block

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro performs very well when it comes to battery life.

Oppo has packed a massive 13,380mAh power pack into the tablet's slender frame, and the sheer capacity on offer translates directly into impressive longevity.

An hour-long PUBG: Mobile gaming session resulted in a 7% drop in battery life, which means the Pad 5 Pro is capable of many hours of gameplay.

Loading up a Dolby Vision-supported movie on Netflix, the Pad 5 Pro dropped 9% in an hour and a half. That was with Wi-Fi connected, brightness at half, and various applications syncing in the background.

Extrapolated out, that's over 10 hours of video streaming, although Oppo claims the Pad 5 Pro can deliver up to 20 hours of video playback. That might be possible on lower brightness settings and with a film file on the tablet itself, but not through everyday streaming.

And when left idle overnight, the Pad 5 Pro lost just 1% in 12 hours.

Battery drain is similar when working and multitasking, with the Pad 5 Pro offering two days of battery life pretty consistently with multiple hours of use each day.

If you use the tablet less, though, you'll find you'll still have battery life days later.

Oppo has also equipped the Pad 5 Pro with its 80W SuperVOOC flash charging, allowing you to top up the mega battery at speed. You'll need a high-powered plug block to achieve the 80W speeds, though — and one isn't provided in the box.

I used a 100W charging block, and the Oppo Pad 5 Pro went from 46% to 54% in 10 minutes, reaching 62% after 20 minutes, and a quarter of the total capacity (3,345mAh) after 30 minutes.

These might not seem like stellar increases on paper, but when you consider the size of the battery inside the Pad 5 Pro, you’re getting hours of use from short charging sessions.

• Battery score: 4.5 / 5

Should you buy the Oppo Pad 5 Pro?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Oppo Pad 5 Pro

I used the Oppo Pad 5 Pro as my daily tablet for a week. I used it for a wide variety of activities, including reading articles, sketching with the Pencil 3 Pro, gaming, checking emails, scrolling social, and streaming TV, movies, and music.

I used the Smart Keyboard Case to type the majority of this review, and recharged the slate with slow and fast charging blocks — you’ll want to invest in an 80W+ block if you buy the Pad 5 Pro.

As part of my testing, I engaged in a mix of high- and low- usage days to get a proper sense of the Oppo Pad 5 Pro's excellent battery life. I tried the tablet's AI features and used its cameras for photography indoors and outdoors, as well as for video calls.

Read more about how we test

First tested October 2026

Cloaked is one of the most popular data removal platforms, and I’m reviewing it to help you decide if it’s your best choice. Read on to learn what Cloaked offers, its features, pricing, support, and other factors that determine if it’s worth adopting.

• How we test, review and rate on TechRadar

Cloaked: Plans and pricing

You can check out Cloaked by clicking here.

Cloaked offers flexible plans for individuals, couples, and families. Individuals pay $12.49 monthly, or a discounted price of $120 if paid annually ($10 per month, compared to the usual $12.49 monthly).

The Couple plan costs $19.99 per month and covers two users. Annual payment is discounted to $175.

The Family plan costs $30 per month and covers 4 users. If you pay annually, the price gets discounted to $300 (equivalent to $25 per month, instead of the usual $30).

Cloaked offers slightly lower prices than many competitors. I like that its pricing system isn’t differentiated by features, but by the number of users. Every plan unlocks the full feature set, with the difference being how many people it covers.

However, Cloaked doesn’t offer a free trial, which I consider a disadvantage. It previously offered a 14-day free trial, but this is no longer available. On the plus side, there’s a 30-day window to request a refund if you aren’t satisfied with the platform.

Cloaked: Setup

Cloaked has a noticeably easy setup process. Simply visit Cloaked.com and click the Get Started button at the top-right corner. You’ll be redirected to a page with two main buttons: Log In or Buy Now. Click on the latter, choose your pricing plan, and proceed to the checkout page. After paying for a plan, you can begin using the software.

I don’t like that Cloaked lacks a free trial. However, Cloaked does offer a free feature. You can scan your phone number and understand what information linked to the number is already present on the web. This scan gives a hint of what needs to be removed–since Cloaked sells the service for removing the data, this free scan incentivizes potential customers.

After the quick setup, you’re off to using Cloaked’s features. The core feature is removing data from people-finder sites, those infamous sites that curate personal information and let users access it for a fee.

Enter your name, address, or phone number, and Cloaked will scan popular data broker sites where that data is present. If found on any of them, Cloaked sends automated deletion requests to the sites. If automated requests aren't enough, Cloaked’s team sends manual deletion requests on your behalf.

Cloaked offers more than just data removal. There's a dark web monitoring service that tracks dark web leaks for your personal data, like passwords and social security numbers. If detected, you'll be immediately alerted about the leak to take corrective action.

There’s also a Call Guard for blocking spam and robocalls on your phone—this feature works when you install Cloaked on your Android or iOS smartphone. Cloaked maintains a list of numbers associated with spam and robocalls and runs every incoming call against this list—numbers found wanting are blocked from getting through.

Likewise, there’s a Cloaked virtual private network (VPN) service that encrypts your online browsing activity. It routes online traffic through virtual servers, preventing third parties from tracking your web surfing. There’s also a password manager that helps you save and retrieve passwords conveniently. All these features are offered under a single subscription, providing good value for money.

Normally, people pay separately for a VPN service, a spam call blocker, and a data removal service. Cloaked offers a cost-effective, all-in-one package.

I do have a complaint about Cloaked. Its data deletion requests cover 120+ people-finder sites, but some rivals cover a much larger number. Cloaked offers broader features than most competitors, but I think it can improve in this criterion.

Cloaked: Ease of use

Cloaked is relatively easy to use. You can access the data removal service mainly on the website. After scanning your data and sending deletion requests, you can monitor the progress of these requests from your dashboard. You’ll also receive email alerts when a request gets successfully processed.

Other features are easily accessible from Cloaked’s iOS or Android app. I found the app easy to set up, but given the numerous features I had to get used to, I’d note that users may face a steep learning curve. Expect some time to get familiar with the app’s many functionalities. All in, Cloaked scores high in the user-friendliness criterion.

Cloaked: Security and privacy

Cloaked offers a lot of features that enhance a user’s general security. It starts with the core data removal tool, which scans people-finder sites for your personal information and sends deletion requests. This tool helps keep sensitive data, like social security numbers and home addresses, off the web.

You may be wondering how something as sensitive as a social security number is available on the public web. That’s the result of data breaches. An instance occurred in 2024 when National Public Data, a background checking service, was breached, and millions of social security numbers were compromised.

The compromised data was sold on the dark web, and most U.S. residents aren’t sure if they were affected. This shows the importance of a dark web monitoring service to raise an alarm if your personal information is found on the dark web.

The Cloaked VPN helps maintain privacy as you surf the web. Your traffic gets routed through remote third-party servers with external IP addresses. This way, adware vendors, ISPs, and other third parties can’t track your browsing activities.

For maximum protection, turn on the Kill Switch feature, which automatically blocks internet access if the VPN temporarily stops working. This feature ensures no data gets leaked during temporary VPN malfunctions.

Cloaked: Support

Cloaked provides decent support resources for users. On the official Help and Support page, I found comprehensive, straightforward guides for all its core features. These guides proved helpful as a first-time user navigating Cloaked.

For direct help, users can contact Cloaked’s support team via email. However, I didn’t find telephone or live chat support options, which I consider a drawback, given the price of its plans. I’d understand if these weren’t available for free users, but for premium users, Cloaked needs to improve by providing live chat or telephone support.

Cloaked: Competition

Cloaked has a lot of competition, with Incogni and DeleteMe being two notable names. I’ve tested the three platforms and can give a fair comparison. Incogni and DeleteMe cover a much larger range of people-finder sites than Cloaked.

Officially, Incogni covers 420+ sites, and DeleteMe covers 750+, compared to Cloaked’s 120+ (these figures can get murky, as some businesses operate multiple people-finder sites under a single umbrella– a deletion request can wipe out your data from multiple people-finder sites owned by the same company).

On the other hand, Cloaked offers a broad range of complementary services that you won’t get on Incogni and DeleteMe. From a VPN to Call Guard, dark web monitoring, and even identity theft insurance, Cloaked is less of a data removal service and more of an all-in-one security software suite.

Cloaked: Final verdict

I’ll recommend Cloaked as a full-service platform that keeps you safe online. It doesn’t just help with data removal, but provides features that prevent your data from being leaked in the first place. It has some drawbacks, like the lack of a free trial, but it’s a reliable tool overall.

For more top picks, we've tested the best data removal services.

But time waits for no computer program, and as version 27 has recently been released, I thought it was time to check how it has improved.

Movavi Video Editor 27: Pricing & plans

• Subscription is fairly priced
• Perpetual license is way more expensive for Americans
• Free trial available

You can grab Movavi Video Editor 27 from the official site by clicking here.

Let’s face it: everything’s getting more expensive. Whether it’s food, petrol, or subscriptions, the price keeps going ever higher, so it was with trepidation that I looked at Movavi’s current pricing structure.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom: Movavi have actually lowered their prices. Should you decide to pay monthly for your video editor, you’ll need to fork out $20, €19 or £18, but the big incentive is to pay yearly, as it’s only $55, €44, or £41, which is a little over 2 months’ worth.

It’s not as cheap as free of course (like DaVinci Resolve), but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than Adobe Premiere Pro (which would set you back $276 each year).

If you’d rather pay once and actually own the software you’re downloading, a perpetual licence is also available for £150, €90 or £90 (the massive discrepancy between currencies is… puzzling).

And perhaps best of all, the software is multi-platform, allowing you to work with it, whether you use a PC or a Mac.

If you’re not sure about investing in this application, there’s a free trial you can access. A watermark will be added to any output, and your projects are limited to 60 seconds in length. Still, it should be enough to give you an idea of what you can do with Movavi Video Editor.

• Score: 4/5

Movavi Video Editor 27: Getting started

• The software still doesn’t know which language your OS is set to
• So it defaults to Japanese

Last time I checked out Movavi, back when it was on version 25, I made a point of stating that unusually, the first time you launch the software, you’re not greeted with an interface in your own native tongue, or at the very least in English.

Instead, all the menus are in Japanese. That’s not an issue if you know that language, but if you’re more familiar with those that use the Latin alphabet, you’re faced with an unexpected challenge.

Thankfully, if you grab a screenshot of the interface and submit it to Google Translate, the solution will become more obvious, and changing the default language then becomes a trivial matter. But it’s disappointing to see that after all this time, Movavi still treats this as a feature, not a bug.

Software should be able to detect the OS’s chosen language and default to that when you launch it. I’m surprised Movavi still insists on making life difficult for many of its customers.

• Score: 2.5/5

Movavi Video Editor 27: Editing

• Excellent video editor with a wealth of useful, powerful, and well implemented tools
• Shame so many of them are locked behind subscription plans

Initial frustrations aside, when it comes to video editing - what the software is designed for - Movavi Video Editor does a sterling job. It starts with mousing over an imported clip in the media section. Doing that allows you to preview the clip as you move the cursor over it, enabling you to set in and out points with ease.

You can work with multiple layers of course, although there is a base layer beneath which you can’t add other clips, which can be a little annoying if you like to create complex projects and move clips around a lot.

There are Titles, Transitions, Effects, and Elements aplenty, all organised by category with a handy search field available, although many of those are restricted behind a paywall. These are identified by a little ‘crown’ logo, top right of their thumbnails.

You can still use them in your project, but you’ll be informed upon export that you need to purchase a subscription to be able to share any video with them in it, for either €36 a month, or €110 a year, which, I’m sure you can tell, is much more expensive than the actual program itself. This can be annoying but it’s entirely possible to restrict yourself to non-premium assets by setting the filter for each section to ‘free’.

The Tools section houses important features, such as image stabilisation, background removal, green green work, and an AI-based subtitle feature which worked incredibly well when I tried it out. Thankfully, everything stored in that section is part of the software’s base cost.

But all of this was already part of Movavi Video Editor. The big innovation that’s being introduced in version 27, is Templates.

• Score: 4/5

Movavi Video Editor 27: Templates

• Templates offers a great and versatile way to spice up your project
• Can be used wholesale or just choosing just the parts you’re interested in

The concept of Templates is pretty clever: editing can be hard and time consuming, and if you just want to put something out there but lack the skills or experience, it can really be a chore. So Movavi have created a large collection of ready-made templates which you can add to your project. One template could be your entire video, or alternatively, be part of a larger one. It’s also entirely possible to add multiple templates to the same project.

These are organised into 12 categories, from Beauty and Fashion, to Gaming, to Marketing and Promo, and more. And it probably won’t surprise you to know that nearly all these templates include some premium features of some kind, although each category has at least one free option for you to choose.

Dragging a template to a project expands it into various sections, each of which lets you know how many placeholders within it need to be replaced. Some sections don’t give you the option to replace theirs which is odd, but it’s a simple matter of deleting them entirely and adding one of your own clips in their place.

As for actually replacing those placeholders, it wasn’t as intuitive as I had expected, but once you’re aware of the concept, the process is quite simple: click on the ‘clips to replace’ text on the section’s representation in your timeline, to reveal the placeholder’s large thumbnail above it.

Clicking on that thumbnail opens a window containing all the media you imported into this project. Select the one you want, choose the part of it you’d like to use, and click on ‘Apply’. Repeat that for every placeholder.

Need more customisation? Double-click on a Template’s Section to reveal its ‘Clip Settings’. In addition to offering you another way to replace those placeholder clips, you also have other options, such as customising the text fields, or checking the applied effects, for instance.

These templates also come with a soundtrack which you’re free to use or discard, just like you can reorder or delete the sections it came with, which actually allows you to mix and match parts of different templates to create your own unique project in minutes rather than hours.

I found it a great fun way to quickly build something original.

• Score: 4.5/5

Should I buy Movavi Video Editor 27?

Buy it if...

You’re into video editing and are looking for an affordable application that will let you do just that, and you appreciate the addition of versatile and customisable templates to speed up your work.

Don't buy it if...

You don’t spend enough time editing video to warrant paying for such software, so you’d rather find something that’s free, even if it means having fewer tools at your disposal.

How I tested Movavi Video Editor 27

Movavi Video Editor is multi-platform, being compatible with Windows and Macs alike, which is a great thing (sorry Linux users). I always like to test such software primarily with the underdog (or I prefer just Macs… you decide).

In this instance, I put it through its paces on a recent laptop sporting Apple Silicon, as based on my previous exploration of this software when it was at version 25, I had concluded it needed a ‘decently powerful machine’ to run effectively.

The software ran incredibly smoothly and was very responsive. I particularly liked the way it looks but, to be honest, that could be due to the fact the interface, and even the way the clips are presented in the timeline, resembles Final Cut Pro, one of my preferred video editing platforms.

For more creative apps, we've tested and reviewed the best video editing software, the best free video editing software, and the best video editing apps for mobile devices.

This review covers the four-bay ‘Creator NAS’ as Beelink calls it, which is available in two SKUs and uses the Intel Core i5-13500H mobile processor. But Beelink has five ‘Home NAS’ options below that one, using the Intel J5005, N95, N150 and Core 304 processors. And another two higher-end options with AMD Ryzen AI 350 and AI 470 class processors.

The four-bay enclosure is a compact all-metal unibody, measuring 165 x 121 x 185mm and weighing 2.4kg without drives. Beelink says it is 50 per cent smaller in volume than a conventional design, and compared to anything by Synology or QNAP, it’s certainly much smaller.

Inside, an internal blower on the motherboard module pulls cool air in and pushes it out to keep everything cool, and the milled aluminium construction also helps radiate heat. Silicone mounts sit either side of each drive and between the case and the motherboard tray, reducing vibration and noise

The review unit, with its Intel Core i5 13500H, has 12 cores, 16 threads and a 45W TDP. It comes with 32GB of DDR4, a 500GB system SSD and four M.2 slots. Beelink pitches it at creative professionals, and this is a great spec for those who need large amounts of fast storage for video editing or maintaining photo collections.

Earlier Beelink NAS used the FygoOS operating system, and it’s also in this NAS. It is flexible and well-featured, and it makes the ME Pro feel like a platform rather than an appliance. The evolution of this aspect is impressive, and FygoOS delivers many of the higher-end features that some NAS products lack.

However, there is one caveat. This is a Kickstarter launch product; therefore, a pledge is not a purchase, and delivery dates can slip. Buyers need to weigh that, but so far I’m impressed with this NAS on several critical levels. And if the Kickstarter goes well and this hardware ends up in the retail channel, it might be included in our best NAS devices.

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $819
• When is it out? On Kickstarter soon
• Where can you get it? Only on Kickstarter initially

The ME Pro range is listed as coming soon on Kickstarter. Beelink is offering a Super Early Bird discount of 30 per cent. Prices are in US dollars, and drives are not included.

The 13500H four-bay costs $819 at Super Early Bird and $1,169 at list. All four-bay prices are below, Super Early Bird first, then list.

A $10 VIP deposit before launch unlocks a free four-bay upgrade. And if you back the two-bay tier machine, you will receive the four-bay model at the same price.

Given what some of these designs include in processing power and memory, these are mostly excellent deals. Specifically, $819 for the Creator NAS seems like exceptional value.

• Value: 4.5 / 5

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Specs

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Design

• Drawer concept
• Easy access to some upgrades
• Lots of screws

The drawer-style design is a neat idea: it uses almost the same mechanism as the drives, but replicated on the motherboard, which slides out for maintenance and upgrades.

That should make a processor upgrade a far simpler job than in a normal NAS. Beelink has also hinted at AMD and ARM boards in the same chassis. If you own a four-bay, you could buy a different two-bay and swap the platforms, in theory.

The unibody metal case is milled from solid aluminium and makes for a small footprint for a four-bay NAS. It’s also quiet enough that this could sit on a desktop.

Cooling relies on one internal blower rather than a bank of case fans, and when the motherboard module is removed, the dual-sided design is clearly influenced by Beelink’s mini PC designs.

Access to the two M.2 2280 Gen4 slots is super-simple, and they come with their own chunky heatsinks to help remove heat with the help of the fan assembly. There are two other M.2 slots (Gen 3 x2), one of these being occupied by the FygoOS installation, but getting those requires removing the fan.

Since the unused third slot doesn’t run at the same speed as the two easily accessible ones, it probably wouldn’t be a good plan to try to make a RAID array of the three, but that slot might be useful for a caching SSD.

What I’m less impressed with is that the trays aren't tool-less for either 3.5- or 2.5-inch mechanisms. Each drive needs four screws, and once installed, two more hold it in place from the back of the tray.

The designers' issue here was that if they used a tool-less tray and a more elegant lock, then the NAS would be bigger, and the designers didn’t care for that. They also used four of these tiny screws to hold the motherboard tray in place, and these screws are easy to misplace.

One annoyance is that, to hold the thin steel air filter on the rear of the NAS, ten small magnets are glued into the chassis. They are placed within 4mm of where the screws hold the trays in, which inevitably means that when you go to screw them in, the magnets pull the screw off the screwdriver before you can thread it.

In short, the filter didn’t need that many magnets, and they didn’t need to be where the tray screws are.

The fine irony of all these screws is that the enclosure tolerances are so good that the screws holding the trays in and the motherboard are mostly pointless, certainly with the numbers used.

These points aside, the ME Pro is better built than most NAS enclosures, even if some compromises have been made to keep it so small.

• Design: 4 / 5

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Features

• Intel Core 5 13500H CPU
• Up to 96GB of memory
• AI capabilities are limited

As a laptop processor, the Core 5 13500H was a strong platform sporting 12 cores total (4 Performance-cores with Hyper-Threading and 8 Efficient-cores) and 16 threads. As is the way with Intel 13th Gen technology, the performance-cores boost at a higher level, up to 4.7 GHz; and the efficient-cores boost at lower levels, up to 3.5 GHz.

All cores share an 18 MB Intel Smart Cache, and the chip has a base power TDP of 45W.

Some laptop designs using this chip scaled power up to 115W, but from what I understand, the ME Pro has more than enough performance at its base wattage.

The review hardware came with two 16GB DDR4-3200 modules providing 32GB, but if you can find them, this system could take dual 48GB modules for 96GB in total. It’s a shame Beelink didn’t use LPDDR5 for faster performance and lower power consumption, but the cost was probably prohibitive when these decisions were made.

The GPU is an Intel Iris Xe Graphics with 80 execution units running up to 1.45 GHz, and it shares memory with the rest of the platform.

The best aspect of this processor, aside from its high core count, is its PCIe lanes: 28 total. In this design, not all 28 lanes are created equal.

Eight primary lanes are Gen5, eight secondary lanes are Gen4, and all sixteen lanes are CPU-attached. The final twelve lanes route through the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) to handle slower or secondary peripherals (like Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, audio controllers, USB extensions, or secondary M.2 storage slots), and these are all Gen3.

That’s a terrific amount of bandwidth, and it enables dual M.2 Gen 4 x4, two more M.2 Gen3, a 10GbE LAN port and a 2.5GbE LAN port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and three USB 3.2 Gen2 ports. That’s plenty for most people, as you can use the Thunderbolt port as a 40Gbps network connection if needed.

Overall, the architecture choices in this NAS are right for demanding workloads like video editing, photo manipulation, and software development, thanks to its hybrid core layout.

However, only the Ryzen AI models are sold specifically for local language models. The 13500H review unit is not one of them, and Beelink lists no AI performance figure for it. The AI 470 is quoted at up to 86 TOPS, with that number assembled from an NPU with 55 TOPS and a CPU and GPU combined for 32 TOPS.

Therefore, if you intend to run AI models on the NAS, one of the AMD machines would be preferable to this system.

• Features: 4 / 5

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Software

• FygoOS
• Docker and virtual machines
• Ollama options

FygoOS is the international face of a Chinese NAS solution that has surfaced in the past year. Its parent is fnOS, also called Feiniu Private Cloud. I believe a small team of NAS enthusiasts built it around Debian Linux, and it is closed source. During its public beta, it was offered as a free option for Chinese home users.

Reviews for this platform only began in early July 2026. Early adopters found a new NAS OS in version 1.2 and the FygoTV app in 0.9. The name hints at open source, but it is a proprietary system built partly on open source parts, with GPL source releases still in progress. It runs on x86 and ARM hardware and offers ZFS, Btrfs and ext4 storage. The changelog shows active development.

During my time with the ME Pro 4, it had several releases; I used version 1.2.0800, and FygoTV was 0.9.7-3.

FygoOS is the beating heart of the ME Pro, and it aims at beginners while leaving room for experts. Beelink says apps install with one click and update the same way. It lists official and community apps for media, backup, productivity and virtualisation.

For what appears to be a relatively new NAS OS, this all seems much more advanced than I’d normally expect, both in application selection and feature set.

As far as I’m aware, FygoOS is the only other hardware-included NAS OS with ZFS file system support other than QNAP QuTS hero. You can get this feature via Unraid, TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault, among other places, but you would be installing them onto this hardware to replace FygoOS.

Included in the selection of apps is a powerful photo and media search tool. It can use AI to rapidly find images using facial recognition and smart categorisation. The private cinema feature matches metadata automatically, and Beelink claims up to 99 per cent accuracy in identifying the content. It also syncs playback between devices and supports real-time hardware transcoding.

However, I was disappointed that, as nice as some of these tools are, Beelink missed a few tricks. One is the HDMI port, which is promoted as supporting up to 4K output. That might be true, but it can’t be driven by the Fygo TV app to play files directly onto a TV. That’s something you can do with a Ugreen or Asustor NAS, but not this.

But there are a few things it can do that are more exclusive. One of the more surprising features of this platform is the collaborative media workspace.

Teams can preview video, photos, audio, documents, fonts and 3D files without downloading them. AI search finds content by meaning, not just file names. You can send a review link, and reviewers add comments, annotations and timestamped notes. Sharing supports access controls, expiry dates, watermarks and branding.

The only caveat is that the features are tiered, with the best ones requiring a subscription.

The personal tier is included in all ME Pro. The business tier comes with a 30-day free trial on the J5005, N95, N150 and 304 models. The 13500H and both Ryzen AI models get six months free. But, and this is a concern, Beelink has not said what the business tier costs afterwards. I’d hate to use this for six months, find it incredibly useful and then discover that the monthly cost is too high to make it practical.

Being an Intel-based platform, and not ARM, this NAS supports virtualisation and with 32GB of RAM it is relatively easy to have several VT instances running. And, it has Docker, expanding the amount of software that can run on this platform dramatically.

It was interesting to note that while the hardware used here, specifically the Core i5 13500H, doesn’t have an NPU, it is a reasonably powerful processor and it has Iris Xe graphics, which can be used to process AI LLMs.

The standard application set includes Ollama, and I was able to install it and use it to run a local model like Gemma. While it wasn’t the fastest response, it did work quite well, so using this machine for AI isn’t impossible.

Obviously, if you want to use the NAS as an AI assistant, the two models with AMD Ryzen AI processors are a better choice, but even without a dedicated NPU, this hardware can run some AI and support interactive chats without relying on the Cloud.

• Software: 4 / 5

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Performance

• Overkill for file serving
• 10GbE and 2.5GbE
• Lacks channel bonding

When I started testing this NAS, I soon realised the platform was largely twiddling its thumbs during large file transfers. Using the 2.5GbE LAN port, no SSD cache and four 4TB drives in a RAID 5 pack, the CPU barely hit 9% usage. And that was shipping a file from my desktop PC at around 290MB/s.

Using the 10GbE port increased transfer speeds to nearly 700MB/s, but only added a few percentage points of CPU overhead. With an SSD, this machine can get closer to 1000MB/s, either directly or by allocating the SSD for reading and writing cache.

Four 3.5-inch drives don’t have enough performance to fully saturate the 10GbE link without cache support, so adding an SSD is more of a necessity if you're involved in file serving.

Gen4 x4 M.2 slots are great for internal SSD performance, but there aren’t many practical ways to use that bandwidth from the outside other than the Thunderbolt 4 port.

But unfortunately, the Thunderbolt port on this NAS doesn’t yet support Host mode, even though it is listed as a feature that’s ‘under development’ on the official FygoOS roadmap.

Also, while the networking functions enable Multi-gateway mode, where the LAN ports route according to the shortest path to the target system, there is currently no link aggregation/channel bonding. I don’t think channel bonding a 10GbE and a 2.5GbE line together is a good idea anyway, but FygoOS currently doesn’t have the necessary interfaces for this.

Because FygoOS is built on a Linux base, users looking to combine multiple network interfaces typically have to configure network bonding manually via SSH or underlying Linux networking tools rather than a native settings panel.

On a more positive note, I used a cheap Ugreen USB-A to 2.5GbE LAN port (CM648), and that worked perfectly for what is an incredibly inexpensive option. I know that Ugreen makes a 5GbE version of this adapter, and I suspect that would also be useful in this context.

Ideally, this system would have dual 10GbE and SMB multi-channel mode, but in most other respects, this NAS is overpowered for most roles.

• Performance: 4 / 5

Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition: Final verdict

Buy it if you want a compact NAS that you can upgrade later and you like the idea of a modern, flexible OS. Beelink pitches the 13500H model to creative professionals, and it has the core count to back it up.

That said, the four-bay market is crowded. Alternatives include the Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus and Pro, the Synology DS925+ and the UniFi UNAS Pro 4. Breaking down the ups and downs of each design would take another article, but to cover the basics, none of them matches the ME Pro 4-Bay Creator Edition.

The Ugreen NAS units are cheaper, use DDR5 and include special features like SMB Multichannel and HDMI video playback, which makes them useful.

Synology’s DS925+ uses a much weaker AMD Ryzen V1500B quad-core CPU, only has dual 2.5GbE LAN ports, comes with 4GB of RAM expandable to 32GB, and has two M.2 slots that can only use Synology-branded storage. That machine supports ECC memory, but that and the DSM OS are the only real positives.

The UniFi UNAS Pro 4 is meant for racks, not shelves, and is an ARM SoC system that supports four HDDs, two M.2 NVMe SSDs, and 2x 10Gb SFP+ LAN ports.

It’s cheap, around $600, but the 8GB memory can’t be upgraded, and the ARM architecture doesn’t support Virtual Machines.

What I haven't considered are the Asustor Lockerstor 4 models, QNAP, and TerraMaster options, to name a few. But to generalise, most 4-bay NAS don’t compete on processing power, memory capacity, and build quality.

The fly in this ointment is that until this product exits the Kickstarter campaign and people have them longer term, will they be able to establish a reputation, good or bad.

I haven't had any issues with the machine Beelink sent, and with a few more updates to FygoOS, it could become a useful NAS to own.

But for those who have had bad Kickstarter experiences, wait if you need proven reliability. This is a new product on a crowdfunding platform, and the modular upgrade path is so far a promise. But as a first-generation device, the Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition is certainly heading in the right direction.

Should you buy a Beelink ME Pro Creator Edition?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

For more NAS solutions we've collated the best NAS hard drives around

The world is not short of little DAC/headphone amps that want to bring a taste of authentic audio quality to your desktop experience — and here’s another one. The Topping DX1 II is a thorough update of a previous (and very competitive) in the Chinese brand's stable, and it makes a strong case for itself even before it’s started doing its thing.

The aluminum casework looks and feels good and the on-paper specification is difficult to lay a glove on. It includes — deep breath — a very hi-res ESS DAC, carefully considered digital and analog architecture, USB-C for both power and data, sufficient grunt to drive most headphones without difficulty, a fistful of input and output options (including balanced analog connectivity), and the facility for plenty of end-user input where sound is concerned. The standard of construction and finish is more than adequate. And a little remote control handset takes some of the pressure off an overworked physical control interface.

The difference the DX1 II can make to your audio experience when it sits between, say, your laptop and the headphones that are plugged into it is fairly profound. The Topping is by no means perfect — it doesn’t attack the top of the frequency range quite as willingly as it might, and it doesn’t have the heft to make big dynamic variations as apparent as they might be — but it’s a far more convincing and well-realized listen than your laptop alone has a hope of being. Soundstaging, rhythmic expression, detail levels and all-around musicality all enjoy a big uptick, and the way the DX1 II handles a tonal balance is one of the most uncomplicatedly enjoyable things about it.

The Topping DX1 II hasn’t closed the door on other desktop-friendly headphone amp/DAC units at similar money, but it’s certainly made sure it’s on the inside of the conversation for the best on the market.

Topping DX1 II review: Price & release date

• Announced on May 18, 2026 (with availability from late June/July 2026)
• Priced $119 / £119 (around AU$169)

The Topping DX1 II is on sale now, and in the United States it costs $119. It’s £119 in the United Kingdom, while in Australia it goes for around AU$169.

So, it's a little pricier than the oh-so-portable iFi Go Link Max and the bigger, hip-flask-esque iFi Uno, say, but an awful lot cheaper than the also-new iFi iDSD GR2.

What exactly are you getting for your money if you go for the Topping? Read on.

Topping DX1 II review: Features

• ESS ES9039Q2M DAC
• Balanced and unbalanced outputs
• UAC 1.0 and UAC 2.0

There’s something quite admirable about the way Topping has specified the DX1 II — I’ve used bigger and more expensive DAC/headphone amps that don’t come close to the level of this little device.

It’s built around a very capable ESS ES90392QM DAC chipset and features dual-DAC architecture with a dedicated digital-to-analog converter for each channel, plus fully independent processing. Digital files of up to 32bit/384kHz and DSD256 are supported.

A 16-core XMOS XU-316 assists with signal processing — just as with the dual-DAC arrangement and the fully balanced analog stage, the idea is to keep noise and distortion to an absolute minimum.

Digital audio information can be delivered using either the digital optical input or the USB-C slot on the rear of the Topping. The USB-C input also provides power to the device. Outputs consist of an unbalanced 3.5mm headphone socket, a couple of balanced 4.4mm alternatives (one for headphones, the other for connecting the DX1 II to a system, a powered speaker or what-have-you) and a line-level analog output on stereo RCAs.

There’s an optical output in case the digital signal needs to be preserved, and a switch to toggle between UAC 1.0 and UAC 2.0 — the first setting allows the Topping to be compatible with, say, the Nintendo Switch and the Sony PlayStation 5.

Topping has made provision for an awful lot of end-user input into the way the DX1 II performs. Connect it to a computer and you can access both the ‘Home Web’ platform (from where stuff like gain can be adjusted and no fewer than eight distinct digital filters are available) and ‘Topping Tune’. This uses a simple drag-n-drop interface to allow the user to easily create and adjust PEQ settings — frequency, gain and bandwidth control across 10 bands (with independent left and right channel adjustment) can be tweaked and settings saved. It’s available across each of the DX1 II’s outputs.

• Features score: 5 / 5

Topping DX1 II review: Sound quality

• Impressively detailed, easy-going sound
• Pleasant tonal balance
• Could easily sound more dynamic

It’s possible to make quite significant changes to the ultimate sound of the DX1 II, of course — those digital filters have a slight effect, but go crazy with the PEQ and you can achieve some pretty obvious alternations. What you can’t do, though, is defeat the things the Topping does well or fully correct its shortcomings.

With a 24bit/48kHz FLAC file of The Record by Boygenius playing in the Tidal desktop app and incoming via USB-C, it doesn’t take long at all to appreciate the facility the DX1 II has with detail retrieval. It’s alert to even the most minor, most subtle occurrences in the recording, keeps an eye on the low-level dynamics of harmonic over- and undertones, and deals with transients confidently too. It gives these details good weighting, so the emphasis is always on the music and not solely on how deeply into it the Topping can peer.

The tonal balance it strikes is naturalistic and pleasant, and its over-all character is, in the most positive way, easy-going and quite laid-back. It can do ‘urgency’ if it absolutely has to, of course, but its fundamental attitude is one that’s not in any way fatiguing. At no point is the Topping likely to grab you by the lapels — it’s altogether too grown-up and, again in a positive way, polite for that sort of behavior.

Some of this comes about because of its relative lack of dynamic impetus. The headline dynamics of ‘quiet’ and ‘LOUD!’ in a 16bit/44.1kHz file of Life Metal by Sunn O))) are somewhat flattened by the slight shortage of headroom the DX1 II exhibits. The distance between these two positions is not as pronounced as it is when described by a DAC/headphone amp that breathes a little more deeply. Some of it is due to the Topping’s slight-but-definite tendency to roll off the highest frequencies. There’s acceptable extension into the top end, but not quite the attack or even assertiveness that makes treble sounds properly bite and shine.

Elsewhere, though, the DX1 II is on firmer ground. It has a good understanding of rhythm and tempo, and controls its low-frequency activity to the point that there’s a proper sensation of fluency to the way rhythms are expressed. It can open up a soundstage to the point that even quite complex recordings get a little elbow-room, and the stage is also controlled well. And it’s worth noting that, unlike a couple of nominal rivals, the DX1 II doesn’t alter its behavior depending on the volume you’re listening at — even when playing very quietly or really quite loud, its sonic stance remains consistent.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Topping DX1 II review: Design

• 275g
• Aluminum chassis
• 32 x 100 x 100mm (HxWxD)

The DX1 II is usefully compact (just 32 x 100 x 100mm, HxWxD), so won’t hog space on your desktop or equipment rack. Built mostly from machined aluminum, it’s very well-made and finished — its edges are nicely rounded and it’s not remotely sharp at any of its corners.

At 275g, it’s unlikely to be towed around your desktop by heavy-cabled headphones, either. Only the fact that some of the socketry is quite close together on the rear panel (which is inevitable, really) precludes the use of chunkier, more premium cables and constitutes any kind of issue.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Topping DX1 II review: Usability & setup

• LED display
• Remote control handset
• Overworked fascia control dial

The majority of the fascia is occupied by a relatively large and gratifyingly legible LED display — volume level, selected input and what-have-you is all revealed. There’s also a relatively large turn/press dial that covers a lot of the device's functions. In all honesty, the dial is not especially intuitive when you want to do anything beyond change input or adjust volume — so it’s just as well Topping provides a little remote control handset that makes getting at your EQs, and all the rest of it, quite a lot more straightforward.

Set-up is the work of a moment, of course. You’ll need to connect the USB-C slot to a source of power — maybe this is also your source of music, if it isn’t then your source will need to be connected to the optical input. Then you need to connect the DX1 II to its output device — headphones, probably, or maybe the stereo RCA outputs to an amplifier or powered speaker. And then you’re in business.

• Usability & setup score: 4 / 5

Topping DX1 II review: Value

• Small but feels premium
• Good standard of build
• Out-and-out sound quality not up there (but you won't feel short-changed)

It may only be tiny, but Topping has managed to make the DX1 II feel and, to a lesser extent, look like it deserves to cost three figures. The standard of build is well up to snuff, too — and when you take the thoroughgoing nature of its specification into account, too, the sensation of value for money is hard to argue with.

The value proposition isn’t quite so cut-and-dried when it comes to out-and-out sound quality - but even here the DX1 II does more than enough right to prevent you feeling short-changed.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Topping DX1 II?

Buy it if…

Don't buy it if…

Topping DX1 II review: Also consider

It’s more affordable than the DX1 II — and it looks and feels it, too — but the iFi Uno is a high-achieving little device that offers a direct, confident and information-rich sound no matter the source of music it’s connected to.

How I tested the Topping DX1 II

I used the Topping DX1 II with an Apple MacBook Pro — connecting to the USB-C slot allowed for data transfer and power supply at the same time, and gave access to numerous music streaming services.

I connected a pair of Sennheiser IE900 wired in-ear headphones to the unbalanced 3.5mm output, and also to the balanced 4.4mm output (the Sennheiser have a selection of cables with different terminations).

I also connected a Sony PlayStation 5 via the optical input and sent the DX1 II output signal to the preamp in my reference system via its RCA outputs.

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

The Seagate One Touch 4TB is a relatively nondescript-looking portable HDD which is bus-powered directly through the USB-C data cable. The drive is relatively compact and slips easily into a laptop bag or pocket, making it highly portable. Whilst the exterior casing is mid-grey plastic, it’s nicely finished and feels robust.

This portable drive features an HDD rather than an SSD, which does make this drive cheaper than some of the latest ultrafast drives I’ve looked at recently. Even so, at £179/US$199 at the time of writing this review, it’s still relatively expensive. For that money, you get the drive itself and a short 50cm USB-C cable to connect it to your machine.

Getting started is easy: the drive comes formatted in exFAT, so it’s easily recognised on Mac, PC, and Linux systems. Opening on either iOS or Windows machines reveals free software that guides you through initial registration, downloads the Security Toolkit, and highlights partner deals Seagate has set up with Adobe, Synology, and Mylio.

In this review, I’ve downloaded and installed the Toolkit, which is basically split into two parts. It includes a backup feature, which lets you choose different backup options for your computer and drive, and a security option, which lets you add a password and encrypt the drive’s contents.

Alongside those software options, there are also partner deals, and all offer a limited trial period before you have to move to a full subscription. However, the Synology Deep Search is well worth mentioning. Whilst you only get six months of free use before needing to pay, if you need to manage multiple files and have a search feature driven by AI that is far better than your standard search options, especially on a Mac, then this really might be of interest.

As a standard portable HDD, the 4TB capacity is perfect if you work with media files and need space for HD and 4K video. Whilst HDD technology limits speed, the benchmarking tests still showed impressive transfer rates, reaching over 140MB/s in some tests for both read and write.

That transfer speed let me edit 4K footage shot on the GoPro Mission 1 ILS directly from the drive in Final Cut Pro X, and while the machine and drive occasionally had to catch up, editing a five-minute production was extremely smooth.

Its real strength, however, is securely backing up your laptop or desktop data, and the included Toolkit software lets you run through a series of setup options with easy-to-follow prompts that work on both Mac and PC.

Unlike many HDD and SSD portable drives that offer software encryption, this drive offers hardware AES 256-bit encryption that is managed through the Seagate Toolkit software. For my money, that makes it one of the best external hard drives for security. Through that software, you can encrypt the drive with a password lock. Because this security is hardware-based rather than software, it also meant that, through the benchmarking, when I tested the drive before and after the hardware encryption had been activated, the performance difference was minimal.

It’s obvious from the aesthetics and material choices that this is a mid-range portable HDD, but the tests impressed me with its performance and overall quality. I'd definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a middle-of-the-road, no-frills, high-capacity HDD for general storage and backup, with the real value here being the Toolkit included with the drive.

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From £95
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Seagate and online retailers.

At present, the Seagate One Touch portable HDD is available in two different capacities - 2TB and 4TB, which retail for $160 and $200 respectively. In the UK, it's priced at £112 and £176.

You can buy it direct from the Seagate website, where you'll also find a list of all stockists, which includes most major main online retailers.

It comes in three colors: blue, grey, and white.

• Value: 5 / 5

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Specs

Drive Type: Portable external HDD
Storage Capacity: 2TB or 4TB
Interface: USB-C
Power: USB-powered, no external adapter required
Dimensions (2TB): 117 × 81 × 14mm
Weight (2TB): 156g
Compatibility: Windows and macOS
Security: Password protection and hardware encryption
Backup Software: Seagate Toolkit

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Design

Lifting the drive from the box, and the 4TB version I’m looking at feels nice and tactile, with a wave surface texture that adds a little interest to the mid-grey colouring. The full build is plastic, yet it feels decent enough, with a single USB-C port at the back and, thankfully, a small white indicator LED right next to it.

In terms of size and weight, it’s just a little larger than the compact 2.5-inch laptop-style HDD inside, with the casing measuring 115.3 × 80 × 20.9mm. The 4TB version I’ve looked at in this review weighs 268g. The USB-C cable is a bit longer than the ones I’ve seen with some other portable drives recently, measuring 50cm, which gives good reach to a desktop mini PC or laptop, depending on what you’re using.

Whilst the One Touch name initially suggests fingerprint security, it actually refers to the company’s product line that offers one-click backup for your files. It also offers automatic backup folder mirroring and is plug-and-play, so the name really reflects how simple the drive is to use.

Alongside the hardware comes a software suite, with installers on the drive's root that you can run once you plug it in. The drive comes pre-formatted in exFAT, but you can reformat it to match your native OS, Mac or PC.

The software installer lets you install the files you need for the more advanced backup and security features, and I liked how streamlined the installation process was, with it guiding you through the initial setup step by step.

• Design: 4 / 5

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Features

The Seagate One Touch portable external hard drive is sold by the company as a premium portable, on-the-go backup solution, designed to be used equally in the home or out and about.

This high-capacity portable hard drive comes with software options ready to install. These let you back up and secure your files, while software partnerships offer extended trial periods for apps to help you manage and organise files on the drive and on your host machine.

The drive is available in three colour options: dark blue, space grey, and white. It’s also provided with a long USB-C cable, at 50cm, that runs from the drive to your host machine. This means your machine needs a USB-C port to work with this drive.

The drive comes with bundled software, including the Seagate Toolkit, which requires registration but no other subscription costs. There’s also a two-month trial of Adobe Creative Cloud Pro, and six-month trials of Mylio and Synology Deep Search. You also get the superb Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Service. If the worst happens to your files, you can send the drive to Seagate, and they will see if they can recover anything that still exists.

While this drive can be used as a portable working drive, Seagate has marketed this as a portable backup solution, and as such, it doesn’t highlight the transfer rate. However, with USB 3.2 Gen 1, essentially USB 3, you can expect a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5Gbps, 625MB/s.

However, since this contains an HDD, we can expect transfer rates between 120 and 150MB/s, which suggests Seagate matched the internal hardware and USB interface to maximise performance for its intended use as a portable backup rather than a working drive.

• Features: 5 / 5

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Performance

Getting started with the Seagate One Touch 4TB portable HDD is as easy as with any portable drive, and in this test, I used it on the MacBook Pro M1 Max and the HP EliteBook XG 21 laptop, along with a series of mini PCs.

As I moved from macOS to Windows 11 Pro and Home, the Seagate One Touch performed similarly across all operating systems, which is great to see, and the simple USB-C connection was fully compatible with all the operating systems I tried.

Because the drive came pre-formatted in exFAT, it was instantly recognised on both Mac and PC. I first installed the software on the MacBook Pro M1 Max to check out the backup options and security features, and I was impressed by how easy it was to set up.

The initial stage requires you to register the drive and create a Seagate account, but once that’s done, it guides you through downloading the Seagate Toolkit installer, installing it, and then walking you through the setup options one after the other.

For backup on the Mac, even though I have Time Machine activated, I selected a portion of my MacBook Pro’s hard drive, and once that initial setup was complete, the backup process started. What I like about the Toolkit is that it’s quick to access, and you can edit your backup plan at any time.

Another point is that if you need to use the machine during a backup, as I did when I initially set up the plan, you can pause it so it doesn’t slow down your system, then restart it later. You can then schedule it to run overnight when you’re not using the machine.

Likewise, on the PC, which doesn’t have such a sophisticated backup system as part of the OS, you can choose to mirror your mini PC, desktop, or laptop hard drive, and the registration and initiation process is just as easy.

The second part of the included software is the security option, which uses AES 256-bit encryption and is activated through the Security Toolkit on both Mac and PC. It takes a little more setup, you need to enable certain security options and unplug and re-plug the drive for the installation to complete.

But again, it’s extremely well documented, and the software guides you through every step, including adding an email address and phone number in case you forget the password you set.

As backup software and an off-the-shelf, easy-to-use solution, this is as good as any paid option out there and is certainly easy to get your head around.

Those two bits of bundled software really do balance the added cost of a standard 4TB portable HDD, and if you are looking for something cheaper, Seagate does make cheaper portable HDDs with this capacity. If you’re using this for business or your home office, I would highly recommend paying the extra for those security and backup features, since you’re only paying an extra $40 / £40 compared with the non-secure options.

When it comes to performance, I used the drive for quick video editing in Final Cut Pro X and then CapCut, using files from the GoPro Mission 1 ILS. I was impressed by how fast this drive’s transfer rates were, both reading the files from the drive and writing the final render back to it during the test.

I started with a simple HD edit, and even with footage shot in GoPro Log, it supplied and wrote data at the speed the system demanded. Even when I upgraded to 4K footage, it was still more than capable, with only the occasional pause as files were written. I’d still opt for an SSD over an HDD, but if you are caught out and need large-capacity storage on the move, then this will do the job. The only issue is that it doesn’t dissipate heat well, so it will thermal throttle during longer editing sessions.

However, when I switched to editing stills shot on the Sony A7 IV and scans of Ilford FP4 Plus, the drive was more than capable of handling edits in DxO PhotoLab on the Mac and PC.

As this drive is designed for archiving, it's a great option for small businesses looking for machine backup, photographers who want a solid, portable drive they can use in and out of the studio or anyone wanting a portable backup drive. The plastic exterior is lightweight, and it feels relatively robust. Plus, you can password-protect it for security.

• Performance: 5 / 5

Seagate One Touch 4TB: Final verdict

The Seagate One Touch 4TB portable HDD is a great all-round option for backup and a decent secure working drive for light media use. The design and build lean a bit toward plastic, but because it uses a single cable for power and data, you don’t have to carry a separate power supply, which makes it extremely convenient for field use.

It’s clear this is designed as a backup drive rather than a working drive, and with HDD rather than SSD technology, transfer rates are slower. So if you are looking for a high-capacity working drive, this is perfectly capable, but you might want to look at an SSD option.

This drive is marketed and better suited to backup and archive use, and the 4TB of capacity at this price is well balanced. What really sets this drive apart, and gives it an edge over many others, is its AES 256-bit hardware encryption, plus software that's exceptionally straightforward and easy to use. There’s just nothing complex about it. It does the job without going into any major complexities and offers excellent fallback when you need it.

Whilst the aesthetics and build quality are very middle of the road, it’s all solid enough. After carrying the drive around for a week in my kit bag, it stood up to knocks and bashes without much issue, proving the plastic exterior is as robust as many metal options.

If you are in the market for a high-capacity portable backup drive with hardware encryption and excellent bundled software, then I would highly recommend the Seagate One Touch 4TB HDD. It’s a well-balanced storage option without any aesthetic frills, with a main focus on pure functionality.

Should I buy the Seagate One Touch 4TB?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

For more storage solutions, we've tested the best portable SSDs and the best NAS hard drives.

Of course, that’s expected. This chair is packed with a range of adjustments for getting comfort levels just right - and I especially like the inclusion of the adaptive lumbar support and 6D armrests. Yes, some of the adjustability mechanisms are a little fiddly, but it’s pretty much set-and-forget once you’ve got them in place.

Now, the EP600 isn’t for absolutely everyone - I think if it were fifty or a hundred bucks cheaper, it’d easily topple the FlexiSpot C7 as the top mid-range pick in my guide to the best office chairs. Although it is first and foremost a home office desk chair, I used it for several gaming sessions and found it a good pick for work and play.

As it stands, you’ll need to be at your desk a lot to truly justify the outlay. But for anyone looking for a chair designed for long hours, coming in at around the $400/£400 mark, it’s more or less unbeatable value.

Boulies EP600: Price & availability

The chair is available direct from Boulies - in the US, it’s priced at $490; in the UK, it’s £430. It comes in light gray and black colorways, with hybrid mesh covering.

At the time of review, the company’s running its early Black Friday sale, where it’s down to $410 / £375. Considering the range of features here - including a built-in footrest and 6D armrests - that feels like a very fair price. It’s well within the price range of my top mid-range pick, the FlexiSpot C7.

While on discount, I’d personally snap up the EP600. It has greater adjustability than the C7, softer material that’s just as breathable, and a good build quality (no squeaks and creaks since I assembled it). At full price, I’d still recommend it, but only if you want those extra features and comfort fine-tuning.

• Value: 4 / 5

Boulies EP600: Assembly

Fixing up this chair took me a little under 30 minutes in total. Everything you need - the screws, the hex key - is included in the box.

I’ve built a fair few office chairs in my time, and if you’re an old hand at this, it’s straightforward enough. However, while the instructions are relatively easy to understand, I felt they could be slightly clearer for those who aren’t assembling an office chair a week. More step-by-step images might improve the process. But it’s seamless enough if you read the printed text carefully and make sure you match the right screw to the fitting.

As ever, I recommend building this chair in the room you intend to use it in. It’s not as heavy as some chairs I’ve tested out, like the impossibly weighty Secretlab Atlas that now lives downstairs because I can’t physically lift it up to the second floor. But it’s still heavy enough to make it worth taking up the parts separately to wherever your home office is.

• Assembly: 4 / 5

Boulies EP600: Design & build

In terms of design, Boulies isn’t reinventing the wheel here. It looks like plenty of other office chairs out there. Whether that 'traditional' style is a pro or a con in your book is a matter of taste. It's fine, and does the job, but won't turn any heads.

There’s a thick plastic base with casters, and a hybrid mesh seat (it’s a woven blend of mesh and fabrics that feels soft to the touch but still highly breathable). I wish, for the price, the base was metal.

The backrest is formed of two parts - an upper shoulder rest and a 4D adaptive lumbar support below. Both are adjustable for height. According to the company, the chair is built for users standing between 5'5" to 6'1” tall. That feels right to me. I’m 5’9”, and sitting in the mid-range it’s comfortable. My wife, who’s 5’3”, also had no issues sitting for extended periods of time either.

Atop the backrest sits the adjustable convex headrest that’s wide enough for most users. And flanking the sides are the 6D armrests, which pivot in - you guessed it - six directions. They’re very comfortable and work well, but I’m knocking off points because beyond the height, they’re not lockable.

Instead, they use tactile detents, with every turn up or down, backwards or forwards clicking firmly, but not permanently, into place. That took me a while to get used to, with the armrests ratcheting out of position when I shifted my weight too much in one direction.

Build quality is precisely what I’d expect for the price. Neither ultra-premium like a Herman Miller or LiberNovo, nor ultra cheap. The plastic parts feel solid enough, and I’ve experienced no squeaks, creaks, or breaks despite sitting in the chair pretty much every day of the week for up to twelve hours.

• Design & build: 4.5 / 5

Boulies EP600: Performance & features

For all-day comfort, I have absolutely no complaints with the Boulies EP600. I’ve been using it for up to twelve-hour shifts without fatigue. Like the excellent value pick, the Boulies EP200, it’s swiftly become my daily driver.

Even while testing other chairs in my office, the EP600 is the one I’ve tended to drop into first for work. Despite the range of adjustments you can make, it’s pleasantly unfussy in a way. It does precisely what I suspect most people want from a $400 office chair.

Adjustability is a high-point across the board. There’s not much you can modify to get yourself comfortable. The backrest tilts and reclines, and you can lock it into place. It gives you a good laid-back position for when you pull out the under-seat footrest. Speaking of which, this retractable footrest is a hard plastic, so you might want to add a cushion for extra comfort. I didn't have problems with it, but it's worth noting here.

For me, the killer feature is the 4D adaptive lumbar support, which can be raised or lowered to snugly meet your lower back. Its resistance altered. I’m always happy to see adaptive support like this, as it provides more consistent support as you move in your seat. It’s one of the main reasons why I’ve tended to choose the EP600 over other chairs I have in the home office.

The 6D armrests are also pleasing in use. Once I accepted the fact that they can’t be locked into position, I grew to like, if not love, them. It’s nice to be able to properly support my forearms when typing at my desk, or, when I’m relaxing on my phone, bringing them in towards my body so I have somewhere to rest my elbows.

Where I feel the EP600 stumbles is just how fiddly making those adjustments can be at first. The controls aren’t as intuitive as a lot of chairs.

Now, I love a chair with adjustable seat depth to accommodate taller users. Here, it has a 50mm range back and forth. But the adjuster is a ring placed under the right-side of the seat. On most chairs, you’d lift or pull this, and the seat slides forward for larger bodies, and smooth rolls back to accommodate smaller users.

Here, you have to physically push or pull the seat into position - that’s not easy to do with one hand, especially when the seat appears to be fighting against you.

Once I had the seat set up for my height, I remained comfortable throughout my time sitting on it. But let me tell you, it was a little frustrating to start.

• Performance & features: 4.5 / 5

Boulies EP600: Final verdict

The Boulies EP600 delivers everything most people need from a mid-range office chair. It’s not the most glamorous, it’s certainly not the most expensive. But it is comfortable, adjustable, and supportive for extended sitting.

While I did find the controls slightly finicky, overall, it does enough to justify its price tag. For remote and hybrid workers (or those looking for a chair for work and play), it’s an easy one to recommend - so long as you can justify the expensive relative to the amount of time you'll use it.

Should I buy the Boulies EP600?

✅ Buy it if...

You want a highly adjustable office chair for the home or office. It’s one of the most comfortable mid-range seats I’ve ever tested.

❌ Don't buy it if...

You don’t need a fancy office chair with 6D armrests, or you’d rather spend a little extra for a more premium seat like the Steelcase Series 2.

How I tested the Boulies EP600

I used the Boulies EP600 as my primary work chair for two weeks, for a minimum of eight hours a day, but more often like ten to twelve. During that time, I turned every knob, pulled every lever, and constantly swivelled the armrests like they were an oddly shaped fidget cube. I also used it as my gaming chair while playing Xbox and Switch. Here, I reclined the backrest and drawing out the footrest to see how well it fared while in 'relaxation mode'.

As my millennial colleagues often say: "you don’t wanna see me before my morning coffee". And there's truth to that: having a cappuccino on first waking has become something of a ritual for me; it's more effective than an alarm clock for getting me up and doing anything useful, at least. And since getting my hands on the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus, making a quick drink every day has never been so easy.

As the name suggests, the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus is an incredibly simple to use, and it’s ideal for anyone who wants to whip up a cold or hot caffeinated beverage at home. It comes with four settings: hot milk, foamed milk, hot cappuccino, and cold cappuccino. I’ve tried all of these out over a month-long period of testing, using both dairy and plant-based milks. Should you get one for yourself? Here’s my verdict.

Straight off the bat, something I love about the MilkEasy Plus are its controls. A single backlit button enables you to cycle through the four different modes. Just select your preferred option, wait a few seconds, and the frothing will begin. This makes it an accessible option for anyone — no matter their level of technical or coffee know-how.

Elsewhere, the included instructions are clear and concise, and after an initial clean cycle, all you have to do is plug the machine’s dock into a power outlet, place the MilkEasy Plus on top, and you’re good to go.

This model comes with a magnetic whisk that easily slots inside the MilkEasy Plus — no awkward installation required. The fact that it's magnetic means that it’s also easy to remove and clean. I was able to scrub the entire device in mere seconds, and while some pesky milk residue can stick to the sides of the MilkEasy Plus, it’s really easy to get off. The whisk and lid are also dishwasher-safe, although the main chamber needs to be hand-washed.

So yes, the MilkEasy Plus is a joy to use, but how does it perform? Well, I was really happy with the results every single time. With dairy milk in cappuccino mode, it whisked up a delightfully thick, creamy foam, which delivered a rich, satisfying flavor.

With foamed milk, I was impressed once more, both with dairy and plant-based milks. All those plant-based baristas will be pleased to learn that this this model is "approved by Alpro", and when using oat milk, this machine really shines. The smooth, velvety texture of the foamed milk was impressive given the modest price of this model, although it did take a good three minutes to prepare.

This wasn’t a big issue for me, as I set the foaming cycle in motion before drawing an espresso shot from my Lavazza A Modo Mio Smeg machine, meaning I wasn’t left waiting. But if you want the speediest performance possible, this might not be the best option for you.

Not surprisingly, the hot milk and cold cappuccino modes produced similarly effective results with dairy and plant-based milk. And I was struck by how quiet the MilkEasy Plus is in use — you won't have to worry about disturbing any friends or family members if you’re making a late-night decaf coffee.

While I had an overwhelmingly positive experience with the MilkEasy Plus, I do have a couple of minor quibbles that are worth a mention.

Like a lot of rivals, the markings for quantity on the inside of the cup are a little difficult to read, and I found myself having to angle the machine to see the maximum fill line when adding milk. My other critique is that the MilkEasy Plus doesn't have a handle, so it can be slightly awkward to handle while pouring. This isn’t a major problem, and it’s still easy enough to grip, but a handle would have taken things up a notch.

Still, this model's build quality is impressive, especially given its relatively low £79 / AU$119 (about $100) list price. The quality of the MilkEasy Plus’ results, its user-friendly controls, and easy cleaning all combine to make it a top-tier option. And while a steam wand will always be superior for latte art, this model is tough to beat for casual coffee drinkers like me.

Lavazza MilkEasy Plus review: price & release date

• Priced at £79 / AU$119 (about $100)
• Released in July 2026

The Lavazza MilkEasy Plus was released in July 2026, and is available in the UK, a number of European markets, and Australia. It isn't available directly in the US, but could conceivably be imported.

This is a relatively budget-friendly model, coming in at £79 / AU$119 (about $100), making it cheaper than some of our favorite picks such as the Smeg Mini Milk Frother (£99.95, about $140 / AU$210) and the Dreo Baristamaker ($99 / £119.99, about AU$150).

Lavazza MilkEasy Plus review: specs

Should I buy the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Lavazza MilkEasy Plus review: also consider

How I tested the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus

I spent one month testing the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus, using it as a key part of my coffee-making setup almost every day. I tried all four of the frothing modes, and made sure to use whole and semi-skimmed milk, as well as oat milk to assess consistency across different types. I used the Lavazza MilkEasy Plus alongside my Lavazza A Modo Mio Smeg capsule coffee machine for this review.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing gadgets here at TechRadar, where I serve as a Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve tested everything from home products such as the Dreo Smart Misting Fan 516S to Dolby Atmos soundbars, like the Marshall Heston 120.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 is primarily billed as a Nintendo Switch 2 controller for handheld use, but it offers a lot more besides. It's CRKD’s follow-up to the Nitro Deck and Nitro Deck+, two previous accessories aimed at the original Nintendo Switch.

The CRKD Nitro Deck 2 has a functional design focused more on ergonomics than style, although some of the colorways add some panache; the Pal Grey variant I reviewed, for instance, harked back to retro Nintendo controllers, thanks to its colorful face buttons and darker grey accents.

The Nitro Deck 2 fits to the Switch and Switch 2 by clamping on the sides of the unit, rather than actually connecting to the Joy-Con 2 slots. A small button on the back clicks and twists to tightly grip your console, and tight it is; even when I held it upside down, my console didn’t move an inch. You can then connect to your console wirelessly via Bluetooth or wired by using the included U-shaped USB adapter.

CRKD’s mobile app can be used to remap the inputs of the Nitro Deck 2, as well as enable the ‘No Deadzone’ mode for the joysticks. Its interface is clear and easy to use, and I didn’t experience any bugs. One downside, though, is that you have to reconnect to the app every time you open it by holding two buttons for three seconds, which limits the convenience of back-and-forth adjustments.

All the buttons feel great, providing plenty of clicky feedback and responsiveness. The back buttons are awkwardly placed, though, and I found myself accidentally triggering them on occasion.

The real highlight of the Nitro Deck 2, though, is its joysticks. Not only are they precise and responsive, but they also feature dials that let you adjust their tension at any point, which is an excellent design choice and should allow any gamer to get their preferred feel.

Unfortunately, poor ergonomics detract from the Nitro Deck 2’s otherwise positive performance aspects. Not only do the pads angle inwards at the bottom, contrary to the majority of gamepads, but it’s also heavy when loaded with a console. These factors can make it cumbersome and awkward to use, especially when trying to game upright.

The Nitro Deck 2 is easy to pair to the Switch or Switch 2 via Bluetooth, although it takes a while to reconnect to your console after sleeping. Reconnection is quicker in wired mode, but it’s still not instantaneous. It was also easy to pair with PC and Android devices, although it’s a shame you can’t switch between them without having to pair each time.

The battery life of the Nitro Deck 2 is reasonable, lasting for as long as CRKD claims (15-20 hours), according to my testing. It’s a small inconvenience that you have to charge it separately from your console, though.

When you consider all that it offers, the Nitro Deck 2 represents good value. Not only are you getting handheld pads for the Switch 1 and Switch 2, but you’re also getting protection for your console, a standalone controller you can use with other platforms besides Nintendo’s, and a kickstand. Comfort issues do hamper the experience somewhat, but if you don’t mind holding a weighty unit, the Nitro Deck 2 is a fine choice as a versatile gamepad.

CRKD Nitro Deck 2 review: Price & availability

• $89.99 / £89.99 / AU$161
• Available now in multiple colorways
• Good price for a versatile handheld gamepad

The Nitro Deck 2 costs $89.99 / £89.99 / AU$161 and is available now in four colorways: Smoke Black, Pal Grey, LRG Fusion, and White. It comes with a USB cable, a double-ended USB adapter, and a legacy adapter for Switch 1 compatibility. The joystick caps and D-pad hat are replaceable, but no extra sets for either are included in the box.

This is a reasonable price for a unit that’s not only a Switch and Switch 2 handheld case and handheld controller, but also a standalone gamepad for PC and mobile, both wired and wireless.

You won’t find many more complete solutions for your Switch 2 than this, or even third-party substitutes for the Joy-Con 2 controllers, save for a few examples, such as the Mobapad M12 HD and M12S. A more left-field alternative to the Nitro Deck 2 is the GameSir G8+, a Bluetooth mobile controller that doesn’t officially support the Switch 2, but users have reported compatibility with the system.

If you just want a more comfortable handheld experience for your Switch 2 while sticking with the Joy-Con 2 pads, the Genki Attack Vector is a reasonably priced solution that offers three sets of grips as well as a backplate cover. What’s more, it can remain attached to your console when docked.

CRKD Nitro Deck 2 review: Specs

CRKD Nitro Deck 2 review: Design & features

• Functional looks
• Solid build quality
• Basic but effective mobile app

The Nitro Deck 2 has an appearance that’s more about function than form, with its soft edges and curves being more about ergonomics than aesthetics. It’s a fetching piece of design nonetheless, and the Pal Grey finish of my review unit added a retro appeal, with its dark grey accents and colorful face buttons alluding to the classic SNES controller.

The build quality is respectable, too. Although the plastic shell didn’t initially strike me as being particularly premium, I quickly felt its solidity and sturdiness once I held it in my hands. The sliding mechanisms for both pads operate smoothly as well.

Rather than the pads of the Nitro Deck 2 actually attaching to each Joy-Con slot on the Switch or Switch 2, they simply clamp to the sides of the console without actually inserting into these slots. To tighten the clamp, you simply push and twist the button on the rear of the unit. This requires a fair amount of force, and so does releasing it to remove the console, but I wouldn’t say it was overly arduous, and it’s worth the effort for the secure fit it provides.

When attached, the Switch 2 fits snugly and securely; I had no worries about it coming loose, as there wasn’t a hint of looseness. The unit also aligns precisely with the dimensions and contours of the Switch 2, although my one small gripe is that accessing the game card flap can be fiddly, as there’s little room to reach down to lift it up. This isn’t an issue when the Nitro Deck 2 is attached to the Switch 1, though, since the flap on that console opens the other way.

Speaking of which, the Nitro Deck 2 fits just as well to the Switch 1 as it does to the Switch 2. Thanks to the included legacy adapter, its USB-C port is still accessible, so you can still have a wired connection between the console and the Nitro Deck 2. This wired connection to both the Switch 1 and 2 is handled by another adapter, a double-ended U-shaped USB-C jack, that slots into the bottom of the Deck and the console.

The Nitro Deck 2 also features a kickstand on the back, allowing you to use your console with another controller. This is made of metal and feels very solid. It’s also very sturdy when open, and it folds flush into the back of the Deck. It can be a little difficult to release it from its clip, but this is a small price to pay for its secure fastening.

To customize the inputs of the extra shoulder and back buttons, you can use the M button in combination with others to alter the mapping. However, you can also use CRKD’s mobile app, where you can remap every button, as well as enable a ‘No Deadzone’ mode for the joysticks in order to increase their sensitivity.

The app is clearly laid out and easy to navigate, and I didn’t experience any bugs or glitches, which was somewhat of a surprise given the poor rating it has on app stores. For some bizarre reason, though, it only operates in landscape mode, but more frustrating is the fact that switching between the app and your console isn’t exactly a seamless experience; you have to hold the Home button and the left D-pad button for 3 seconds every time you go back to the app after exiting it.

CRKD Nitro Deck 2 review: Performance

• Excellent joysticks
• Awkward to use upright
• Some connectivity issues

While its grips may look ergonomic, I struggled to get entirely comfortable with the Nitro Deck 2. Partly, this is due to the sheer weight of the unit when loaded with a console, which makes holding it upright a chore, even for short periods.

But the other half of the problem stems from the grips’ orientation. They protrude outwards at the top rather than at the bottom, running counter to the best Nintendo Switch 2 controller shapes, and are at a less natural angle for your hands. I did acclimatize to their form somewhat, but I was never entirely at ease with it.

I also found the back buttons awkward to use, as they were too low down to align with my natural finger placement around the grips. Their low travel and resistance meant there were times when I accidentally triggered them, too.

These issues aside, though, the Nitro Deck 2 offers fantastic performance. The face buttons are clicky and satisfying to use, while the D-pad is very comfortable thanks to its circular hat. Its floating design also meant presses had plenty of travel, which in turn created good feedback. I found the shoulder buttons were easy to reach and use as well.

The best input of all, though, is the joysticks, which feature dials at their bases for adjusting resistance on the fly. This is a great idea and one I wish more controllers implemented. Looser settings allow for easy maneuvering and quick flicks, while tighter settings give you more control and precision.

The Nitro Deck 2 also features motion controls. I found these to be accurate and responsive when aiming with the bow in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, although using them in handheld mode isn’t exactly practical, given the whole console moves with your hands.

Unfortunately, I did experience some small connectivity issues with the Nitro Deck 2. Although pairing with my consoles was a relatively quick process, it can be slow to reconnect when you wake your console. It activated quicker when I used a wired connection, but it wasn’t instant.

The Nitro Deck 2 worked just as well with my Switch 1 as it did with my Switch 2. It’s a shame, though, that the aforementioned legacy adapter doesn’t support console charging. I’m not sure whether this was a particular issue with my review unit or a known limitation, but either way it’s a shame from a convenience perspective.

As for other platforms, I had no issues connecting or using the Nitro Deck 2 with PC or my Android smartphone via Bluetooth, although hot-switching isn’t possible, with pairing required each time you move between devices.

The battery life of the Nitro Deck 2 is reasonable — according to my testing, it lasts about as long as CRKD claims it can, which is between 15 and 20 hours. However, it’s a shame you can’t charge your console and the Deck with a single cable, as there’s no passthrough feature.

Should I buy the CRKD Nitro Deck 2?

Scorecard

Buy the CRKD Nitro Deck 2 if…

Don't buy it if…

CRKD Nitro Deck 2 review: Also consider

How I tested the CRKD Nitro Deck 2

• Tested for over a week
• Used on various platforms
• Relied on extensive gaming experience

I tested the Nitro Deck 2 for over a week, using it with both the Switch and Switch 2, as well as with a PC and my Android smartphone. I tested both wired and wireless connections. I also tested CRKD’s companion mobile app.

I played games such as Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse, both of which are good tests for the responsiveness of the buttons and comfort of the D-pad. I also played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is a great test of all facets of a controller, including the motion controls.

I’ve been gaming for decades and have plenty of experience testing controllers and other peripherals for numerous platforms, including the Switch and Switch 2. I’ve also reviewed other Switch 2 accessories, including handheld grips.

• Read more about how we test
• First reviewed October 2026

Unless you specifically want an Intel-powered NUC, AMD-powered machines typically offer more power and features for less money.

A classic example is the GMKtec EVO-X1 Pro AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 AI Mini PC, which uses the latest Zen 5 architecture and Gorgon Point silicon to deliver plenty of processing power for a wide range of applications.

Alongside its strong performance, it also supports ample memory, at least 16TB of storage, and an excellent port selection. This NUC offers USB4 and OCuLink ports, dual 2.5GbE LAN ports, and triple (HDMI, DisplayPort and USB-C) screen outputs.

GMKtec has a habit of refreshing a good idea before anyone finishes praising the last version, and the EVO X1 Pro is a prime example.

It keeps the compact box that arrived with the original EVO X1 in late 2024. Inside, it swaps in AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 470. It also moves to WiFi 7 and ships with 64GB of soldered memory.

That raises two questions. Is the step up from the cheaper HX 370 model worth paying for? And does AMD's platform still hold its ground now that Intel's latest mobile chips are turning up in mini PCs?

My review answers some of those questions, but it also poses a few I hadn’t considered. Based on some blistering performance, the GMKtec EVO-X1 Pro should be on any list of the best mini PCs, but are there more cost-effective options?

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $1150
• When is it out? Shipping now, but limited stock
• Where can you get it? You can get it directly from GMKtec

GMKtec's US store lists the EVO X1 Pro at $1,599.99 for the 64GB and 1TB build. A 2TB option is also shown at $1,769.99. At the time of writing, every configuration showed as sold out, and a banner warned that prices would rise soon.

The page also shows a struck-through reference price of $2,299.99. Treat that with a pinch of salt, because I’m confident that GMKtec has never sold any of these at that price.

For those with less cash to splash, there is a single SKU of an HX370 model with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage for $1,149.99. Please note that the memory on this machine is soldered, so you can’t get the HX370 model and add extra memory later. And the same is true of the HX470 SKUs, because while the platform can address up to 256 GB, you can’t add any more to the existing hardware.

UK buyers have a separate GMKtec store, which doesn’t list this hardware yet. But based on dollar pricing, around £1250 for the review specification SKU seems believable.

Warranty is listed as one year on the US store, although I think UK and EU retail laws would insist on longer warranty periods.

The obvious competitor for this system is the MINISFORUM AI X1 Pro-470, which uses the same platform but a slightly different port and slot arrangement. For the same 64GB+1TB spec as the review hardware, MINISFORUM wants $1655, another $55 more than GMKtec.

But the memory in the X1 Pro-470 is socketed, enabling it to be upgraded, with the caveat that the memory is running at a slightly slower speed. Because of the memory slots, MINISFORUM also offers this system barebones for only $727, if you have spare DDR5, M2 storage and a Windows Pro license. And it comes with a two-year warranty.

The Beelink SER10 MAX AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 is another socketed memory offering, but it's $1699 for the 64GB+1TB model.

The Geekom A9 Max 2026 Edition also has 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, with an asking price of $1519. It also has a socketed memory system and can be loaded up to 128GB.

Among these mini systems, the EVO-X1's asking price is roughly in line with the alternatives, but all of them use socketed memory, trading a little speed for greater flexibility.

• Value: 4 / 5

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Specs

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Design

• Metal enclosure from the original EVO-X1
• Easy access
• No memory upgrades

The chassis is unchanged from the original EVO X1. Dimensions are 110 by 107 by 63mm, and it weighs around 590g. Systems like this are often shorter vertically but wider in other directions, but this is a nice size for the desktop or for mounting on the rear of a monitor using the provided frame.

GMKtec describes a dual fan layout, with one fan for the processor and a second for the system. The original EVO X1 drew complaints about fan noise, but I found this model extremely quiet even under benchmarking stress. That said, the air it ejects from the sides is noticeably warm when in performance mode.

The front of the EVO X1 Pro has dual USB-A, a single USB4 and a single OCuLink port, along with a 3.5mm audio jack and the illuminated power button.

And, on the back, there are two 2.5GbE LAN ports, two more 10GBps USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports and both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.1. If you use the USB4 port with an HDMI adapter on the front, you can easily run three monitors off this system.

I’d have preferred the OCuLink port was on the back, but the port selection is good.

One minor complaint is the port labels. These do exist, with each port having a label, but some need more detail. All the USB-A ports are merely labelled ‘USB’, and the LAN ports don’t get a speed or a port number; they’re just ‘LAN’.

Internal access is something of a tease. At first, it suggests you can get inside without tools, just by rotating the threaded feet. Once you remove these, the metal outer casing covering the bottom, top, and left side detaches, revealing that a screwdriver is indeed required.

Four more screws later, the fan housing comes off, giving access to the storage area.

You can only change the storage here, since the memory is soldered on the mainboard. There are two 2280 M.2 Gen4 x4 slots, one of which is occupied with a pre-installed drive.

Two equally fast slots are useful, since you can easily clone the Windows installation to a new NVMe drive in the second slot. The largest size that’s typically available is 8TB on a 2280-sized drive, so you could place 16TB inside this tiny computer.

You might even be able to get more. I noticed that the M.2 slot that is used for the WiFi 7 and Bluetooth electronics can also be modified to accept larger than 2230 modules. That M.2 slot might be Gen4 x2 or even x1, and you'd give up wireless connectivity, but you might be able to add a third drive using it.

Overall, this was a good enclosure when it was the original X1, and the system in this model uses it effectively.

• Design: 4 / 5

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Features

• Gorgon Point Silicon
• LPDDR5 Memory
• Full PCIe lane usage

The HX 470 belongs to AMD's Ryzen AI 400 family, codenamed Gorgon Point. It is a refresh of the Strix Point chip that powers the HX 370. The core layout is the same, with four full Zen 5 cores and eight smaller Zen 5c cores.

The gains are modest. Boost rises by 100MHz. GMKtec lists the Radeon 890M at 3.1GHz rather than 2.9GHz. The NPU moves from 50 to 55 TOPS.

It feels like AMD needed to polish the Strix Point design, ran out of time before it launched, and then made those tweaks for the Gorgon Point generation.

AMD's own figures give a default power limit of 28W, configurable between 15W and 54W. GMKtec's 65W performance mode is therefore a system-level tuning claim rather than a standard AMD specification. This 4nm chip copes well at 65W, even if, in benchmarks, it threw copious amounts of warm air.

The caching on this chip is 12MB L2 and 24MB L3. That’s 1MB of L2 per core to handle immediate, low-latency instruction and data retrieval. The L3 cache is not a single monolithic block; it divides its cores into a dual-CCX layout, servicing both the Zen 5 and the Zen5c cores.

One aspect of this design that people will either love or hate is that memory is soldered. The advantage of this is fast memory speeds, but it removes any upgrade path. The 64GB configuration is generous for local AI models and heavy multitasking. But it is also a financial commitment, and it assumes you won’t want more at some stage.

The M.2 slots are less controversial. Dual PCIe 4.0 x4 slots are rare in a box this size, mostly because of the limitations of free PCIe lanes. The HX 470 has sixteen PCIe 4.0 lanes, so the M.2 slots take half the available lanes. Since the OCuLink also comes from the same lane pool and uses four lanes, that leaves only four unused.

Thankfully, the USB controllers are native to the processor and do not steal from the general-purpose PCIe lanes, so that probably leaves enough for the shorter 2230 slot for Wi-Fi and the two 2.5GbE LAN ports.

OCuLink is a critical feature for enthusiasts who either want more GPU power or to run LLMs locally. GMKtec warns that the port is not hot-swappable, so you need to connect everything with the machine powered down, and then power the external device before activating the mini PC.

What I like about this system is that it doesn’t leave PCIe bandwidth unused, and with the 65W power profile, it's getting as close as it can get.

• Features: 4.5 / 5

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Performance

Rather than comparing the EVO-X1 Pro to another AMD system, I thought it would be more interesting to compare it to the EVO-T1 from the same brand, which uses Intel silicon.

There is relatively little to separate these systems, since they both use LPDDR5 memory, although the T1 uses socketed SODIMMs (5600 MT/s) versus the unsocketed 6400 MT/s LPDDR5 memory on the X1 Pro.

What isn’t detailed above is that the power peak of the X1 Pro is 65W, where you can set the T1 to use 80W. In both these tests, I set ‘performance mode’ in the BIOS, to get the best speeds and on the X1 Pro I set the memory allocated to the 890M GPU to 8GB.

For those interested, I allocated 16GB of RAM to the 890M and boosted 3DMark Steel Nomad Light to 3361, which probably wasn’t worth losing 8GB of RAM for.

Given how close the performance of these two systems is, it’s worth considering the price difference. Things are slightly complicated by changes since launch on the T1, where it isn’t offered with 64GB as a standard SKU. It can be bought with 32GB+1TB for $1,279.99 or 96GB+2TB for a whopping $2,199.99.

Since you can add memory, you could get the T1 with no memory or storage for only $829.99, then add 64GB of RAM (2x 32GB SODIMM) and an NVMe drive. With a Lexar 32GB DDR5 SODIMM costing around $290 and a typical 1TB Gen4 drive being about $160, the upgrade to match memory and storage will cost you an extra $740, bringing the total system (without Windows) to about $1570, or $30 less than the X1 Pro cost, but without a Windows license.

The advantage of the Intel T1 is that you can upgrade it to 96GB, if you have that sort of cash, and it does have more inherent AI power with 99TOPS in total. However, the NPU on the AMD platform is far superior to that on the Intel, and if it wasn’t for the ARC 140V GPU, the Intel wouldn’t be better.

Conversely, the X1 Pro is less flexible, with no memory upgrades beyond the 64GB provided, but it’s more power-efficient with a 28W base TDP versus 45W on the T1.

Overall, the T1 is the machine for single-threaded tasks, and the X1 Pro is ideal if you run multi-core and multi-threaded code.

So is the X1 Pro worth the asking price? That depends on whether you need the memory. If you don’t, I’d recommend the EVO-X1 Pro with the HX 370 processor, as it's much better value than either its bigger brother or the Intel T1.

If you want an AMD NUC that’s more powerful than this, you'll want one that uses AMD Ryzen AI 395 Max or Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 silicon. And, the new Intel Panther Lake machines are also twice as quick as this, but all these options cost much more.

• Performance: 4 / 5

GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro: Final verdict

A year ago this system would have been closer to $1000, and might have been much easier for me to recommend. Now, with silly memory and storage costs, it's hardly an impulse purchase, is it?

That said, there is relatively little wrong with this hardware, though I’m genuinely disappointed that GMKtec is offering only a single year of warranty on a system I’d expect to last at least five years. Geekom is offering three years on their equipment.

When you factor in the price and the warranty, I’d be inclined to ask anyone buying one if they would be impacted by having the HX 370 SKU with 32GB of RAM, because that’s $450 less for a machine that will perform almost identically, unless you need more RAM.

It comes in the same well-engineered enclosure, and you can expand storage the same way.

I can only hope memory prices start to drop soon, because we need more systems like this with 64GB, or more, and more plausible pricing than we’re seeing currently.

The EVO-X1 Pro is a great mini system, but it desperately needs to be cheaper so that more people can experience this lovely mini PC.

Should you buy a GMKTec NucBox EVO-X1 Pro?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Also Consider

For more professional hardware, we've reviewed the best business computers.

It’s taken Fyne Audio less than a decade to establish itself as a deeply credible manufacturer of passive loudspeakers at a wide range of prices. The Cubitt 5, though, represents its first pair of active speakers — and they've got some serious competition to overcome.

At first glance, though, the system seems to have every chance. Its compact, well-made cabinets are available in a wide range of finishes, and are home to an intriguing driver array that draws liberally from the company’s very successful (and much more expensive) line-up of passive loudspeakers. Power is more than adequate at 240 watts, and the range of inputs (Bluetooth with aptX HD capability, line- and MM phono-level analog, optical and HDMI ARC) is very competitive, too. The lack of on-system controls is an odd decision, as is the lack confirmation of selected input or volume, and the remote handset that’s your only control option is unlovely.

Get the system up and running and you’ll have to ignore the unwelcome low-volume hiss that comes from each speaker before any music is cued up — fortunately it’s not an issue once your tracks are playing. Instead you’re free to admire the Cubitt 5’s abilities with detail retrieval, soundstaging, low-frequency authority and articulate midrange communication. It’s absolutely as confident as is acceptable when it comes to handling the top of the frequency range, but even here it’s not overtly ill-balanced or unruly.

Add in significant dynamic headroom, an expansive overall presentation and a disinclination to alter its stance in any significant way no matter which of its input options is in use, and it’s apparent that where the fundamentals are concerned, the Cubitt 5 has plenty going for it. Maybe not quite for the best stereo speakers on the market, though.

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Price & release date

• Launched on June 30, 2026
• Priced $749 / £549 / AU$1,499

The Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 wireless stereo speaker system is on sale now, and in the United States it costs $749. In the United Kingdom it sells for £549, while in Australia you’ll have to part with AU$1,499.

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Features

• 127mm ‘IsoFlare’ mid/bass driver with 19mm concentric titanium dome tweeter
• 240 watts of Class D power
• Wired and wireless inputs

The idea of positioning a tweeter in the acoustic center of a mid or mid/bass driver is not a new one, but it’s a rarity nevertheless, and Fyne Audio has been busily democratizing its ‘IsoFlare’ variation on this particular theme for a while now. The Cubitt 5 is just the latest example.

In this instance there’s a 19mm titanium dome tweeter positioned in the center of a 127mm multi-fiber mid/bass driver — the idea, as ever, is to create a single point-source of sound at the same time as optimizing driver integration and sound dispersion. The mid/bass driver’s surround is the company’s ‘FyneFlute’ design, the unusual pattern of which helps minimize unwanted energy from the pistonic movement of the driver. Each of the four drivers gets 60 watts of Class D amplification to power it — an all-in total of 240 watts really should be adequate in a system such as this — and the output is bolstered by a front-firing bass reflex slot. It’s an arrangement Fyne Audio suggests will deliver a frequency response of 43Hz - 34kHz.

The primary speaker takes care of all wired and wireless connectivity. The wireless stuff consists of Bluetooth 5.0, with codec compatibility up to and including aptX HD. Physical connections, all on the rear panel, run to a moving magnet (or high-output moving coil) phono stage accessed via stereo RCA inputs, a line-level analog equivalent also using RCAs, a digital optical input and an HDMI ARC socket. All incoming digital information is dealt with by a DAC of 24bit/96kHz resolution.

• Features score: 5 / 5

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Sound quality

• Expansive and controlled presentation
• Solid punch and decent dynamics
• Audible hiss when not playing

There’s a unique aspect to the way the Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 performs — or, at least, it’s unique in my extensive experience of products of this type. Connect the speakers together using the supplied umbilical, plug the primary speaker into the mains, turn the power on, and there’s an obvious and consistent hiss from both speakers. Is it loud? No, but it can be heard down the length of my listening room. Is it audible when playing music? No, not at all. So is it an issue? I guess not, unless you intend to use the speakers on your desktop, but I can’t pretend it fills me with confidence.

Which is a great pity, because when it’s actually playing music the Cubitt 5 is one of the best sub-$750 wireless stereo speaker systems I’ve heard so far. In virtually every respect, it’s an enjoyable, balanced and well-sorted listen.

With a vinyl copy of Julian Cope’s Peggy Suicide incoming via the moving magnet phono stage, the Fyne Audio doesn’t take its eye off the ball for a moment. It’s good where detail retrieval is concerned, and manages to stay on top of the finest details without sacrificing any sense of unity or performance. It creates a fairly large soundstage — it’s certainly larger than the cabinets that are producing it — and it’s coherent, organized and easy to understand.

The tonal balance is persuasive, too, the Cubitt 5 hits the plosives at the top of the frequency range absolutely as hard as it dares, but somehow they never quite get too edgy or overly hard. The midrange is sweetly communicative, so there’s confidence and eloquence to the way the system handles a vocalist. And while the claims for extension down to 43Hz are, I think it’s fair to say, a false alarm, the Cubitt 5 nevertheless bigs deep, hits hard and controls its low-frequency activity well. Rhythmic expression is very decent as a result, and the way the system handles tempos is similarly unforced and naturalistic.

There’s a fair amount of dynamic headroom available, so the Fyne Audio handles big shifts in volume or intensity calmly, and its overall attention to detail means that the more subtle dynamics of harmonic variation are given their due weighting, too. Frequency response is nice and even, too. The tendency to attack the highest frequencies can make it sound like the top end is being overstated on occasion, but otherwise the Cubitt 5 gives every area of the frequency range fair representation.

It’s winningly unconcerned about volume, too. Some systems can change their character when asked to play at bigger levels, but the Fyne Audio just gets louder. There’s no change in tonal balance or frequency response, and the stage maintains its shape, too. And the same is true when you change inputs — switch to a wireless stream of John Glacier’s Money Shows and the fundamental attitude and character of the system don’t alter in the slightest. It’s still balanced, insightful, punchy and just slightly treble-happy.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Design

• 260 x 165 x 215mm (HxWxD)
• Available in five different finishes
• Supplied without grilles

It’s by no means an easy trick to pull off, but the Cubitt 5 manages to look discreet and interesting at the same time.

The ‘discreet’ part is mostly thanks to the 260 x 165 x 215mm (HxWxD) dimensions, assisted by some nicely curved cabinet corners and a selection of no fewer than five very agreeable finishes. My sample is in ‘olive green’, but ‘arctic white’, ‘midnight black’, ‘pearl titanium’ and ‘pebble gray’ are also available. No matter which finish you decide suits you best, you’ll find it’s the final flourish in a process that includes a very high standard of construction. There are no visible seams, and the soft-touch paint is flawlessly applied.

‘Interesting’ is mostly derived from the driver array that’s already been discussed in the ‘features’ section of this review, as well as the forward-facing bass reflex slot that somehow makes each speaker’s appearance easy to anthropomorphize. The not-quite-circular brightwork surrounding the driver array doesn’t do any harm when it comes to making this most functional of products look interesting, either. It comes as no surprise to me that Fyne Audio doesn’t see the need to supply the Cubitt 5 with grilles.

• Design score: 5 / 5

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Usability & setup

• Speakers must be wired together
• No app, no on-speaker controls, no input selection of volume indicator
• Nasty remote control handset

In terms of getting up and running, there’s really not a lot to get your head around here. Despite the fact this is an active system, only the primary speaker requires mains power — it transmits power, as well as data, along a supplied four-core umbilical cable that screws down onto the rear of each speaker. Once the speakers are connected together and the primary is powered up, it’s really only a question of positioning them to your satisfaction and then you’re in business.

Getting what you want from the system isn’t all that tricky, either, but neither is it all that satisfying an experience. This is not a Wi-Fi-enabled system, of course, so there’s no control app, which is hardly unheard-of in this part of the market. There are no controls on either speaker, either, which is rather less common. The primary speaker has an LED tell-tale that’s red when the system’s in standby and blue when it’s powered up. The blue light flashes when it’s following instructions from the remote handset that’s your only method of operation.

Given that the remote is all you’ve got, though, it’s a shame Fyne Audio specified what I imagine is the least expensive handset it could source. The look and feel is down-market, and the fact you’ve no indication of the source that’s been selected or the volume level that’s been specified only adds to the impression of cost- and corner-cutting.

• Usability & setup score: 3 / 5

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Value

Judged purely on the sound it makes, there’s no denying the Cubitt 5 offers very decent value for money indeed — once it’s making a sound, that is. The standard of build and finish only adds to the impression of money well spent.

But there’s more to it than this, of course — and as far as the experiential goes, the feel of operating the system, the sensation is undeniably low-rent. Which unfortunately undermines the impression of value the Fyne Audio system otherwise offers.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Fyne Audio Cubitt 5?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Fyne Audio Cubitt 5 review: Also consider

The Cambridge L/R S system handily undercuts the Fyne Audio on price, and has an awful lot to recommend it both aesthetically and in audio terms. Not quite the room-filling ability of the Cubitt 5, mind you.

And the same is true of the Ruark Audio MR1 mk3, but if you want a well-specified and great-sounding system that’s genuinely small enough for desktop use and isn’t as pricey as the Fyne Audio, you need look no further.

How I tested the Fyne Audio Cubitt 5

Almost all my testing is done with the Cubitt 5 positioned on a pair of Soundstyle S2 speaker stands, joined together by their supplied connecting cable and with the primary speaker plugged into the mains.

Sources include a FiiO M15S digital audio player with aptX HD Bluetooth capability, a Technics SL-1300G with Goldring 1022 cartridge for vinyl via the phono stage, a Rega Apollo CD player connected to the optical input, and a Philips OLED806 via the HDMI socket.

Which means a lot of different content, stored in a variety of file types, and of many resolutions, is available — and then I listen for almost an entire working week.

• Read TechRadar's Reviews Guarantee
• First reviewed: October 2026

The AX9 Max instantly feels premium, with a full metal build and a huge array of ports on the front and back. However, as you look closely at the embossed detailing around the edges and a logo that seems to blend the old Cadillac and Ferrari logos, something about the aesthetics starts to looks a little less premium.

Aesthetics aside, the build quality is solid enough and well finished, with the most impressive aspect being the sheer volume of ports that have been fitted around the exterior. On the front, there’s a selection of USB Type-A ports and the usual headphone jack; around the back, there are even more connectivity options, including two USB4 ports.

To handle the potential power draw of the devices you can hook up to the box, it packs a powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 processor which is supplied with the 120W power supply. The processor is relatively new, launched at the start of 2026, so it has had a good amount of time to bed in and now has a proven track record. This is supported by an integrated GPU and a dedicated NPU for all those new AI workloads.

As the test progressed, the machine's speed in Microsoft Office apps and the Adobe Creative Suite highlighted its potential. During video editing, the internal SSD kept pace with high-resolution edits without issue. However, a little more headroom on the 1TB capacity would have been beneficial.

Storage and RAM are the two interesting points of this machine. While both are modest in my review sample, maxing them out could turn this from a powerful mini PC into something that will hold great interest for anyone looking to run offline AI and larger LLMs, although that potential does come at a huge monetry cost.

Throughout the test, the creative applications and handling of video and image files were limited by the 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. However, with two USB4 ports, I could at least boost the storage capacity. For most HD and 4K edits, the machine handled rough cuts and transitions in Premiere Pro quickly and without issue, though more RAM would have helped.

The most interesting test was running LM Studio and a few local models; while general performance was good, especially for models that utilised the NPU, I could see where the 32GB RAM limit restricted what the machine could potentially do, limiting it as the best mini PC specifically for AI workloads.

For gaming, at mid settings in most games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the machine was more than capable of supplying the power needed for the action. However, again, a little more RAM would have smoothed some of the minor slowdowns in gameplay, especially in Cyberpunk 2077 where quality settings had to be lowered.

This is a machine with potential, and while undoubtedly expensive for a mini PC with a 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM, that money is invested in that powerful CPU, GPU and NPU combo and the ability to expand the storage to a far greater degree than I have seen on the vast majority of other mini PCs of this size and type.

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $1,349
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from VZMore and online retailers.

At present, the UK price is £1,349 for the 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD configuration I’m looking at in this review.

At the time of review, the US site is down (maybe it's just me?), however, it's available on Amazon for $1,399.

• Value: 4 / 5

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Specs

Processor: AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470
Graphics: AMD Radeon 890M
NPU: AMD Ryzen AI, up to 55 TOPS
Memory: 32GB DDR5
Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Front ports: 5 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 3.5mm Audio
Rear ports: 2 × USB4, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, USB 2.0 Type-A, 2 × HDMI 2.1, 2 × 2.5Gb Ethernet
Wireless: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Card Reader: SD 4.0
Power Modes: Silent 45W, Balanced 54W, Performance 65W
Dimensions: Approx. 134.9 × 131.8 × 57.7mm
Weight: 777.5g
Power Adapter: 120W

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Design

Unpacking the compact AX9 Max, the metal casing and detailed plastic base of this mini PC instantly reinforced its price point. Only after carefully checking the detailing and the large, shiny logo on top did I start to question whether this was a premium machine or just one trying to look premium.

Checking the specifications and that the price point was justified, but there’s still something about the design that feels a little over the top. The rest of the design is solid, and at 134.9 × 131.8 × 57.7mm and 777.5g, it’s a great size and weight for this style of machine.

Around the casing, there are four USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports and a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. On the left side of the casing is an SD 4.0 memory card slot, while the back has two USB4 Type-C ports, a USB 2.0 port, two HDMI 2.1 ports, two 2.5Gb RJ45 sockets, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and the DC-in port.

Despite the number of ports, they’re well laid out, and testing with multiple accessories, SSDs, and other card readers showed the port selection offered enough space to easily plug in and remove cables when needed.

You access the inner workings of the mini PC through the base, and while it's designed to be upgraded, initial access proved tricky, but only because of the four small rubber plugs covering the screw holes.

Once these are removed, removing the base is easy, and thankfully there are no easily detachable wires to get in the way of speedy progress.

• Design: 4 / 5

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Features

The aesthetics of this machine are quite run-of-the-mill despite the premium metal build. However, as I checked the specifications, I found plenty that’s quite exciting. First, it features the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 with 12 cores and 24 threads, plus Radeon 890M integrated graphics. That’s a powerful combo, especially with the dedicated NPU rated at 55 TOPS.

To keep up with this processing power, the machine has a substantial cooling system; flip it over, and the base design suddenly makes sense, as it, along with the huge venting on the back, is designed to keep the machine cool.

VZMORE has its own cooling system called V-Cooling, which uses a vapour chamber and a 360º air intake on the base, and the company claims it provides 65W of sustained TDP output while keeping things quiet. In testing, this claim held up: the cooling seemed effective and quiet for the most part until it was put under heavy load and even then while the fans are audible they’re still well managed.

As mini PCs go, one of the first notable features is the sheer volume of ports across the body. This is far more than most, with wireless connection options including Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

There are also three selectable power modes, including 45W Silent mode, 54W Balanced and 65W Performance. Through this test, I turned it to Performance mode.

This machine is aimed at creatives, those looking to use AI and gamers- all high-demand applications. As I reviewed the specifications, a couple of points stood out. First, the internal SSD was limited to 1TB in the review sample, and given the machine's price, I expected at least 2TB.

The other point is that the SSD is PCIe Gen 4 x4, which still provides plenty of speed, as I saw in the benchmarks, but I would have expected an upgrade to PCIe Gen 5. The other point is that there are two M.2 slots: one pre-installed with an M.2 2280 module and one M.2 2230, slot that can only take up to 1TB. That’s still 5TB in a relatively small box, but for this price, I would have expected a little more.

the main point here is that CPU, GPU and NPU combo is an expensive choice and that’s what you’re paying for here.

Then comes the real surprise, the RAM. This is 32GB of DDR5 SO-DIMM, split into dual-channel. That in itself isn't unusual, but since AI is one of the machine's key selling points, this 32GB can be upgraded to 256GB. However, at the time of writing, the most that I could find was 128GB in two 64GB modules for the cool price of £1,999. This could be possible, but would you really want it?

In this test, I’ve run Qwen3.6-35B-A3B and Gemma-4-26B-A4B through LM Studio.

• Features: 4 / 5

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Performance

The machine arrives with Windows 11 Pro pre-installed and only needs the final steps of the installation to be completed. However, this takes a good 10–15 minutes, rejecting each of the many packages on offer. Once in, Windows 11 Pro runs smoothly, and the Microsoft Office suite is fast, as is interaction with Windows as a whole. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all well within its capabilities.

Moving on to Photoshop and Lightroom, the machine's power is evident, but the limits of 32GB of RAM are quickly apparent. The applications load quickly, and photos load into Photoshop and Lightroom are easily adjusted. It’s only when I do batch updates in Lightroom or select files in Adobe Bridge that I started to notice the limitations. On a machine at this price, I really expected a little more performance, and checking the Device Monitor showed the RAM topping out.

Again, loading Premiere Pro and some HD and 4K video, the initial HD footage ran smoothly, with the AX9 Max handling the video files with ease. 4K video was handled just as well, but again, RAM limits meant that as the edit grew more complex, it was best to give the machine a few seconds to catch up with the renders. Still, a good 5-minute 4K edit is well within the limits, and again it’s the RAM that holds the machine back. Another point was that I needed to connect an external SSD to one of the USB4 ports because of limited storage.

Overall, the machine is exceptional for heavy office use and more than able to keep up with the demands. What stood out was how easy it was to connect multiple accessories and screens, thanks to the port support around the case.

For creative applications, the machine performed well and handled most task with relative ease, although I would definitely boost the RAM to 64GB for video work.

To really test the machine’s potential, I loaded Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and was pleased to see that, with settings at moderate, it was more than capable of delivering smooth gameplay and stunning graphics. However, when I switched to Cyberpunk 2077, the gameplay faltered, and I had to dig into the settings and dial everything back to near-base levels to get the smooth gameplay I prefer.

The final test was to run a few LLMs locally and run a series of tests on the machine. The results here were mixed as I switched between two models, Qwen3.6-35B-A3B and Gemma-4-26B-A4B. On the initial run, I noticed that as the five tests I ran, technical writing, programming, reasoning, image understanding, and review analysis, became more intensive, the machine slowed down and the available RAM maxed out.

Using the installed models in LM Studio provided decent performance, with the chat flowing easily and responses coming back relatively quickly, in 2 to 5 seconds. However, as complexity rose, so did processing times and machine noise.

First, with every request, RAM maxed out between 95% and 99%, leaving little, if any, headroom for the machine to do anything else. The first test, writing a short 200-word technical piece with the Qwen model, took 4.38 seconds to get the first response, at 19.1 tokens per second, requiring 5920 output tokens, for a total run time of 316.7 seconds. Far slower than online models, but still all done completely offline.

Less complex models completed this task far faster, with less finesse in the wording.

Running a Python coding task to read and organise a folder of image files, again using the Qwen model, maxed out the machine across the board, with the fans kicking in to keep things cool. Time to first token was just over 1 second, with 18.84 tokens per second; 7653 output tokens took 407.36 seconds to complete the task. This was more impressive as the folder contained 2,764 images. The Python script could then be run to create a CSV file containing the file information. This is base-level organisation.

As I started pushing more complex image-analysis models, the machine's limits were hit, with processing times running in excess of ten minutes, mainly due to limited RAM.

However, the local LLMs available in LM Studio are surprisingly good, but they aren’t a replacement for online or higher-end models.

• Performance: 4 / 5

VZMORE AX9 Max AI: Final verdict

The VZMORE AX9 Max AI Mini PC is a powerful mini PC with plenty of potential and a premium build. The aesthetics and large logo on top feel a little out of place for a machine at this price and for its intended audience; I usually associate that type of styling with entry-level models.

It is undoubtedly a powerful machine with a CPU, GPU and NPU that make light work of most Copilot and app-initiated AI tasks, and even with 32GB of RAM, it handles all office and most creative tasks without issue. What surprised me was that it struggled with some AI processing through LM Studio, with longer-than-expected processing times because the 32GB limit pushed the RAM to near 100% for extended periods.

Likewise, while most games played back smoothly, Cyberpunk 2077 struggled with the graphics, and the quality options and resolution had to be dropped to get smooth gameplay. Other games, such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, played well.

Creative use was also mixed, again held back by that 32GB of RAM, which topped out in Premiere Pro, causing slight slowdowns when editing 4K Log footage. Editing standard 4K and HD was fast, though I still needed to attach an external SSD to expand storage.

The point is that the machine supports up to 256GB of RAM, far more than I’ve seen in any other mini PC. However, as I couldn’t find 128GB modules in the UK, and the maximum available at this time is 2 × 64GB, costing between £1,500 and £2,000, this value seems to be theoretical rather than a reality.

As it is, this is a powerful mini PC, but while it offers upgrade options and plenty of connectivity, it feels like it overpromises; to reach its full potential, you’ll need to invest more in upgrades. At present what makes this machine the price it is, is that CPU, and in order for you to see it’s full potential this machine needs far more investment.

Should I buy the VZMORE AX9 Max AI?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

For more professional-grade desktops, we've tested the best business computers.