On my recent unboxing of the brand-new Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition (the one with the brushed aluminum back), I noticed someone asking about the quality of colors in dark mode, and I realized I didn't have a good answer.

Dark Mode, which became popular on modern screens over the past 15 years or so — a throwback to the original CRT displays — has never been my thing. As a result, I don't use it on phones, browsers, or Kindle e-readers. Still, the more I thought about this question (below). The more I wondered about it.

"This might be a dumb question," started one TikTok commenter, "but do the colors still show when in Dark Mode? I've only seen photos in light mode."

I instantly tried to imagine what a comic or graphic novel might look like in Dark Mode and realized I'd never seen it that way either.

Let's try the Colorsoft Dark mode

The Kindle Colorsoft shares a menu system with the rest of the monochrome Kindles, with the Dark Mode option sitting right up top. You access the quick menu with a swipe down from the top of the display. You can also dig into settings to turn on the control from there.

I turned on Dark Mode on the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition and noticed that my library immediately reversed, turning all the white borders black, but the book, magazine, and graphic novel covers remained untouched. If I opened a book, I saw white text on black pages.

The other thing I noticed is that the screen looked a lot dimmer. Basically, Dark Mode automatically lowers the screen brightness by half.

I opened a graphic novel. As with the rest of the Colosoft interface, the borders around each graphic novel page were black. However, each page was still white, with the untouched color panels inside. Honestly, this makes sense, since I can't imagine any artist would want dark mode reversing their work. It would probably look terrible.

I could see all the colors, but the pages looked too dim. Fortunately, I could still push the front-lit LEDs brighter (I turned them up to max) to return some of that vibrancy, though I'm not sure if that defeats the purpose of Dark Mode.

The other option is to take advantage of the Kindle Colorsoft's reflective display (unlike an LCD, there are no traditional backlights). If you have a good external light or even sunlight, the page looks great with or without dark mode, which can reduce eye-straining screen glare and save some battery life (not much of an issue with Kindles).

Here's what I learned: Yes, you can still see colors in Dark Mode, but as Amazon confirmed to me, "When setting Colorsoft devices to dark mode, the screen may appear dimmer overall due to the color E-Ink layer."

If the screen looks too dim, adjust the brightness or find a good light source and enjoy your colorful graphic novels.

Against a backdrop of component shortages and price hikes, 2026 has been a challenging year for camera companies, and it's been a quieter year for new gear as a result. That being said, we were still treated to some cracking cameras — but standing tall above them all was the Sony A7R VI, with a new 66.8MP full-frame stacked sensor, Bionz XR 2 processor, Sony's latest subject-detection autofocus, and its first new battery for 10 years.

It's a formidable camera whatever your genre of photography, and won both our Best Professional Camera and overall Camera of the Year awards for 2026 at the TechRadar Product of the Year Awards 2026. Here's what makes the A7R VI so special, in my opinion.

Can a camera really be ‘perfect’?

It's possible that I got carried away slightly when I said the A7R VI “had no weaknesses”, but after weeks testing the full-frame mirrorless camera across landscape, portrait and wildlife photography, I had no doubt in my mind that it deserved a perfect 5-star rating.

I’ve been reviewing cameras for almost two decades, and the A7R VI genuinely feels like peak camera. In my A7R VI review, I was even compelled to say “Sony can stop making cameras now.”

First up, I must point to the new sensor, which had an admittedly modest bump in pixels from the already class-leading A7R V’s 61MP sensor, to 66.8MP. But that’s not the exciting part about this sensor — it’s also a ‘stacked’ type with a faster read-out speed.

Faster read-out speeds can improve a camera’s performance in multiple ways, not least by reducing rolling shutter (an ugly distortion effect that appears when recording video and taking photos of high-speed subjects).

For me, I preferred having the smaller bump in resolution and a greater emphasis on speed, as opposed to an even bigger bump in resolution but no speed improvement. The A7R VI is a powerful all-rounder, as opposed to a pure pixel monster.

The camera packs Sony’s Bionz XR 2 processor, which combines two chips, including one that’s tasked with subject-detection autofocus. Whether I was photographing small birds or large mammals in a nature reserve, or taking portraits, the A7R VI never skipped a beat.

Then there’s the camera’s handling. Historically, for me Sony's design and user experience haven't matched those of other leading mirrorless camera brands — I’m a sucker for Nikon in particular. But the A7R VI is spectacularly well designed.

There’s a tilt-and-flip touchscreen, meaning the screen can be pulled out and used as a tilt screen for waist-level shooting, or flipped out and rotated for selfies — traditionally you’d have to pick either / or (or have neither). It’s the most versatile design on the market, and one which you can also find on the latest Lumix S1 II cameras. If I had one wish, it would be that Sony increased the size of its 3-inch display in the future, even if only to 3.2-inches like Nikon.

The viewfinder is big, bright and highly detailed class-leading 9.36m-dot display, while the button layout makes perfect sense, and the camera’s grip is nice and deep and comfortable to hold.

Housed inside the grip is an all-new battery — Sony’s first for 10 years since the legendary NP-FZ100. The new unit has a higher capacity, and increases shot life by 20%; not bad, considering the previous battery already delivered class-leading power.

The downside to the new battery is that it’s not forwards / backwards compatible with the NP-FZ100, so upgraders are going to have to splash out on additional batteries should they need them.

Video specs are decent, though arguably not as strong as those of some lower-resolution rival cameras. For example, Sony again omitted open-gate recording (this would finally appear later in the yet-to-go-on-sale FX5 cinema camera).

But if photography is your beat, and you need a high-resolution sensor with huge scope for cropping — the A7R VI’s Super 35 (APS-C / 1.5x crop) mode is still a healthy 28MP — and don’t need the absolute top speed and buffer performance of cameras like the A9 III and A1 II, there really is no better camera.

The A7R VI was so good, in fact, that it put the (much) pricier A1 II’s position in doubt, given that it can do 90% of what that camera can, while boasting a higher-resolution sensor.

I reviewed some fabulous cameras in 2026, but my absolute favorite was without doubt the A7R VI — it’s the camera I wish I owned, along with some of Sony’s spectacular recent pro GM lenses. It was the crowning achievement for Sony in a year in which it also scooped our Brand of the Year award, and comfortably maintained its #2 market position behind Canon.

Sony A7R VI image gallery

The Romo P is DJI’s first foray into the world of floor-cleaning, and the company's years of expertise in navigation and obstacle-detection have translated flawlessly from the sky to your floor.

The most important aspect of a robot vacuum, though, is its cleaning ability, and in our tests the Romo P more than holds its own against established leaders like Roborock and Dreame — read our in-depth DJI Romo P review for more. It’s a hugely impressive package all-round, and my choice for Home Device of the Year in TechRadar's Product of the Year Awards 2026.

DJI’s drones have offered autonomous navigation since 2016, and it's that expertise that gives the Romo P the edge when it comes to pathfinding. It combines dual fisheye cameras with LiDAR to detect objects as small as 2mm thick (that's less than an eighth of an inch), so there’s no need to worry about cables or shoelaces getting wrapped around the brushroll.

The Romo P packs serious cleaning power inside its space-age chassis too, tackling dirt, dust and pet hair across all floor types. With 25,000Pa suction and extendable cleaning brushes, it’s particularly well suited to wood, tiles and other hard surfaces, and it’s no slouch on carpet either, easily keeping up with rival robovacs.

Wet cleaning is especially impressive; the Romo P’s dual mop heads are noticeably more plush and absorbent than those of other robovacs we’ve tested, and the right-hand head articulates out slightly to clean all the way to the edge of furniture and baseboards without leaving dust lines (a common issue with round robovacs). When it needs to move onto carpet, the mop heads raise automatically to keep the floor dry.

Once the Romo P has finished cleaning, its automated charging and self-cleaning dock takes over. This surprisingly compact unit sucks dirt from the romovac’s bin into a sealed dust bag to keep dirt and allergens safely contained, then washes the mop pads and dries them to prevent mold and odors. The process is so effective that you might only need to intervene a few times a year.

The Romo P is controlled via DJI’s Home app, which lets you customize its automated functions to suit your floors and lifestyle. For example, you can set up custom cleaning schedules, and adjust the Romo P’s suction and mopping-water levels on a room-by-room basis. Like any good robovac app, DJI Home also allows you to set no-go zones, and monitor cleaning progress in real time.

That’s not all — the app also gives you a ground-level view of your room via the robot’s two fish-eye camera lenses, so you can, for example, check on your pets while you’re away. There's full voice control too.

The Romo P is even a cut above other robot vacuums when it comes to aesthetics, with its transparent top panel and matching see-through dock letting you see exactly what’s happening while the duo keep your home spotless with little-and-often cleaning. They’re a far cry from the usual black or white pucks and chunky docks of most robovacs.

DJI has launched itself into your home in style, with a robot vacuum that can literally run rings around its competitors, and its Romo P is a thoroughly worthy winner of our Home Device of the Year award.

If you celebrate Halloween, you'll no doubt be on the lookout for some things to entertain you this weekend. With this in mind, I checked out three of the biggest new horror releases in October to see if they're any good.

There have been some real highs and lows this month, and I found myself especially disappointed by one movie in particular. Thankfully, there's a great TV show and game to keep you occupied, so it's not all bad.

So, what do I recommend checking out this spooky weekend? Scroll down to find out.

TV — Crystal Lake

Where to watch: Peacock (US); Sky (UK); Stan (AU)
Lucy's verdict: Scream

Crystal Lake is the anticipated Friday the 13th prequel, and it's a great choice if you want a binge-worthy series to watch over the Halloween weekend. With all eight episodes streaming at once, how could you resist?

I did have my reservations about this series, but it is an excellent entry into the horror franchise. In my full Crystal Lake review, I noted there's a clear love for the original movies here, and that it expands upon the lore by focusing on Pamela Voorhees, an under-explored character in the Friday the 13th universe. Played excellently by Linda Cardellini, it's very worth your time.

Movie — Other Mommy

Where to watch: Theaters worldwide
Lucy's verdict: Skip

As someone who loved the book Incidents Around the House and was genuinely freaked out by it, I was excited to hear it was getting a movie adaptation. I was even more excited to hear that Jessica Chastain would star in a dual role as a woman and an entity that emulates her, known as "Other Mommy".

Unfortunately, the movie ended up being a massive letdown. Not only does it suffer from the cliché of tired and overused jump scares, but it also deviates from the book to the point that it loses the psychological dread and tension that had me looking over my shoulder. Other Mommy does very little to stand out from similar supernatural movies like it

Game — Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival

Where to play: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Lucy's verdict: Scream

Hellraiser has been everywhere recently, from its haunted house at Universal's Halloween Horror Nights to a new video game. I was very impressed with Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival and would highly recommend it this Halloween weekend.

It's clear it's been made by people who have a genuine appreciation for Hellraiser, as the atmosphere and the willingness to stick to canon are excellent. Iconic character Pinhead returns too, and the result is a gripping game with puzzles and heart-pounding moments.

If I was to pinpoint one special lens in my photography career, it would have to be the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art for Nikon F-mount.

I picked mine up just before I moved to East Africa where I would work in photo journalism. Sigma had just burst onto the scene with its new ‘Art’ lens in 2012, for a much lower price than Nikon’s proprietary 35mm f/1.4 for its DSLRs, and so I bought one to pair with my Nikon D800 camera.

Over four memorable years living in Kenya and travelling the region and neighbouring countries, I estimate that I took more than 75% of my photos with this one lens, many my all-time favorites of people in their environment.

More recently, I switched to a mirrorless camera made by the same company — the Z-mount Nikon Z6 II, which has been updated with the Z6 III but remains my primary camera.

Viltrox then offered a review sample of its shiny new AF 35mm F1.4 Pro lens, which was unveiled this week in Nikon Z-mount and Sony E-mount versions, but with no word on an L-mount version yet. I’ve already tested Viltrox’s pricier 35mm F1.2 from its flagship ‘Lab’ series, but the latest f/1.4 pro is a specs match to my old lens, so I was keen to see how the two compared.

I tried both lenses in various scenarios, shooting like-for-like photos with them using the Z6 II camera (the Sigma lens attached via the Nikon F-mount to Z-mount adapter).

Along the way I was asking myself — is mirrorless all that it’s cracked up to be, or could I happily continue with my decade-old-and-more DSLR optic? Here’s what I learned.

Handling of each lens

I'll start with handling, and Sigma’s lens by itself is physically smaller than Viltrox’s. However, the necessary F-mount to Z-mount adapter to use it with my Z6 II adds bulk and evens matters out.

And if I were to use the Sigma lens with my D800 DSLR, well, that's a much bigger camera than the Z6 II. The adapter essentially addresses flange depth (the distance between the camera sensor and the rear of the lens — which is deeper in Nikon's F-mount), while maintaining full autofocus performance.

As such, there was no real size or weight advantage to either lens, whatever camera system was used. Nikon also has an affordable 35mm f/1.4 Z-mount lens, mind you, which is smaller than both of these lenses, but in my experience it doesn't match the quality of either lens here.

My Sigma lens has taken a beating over its almost 15 years of use in harsh conditions, and it's still going strong. Sure, it looks well-used, but it performs like it did on day one. I wouldn't hold the same hope for the Viltrox lens, aesthetically speaking, at least. It's one of the many Viltrox lenses that I've tested with an exterior that scratches easily. That doesn't affect optical quality, but it did make me mindful of taking care of the lens.

Autofocus is a fraction snappier and smoother with the Viltrox lens, but not enough of a reason alone to opt for it. I don't believe that using an F-mount lens through the adapter with a Z-mount mirrorless camera has any adverse affect on autofocus performance.

Optical quality: any obvious progress?

I regularly want to make use of the bright maximum f/1.4 aperture with a lens such as these, in order to decrease depth of field and blur surroundings so that my subjects standout, and for working in dim light with no supplementary lighting. It’s at this setting in particular that the differences in optical quality between the two lenses are acute.

The Viltrox lens is optically sharper at f/1.4. Not by much, I must say, and you won't necessarily see the difference even when viewed on a laptop — I'd still class the Sigma lens as very sharp. However, when pixel peeping, the difference is there.

And it's when pixel peeping that chromatic aberration (CA) in the Sigma is way more pronounced. The Viltrox lens isn't immune to it, but it handles the distortion much better. The Sigma lens shows longitudinal chromatic aberration (LoCA) at times, too — a lens distortion that is harder to correct. I expected vignetting (where corners are darker) to be worse in the Sigma lens, but in reality performance was roughly on par.

• Check out my round-up of the best Nikon Z-mount lenses

And what about bokeh (the out-of-focus quality, typically observed in dappled light)? From my sample images, I'd have to say it's a tie. Both lenses can render buttery smooth bokeh, with similar characteristics; roundish in the center of the frame, becoming slightly more cats-eye in shape towards the corners.

The optical quality observations above are made with the lens aperture wide open at f/1.4. In all the situations above, I took sequences at f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2, f/2.8, f/4 and f/5.6 and compared the differences.

Stop aperture down to, say, f/4 and f/5.6, and most of the above differences are negligible; sharpness evens out, and lens distortions reduce — only does chromatic aberration remain more pronounced in the Sigma. I've included closeups of images shot at f/5.6 which prove how the quality evens out, below.

Viltrox AF 35mm F1.4 Pro vs Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art: the bottom line

For photographers, there is surprisingly little to choose between what is an excellent Viltrox AF 35mm F1.4 Pro lens and the 15-year-old Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art.

Optical quality differences are more acute at f/1.4; with aperture at its maximum setting, the Viltrox lens is slightly sharper and handles chromatic aberration better. However, you'll only really spot those differences when pixel peeping, and closing down each lens to f/4 and lower, the end results level out.

Bokeh is essentially the same in both lenses, although there's a touch of LoCA in the Sigma lens in certain backlit scenarios.

The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.4 Pro joins a growing list of lenses from the Chinese company that I can highly recommend. However, comparing it to a 15-year-old Sigma legend, that's designed for a mostly discontinued camera system, has only shown me that DSLRs and their best optics are still a decent option today. I for one will happily continue using my Sigma lens for photography.

The past four weeks have been, frankly, a wild time for our product testers. Each month I put together a Reviews Recap of the gadgets that have impressed us most; the products that have endured our tough tests and come out with a score of 4.5 or 5 out of 5. And this month there's a bumper crop, with dozens of great gadgets and gizmos to explore, across a variety of different product categories.

It won't surprise you to see Apple amongst the standouts of the past month: the Duo won us over with its "exquisite engineering" and "vibrant, virtually crease-free screen", but it was the Apple Watch Series 12 that earned perfect marks, with our tester dubbing it "the best mainline [Apple Watch] in years".

We also reviewed several excellent laptops, some sublime speakers, and many a magnificent TV. If you're not sure we're branching out enough, we also gave the stamp of approval to an innovative, podless pod coffee machine and a microwave that moonlights as an air fryer.

Scroll down to browse all the most impressive tech we've tested over the past four weeks. Tap the View details button for a run-down of what we thought, plus a link to read the full review for each. Note: only the products that are available in your region will display as cards.

5-star products

4.5-star products

As people delegate more abstract reasoning to large language models (LLMs), the precise meaning and nuance of our words can get lost in endless interpretation as LLMs repeatedly process, summarize, and recirculate these words.

Humans aren’t robots that formalize all of their sentences. Instead, we converse with some unwritten cultural and situational tones. For example, in some cultures, asking “Have you eaten yet?” doesn’t literally mean asking if the person has eaten food, but is another polite way of saying “How are you doing?” An LLM may miss this nuance in an essay, interpreting it literally and giving a wrong output.

If AI Model A interprets “Have you eaten yet?” literally, it then passes that same interpretation to Model B, which then passes it to Model C. At the third layer, the nuance gets lost. The AI models provide a coherent output, but one that’s out of the cultural and situational context. This is an example of semantic erosion, where definitional precision and cultural nuance gradually get lost as AI models recirculate interpretations and ideas.

Semantic erosion is a structural error, not a "hallucination" where AI models invent wrong facts. Instead, the output remains clear, but with context stripped away, the meaning changes. It’s a major bottleneck that LLM developers have to work around. Let’s deeply examine this issue and how developers are innovating their way around it.

Semantic erosion explained in detail

As LLMs increasingly process more information, small misinterpretations can compound and affect output quality. LLMs can misread human context or substitute it with a synonym, generating output that may be fluent and grammatically correct but not what the user actually desires.

Above, we gave an example of “Have you eaten?” being misinterpreted in the cultural context, but let’s see another fitting example.

Picture a company’s annual financial statement, and a multi-agent AI model is asked to analyze this statement to extract key insights. Agent A misinterprets “net profit” as “operating profit” even when they aren’t the same (operating profit is the company’s total profit from its business activities, while net profit is what’s left after subtracting taxes, depreciation, debt servicing, and other costs from the operating profit).

Agent A passes this misinterpretation to Agent B, degrading the data. After Agent C, D, and E analyze the financial statement, the extracted insights will be wrong. This isn’t an explicit error, but a quiet one the user can easily overlook, and wrong insights can cause wrong decisions.

If left unchecked, semantic erosion reduces the accuracy of AI model outputs. A little misinterpretation here, another there, and another here, and AI models can become too unreliable to be trusted by users, so LLM developers have to tackle this problem.

The intent compression paradox

Humans aren’t robots that speak programmatically. We add emotions, understanding, and cultural and environmental context, where just the voice tone can change the meaning of a sentence. For example, “We need to talk” can indicate care when spoken in a gentle tone but signal confrontation when spoken in a loud, high-pitched tone. “You can say that again” indicates friendly agreement when spoken in a warm, soft tone, but can sound confrontational when spoken loudly.

The thing is, humans mimic how we speak to each other when speaking with AI models, even though these models don’t understand emotion. AI models analyze words statistically and give quantitative output. This creates a paradox where the more optimized an AI model is to provide the most analytical answers, the more aggressively it may misinterpret human intent. It’s known as the intent compression paradox.

LLM developers usually compress prompts to save token costs, but as human intent gets heavily compressed, there’s a higher chance of models generating unreliable answers. To compensate for the compression, AI models may even generate longer yet less direct output that doesn’t fit the intent.

Strategies to address semantic erosion and the intent compression paradox

Above, we’ve explained the problem in detail. Now let’s look at the strategies AI model developers apply to address the problem. How do they avoid misinterpreting human intent? How do AI models avoid intent compression while still saving token costs? Let’s look at some real-world approaches.

Data filtering

The foundation of every AI model is its training dataset, so fine-tuning it to understand human intent starts here. Using more curated datasets like peer-reviewed journals, expert discussions, in-depth articles, and literature, not generic datasets, helps AI models understand context better. These curated datasets contain rich, high-integrity information that helps AI models recognize structured, context-based analysis and sound reasoning instead of just grabbing unverified claims from anywhere. Human expert discussions feature a lot of nuance, which is important for AI models to recognize.

Curated datasets are costlier than generic datasets, but the payoff is better accuracy and reliability. The entire dataset doesn’t have to be curated, but introducing a significant volume of curated datasets helps LLMs understand context much better.

To maintain the integrity of curated datasets, even as AI models generate output that may misinterpret context, developers can implement cryptographic or statistical watermarks (e.g., Google's SynthID) into their AI outputs. This watermark lets models recognize their own output and avoid training based on it, preventing a “model collapse” where LLMs degrade in quality after being trained on their own generated data.

Another approach is to build training dataset pipelines that only include data before 2023, the year when LLMs went mainstream, and the web began getting flooded with AI-generated content. Tackling semantic erosion in AI models starts with filtering their foundational training datasets, and we’ve described some effective approaches.

Architectural solutions

Developers can counter semantic erosion with strategic AI model architecture design. For example, AI models can be prohibited from guessing what data fields mean and, instead, use a localized semantic platform (e.g., SqIDBM) to map data queries to structured metrics, not raw database tables from which the model can extract wrong data if left alone.

Instead of letting AI models look directly at database tables, developers place a semantic platform in the middle that acts like a translator, telling the AI model what to output instead of leaving the model to search through the tables and possibly extract wrong insights.

Developers can also implement autonomous drift detection and session-level observability, where independent systems check if an AI agent’s output begins diverting from its preset semantic baselines, or when output starts drifting out of context. Instead of just monitoring isolated API calls, this approach involves tracking an AI agent's responses across a whole conversation and multiple workflows. If context drift is detected, automated corrections can be triggered, such as assigning the task to another model, automatically injecting updated, more context-aware prompts, and halting repetitive loops to save token costs.

Developers can also introduce loss functions that penalize AI agents for being too uniform, forcing them to keep some statistical entropy (diversity) in their outputs. Without this penalty, AI models can hyper-optimize to the point of finding one successful answer to a query, then repeating it endlessly for similar queries even when context differs. The entropy penalty compels the AI agent to distribute probabilities across multiple options instead of placing 100% confidence in a single response.

Think of the loss function as a mathematical rulebook that tells the AI model when it goes wrong, and the model only gets penalized for mistakes. This makes the AI model avoid wanting to give wrong answers, so it uses diverse vocabulary, alters sentence structures, and follows "creative" approaches to respond to user queries instead of following the safest, most generic path (e.g., "I understand that...").

Moving from 1 to 5 agents introduces a high level of coordination complexity. Think of the possible state errors, race conditions, and failure points for an AI model and multiply that by the number of models raised to the power of 2. That’s what developers face. For example, moving to 3 agents increases complexity by 9, and moving to 5 agents increases it by 25. Research indicates that 36.9% of multi-agent system failures are due to coordination misalignment.

Agents sharing the same memory may read outdated data from cached layers. Unlike standalone AI models with strict API limits, multi-agent systems can loop infinitely and misinterpret context. Inter-agent handoffs and context repetition lead to these systems consuming many more tokens than standalone counterparts.

To work around this problem, developers use a central coordinator to break down user queries into various parts, assign parts dynamically or sequentially to different agents, and aggregate results. Yet, earlier on, we described the limitations of this centralized orchestration approach.

Algorithmic solutions

Developers can follow algorithmic approaches that prevent semantic erosion in AI models. This involves injecting mathematical rigor into the models to enforce semantic consistency, restrict probability distributions, and limit the occurrence of hallucinations.

One approach is to supplement pure vector-distance searches with precise knowledge-graph paths in AI agents. This helps AI agents move from simply looking for semantic similarity to structured reasoning based on relational facts. Knowledge-graph paths connect entities (like places, people, and objects) with directional edges, allowing agents to follow preset multi-hop paths, such as Author > Book > Chapter > Quote, to retrieve facts.

Vector-distance searches aren’t discarded entirely, as they're essential for routine, narrative-style answers. Rather, use the hybrid model where vector-distance handles routine user queries, and knowledge-graph paths handle more complex queries.

For their AI model, developers also combine statistical machine learning (data-driven prediction) with hard-coded algebraic constraints (mathematical bounds) that can’t be bypassed. For example, an AI model simulating chemical reactions will use statistical machine learning to simulate the reactions, and an algebraic layer that binds it to the law of Conservation of Mass and Energy, which states that the total sum of mass and energy in an isolated system stays constant and can't be created or destroyed. In mathematical terms, it’s E = mc², where E is total energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light in a vacuum (3 x 10⁸ m/s).

The above algebraic constraint ensures that when the AI model simulates chemical reactions, it doesn’t violate the laws of physics by creating or destroying chemical energy. Semantic erosion won’t let the AI model generate physically impossible outcomes with more or less energy than the original reactants in a chemical process.

During training, developers also restrict an AI model’s reward function to compiled results, or deterministic tokens, known as the Outcome-based reward mechanism. It emphasizes results and correctness over format compliance, where the model must pass a unit test, not just sound convincing while possibly being very wrong.

AI models are good at “reward hacking,” where they can generate coherent but very incorrect text, and this is behind the hallucinations that users often see. Restricting a model’s reward function to deterministic tokens prevents hallucinations and semantic erosion, helping the model provide accurate answers to complex questions.

Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) approaches

AI models may work independently after training, but inserting a human in the loop remains beneficial. A human-in-the-loop (HITL) approach infuses human judgment directly into AI data pipelines to prevent semantic erosion.

While labeling training data, domain experts can step in to re-anchor drifting tokens to real-world definitions instead of allowing recursive AI-to-AI outputs that can get easily misinterpreted. It’s no surprise that platforms like Mercor have built major businesses out of hiring domain experts (like software engineers, lawyers, doctors, and investment bankers) to label data for AI labs. Mercor alone has tens of thousands of hired talent fine-tuning data for numerous AI model developers, including Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT), the two biggest ones.

Developers also infuse frequent human-validated feedback to prevent semantic erosion loops where AI models train on AI-generated data and gradually lose touch with real human data. If left alone without human feedback, small biases, hallucinations, and errors can become foundational data for training the next AI events, and edge cases disappear, making the AI model forget its underlying data. However, developers regularly inject more context-heavy data to prevent this from happening.

There’s also the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) approach, a training method where human experts rate an AI model's outputs for alignment with stated values and preferences. The model learns from this process to give outputs that align with human intent, not just relying on hard-coded rules.

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) occurs in the post-training stage, after the model has gone through pre-training to build foundational knowledge, followed by the supervised fine-tuning (SFT) stage that teaches the model to format answers properly and act like an assistant. Then, RLHF comes in to align the base model with human values.

There’s no silver bullet strategy for addressing semantic erosion in AI models. Rather, developers combine various methods, which we’ve described in detail. The broad AI training process never truly ends, even when most work is done in the initial stage, so semantic erosion will always be a lingering issue that has to be addressed. Fortunately, developers have proven strategies to address it and keep models as accurate as possible.

Thought the era of CDs had come and gone? How wrong you are. We're seeing a real resurgence in physical media at the moment, and CDs are at the forefront of the trend. Below, I've rounded up a selection of the coolest, most interesting, and most lusted-after models we've spotted recently.

Shanling's EC Zero ASM is a multitalented portable player that can also cast tunes to wireless speakers or headphones via Bluetooth, rip CDs to USB storage in real time, act as a CD transport for your hi-fi, and double as a DAC for other digital devices.

Trettitre's Retro Ambient Audio System is the eye-catching result of a successful KickStarter campaign. It combines a turntable and cassette system alongside the CD player, all mounted on your wall in an artistic celebration of physical media.

For those with deep pockets, Rotel's Michi Q5 is an elite-level CD player and transport DAC with an eye-watering price tag to match. And even though it might never make it to market, I couldn't resist including Panasonic's portable TV-CD player prototype, which won over our Entertainment Editor with its unexpected, boombox-meets-gogglebox design.

Scroll down to take a look at all of those players and more, and hit the 'View details' button to learn more about each one. Want more CD goodness? Here are bunch of other cool disc-spinners to check out.

Disc-y business

• Demand for AI continues to grow, but more AI doesn't mean better returns
• Businesses are underestimating costs as they go from pilot to production
• Seat- and consumption-based pricing both have their places, it seems

Businesses are at risk of confusing generic AI adoption within their workforces with actual meaningful value, Oracle's Head of AI Strategy Hammad Hussain warns, with many of its customers now struggling to manage increasingly unpredictable AI costs.

We already know that three in five businesses agree unpredictable billing hikes cause them more strain than a higher but flatter baseline cost, thanks to a recent Splunk study, but it seems cloud vendors already know this too.

Speaking with a group of journalists at Oracle's recent AI World event, Hussain explained that while demand for AI continue to grow, businesses need to focus more on measurable outcomes than just adopting AI for the sake of it.

AI adoption does not equal value

"One of the fatal mistakes that clients can do... is they might perceive usage as value," Hussain said. "And that's not the case."

Companies should consider whether they're creating more experiences, more efficiencies, more products, and so one – rather than just whether they're using more AI, at the risk of doing so blindly.

This all comes as they struggle to maintain a sort of balancing act between investing enough in AI to make a meaningful impact on business outcomes while still maintaining cost visibility and control. It's that second element that many are now struggling with.

In fact, even the largest enterprises and early AI adopters who have experienced considerable success are looking at ways to scale back costs and only spend on the AI that's necessary.

Unpredictable costs are now becoming a major focus

Multiple studies have already uncovered the impact that unpredictable costs are having on AI consumers, and this follows a period of transition from flat, seat-based models to variable, consumption-based pricing as AI vendors themselves look to make the economics work.

Hussain warned that many customers risk underestimating the financial implications of rolling out tools on a bigger scale. "The production economics is quite different from pilot economics," he added.

Looking ahead, Hussain implied that a hybrid approach is emerging as a 'best of both worlds' scenario. Companies can still use the latest and most advanced frontier models to handle their biggest workloads, but some of the lighter work might just need conventional CPUs without the expense of GPUs and advanced AI altogether.

Somewhere in the middle seems to be a new solution that we're only really starting to see at scale this year – leaning on open-weight models.

"One way of [balancing costs and impact] is also using dedicated AI clusters, where they pay fixed amounts for a cluster, which might have open-weight models, so they're not paying per tokens."

Hussain explained that having access to a pre-defined set of compute resources and a slightly less advanced model gives companies a space to throw their less demanding work for a cheaper – but importantly, more predictable – price.

Unlike accessing a third-party model through an API, running an open-weight model on their own dedicated infrastructure allows organizations to process certain workloads without incurring extra costs for tokens.

Of course, they'll still need to pay for the underlying compute infrastructure, but it offers a far more predictable and budgeting-friendly cost.

Oracle's AI Strategy Head doesn't expect consumption-based pricing to disappear altogether. The pendulum has already swung from seats to tokens, but he now sees it swinging back to settle somewhere in the middle, where organizations will mostly be given the opportunity to choose which pricing strategy fits their needs best.

"We started off with fixed pricing," Hussain shared. "But then we realized that some are heavy users and some are low users."

More AI doesn't mean higher or quicker ROI

But regardless of how customers choose to pay for their AI, Hussain argues that the real measure of success should be the returns those investments actually make, and more isn't always better.

Defining AI ROI has been an unresolved topic for years, now, but Hussain offered a glimpse into some of the calculations companies can make to both determine whether they're been a success, but also to help guide their strategies initially.

On the upper side of a fraction-like equation Hussain detailed were benefit and adoption – AI investments need to create some sort of benefit, whether that's unlocking more productivity, driving more revenue or something else – but workers also need to adopt the new AI. "Benefit multiplied by zero is zero," he warned.

But then you've got the balancing act on the bottom half of that fraction – cost. Direct costs that stem from buying AI and compute, but also indirect costs relating to upgrading infrastructure and training employees.

Our discussion also revealed that only around 20% of organizations capture 75% of the value, and Hussain thinks he knows why.

"The thing which separates that 20% from the rest of the 80% is the fact that they can rewire their business, or they're truly reimagining their business using AI."

The future might not be so clear, but the underlying message is – personalization is key, and emerging hybrid approaches probably hold at least some of the keys to that.

That's hybrid in terms of how much workload actually needs to be handled by AI in the first place, but also hybrid in the way that consumers actually pay for their compute.

Ultimately, with AI costs becoming harder to predict, the most successful adopters will become the ones who find the most effective ways to turn investments into ROI – not just the ones that have the biggest budgets and the most extensive AI portfolios.

It's the largest cryptocurrency theft in history: hackers from North Korea allegedly swiped $6.36 billion in funds from Binance in the space of just 20 minutes, which has left customers reeling and the financial industry in shock.

The heist raises all kinds of questions about how this was allowed to happen, what might happen next, and whether Binance customers are going to get any of their stolen money back.

Even if you never owned any cryptocurrency before, there are bigger questions too — like what this means for global financial stability, and what the aftershocks might be for everyone outside the Binance world.

Looking for a quick five-minute primer on the Binance hack? We've been speaking to industry experts to get some answers...

1. What actually happened?

The basics are now pretty clear — $6.36 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen from the Binance exchange in the space of just 20 minutes. Security analysts are pointing the blame at North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking group, which has a history of this kind of heist. What's less clear is exactly how the hackers got access. Early reports identified a Binance employee's compromised laptop as a potential way in, though it now seems there's more to the story.

"A compromised laptop may explain where an attack started, but it does not, on its own, explain how billions of dollars could leave an exchange," Pieter Arntz, researcher at cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, told TechRadar. "The real question is what allowed that initial foothold to become access to withdrawal systems — and which safeguards failed to stop unauthorized transactions."

"According to blockchain analysts, the attacker spent at least a day and a half preparing, including testing their tools on public blockchains where anyone could see," Ben Bernstein, manager of cybersecurity advisors at Huntress, told TechRadar. "Then most of the $6.3 billion left Binance's wallets in about 20 minutes. That's common in attacks we investigate. The attacker does most of the work long before anything is stolen."

2. Will anyone get their money back?

Binance has promised to reimburse customer losses through its backup and emergency funds, but in the meantime we're seeing deposits and withdrawals frozen on the platform while the hack is investigated. It's a warning that even the largest and most sophisticated exchanges can still be vulnerable.

"Binance says it'll cover every cent," Nigel Green, CEO of the deVere Group, said in a press statement. "I hope so. The emergency fund is around $1.2 billion and the gap is several times bigger, so the rest has to come from the company’s own balance sheet. The market will want to see the numbers, and the new proof of reserves can’t come soon enough."

"Long term holders have just been reminded, very expensively, why keys kept offline matter. Crypto has spent years pushing back against heavy regulation, and plenty of those arguments were fair. This one's harder to argue with. Platforms holding billions of other people's money need enforceable security standards. I expect regulators in the US, Europe and Asia will likely move faster after this week," he added.

In the meantime, the US Secret Service has said in a statement that it's "working around the clock" with partners in the private sector "to identify, freeze, trace, and recover funds" that have been stolen from Binance.

3. What follow-up scams might appear?

Whether you're a Binance customer or not, you need to keep your wits about you over the next few days. It's likely that scams trying to literally cash in on the hack will start appearing — perhaps warning you that you need to quickly claim refunds, lock your account against a particular threat, or go through a bogus verification process.

"Criminals routinely use major breaches as a hook for phishing campaigns," Dray Agha, senior manager for tactical response at Huntress, told TechRadar. "Consumers should be highly suspicious of any emails or messages claiming to be from Binance offering urgent account recovery steps. You must only check your account status through the official application or website rather than clicking links in unsolicited messages."

According to the team at Huntress, you should watch out for social media posts, emails, and text messages that use the Binance hack as a hook — perhaps a fake news story suggesting that now's the time to buy crypto, while prices are down.

As always, think twice about following links or entering sensitive information into online forms and portals you're not familiar with.

4. How does this affect the average consumer?

If you don't own any cryptocurrency, the good news is that you're largely going to be unaffected by what's happened here. There's not going to be a stock market crash, or a run on the banks, or a global recession — not because of this hack, at least. However, it's always worth weighing up your own personal privacy and security setup.

"If you don't own crypto, the direct impact on you is small," Ben Bernstein from Huntress told us. "Your bank account and your card are not affected by this. The bigger takeaway for consumers is that attackers often get in by targeting people rather than technology, through a convincing email, a fake login page or a phone call from someone posing as IT support," he said.

"That makes security awareness everyone's job, at home and at work. If you pause before you click a link, approve a login or share a code, you're making it harder for an attacker, whether they're after your savings or your employer's systems," he added.

5. What does this mean for the future of money?

This clearly raises a lot of questions about the safety of cryptocurrency and the exchanges that it sits on — and of course it's far from the first crypto heist we've seen. In the longer term, it may lead to less confidence in crypto as a whole, but the experts we spoke to don't think it will bring the industry down. What will be important is making sure the risks of this happening again are minimized as much as possible.

"Despite the scale of the theft, this is not a threat to global financial stability," Feike Hacquebord, Principal Threat Researcher at TrendAI, told TechRadar. "Around half of the stolen funds have already been frozen, while the regulated banking system is well equipped to absorb a shock of this size. This is a major crisis for Binance, not a crisis for the global financial system."

"The change I’d like to see, for crypto firms, banks and every other business, is working on the assumption that someone will get in eventually," Ben Bernstein told us. "Keeping attackers out matters, but it isn't enough on its own. Companies also need someone watching around the clock, especially for logins and account activity that don't look right, so they can find and remove an intruder before the money starts moving," he added.

Back when Apple announced watchOS 27 back in June earlier this year, there was one new feature that piqued my interest more than the promise of a smarter version of Siri or a Workout Buddy that now operated more standalone. Apple revealed that it was delivering more accurate distance tracking during walks and treadmill runs. It’s primarily doing that by making improvements to the algorithms that help to calculate the distance covered when you step onto that belt.

It's website states that 'improved motion tracking algorithms help measure the distance of your treadmill runs and walks more precisely straight from your wrist.'

As a runner that does his fair share of runs on a treadmill (and not just because it’s got cold outside — treadmill running is great for specific pacing and incline drills), I liked the prospect that the best smartwatch’s indoor activity credentials could now match its very solid outdoor performance — which I tested on the London marathon course’s infamous GPS black spots.

So, has Apple actually managed to deliver more accurate distance tracking for indoor runners? I’ve been spending the last couple of months testing the feature across the best Apple Watches — including the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 — to find out.

How I tested

I began my testing using the beta versions of watchOS 27 running on the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Apple Watch Series 11. When watchOS 27 was given a public release, I also strapped on the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the Watch Series 12 to see how Apple’s latest smartwatches fared indoors.

I didn’t have my own treadmill (or indeed, have the room to house one), so I relied on the treadmill at my gym. While I did my best to stick to the same treadmill for these test runs, that wasn’t always possible. That did mean I’d be stepping onto treadmills of various conditions and belt wear, which does have an impact on the reliability and accuracy of the treadmill distance tracking feature.

With the Apple Watch strapped alone to one wrist, I had a Coros watch on the other paired to the Coros Pod 2. This foot-worn pod is designed to track distance, among other metrics, and was an additional source of data that could offer a more reliable picture of my running distance than the motion sensors that usually do that from the wrist. I used the foot-worn pod as a control device, the same way we use the best heart rate monitors to test the readings from smartwatches.

With watches on wrists and the pod on my feet, I captured a range of runs covering different paces and distances. That included short one-mile test runs, steady hour-long runs and interval runs during which I mixed up my pace.

I stuck to the same incline for all runs and used Apple’s own Workout app to track the workout. Apple suggests tracking an outdoor run of at least 20 minutes to calibrate the watch and help those algorithms do a better job of understanding your stride length, and in turn, deliver more accurate distance tracking. I did that with each Watch I tested.

The results

On the early runs in my testing using the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Series 11, I found a difference of about 300 metres (0.3km) from the distances the treadmill and Coros Pod 2 reported. If I’m looking at that difference in terms of a longer distance race such as a marathon, that’s quite a small difference. If we’re looking at that difference over a shorter distance race such as a 5km, then it might be the kind of difference that mattered.

When I switched to testing with the publicly available version of watchOS 27 with the Apple Watch Ultra 4 and the Series 12, there tended to be a difference between the treadmill and watches of roughly 200 metres. Again, that’s a very good performance and a small difference when you’re banking a longer run.

The improvement in distance tracking should, in theory, have a positive impact on capturing your running pace. While I found the pacing data to in general be similar to the Coros Pod 2 and the treadmill, there were times I felt the Apple Watches struggled to register faster sections of certain running sessions and typically was more noticeable during interval-style sessions.

This is generally where treadmills can struggle too, and I’m not convinced the various Apple Watches always got a good grip of my real-time pacing.

Is the Apple Watch fit for the indoor run tracking job?

After hitting double-digit treadmill runs across a series of Apple Watches that promise more accurate distance tracking for indoor runs, I can say that I never saw the Watch and treadmill entirely match up. What I did see was that those Watches weren’t far off. reporting similar distances to the kilometers listed both on the treadmill and on the Coros Pod, especially on steady or easier paced runs. However, they were never exact.

Like most watches and badly-calibrated treadmills for that matter, the pacing during those runs did feel off and made using the Apple Watch for faster runs more problematic. I do feel that those algorithm tweaks will be more appreciated by those choosing to do their walking indoors, and are mainly focused on the distance they cover during that inside walking time.

If I was choosing to track my runs indoors, I’d still make sure I was performing that 20-minute outdoor run calibration to get the most reliable data. I’d also say that having a footpod sensor like the Coros Pod 2 or a Stryd that captures your stride data closer to the point of the body that’s actually doing the moving will get you a better level of accuracy. While the Coros Pod 2 is tied to Coros watches, the Stryd does work with the Apple Watch.

What it really showed is that if you care about accurate distance and pace data, getting outside and putting the onboard GPS sensor will still be the best way to get you that. It will also give that indoor running time a boost as well — while the Apple Watch has improved, it’s not pinpoint-accurate and you should take indoor running metrics as a generally accurate guideline, giving or taking a couple of hundred meters. For most exercisers, that will be enough.

There are only so many ways I can say how good the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite is, but perhaps the simplest way is the best: it is the greatest gaming headset I have ever tested and reviewed.

Yup, it still looks very familiar, and very SteelSeries Arctis on the outside, but this headset is like no other in the brand's lineup, or the wider market. Everything, every minute detail, has had time and consideration poured into it, and it really is the fullest realization of what a gaming headset can be, and a natural winner at the TechRadar Product of the Year Awards 2026.

First and foremost, as I laid out in my full SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite review, it's got that brilliant out-of-the-box SteelSeries audio — but not quite as we all know it. The brand-new custom-made carbon fiber audio driver, held in place by a brass surround ring, makes for a different, but still breathtaking, flavor.

Combine that SteelSeries Arctis tuning with the new hardware combination, and you get unbelievable immersion, supremely accurate sound reproduction of anything and everything, and excellently rich and detailed certified Hi-Res Audio for a wireless gaming headset.

While I could talk about the audio alone for ages, the Elite backs up its brilliant sound with a faultless feature set.

Firstly, building on the brilliant DAC unit the Arctis Nova Pro headsets introduced, the Elite's GameHub with OmniPlay means you can be connected to every platform type, basically simultaneously.

It's fabulous. Utilizing this, as well as the headset's Bluetooth connection, you can actually connect to up to four different sources, and mix and listen to them altogether. You might never need four, but being connected to my console and PC, and having Bluetooth on to take phone calls, has been really useful for me.

You've got two different microphone modes (a retractable boom, which is fantastic quality, and built-in ones for convenience), the 'infinite' battery supply due to a spare being charged in the GameHub all the time, and a host of EQ and other controls in the GameHub.

The Nova Elite feels fantastically premium, and joyous to wear and use. The cold-rolled steel and aluminum materials are superb, the leatherette cushions are sublime, the metallic volume wheel is a tiny but glorious touch, and every button and material finish feels worthy of the headset's lofty price tag.

Other headsets might tickle different fancies, or appeal to different priorities that folks might have; but for anyone looking for a premium, do-it-all headset for all of their devices that excels in every way, it has to be the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite. You simply will not find a better headset offering the same combination of design, features and audio quality. Buy it, and you will never look back.

So you've got your water, cash, canned food, and a wind-up radio, but something is missing from your prepping supplies. If the power goes out and your water supply is cut, how will you make your morning coffee? Put down that jar of instant granules — basic services might have failed, but your tastebuds haven't.

Drip coffee is an easy way to perk yourself up and boost your morale in a crisis (just pick up a ChemEx brewer or a simple dripper with some filter papers), but if you're aiming to conserve water then a shot of espresso is a better way to get your caffeine fix, so here I've focused on brewers for preparing shorter drinks.

Consider how you're going to store your emergency coffee supply, too. Whole beans will hold their flavor better than ground, and I recommend keeping them in an opaque, airtight container in a cool place (light, heat, air, and moisture are the enemies of aroma compounds). You'll need a grinder, too — look for one with burrs rather than blades so your coffee isn't chopped up in rough pieces.

If all that sounds like too much hassle in a crisis, opt for foil-sealed coffee pods instead. Both the Nanopresso and Dreame Ecceluxe Go below have adapters for brewing with single-serve capsules.

The Ecceluxe Go heats its own water, but if you pick a more basic brewer then you'll need a different way to get it up to temperature. As the former editor of an outdoor gear website, I recommend a simple gas camping stove like the MSR Pocket Rocket 2, which will get your water up to around 203F / 95C in approximately 3.5 minutes. Now, onto the brewers...

Wacaco NanoPresso

No power? No problem. The Wacaco Nanopresso generates up to 18 bars of pressure using nothing but elbow grease. It's small enough to tuck inside a pocket, and is hand-powered, so all you need is a source of hot water to create properly extracted espresso with thick crema (even if you have to use a flashlight to see what you're doing).

The standard Nanopresso uses ground coffee, which you can tamp down using the scoop (the brewer has a valve to release pressure if you accidentally tamp it too hard), but if you'd rather use pods then the NS adaptor allows you to use Nespresso Original style capsules instead.

It feels robust and solid in the hand, and is packed with thoughtful little features like an insulated water tank and cup to protect your hands from heat, and an easy-clean portafilter that needs minimal maintenance.

Dreame Ecceluxe Go

The Dreame Ecceluxe Go is a battery-powered brewer with a miniature boiler built-in. Just pour room-temperature water into the reservoir on top (measuring lines engraved inside will prevent you overfilling it and wasting precious resources), then pick the right adapter — Nespresso Original, Nestlé Dolce Gusto, ESE (Easy Serve Espresso), or fresh grounds — and you're ready to brew.

Preparing an espresso with room temperature water takes about six minutes from start to finish, and you can prepare two or three drinks before the Ecceluxe Go needs recharging (from a portable battery or solar generator during a power outage). The brew unit itself is smaller than a thermos flask, and comes in a compact carry case that you can tuck away with the rest of your emergency supplies.

The Dreame Ecceluxe Go is due to go on sale in Spain and Portugal very soon, with the US following shortly after. There's no plan for a UK launch yet, but it charges via USB-C, so there's no reason British preppers can't import one.

AeroPress and Manual Coffee Grinder

If you're planning to keep whole coffee beans in your emergency supplies, you need the AeroPress Manual Coffee Grinder. I've tested a lot of manual grinders in my time, and this is easily the best. It has proper burrs rather than cheap blades so coffee is ground rather than shredded, and they're adjustable so you can optimize the grind size to suit your brewing method.

The default setting is optimized for the AeroPress brewer, which you can use to make a short, strong shot of coffee to keep you awake, or a longer, smoother drink if you have water to spare. I have a plastic AeroPress in my locker at work (you never know what might happen), but if you want something extra tough then take a look at the rugged AeroPress Steel. If you're part of a whole family of coffee-lovers there's also the king-sized AeroPress XL, and if you need something you can also use on the road, the bijou AeroPress Go packs down into a compact travel cup.

I reviewed the MacBook Neo way back in March, and even then I knew there was very little chance that I'd be giving our Laptop of the Year award to any other device at the TechRadar Product of the Year 2026 Awards.

It's not necessarily the best choice for everyone — many far more powerful laptops have been released this year, and if you want to play PC games on your laptop don't even think of buying the Neo — but what Apple did with the MacBook Neo is pretty incredible, and it set the tone for a lot of other laptops that have come out this year.

Apple has always been seen as a premium brand, offering expensive devices that (usually, but not always) justify their price tags with superior build quality, and the kind of lifespans that owners of Windows laptops, who feel they have to upgrade every five years, can only dream of.

With the MacBook Neo, however, Apple has produced a (relatively) cheap laptop that manages to keep a lot of what we love about Apple's more expensive MacBooks, while making it affordable for more people.

The timing couldn't have been better, as a global cost-of-living crisis has meant that more people are struggling to afford day-to-day essentials, let alone 'luxury' purchases like laptops. At a time when a lot tech is also increasing in price because of the RAM crisis, it was very welcome to see a company like Apple release a relatively inexpensive new device.

Before the Neo's announcement, rumors had been swirling that Apple was planning on announcing a cheaper MacBook, but I don't think any of us were expecting the earthquake of its $599 / £599 / AU$1,049 starting price.

I say 'earthquake' because not only was it a lot cheaper than expected, it changed the landscape of the laptop market, shaking Apple's competitors, and leaving them scrambling to come up with a response.

And respond they did, with the likes of Dell and Acer releasing laptops at a similar price point that were explicitly pitched as competitors to the MacBook Neo when I discussed them with the makers.

A victim of its own success?

The fact that the MacBook Neo has had such an influence on the laptop market is one of the key reasons why I've picked it as TechRadar's Laptop of the Year. The likes of the Dell XPS 13 (2026) and Acer Swift Air 14 have made affordable Windows 11 laptops worth buying again, and the higher price of the new Googlebook laptops have a more difficult time justifying their price tags when the MacBook Neo, and the laptops it inspired, offer such good value.

In fact, you could almost argue that the MacBook Neo proved a bit too successful in inspiring its competitors, especially given that, a few months after launch, Apple increased the price of the MacBook Neo by $100 / £100. Not only did this make the MacBook Neo less groundbreaking value (and less of an 'instant recommendation' when people asked me which laptop they should buy), but its competitors seem to have mostly held steady with their initial pricing.

All of a sudden, Apple appeared to have inspired its competitors to make rival products that were cheaper than the MacBook Neo. Whoops.

Despite that price bump, the MacBook Neo remains an excellent laptop that continues to offer plenty of value. If you're looking for a dependable, well-built laptop for day-to-day tasks that doesn't cost a fortune, it's still one of the best laptops you can buy — and it remains the cheapest way to get into the Mac ecosystem.

The MacBook Neo proved that, at a time when hardware prices appear to be rising inexorably, it's still possible to make an impressive, affordable device, without making too many sacrifices — and that's exactly what we need in 2026.

I thought I had more time to prepare this week's TechRadar crossword, but then several retailers decided to launch Black Friday sales early, so I had to get on with my proper job instead of having fun making puzzles. Life is cruel.

Well, thankfully, we've covered all the best early Black Friday deals now, so I've just managed to sneak in another crossword for you before the week is out. It's made up of all the usual news highlights from the week and a few general pieces of tech and nerd trivia.

I hope you enjoy it! As for me, I'm off to see what bargains I might want to snap up in the early sales to get ahead on some Christmas shopping. It was payday, after all.

Your website says just as much about you as what your existing customers do, and that’s why you’ll want to make a good first impression. And, while it used to take months to put together a compelling website through code and toolkits, it’s now easier than it has ever been thanks to GoDaddy’s Airo AI Builder.

Airo AI Builder is a comprehensive website design tool that gives you the tools to construct a professional site, with a full commerce-ready backend, in minutes, not months, with code yours to keep so you can download it anytime.

Say It, Build It

If you remember the early internet, where sites were blocky, unintuitive messes built by code, you may fear that’s how your first effort will look. After all, how can you build something sleek and modern without knowing the first thing about website design?

Thankfully, GoDaddy’s Airo AI Builder removes all the friction of website construction without asking you to compromise on your ideas.

With a few prompts, Airo AI Builder can build a website, and then you can prompt it to change various elements with natural language input, while paid plans include a free domain for the first year.

Airo AI Builder is multimodal, too, meaning you can share all kinds of inspiration. Use a written prompt, drop in a file, a URL, or even use your voice to get started - Airo AI Builder does the rest, building a site in real time, and editing text and images directly doesn't use credits

Get Started for Free

New accounts include 50 free credits per month, letting you mock up your first design with no credit card info or subscription required, and paid plans start at 150 credits per month. Plus, you don’t need to lock in a plan to keep making changes — you can buy credits on a pay-as-you-go basis.

You’ll only need to switch to a paid plan once you’re ready to publish, and any remaining credits can be used to edit websites via the AI chat. Editing text and images, previews, and domain setup are all free, however.

You can also use Airo AI Builder to build a web app, single pages, databases, and logic in minutes.

Imagine a client portal that your customers can use to check updates on a job, or an online store on your own domain. Then, there are uses like portfolios, online booking for a salon, trainer, or consultant, and more.

If you do decide to step into e-commerce, then Airo AI Builder includes everything so you can build product listings, a cart, and checkout from a conversation. That means everyone from restaurateurs to client relationship builders can find a way to build an impressive site.

Airo AI Builder's Starter plan lets you kick off a website or app with a free domain for the first year, makes your code your own, and access to marketing campaigns, while the Professional plan adds analytics (payments and bookings are available on all paid plans), as well as collaborator and SEO tools. Finally, the Ultimate plan allows you to publish up to 50 apps while scaling across multiple sites. No hosting fees, no runtime charges. Just your plan, and 24/7 phone and chat support in the US.

Airo AI Builder has the lowest starting price for annual entry plans in the market.

Remember, you can get started for free now, and a paid plan will get you additional features. All of this means the entire process is hassle-free, flexible, and can help you improve your business’ visibility, too. So, what are you waiting for? Start building your idea today with Airo AI Builder!

Now that I've seen and touched the touchscreen MacBook Pro, I'm starting to understand that, despite the invention of a Frankenstein-ed new display term ('PROLED'?), this display might be something special. It looks extraordinary, and when compared visually with, say, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition, which also has a Tandem OLED, it doesn't even seem to be of the same species.

There are good reasons for this, which span from the fabrication process to the core specs of what is clearly Apple's most advanced laptop display yet.

Starting with manufacturing, Apple says it employed an unnamed manufacturing partner to build these panels in what's known as a Gen-8 OLED Fab. Seeing as there are just four of these cutting-edge facilities in the world, and that one of them is operated by Samsung Display, which has reportedly partnered with Apple on display tech previously, I'd guess it's Samsung.

One of the most notable features of these manufacturing facilities is their massive size. Whoever the partner is, we know that the touchscreen MacBook Pro's panels are being manufactured in a chamber around the size of the Colosseum in Rome. These huge facilities improve yield, efficiency, and costs.

Though less than a millimeter thick, the laptop PROLED XDR panel is comprised of 50 layers. Even what appear to be individual panels have many layers, sometimes just a nanometer thick. The two stacks of OLED have, for instance, 30 layers, though the organic self-emissive material is layered onto the panels and dried, making the layers range from one nanometer to hundreds of nanometers thick. FWIW, I held some of these individual panels, and they are incredibly thin and light.

Behind the OLED is the TFT (thin-film transistor) glass substrate that powers and drives the imagery on the surface.

What's not mentioned here is the digitizing layer (basically the same touch technology you find on the iPhone and iPad) that drives touch; that's because it's integrated with the whole in a process that, if it isn't already, probably should be patented.

Despite working with a third party, the production is another Apple trademark bespoke process, and one not necessarily replicated in other Tandem OLED or even basic OLED display manufacturing processes.

The specs bear that out. Where the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i Aura Edition touch display has a pleasing 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, Apple's touchscreen MacBook Pro boasts 10,000,000:1. In person, and even under bright lighting conditions, the blacks and definition I saw on the touchscreen MacBook Pro PROLED XDR are stunning.

The MacBook Pro display also looks better because Apple equipped it with up to 2,000 nits for HDR and SDR content, and both an anti-reflective screen and the option of the nano-etched one, as well. Essentially, I could see myself reflected in the Lenovo, and could not detect my reflection in the MacBook Pro.

Also, for those concerned about fingerprints collecting on the touchscreen MacBook Pro, Apple has applied an oleophobic coating to the standard and etched displays. In my hands-on time with several of the new laptops, I didn't notice any significant fingerprints.

Compared to the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i's 1,600 nits, the touchscreen MacBook Pro looks better equipped for working in direct sunlight. Based on what I saw, the MacBook Pro also maintains much better off-axis color quality.

Looking beyond direct visual comparisons with pro-grade Windows laptops, Apple is positioning the touchscreen MacBook Pro display as both a color reference screen and one that has grayscale precision reportedly sufficient for medical diagnostics. This is basically a reference monitor on a laptop frame.

So, sure, the story is that we finally have a touchscreen MacBook, but it may be the visual quality that ultimately wins over creative, business, medical, and film professionals. It's probably the best display Apple has ever produced, not just for a laptop, but possibly for any Mac system.

Of course, a screen panel alone does not make a laptop, and there are questions around whether everyone wants or needs touch, if the redesigned hinge is stable enough to keep the laptop from wobbling with every touch — and if touch capability is worth the almost $1,000 premium.

If you’ve just picked up a shiny new iPhone 18 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro Max, you’re probably sifting through a gazillion case options to better protect it from drops and scratches.

The very best iPhone cases are stylish, durable, and feel great in the hand, but having tested hundreds of different models over the years, let me tell you: not all iPhone cases are created equal.

So, to help you find the treasure in a sea of trash, I’ve rounded up nine of my favorite iPhone 18 Pro-specific cases from Moft, Troubadour, CASETiFY, and more.

Apple Silicone Case with MagSafe

Apple’s classic Silicone Case for the iPhone 18 Pro is the definition of a safe bet. As we’ve come to expect from these largely unchanging models, this case feels great in the hand and is grippier than many of the leather options included elsewhere on this list. But if by some miracle Apple’s Silicone Case does slip from your grasp, its rubbery construction provides a good amount of shock absorption for your precious iPhone.

If I’ve got any criticisms of Apple’s Silicone Case, it’s that it picks up lint pretty easily (a consequence of that extra grippiness) and it's prone to showing circular marks when attached to MagSafe charging accessories for long periods. These circles are temporary, only appearing when the case itself heats up during charging, but their existence is worth noting nonetheless.

For extra protection, you can pair Apple’s Silicone Case with a compatible Wrist Strap or Crossbody Strap, which are both sold separately. I'm not cool enough to pull off either of those things, but you might be.

Buy the iPhone 18 Pro Silicone Case with MagSafe

ESR Atelier Silicone Leather Magnetic Case

Crafted from soft silicone leather (which I can only assume is a synthetic leather-adjacent material), the ESR Atelier Silicone Leather Magnetic Case feels comfortable to hold and is chunky enough to protect your iPhone from reasonably high drops.

But the selling point of this case is its built-in stand, which sits around the iPhone 18 Pro’s camera plateau. It can be adjusted from 15 to 69 degrees and is sturdy as heck at all angles, so whether you’re watching a YouTube video with breakfast or a movie on the train, you don’t have to worry about your iPhone collapsing backwards on itself.

A 90-degree extension option would’ve been nice, but if going beyond 69 degrees would necessitate a bulkier module around the camera plateau, I’m happy with the trade-off.

Buy the ESR iPhone 18 Pro Atelier Silicone Leather Magnetic Case

Troubadour Modular Case

I’ve written about my favorite iPhone cases from Troubadour (formerly Mujjo) before, and for the iPhone 18 Pro, the case-maker has shaken up its lineup with a modular version of its classic Leather Case.

This Terracotta model features a removable magnetic back panel, which lets you pop out a portion of the case if you’d rather leave the rear of your iPhone 18 Pro exposed. I’m not entirely sure why anyone would want to do this — a backless phone looks cool, but feels strange in the hand — but I suppose it’s nice to have the option to do so.

The bigger benefit of having a removable back panel is that you can swap out the standard piece for custom MagSafe accessories that sit inside the cavity, rather than stacking onto the back of the case itself. Troubadour’s MagSafe Card Leather Wallet Stand is sold separately, but it’s absolutely worth picking up: it’s big enough to hold three cards, and features a fold-out stand that can prop up the iPhone 18 Pro in either portrait or landscape positions.

Buy the Troubadour iPhone 18 Pro Modular Case

CASETiFY Ripple Case

CASETiFY never does things by halves (remember when the brand partnered with The Andy Warhol Foundation?), and its latest Ripple Case for the iPhone 18 Pro is characteristically fun and durable.

Featuring four raised corners, this silicone case has been engineered to absorb and disperse force when dropped from multiple angles. CASETiFY says it’s been tested to withstand drops from up to 6.6 feet high, and while I wasn’t brave enough to raise my own iPhone 18 Pro above my 6-foot frame and drop it to the floor, I can believe the company’s claim: this thing bounces around like a ping-pong ball (complimentary).

Another nice feature of the Ripple case is its ability to withstand light-induced yellowing and object staining. You can rub ketchup, crayons, and coffee all over it — or even leave it out in the sun all day — and it’ll look good as new after a quick wipe. Parents, rejoice!

Buy the CASETiFY iPhone 18 Pro Ripple Case

Wave MagSafe Case

Wave’s MagSafe cases are unfussy, eco-friendly, and devoid of flashy features. Crucially, they’re made from biodegradable wheat straw, so they’re (much) better for the planet than many of the other options in this list — including those made from vegan leather.

I don’t love that Wave’s cases leave your iPhone’s Camera Control button exposed, which makes the button itself harder to reach given the width added to the phone by the case. But if you’re conscious about what might happen to your case after you’re done with it, there aren’t many better options than the Wave case.

Buy the Wave iPhone 18 Pro MagSafe Compatible Case

Peak Design SlimLink Everyday Loop Case

If you’re someone who likes to attach your phone to your vehicle, Peak Design’s SlimLink cases are the way to go. The SlimLink Everyday Loop Case for the iPhone 18 Pro can be attached to the brand’s car, bike, and motorcycle mounts (sold separately) via a novel magnetic-plus-mechanical mount system, which is more resistant to vibrations and bumps than magnets alone.

But even if you’re not fussed about mounting your phone to your, err, mount, the SlimLink Everyday Loop Case feels awesome in the hand, looks super smart (particularly in the Sage color pictured above), and features an optional finger loop for added peace of mind when you’re leaning over the railings at Niagara Falls to get the perfect shot.

I’m going to cheat and add a second Peak Design option in this same entry: the brand’s MagSafe-only Everyday Case is also a great pick if you’d rather avoid the bells and whistles of its SlimLink system and finger loop. It’s available in Charcoal, Sage, Ocean, Redwood Clarino (pictured above), Dusk Clarino, Cirrus Clarino, Black Leather, and Amber Leather.

Buy the Peak Design SlimLink Everyday Loop Case for iPhone 18 Pro

Moft Snap Case MOVAS

The Moft Snap Case MOVAS is an absolutely gorgeous iPhone 18 Pro case, but I urge you to exercise patience if, when putting it on your iPhone for the first time, it seems defective.

This is the tightest iPhone case I have ever used, which means it’s a bit of a challenge to get on and off. And once you do manage to snap it around your iPhone, it can sometimes ‘lock’ the power button into depression erroneously, which will force you to remove and re-apply the case until the power button becomes clickable as normal.

However, once you do find the perfect fit (I suggest leading with the power button side, and ‘pushing down’ with the volume rocker side), I’d wager that this is the nicest-feeling and nicest-looking iPhone 18 Pro case around.

There is something remarkably soft about Moft’s proprietary vegan leather, which is topped with a silicone-based surface treatment for a skin-like feel. And the aforementioned tightness of this case means it adds almost zero bulk to your iPhone 18 Pro. If you’re concerned about aesthetics above all else, this is the case to choose — especially in the Blackberry color, which complements Apple’s new Burgundy shade perfectly.

Buy the Moft Snap Case MOVAS for iPhone 18 Pro

Moment Camera Case II

Here’s one for the camera aficionados: the Moment Camera Case II lets you attach extra mobile lenses, physical photo filters, and mounting hardware to your iPhone 18 Pro.

Maybe you want to add some cinematic depth to your wide shots, or more optical character to your macro shots? Moment has attachments that help you do both those things, and the Camera Case II is the rig onto which these attachments, well, attach.

The brand’s twist-and-lock system works seamlessly, and the Camera Case II’s Camera Control button is the best of any case I’ve tested. Sure, this is a chunky piece of kit, and I don’t particularly like the ribbed material on the rear panel (think mild carpet burn), but this is the case to choose if you’re looking to take your iPhone photography to the next level.

Buy the Moment Camera Case II for iPhone 18 Pro

In a year that saw the arrival of next-gen RGB mini-LED to the mass market and elite OLEDs get more impressive and flexible than ever for brightness, my TV of the Year at the TechRadar Product of the year Awards 2026 is, in fact, the mid-range LG C6 OLED TV.

The latest in the LG C-series lineage, the LG C6 earned the full five stars in my LG C6 review, delivering what has always made LG’s C-series TVs among the best TVs around, but taking a few key features to another level (more on that below).

When I compared it to its predecessor, the LG C5, my admiration for the C6 was further solidified, again as the latter showed major upgrades over the former — that's not something you always see in newer TV models. At the time, I said I thought the C5 was better value — but six months on, the C6's price has dropped significantly, and it's now phenomenal value.

This win actually marks LG’s first return to the top of the TV of the Year podium since 2022, with Samsung’s mid-range QD-OLED the S90C taking the crown in 2023, with subsequent victories for Samsung’s flagship OLED models, the S95D in 2024 and the S95F last year. While Samsung released very impressive TVs in 2026, one of the key things we're all looking for even more than usual this year is value, and C6 has a few key elements that make it the best bang for buck.

Accuracy, brightness and power

One of the LG C6’s big upgrades was to its processor. While previous generations of the C-series had used LG's Alpha 9, the C6 was fitted with the Alpha 11 AI Gen 3: LG's most powerful chip, and the same one used in the flagship LG G6. This meant faster processing times for easier use and navigation, as well as upgraded picture features including 13-bit image processing for reduced color banding, and an upgraded brightness booster.

But did these features actually translate into real-world improvements? When I compared the C6 to the C5, the answer was a resounding yes. The C6 registered 1,438 nits peak HDR brightness in Filmmaker Mode in a 10% window — a notable step-up over the C5’s 1,180 nits in the same test. It even hit 245 nits fullscreen HDR brightness, which was 50 nits higher than the C5. That may not sound like much, but for an OLED battling against reflections in bright rooms, it makes a clear difference.

As for actual real-world viewing, the HDR brightness boost was best demonstrated in scenes with a sunset on horizon, such as Wicked and Top Gun: Maverick, where the C6 clearly had higher peak brightness, resulting in punchier HDR highlights. Bright scenes and colors also looked more impactful and engaging on the C6, particularly when large areas of white, such as snow, were on screen.

But, the thing that impressed me the most with the C6 during my testing was its color temperature accuracy. When I viewed the C6 and C5 together, it was obvious that the C6 had a green tint effect on it (something that has affected OLED panels in the past), which you don't really register when you're watching it solo, but is clear when comparing against other high-end panels.

This was most noticeable in The Batman, namely the scene after he fought with a gang on a subway platform. Watching the scene on both the C6 and C5, they both demonstrated excellent contrast with well-balanced dark and bright tones, but the C6 clearly had a much more accurate color temperature, meaning the gray tones of the walls and platform actually looked gray, whereas the C5’s green tint took away some of that true-to-life accuracy.

Outside of this, the C6 also delivered bolder colors that popped more on screen, more accurate skin tones and slightly more refined dark tones than the C5. Watching Elemental during my C6 testing was a particular treat, as the red, purples, pinks and blues throughout really dazzled on screen. The C5 had also done a great job with that movie, but the C6 just had more.

Unbeatable value

The C6 is not a ‘cheap’ TV by any means, but one thing the C-series has always excelled at is value for money. It’s got a full suite of gaming features, and when you pair it with responsive, smooth performance, it’s easily the best gaming TV available. Its motion is also super smooth for sports, and because it's available in sizes from 42 inches to 83 inches, it’s versatile for any space. It really is a jack-of-all-trades TV.

But in this year’s C6, an exciting new twist happened with its larger 77- and 83-inch models, both known as the LG C6H: they received the same Tandem RGB OLED panel used in the LG G6. And the best part? This came at no changed cost from the LG C5, which used a less-advanced OLED EX panel. So at these sizes, the LG C6 is practically the same TV as the LG G6, but cheaper.

We always worry about price increases from previous models when a TV launches, due to inflation as well as upgrades touted by manufacturers — and obviously this year has been especially hard for tech price rises.

However, the C6 launched for nearly identical prices and those prices have been dropping ever since. At the time of writing, several months from its release in April 2026, you can pick up a 65-inch C6 for $1,499 / £1,799 / AU$3,995 already, which is a $1,200 / £700 price drop (none in Australia yet unfortunately). And with Black Friday around the corner, there’s only more opportunities to get one for less.

When you put its upgraded performance and features over its predecessor, stable prices, upgraded panels in larger sizes at no extra cost and its genuine value for money together, the C6 is my obvious pick for TV of the Year. Yes, there may be more impressive TVs out there if money's no object, but here in 2026 money very much is an object — and no other TV ticks all the box boxes, including value, so impressively.

A few weeks ago, Keurig announced plans to kill off K-Cup coffee pods and replace them with tablets of compressed coffee called AltaRounds. Unlike the venerable K-Cup, these are entirely biodegradable, and leave behind no plastic waste after brewing.

It sounds like a great concept, and now I've had the chance to try the new Alta system myself, to see how it compares to conventional single-serve espresso machines — and to the Lavazza Tabli system, which uses similar pucks of ground coffee to achieve a capsule-free brew.

The Keurig Alta Coffee and Espresso Maker is a large machine, measuring 10.84 x 11.7 x 19 inches / 27.5 x 29.7 x 48.6cm (W x H x D), and it has a stylish design reminiscent of Smeg's premium coffee makers, with clean lines and rounded corners. It's available now direct from Keurig priced at $499.99, which includes four packs of AltaRounds of your choice. It comes in three colorways: Sandstone (shown here), Sandstone and Satin Stainless, and Graphite, all of which are classic and neutral enough to tie in with any kitchen decor.

All the components feel reassuringly solid and well-made, including the removable drip tray extender that slots below the coffee dispenser to prevent splashes when using a small espresso cup, the stainless-steel milk frothing pitcher with measuring lines engraved on the interior, and the pitcher-style water tank with its ergonomic handle and large pouring spout. It's controlled using a bright touchscreen on the top, and although the setup process suggests connecting it to Wi-Fi, this is optional.

The Alta brewer a versatile all-in-one machine, capable of preparing both espresso shots and longer coffee drinks, and is compatible with K-Cups as well as AltaRounds — an important consideration, since the switch to the new format is happening gradually, and your favorite drink may not be available in AltaRound format yet.

I tested the Alta brewer with three AltaRound varieties: Double Shot, The House, and Sweet Spot. Each one has a thin plant-based coating printed with a small QR code on both sides. When you lift the brewer's lid, you'll notice a white LED that allows a small camera to read this code, and instantly provides you with a list of brewing options and recipes for that specific type of coffee. For example, if you insert a Double Shot pod, the brewer might suggest preparing an espresso or cappuccino, whereas inserting a caramel-flavored Sweet Spot pod will suggest brewing a long coffee hot, or over ice.

It's worth noting that AltaRounds can't be brewed cold. If you select the 'over ice' option, the machine will dispense a shot of hot espresso that's more concentrated than usual, so it can be poured over ice without the meltwater diluting the flavor.

Once you've picked a brewing style, you can customize your drink by tweaking the volume and temperature, and choose whether to finish it off with milk. Unlike the Lavazza Tabli coffee maker, the Keurig Alta machine has a steam wand for this purpose, and has presets optimized for dairy and plant-based substitutes. You can use the wand manually, or insert a small whisk in the bottom of the milk pitcher and let the machine do the work automatically, whipping the milk while steaming it to produce creamy foam. Want a chilled drink? The Alta brewer can also whip milk without steam to create cold froth for iced lattes.

I tested the auto-frothing option with semi-skimmed dairy milk, and selected the hot mode with extra foam. The result was a 'dry' froth ideal for cappuccinos. Picking a lower-density foam option yields smaller bubbles, and a more pourable texture suitable for latte art.

Although I've only tried a few brews so far, my first impression is that AltaRounds deliver a more intense flavor than Lavazza's Tabli Tabs, despite using similar extraction methods. Double Shot is particularly punchy, and delivered a rich espresso topped with an impressive layer of crema.

When brewing is done, used pods drop into a bin at the bottom of the machine automatically, where they're suspended in a basket so water can drain away. The thin coating means each pod stays intact, and dropping them into your food waste bin is much less messy than knocking used coffee grounds out of a portafilter.

So is this the future of single-serve, and does it deserve a place in TechRadar's roundup of the best coffee makers? I'll continue testing the Keurig Alta Coffee and Espresso Maker over the coming weeks, using both AltaRounds and K-Cups, and will bring you a full review once I've finished putting it through its paces.

Mary could tell that her husband was “distraught” the moment he was wrongly accused of shoplifting and ordered to leave Home Bargains. The ordeal left him feeling “isolated”. “I was scared to go into a shop,” he said. They had only popped out to pick up some vitamins.

Elsewhere, a woman’s husband was left “shaking from head to toe” after she was told to leave Budgens on account of stealing “loads of meat” the week before. “My mind was racing,” she said. They hadn’t been to that shop for months.

Facial recognition is an inherently personal and intimate technology. It scans your features, processes your biometric data and, depending on its results, can stop you from entering a particular space.

It might all happen in an instant but its impact extends far and can be surprisingly long lasting — something that is made all the worse by a dizzying lack of clarity about who is to blame when something goes wrong.

‘Taste the indifference’

Earlier this week, in a cramped room in the House of Commons, people wrongly accused of shoplifting by facial recognition technology met to discuss their experiences with Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, Dr Allison Gardner.

The event, sponsored by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, was designed to give people an opportunity to air their grievances with politicians, the media, and the companies involved.

Above all, perhaps, it gave everyone the chance to get some answers about how the system works, who is to blame when it doesn’t work as intended, and to start planning how best to move forward.

Big Brother Watch invited Facewatch, the company behind the technology, to attend. It also invited representatives from Sainsbury’s, a company that is currently in the process of introducing facial recognition to 200 of its stores.

Neither company sent representatives to the event.

On hearing details of one specific case, Dr Gardner said she “had so many questions.” Was it an algorithm glitch, a shop worker making an honest mistake, or something else? Unfortunately, there was no one to answer the specifics.

“You can taste the indifference,” someone at the back of the room said.

“Sainsbury’s is happy to scan its customers’ faces but won’t face the people its technology has harmed,” Jack Coulson, Head of Advocacy at Big Brother Watch, later told TechRadar.

Each of the testimonies from people wrongly flagged by the technology shared striking similarities. A routine activity was suddenly transformed into a confusing, public ordeal of having to defend themselves against allegations they did not immediately understand. People said they felt “bewildered”, “isolated” and “confused.”

However, while the emotional impact was consistent, the specifics of each case were often not.

Some people were stopped the moment they walked through the shop doors. Others were confronted at the tills with a full basket. The errors were equally unpredictable. One person was a victim of mistaken identity, while another saw their face flagged on an overhead screen. One woman was wrongly intercepted simply because the system had identified the people walking in directly behind her.

There was talk of algorithms, of bias and poorly configured training data, of mechanisms for redress, and off-the-record chats about how some managed to gather more information.

The overarching feeling was one of bureaucratic exhaustion. Shoppers were left with no clear path to clear their names. “I didn’t know who to turn to,” one person said.

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The corporate defence

TechRadar reached out to all the companies mentioned in this article. Booker Group, which owns the Budgens brand, refused to comment on record. Sainsbury’s did not respond, and neither did Home Bargains.

Facewatch said it gave the invitation “serious consideration” but cited concerns about the balance of the event “given the tone of Big Brother Watch’s campaign messaging to date”. The company said that it had provided an explanation to the organizers and parliamentary co-chair, offering to answer questions after the session.

When asked who is liable when the system produces an error, Facewatch said it "takes responsibility for its technology and processes, and retailers are responsible for how their staff interact with customers” though it said legal liability “depends on the facts and it cannot responsibly be determined by providing a blanket answer”.

The company also said that when a false alert occurs, it initiates a “safeguarding process with the retailer to establish exactly what happened”.

Facewatch added: “We challenge campaign messaging that uses those incidents to create a disproportionate impression of the risk to ordinary shoppers. Facewatch operates discreetly and successfully in thousands of stores across the UK every day. Presenting exceptional incidents as representative of that everyday operation is misleading and risks creating unnecessary fear.”

‘Salt in the wound’

The lack of clarity that follows when someone is mistakenly flagged by the facial recognition system is the “salt in the wound of being publicly humiliated,” Big Brother Watch’s Coulson said.

When TechRadar visited a South London Sainsbury’s earlier this month, we found that there was no viable way of opting out of the facial recognition system and that security had little information about how the system works. There are signs with QR codes at the entry of the shops, though attendees said these contained insufficient information following a dispute.

Big Brother Watch offers some respite for the affected people, helping individuals navigate Subject Access Requests (SARs) — a statutory mechanism under UK data protection law used to force companies to disclose what data they hold. But the process is slow, demands that victims surrender even more personal data, and offers no guarantee that a face will actually be removed from watchlists.

“It’s the stuff of Kafkaesque nightmares to be trapped in a maze of bureaucracy and forced to hand over even more personal data just to be told the accusation,” Coulson told TechRadar.

The UK’s data privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), acknowledged the severity of the testimonies, calling the experiences "harrowing". It said it hoped to share more concrete insights into the commercial use of the technology soon.

But for now, the confusion remains and the blame for when it goes wrong is still unclear.

Following the event, Dr Gardner told TechRadar that she is "extremely concerned at the poor implementation and lack of governance" surrounding the technology and will be raising the issue with ministers and contacting companies directly.

She added that she would “like to know what redress is being given to wrongly accused individuals that is proportionate to the upset caused. Who is accountable and can be held liable.”

Until those questions are answered, the lack of clarity isn't just acting as a regulatory loophole; it risks creating a chilling effect for the wider public. If one person was “frightened to go to a shop” for weeks after, then perhaps you would be too.

Names have been changed to protect affected peoples’ privacy.

A Google Pixel Watch Ultra? Google is reportedly mulling over a sequel to its best Android watch of 2026, and the next iteration might be cut from the same cloth as the Apple Watch Ultra 4, Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 and Garmin Fenix 9 Pro.

According to Gadgets & Wearables, Google is circulating a survey in its app to 'select users' regarding the future of Pixel Watches. We haven't managed to see the survey — if you do get a screenshot, please email it in to matt.evans@futurenet.com — but G&W states that, among other questions, users were asked 'whether they would pay extra' for a rugged watch and 'what would make the Google Pixel Watch 5 feel more premium'.

That's a clear indication that Google is looking to launch, if not a Google Pixel Watch Ultra, then something along those lines. The use of the word 'rugged' is a dead giveaway: according to G&W, Google is looking at the successes of the Apple Watch Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra lines with envy, and is seeking to replicate them.

The only problem is, the Pixel Watch will need some changes before it enters into the Ultra watch arena. Here are three key design elements it needs to adopt, borrow or steal in order to be mentioned in the same breath as the Apple Watch Ultra 4 or Garmin Fenix 9 Pro.

Add a bezel, keep the dome?

The last couple of generations of Pixel watches have sported a domed display, which has become iconic in the world of wearable tech and unique to its Pixel pebble shape. The domed display provides improved glanceability, more surface area overall for its Materia 3 Expressive software design language, and looks the business from all angles.

What happens when we try to rugged-up the Pixel Watch by adding a titanium bezel to the mix? One of the principle functions of a raised bezel is to protect the screen, especially for adventure watches — but when the screen's a dome, the bezel will need to be strangely thick in order to protect the raised section.

Yet, you can't really have a rugged adventure watch, made for a beating, which is all glass — if they're going to get rugged, a bezel must be included.

The folks at Google are much cleverer than I am, and I'm sure they'll come up with a couple of ways to keep the dome and add the bezel. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the domed screen is quietly done away with for the Pixel Watch Ultra.

Improve battery life

One of the Pixel Watch's biggest failings is its lackluster battery life. While each model receives incremental improvements, the drive to also increase the watch's power means it never gets very far. Google will need to address this in order to compete in the Ultra stakes.

The Apple Watch Ultra, when launched in 2022, managed 36 hours of battery life, and since then has crept up to 50 hours with the Apple Watch 4. Samsung managed the get the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 up to 100 hours in low-power mode, although in practice most people will get around three days of use out of it. Meanwhile, Garmin, Coros, Suunto, and others dominate this space, frequently measuring their watch's battery lives in weeks — although their devices tend to be far more specialized and training-orientated than Apple, Samsung, and Google.

Google will have to make strides in this arena if it wants to compete with more expensive watches. It's likely a Google Pixel Watch Ultra would get battery life similar to Samsung's, around 3-4 days of use on paper.

But it will need to be able to hit those numbers in practice too, with long workouts using multi-band GPS and an always-on display enabled. Rugged smartwatch users do not want their tech to die in the middle of an ultramarathon.

Find space for more buttons

The Google Pixel watch is a perfect circular dome, interrupted only by a single digital crown. The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra series was the first in Samsung's rangle to adopt the squircle titanium 'cushion', providing defined sides to the watch, and as such, logical places to put extra buttons. Where the hell do you place them on the watch pictured above?

The reason we need more buttons is that Ultra-style watches have to be able to be operated while wearing gloves during exercise, rather than touchscreen-only. It's why most Garmins have between two and five buttons to aid in interface navigation. A Google Pixel Watch Ultra will need at the very least a programmable Action button-style extra, and preferably more than one.

That redesigned bezel will also have to take button placement into account. If you're thickening up the watch's surrounding casing, you could create something akin to a Garmin Fenix or a Forerunner, which are round watches with thick cases, bezels, and protruding buttons.

But how do you do that while keeping the Pixel Watch's distinctive design language? I guess we might find out one day in the not-too-distant future.

For Apple fans, the touchscreen MacBook Pro PROLED XDR tandem OLED display may be the gift that keeps on giving. Obviously, new integrated digitizing technology made the touchscreen possible, but the ultra-thinness of the display tech can also be credited with enabling the return of a beloved MacBook feature.

The touchscreen MacBook Pro is the first MacBook in almost a decade to feature an illuminated Apple logo on the back. I've seen it in person, and it somehow looks like polished metal when closed, and then a glowing bright white when open.

Apple bringing back the illuminated logo back is directly attributable to the PROLED XDR display. Each pixel in an OLED panel is emissive, which means there's no need for a backlight. Even after Apple made the laptop lid thinner, it still had some room left there — and it turns out there was enough room left to give the Apple logo its own backlight.

As improbable as it seems, there's now a dedicated light for the logo, but not for the rest of the screen. And it still doesn't take up extra space (nor eat up measurable energy).

Do it for the fans

Why did Apple do this? Well, Apple's not telling us, but it's clearly a nod to the fans.

CEO John Ternus tried to tell us the glowing logo was returning in his tiny X tease that showed light shining on the logo, which was on a flat surface. I simply thought it was another way of highlighting the Apple brand, and the big news to come. Granted, I was never that hooked on the old light-up logo.

In fact, my strongest memory around the Apple logo on the back of MacBooks is a conversation I had with Ternus when he was still Apple's hardware lead, during which he explained how Apple milled an ultra-thin and shiny stainless steel Apple logo for the MacBook 12 (the rest of the chassis was brushed aluminum). That was a big deal back then, even if it didn't light up

When Ternus revealed that the glowing logo was returning to the new MacBook Pro during the launch presentation ("the logo is back"), the crowd basically lost their collective minds. It's a big deal.

The illuminated logo also serves another purpose, instantly telegraphing that you're using a special MacBook Pro — the first with a touchscreen.

What Apple is not sharing, though — and it merits further investigation — is how it managed to make the glowing logo look like polished metal when the laptop is closed. It's an engineering secret that I suspect Apple execs and engineers will take to their graves, even after the inevitable teardown.

Confirming one of Apple's worst-kept secrets, Apple finally unveiled its first-ever touchscreen MacBook Pro in 14-inch and 16-inch models on Wednesday, October 28, in Los Angeles. The news comes just days after Apple unveiled M6-class MacBook Pros. Notably, the new PROLED touchscreen laptops are running M5 Pro and M5 Max Apple silicon.

Apple CEO John Ternus didn't waste much time on stage, quickly announcing the laptops and running through key innovations like the tandem OLED (PROLED) screens and relatively lightweight (3lbs for the 14-inch model and 4lbs for the 16-inch one) before leaving the stage and directing the assembled group of media, analysts, creators, and Apple execs to an adjacent space where I got my first experience ever with a touchscreen MacBook.

You've been waiting for this

If you read no further, know this: it felt totally natural to tap, swipe, gesture with three fingers, pinch, zoom, and more on a MacBook Pro display. It feels like I've been waiting my whole life to do this on a MacBook (or at least as long as I've been using MacBooks).

As a former Windows user, and more specifically a longtime Surface Pro fan, I'm actually quite used to touching a screen, though maybe not one quite as beautiful as this.

For those unfamiliar with tandem OLED technology, which Apple first introduced a few years ago with the iPad Pro, it sandwiches two ultra-thin, light-emitting OLEDs together. This increases the brightness while maintaining incredibly inky blacks (they're gorgeous). It also allows for a far thinner display panel because you don't need a backlight.

Though there now is a "backlight of a sort. This touchscreen MacBook Pro lineup marks the return of the glowing Apple logo on the back of the display. It lights up when you open the laptop and turns off when you close it (people at the Hollywood, California, event were cheering for that).

I played mostly with the larger, 16-inch model, which still features the expansive, backlit Magic Keyboard and a huge ForceTouch Trackpad, which honestly is gonna get a little bit less use now that a touchscreen is just inches away.

A pair of large speaker grills sits on either side of the keyboard, though I couldn't hear them over the din of the demo room. As with previous MacBook Pros, there's still an SD Card slot, three Thunderbolt 5 ports, one USB-4 port, HDMI, and the headphone jack.

In my hands, the 4 lb, 16-inch model felt a tad lighter than previous 16-inch MacBook Pros, though the 14-inch (which might be my preference) felt lightweight at 3lbs.

Touch it, touch it, please say you want to

Let's talk, though, about using the touchscreen.

I tried a 3D design app where I used a couple of fingers to spin a model of a guy in battle armor and then a single finger to paint gold on some of the armor.

I opened Maps and used two fingers to spin the map, then pinch-and-zoom.

I used three fingers to swipe through desktops.

I could use two fingers to grab a window, flip it to one side of the screen, and watch it instantly dock itself as a half-screen app (yes, I've done something very similar on a Surface Pro).

I played touchscreen piano with all my fingers.

At no moment did I hesitate and wonder how I did this or that thing. It's obvious. It never felt uncomfortable, and my arm never got tired. Put another way, a touchscreen is a perfect fit for the MacBook Pro family,

Now, you cannot take the screen and flip it all the way to the back of the laptop (something many touchscreen Windows laptops can do). That might be a shame because I could also use my finger to paint and, though I haven't done it yet, draw.

Speaking of which, there is no indication that the touchscreen MacBook Pro supports the Apple Pencil. Honestly, if it can't fold back at least flat, there's no point in this support anyway.

There is, by the way, a Dynamic Island that's basically copied from the iPhone, but I didn't see it do very much.

As I used the touchscreen MacBook Pro, I was not only reminded of my time with the Microsoft Surface Pro but of my initial weeks and even months with the MacBook after I switched platforms. Yes, I found myself touching the inert MacBook screen and had to retrain myself to stop doing it.

Point is, touch was something I reflexively used on the Surface Pro, and I am now certain I will happily use it on the touchscreen MacBook Pro. You probably will, too.

You will pay for the privilege of touch. The 14-inch MacBook Pro with touch starts at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599, and the 16-inch model starts at $3,399 / £3,399 / $5,499. Pre-orders are live today, and the laptops ship on November 6.

In the year of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8, Honor Robot Phone, and recently released iPhone Duo, it feels almost blasphemous to hand TechRadar’s Phone of the Year award to the iPhone 18 Pro at the TechRadar Product of the Year Awards 2026, but there is something quietly brilliant about Apple’s latest flagship.

Contrary to those aforementioned headline-grabbers, the iPhone 18 Pro is not a flashy product in almost any way. Heck, it even swaps the Cosmic Orange excitement of the iPhone 17 Pro for a more sophisticated, wine-tasting-in-Sonoma Burgundy shade, as if it wants to emerge from your pocket with as little fanfare as possible.

And yet underneath the iPhone 18 Pro’s muted exterior is a phone so consistently competent that it’s hard to find anything to complain about. Not only is it one of the best camera phones money can buy, but it also brings market-leading performance, a gorgeous OLED display, impressive battery life, and refreshing software simplicity to the table.

The iPhone 18 Pro’s well-roundedness is what makes it a cut above the rest. Sure, you’ll find larger camera sensors on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra or bigger batteries in the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. You’ll even find a variable aperture feature on a handful of Android phones from the last decade (Huawei Mate 50 Pro, anyone?). But if I had to recommend a phone that does everything at an 8/10-level or above, it’s the iPhone 18 Pro.

And I really do mean everything.

In recent years, Apple’s flagships have been excellent phones with embarrassingly limited AI capabilities compared to the competition. But following Siri’s long-awaited glow-up in iOS 27, the iPhone 18 Pro no longer feels like a hamstrung device (don’t let the naysayers fool you — Siri AI is good).

Even if you’re not fussed about AI and are wondering whether the iPhone 18 Pro is a meaningfully different device to the iPhone 17 Pro, I’m inclined to say, “no, but that’s not really the point.” Most people aren’t upgrading from a previous-generation flagship, and Apple is hardly alone in shipping iterative upgrades year after year. The iPhone 18 Pro is familiar but formidable.

I also think the arrival of new form-factor devices like the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and iPhone Duo will remind people not to take the iPhone 18 Pro for granted. Consumers have long berated Apple for shipping ‘boring’ new-generation iPhones, and yet critics of the Duo are lamenting its thickness, awkward button placement, and lack of Face ID and Pro camera components.

We’ve been spoiled by the consistency of Apple’s flagship phones, just as soccer star Erling Haaland — who regularly scores 30+ goals every season — is rarely mentioned in conversations surrounding the most exciting players in the world. Haaland’s excellence has been normalized so as not to be exciting anymore: he's the iPhone 18 Pro of the soccer world (Lamine Yamal is the iPhone Duo in this metaphor — I won’t be explaining further).

The question now is: where do candybar flagships go from here? It feels like we’re approaching the end of an era, not only because the margin for year-on-year improvements is as small as it's ever been, but also because foldables are finally entering the mainstream conversation.

What's more, smartphones as we know them might soon be replaced by smartphone-adjacent wearables, especially if OpenAI and Jony Ive get their way.

But if you’re asking me right here, right now, for my pick as the best smartphone of 2026, my answer is the iPhone 18 Pro. It’s the boring choice, but in my opinion, the right one. We've reached ‘peak smartphone,’ and the iPhone 18 Pro is what ‘peak smartphone’ looks like.

I now invite you to (*deep breath*) debate me in the comments.

• GTA VI officially launches on November 19, and is expected to be a 210GB download
• On a fixed-line NBN plan, that download could take up to 19 hours on NBN 25, or as little as 14 minutes on NBN 2000
• Tier-for-tier, the biggest improvement in download speed is provided by NBN 500, which is around 5x faster than NBN 100
• We recommend Exetel's NBN 500 plan as a speedy and great-value option for gamers

The world is expected to come to a standstill in roughly three weeks, when the long-overdue, much-anticipated GTA VI finally, finally launches on November 19.

If you've already preordered the game, or are planning to, you might be wondering whether you've got the best TV to make the most of its sumptuous graphics. But there's something else you'll want to consider before launch day: is your home internet connection up to the task of downloading what could be an absolutely enormous game?

Our friends at GamesRadar have reported that GTA VI could weigh in at a whopping 210GB on PS5, roughly double the size of GTA V. And with Rockstar confirming that even physical copies will contain a download code rather than a disc, there's no escaping the need for a sizeable download, regardless of which version you buy.

That means you'll not only need to make sure you've got enough storage space on your console — one of the best SSDs for PS5 could help if you're running low — but you'll also want to know how long it'll take to download. And with preloading confirmed to start on November 12, there's good reason to start preparing now.

So, I've crunched the numbers to find out how long a 210GB download would take on every NBN speed tier, from NBN 25 all the way up to NBN 2000.

The results make for interesting reading. While the difference between the slowest and fastest plans is enormous, it's the jump from NBN 100 to NBN 500 that could provide the most compelling reason to upgrade.

How long will GTA VI take to download on your NBN plan?

The table below shows the estimated time it would take to download GTA VI on each NBN speed tier. These calculations assume a file size of 210GB, which remains unconfirmed, and that each connection maintains its maximum advertised download speed throughout. Actual download times may vary depending on network congestion, your equipment and the speeds supported by the game servers.

NBN 25 vs NBN 2000

If you're still on an NBN 25 plan, you might want to make yourself comfortable. Based on a 210GB download, you'd be looking at a wait time of approximately 18 hours and 40 minutes before GTA VI is ready to play. And that's assuming your connection can maintain its full 25Mbps download speed throughout.

At the other end of the spectrum, an NBN 2000 connection could theoretically download the same game in just 14 minutes. Clearly, that’s a crazy difference, but there are some important caveats to be aware of before you put an order in for one of the best NBN 2000 plans.

For starters, you'll need a new network termination device (NTD) installed at your premises, along with a compatible router with at least a 2.5Gbps WAN port to take full advantage of the connection. Even with these two taken care of, your console could still be a limiting factor.

The standard PS5 and PS5 Slim support Wi-Fi 6, while the more powerful PS5 Pro supports Wi-Fi 7. The latter is theoretically capable of wireless speeds exceeding 2Gbps when paired with a compatible router, but real-world performance will depend on a variety of factors.

And if you prefer the reliability of a wired connection, all PS5 models have a Gigabit Ethernet port, effectively limiting download speeds to around 1Gbps at best.

So while an NBN 2000 plan might sound like the ultimate solution for downloading GTA VI in record time, there's no guarantee your console will be able to make full use of all that bandwidth.

NBN 500 proves it worth once more

Despite coming to the conclusion that an NBN 1000 plan offers the best value on a cost per mb basis, I still believe that an NBN 500 plan is the sweet spot for most Australian homes. The combination of fast speeds and low-cost monthly fees is a win-win in my book.

And now the best NBN 500 plans are making a solid argument for upgrading, whether that be from an NBN 50 plan, or taking advantage of the free fibre upgrade to get your home connected via fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology.

As the table further up shows, an NBN 100 connection would theoretically take four hours and 40 minutes to download a 210GB game. Step up to NBN 500, and that figure plummets to just 56 minutes — a time saving of almost four hours, and a fivefold increase in download speed.

The benefits become less dramatic as you move further up the speed tiers. An NBN 750 plan would shave another 19 minutes off the download, while NBN 1000 could theoretically have the game ready in just 28 minutes.

Of course, faster is always better when you're impatiently waiting to play one of the most anticipated games in history. But whether those additional minutes are worth paying more for is another question entirely.

And with NBN 500 plans now widely available from Australian internet providers, it could be the most sensible choice for gamers who want significantly faster downloads without necessarily paying for the fastest connection available.

Still on FTTN or FTTC? Now could be the time to upgrade

There's one final consideration, particularly if you're still connected to the NBN via fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) or fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC).

While these connection types can support an NBN 100 plan, you'll generally need an FTTP or hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) connection to access the faster NBN 500, 750 and 1000 speed tiers.

The good news is that many Australians with FTTN or FTTC connections are eligible to upgrade to FTTP through NBN Co's fibre upgrade program.

If you're eligible, you can arrange the upgrade through your internet provider, although installation timeframes will vary depending on your property and the work required.

With GTA VI preloading scheduled to begin on November 12, it's worth checking your eligibility sooner rather than later if you're considering making the switch.

And while upgrading your internet connection solely for one game might seem a little excessive, the benefits of faster downloads, additional bandwidth and a more capable connection will extend well beyond GTA VI.

The NBN plan to get

If you’re questioning whether your current NBN is going to be up to the task of handling the GTA VI download file, then there’s one plan in particular that I can confidently recommend.

Ultimately, whichever NBN plan you're on, a little preparation could go a long way towards making sure you're ready for GTA VI's launch.

If you're on a slower connection, taking advantage of the preload period could mean the difference between playing as soon as the game unlocks and spending launch day staring at a download progress bar.

And while upgrading to a faster NBN plan could dramatically reduce your download time, there's no need to rush out and sign up for the fastest connection available. As the figures above demonstrate, even a relatively modest upgrade could make a substantial difference.

After all, you've waited years for GTA VI. What's a few more hours?

It’s been an exceptionally busy few months for Apple. In just seven weeks, the Cupertino giant has refreshed its store shelves with the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, iPhone Duo, HomePod mini 2, HomeView, OLED iPad mini, iMac M6, and MacBook Pro M6.

That’s eight new products for your perusal, but by offering more choice than ever, Apple has also thrown up some unique new buying conundrums.

For instance, if it’s cheaper to buy an iPhone 18 Pro and Apple’s new iPad mini than it is to buy the iPhone Duo (spoiler: it is), should you? That’s the argument currently doing the rounds on Reddit and TechRadar sister site Tom’s Guide, where my colleague says the iPhone 18 Pro/iPad mini combo is “cheaper and better” than Apple’s first foldable.

I can absolutely see the logic in this position. The iPhone 18 Pro costs $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,099. The new OLED iPad mini costs $699 / £699 / AU$1,099. Together, they cost $1,898 / £1,898 / AU$3,198, while a single iPhone Duo costs $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,499. You’d be getting two great products instead of one, and saving $101 / £101 / AU$301 in the process.

The iPhone 18 Pro is also a better phone in many ways than the iPhone Duo. It’s thinner, lighter, has better cameras, and doesn’t rely on Touch ID. The OLED iPad mini, meanwhile, offers a Duo-comparable entertainment experience, and can even be equipped with the same Nano-Texture display technology as Apple’s first foldable. So buying the Pro and mini over the Duo is a no-brainer, right?

Well, I'm not so sure. The fundamental difference between these two purchase decisions is that one involves two devices, and the other only one. These are not like-for-like experiences. Owning and using an iPhone 18 Pro alongside an iPad mini is not comparable to the experience of owning and using a single iPhone Duo. But, crucially, the reverse is true.

The Duo is a compromise, yes, but it still offers an undeniably iPad-like experience in pocketable form. You’re paying a premium for its versatility and portability. The whole point of the Duo (and foldables generally) is that it lets you experience a tablet whenever and wherever you are. It’s like using a spork while camping to save you packing a spoon and a fork. Or buying a Range Rover Sport instead of a Ferrari and a family-sized minivan.

The new iPad mini is small, sure — but are you really going to walk around with an 8.5-inch tablet in your pocket? Tom’s Guide’s assertion that “Apple has inadvertently priced its own foldable out of the market for anyone willing to carry a small bag” makes a rather big assumption about the number of people willing to carry a small bag on their person at all times. I am not one of those people, and I don’t know many of them.

All this being said, I am no great iPhone Duo defender. For me, the compromises of getting an iPad-like experience in an iPhone-sized device are, at the time of writing, too great, and I would personally rather stick with my iPhone 18 Pro (and, yes, maybe even buy an iPad mini for watching movies in bed or on the plane).

But that does not mean I think I'd be recreating the experience of owning the iPhone Duo by buying two separate Apple products — watching movies in bed or on the plane is not the same as watching movies wherever I please.

So, yes: buying the iPhone 18 Pro and the new iPad mini might be better value for money than buying a single iPhone Duo, but value and compatibility are two different things. There’s definitely something to be said for owning one device that offers the best of both worlds, and anyone considering the iPhone Duo should remember that before being swayed one way or the other.

Though 2026 has been a tumultuous time for technology when it comes to price hikes and shortages, the tech that's reached us has been excellent — in fact, it's been a banner year in most areas, just with some downsides for your wallet.

We've already crowned the best tech of the year as chosen by you in our TechRadar Readers' Choice Awards 2026 — but this is where we let our experts have their say.

Our writers and editors chose their favorite products in nearly 100 categories, ranging across all the kinds of products we review. In some cases, we agree with the readers; in lots of cases, we don't. So read on to see which gadgets we rate as being the most impressive of the last 12 months.

Phones & tablets

Phone of the Year

Phone Brand of the Year

Phones Innovation of the Year

Best Value Phone

Best Mid-Range Phone

Best Folding Phone

Best Flip Phone

Best Camera Phone

Best Gaming Phone

Best AI Phone

Best Phone Accessory

Best Tablet

Best eReader

Cameras & drones

Camera of the Year

Brand of the Year

Camera Innovation of the Year

Best Beginner Camera

Best Mid-range camera

Best Professional Camera

Best Compact and Instant Camera

Best Action and Vlogging Camera

Best Camera Lens

Best Camera Accessory

Best Drone

Computing

Laptop of the Year

Computing Brand of the Year