Apple Watch Ultra 3 owners tend to know the headline features by now: satellite messaging, the brighter always-on display, hypertension alerts.

What most people haven't noticed is a much quieter feature that only shows up if you also own a pair of the well-received AirPods Pro 3 — the same earbuds you're probably already using on all those Zoom calls at work every day.

For anyone else trying to squeeze a workout into a packed workday (or if you're trying to travel light on a business trip), I can tell you it's become the one I actually rely on most.

No more packing the chest-strap

AirPods Pro 3 have their own in-ear heart rate sensors, enabled by default, which is easy to miss since Apple doesn't make a big deal about it.

On their own, they're a genuinely solid heart rate source, useful for anyone who wants to track a run or a lift without a watch at all. But when you wear both an Apple Watch and AirPods Pro 3 during the same workout, the two devices don't just duplicate the same job.

They combine into multiple simultaneous streams of heart rate data, and the system automatically leans on whichever source has the highest confidence at any given moment.

That matters more than it sounds like. Wrist-based optical sensors, including the Ultra 3's, can struggle during movements that shift the watch on your wrist: heavy grip work, rowing, anything involving a lot of wrist flexion.

In-ear sensors don't have that problem, but they can be thrown off by their fit or by their own motion. Fusing both sources means the watch is quietly falling back on whichever sensor is actually reading you correctly, workout to workout and rep to rep, instead of you having to guess which device to trust.

Honestly, it's replaced the chest strap by now. I used to strap one on for anything where zone accuracy actually mattered, interval sessions, heavy lifting days, anything where the watch slides around enough on my wrist to throw the optical sensor off.

Is it clinically equivalent to a chest strap? Probably not. But after a few months of comparing the two side by side, it's close enough that I just don't bother anymore.

As a professional, that feels like a win to me. It's one less piece of gear I have to cart around with me on a business trip or to a conference with the rest of my work gear.

Setting it up takes no extra effort. Heart rate monitoring is enabled by default on AirPods Pro 3, so if you already own both devices, this will likely happen in the background the next time you start a workout with both in use.

You can check or turn it off entirely from the Settings app on iPhone, under your AirPods' name, if you'd rather it not run.

It's a small thing, and Apple has barely marketed it. But it's the kind of feature that only reveals itself once you own the specific pair of devices it's built for.

In my experience, it's an ideal setup for busy professionals who still want accurate health data without adding extra setups and gear.

If you've already got an Ultra 3 and a pair of AirPods Pro 3, there's nothing to set up and nothing to buy. You're most likely already using it without realizing it.

If you love coffee, you’ll be very aware of the impact of factors like grind size, water temperature, and infusion time, but there’s something else that’s often overlooked. A double espresso is at least 90% water, and the minerals and other substances it contains can have a huge impact on the overall taste.

I’m a big coffee-drinker (which is just as well, since I test over a dozen coffee makers every year for TechRadar), and I’m planning to buy a water filter to take my brewing to the next level — but what should I look for — and what should you consider if you’re thinking of taking the plunge into filtered water too?

To find out, I spoke to Andy McPhilbin, Head of Aquaphor Professional for UK and Ireland, and Genevieve Upton, beverage industry expert and Head of Water Filtration at Our Taap.

Why does water matter?

“Water quality can have a considerable impact on how coffee tastes, with chlorine, mineral composition, alkalinity and pH all influencing the final flavour profile,” says Upton.

“Most tap water supplied to UK homes is disinfected using chlorine-based compounds. Residual chlorine can react with components in coffee and tea, contributing bitter, medicinal or chemical notes that may overwhelm the more delicate characteristics of the coffee. Boiling water can reduce the levels of chlorine, though it can also create other unwanted flavours, such as by reacting to a plastic kettle.”

She explains that the mineral composition and pH of the water also play an important role when it comes to how your coffee tastes.

“Slight differences in acidity, together with the concentrations of minerals and buffering compounds, influence extraction efficiency and the balance of flavors in the final cup. As water companies vary their supply sources throughout the year, you might notice that the same beans, brewed in exactly the same way, taste different from season to season.”

In fact, using unfiltered water doesn’t just mean your coffee tastes sub-optimal - it could cause your expensive coffee machine to break down — and it won’t be covered by the manufacturer's warranty..

“The warranty only covers manufacturing defects, and unfortunately, hard water is not a manufacturing defect,” explains McPhilbin. “So you can turn something that is a very efficient espresso machine into something very inefficient within a matter of weeks. You get a millimeter of scale forming within a matter of six weeks.

“Now, is that important? It is, because you want the life of the machine to be good, but also you've got little injectors which put the right amount of water into that espresso. If they're blocked, you're not going to get the right amount of water. You're going to have the wrong taste. It's got to be precise.”

What types of filtration are there?

Our Taap specializes in home water filtration Its latest system is the Our Taap Home Water System II — a countertop unit that connects to your mains water supply, and uses a triple filtration system with UV purification to remove contaminants while retaining minerals.

Aquaphor makes water filters for commercial and home use, including under-sink systems, pitchers, and even water bottles. Its most advanced systems for home users are the RO-101, RO-102, and RO-202, all of which use reverse osmosis (RO).

This involves forcing water through a semi-permeable membrane that removes chlorine, bacteria, viruses, pesticides, and microplastics. Standard RO filters also strip out minerals, but Aquaphor’s systems can optimize the concentration of calcium and magnesium so they’re just right for coffee — something McPhilbin says “really is a science”.

“The mineral content is measured in TDS [total dissolvable solids], and we want that TDS to be somewhere in the realms of between 80 and 120 [parts per million],” he explains. “We have a couple of ways in which we do it, but generally we can either feed more minerals in it by making it tuneable, or we can take them out as well by turning it the other way. But if you have too little, you can cause corrosion, and if we have too much, we're going to get limescale. So we try to hit that sweet spot, which is 100 parts per million in the middle there.”

Our Taap’s filters use granular activated carbon filtration, which Upton says “is particularly good at removing chlorine and some of its by-products, which can mask the more delicate flavour notes in coffee.”

“By reducing these compounds, the water has a cleaner, more neutral taste, allowing the natural characteristic of the coffee beans to come through. Whether you’re brewing with a cafetière, pour-over or espresso machine, using filtered water can help create a smoother, more balanced cup with greater flavour clarity.

"It's worth remembering, however, that activated carbon filters are designed primarily to remove chlorine and certain organic compounds rather than minerals,” she adds. “As a result, they have little effect on the calcium, magnesium and bicarbonate levels that influence water hardness, alkalinity and extraction.”

Under-sink or countertop?

So which type of filter is right for you? Do you need an under-sink reverse-osmosis system, or would a countertop filter be better? McPhilbin says the decision will mostly depend on how much filtered water you need.

“I think it's down to capacity more than anything,” he says. “Our jug filters have twice the capacity of the competition because we use a unique media called Aqualen, which is a patented media based on ionic exchange and carbon, so you're getting a dual-purpose piece of filtering equipment there. Reverse osmosis has a massive capacity, and [the filter] is not something [you’re] changing all the time.”

Upton says your choice of filter will also depend on the problem you want to solve.

“If your tap water has a noticeable chlorine taste or smell, a filter with activated carbon is usually the best place to start,” she says. “This technology is available in everything from filter jugs to more advanced under-sink or countertop systems, with plumbed-in options offering great convenience for households that use filtered water regularly.

“If you’re dealing with limescale build-up in kettles or coffee machines, it’s important to choose a filter that specifically reduces water hardness, as not all filtration systems are designed to do this.”

I know I live in a hard water area (the limescale in my kettle is proof) but even if your tap water is soft, McPhilbin says a water filter is still a good investment.

“Most of the water in the UK is chlorinated, and that can affect the taste quite a lot,” he says. “And it might be that you've not got enough minerals in it to get the best taste.”

If you’re not sure about the type of water you’re working with, there are online tools that can help you understand its composition.

“The Our Taap Water Confidence Index is a great way to look up your postcode and understand what’s in your local water and how this impacts taste, scent and quality, so you can find the best filter for your needs,” says Upton.

According to the Confidence Index, I’m lucky - my tap water is better than 93% of UK postcodes. However, it is moderately hard (as I expected), with a normal level of chlorine and an elevated level of overall minerals. I’m still deciding exactly which type of filter to choose, but considering these results and my penchant for espresso, I’m leaning towards under-counter reserve osmosis with mineral balancing. What about you?

I’ve tested more than 50 Bluetooth speakers, and whenever I review a new model, there are a number of factors to consider. Do its features rival the competition? Can its design merge beauty with practicality? Is it actually worth the asking price? But one question is more important than any other: does it genuinely sound good?

This raised a deep curiosity within me. What if a Bluetooth speaker was judged on sound alone, with elements such as pricing, brand reputation, and looks holding no influence on people’s perception of quality? Well, I decided to find out for myself, and blindfolded four of my colleagues for a blind speaker test.

I played a 30-second snippet of a track, asked listeners to make notes, and when each speaker had been tested, I got my participants to rank each speaker from 1 to 5 (with 1 being the best, and 5 the worst). We repeated this process across five different tracks, each spanning a range of genres, in order to determine which sounded the best.

A few things to run through before we get into the results, though. The volume of the speakers were all equalized, but I ensured not to push them above 80% volume, in order to limit distortion and compression. Each speaker was also set to its default EQ, and tracks were streamed from a single source device over Spotify. Also, my listeners had no prior knowledge of the speakers involved in the test, so as to cancel out any prejudices or prior experiences they may potentially hold.

I decided to use five speakers in a very similar size category: the JBL Go 5, the IKEA Kallsup, the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2, the Edifier ES20, and the Ultimate Ears Miniroll. Some have a higher power output than others and some are considerably cheaper (or pricier) than others. And some sit in our guide to the best Bluetooth speakers, while others have fallen short. But interestingly, rankings varied quite a fair bit depending on the track and listener involved.

Curious to find out who came out on top? Here’s how our listeners ranked each speaker across each track, as well as the final scores.

Track 1: Fascinator by Max Dean

I started with a house track, Fascinator by Max Dean. I asked participants to listen to a short lead up to some sub-bass, and while I emphasized that the small models wouldn’t produce roaring power, I asked them to assess how well the speakers manage it. When the drop came in, I also asked them to judge how controlled and precise drums sounded in the treble range.

The results were pretty interesting here. Our cheapest option, the $10 / £5 IKEA Kallsup was the clear loser, with one listener, Caspar, noting ‘tinny’ highs and underwhelming bass — a sentiment generally shared across the board. It was quite close between JBL and Edifier here, with some listeners noting a slight lack in low-end impact, but improved mid-range performance and tighter treble.

However, the clear winner was Bose, which ranked 1st with all of our participants — and spoiler alert, this was the only instance of a unanimous verdict across the entire experiment. One listener, Ashley, noted how the track sounded ‘balanced with no distortion’ with others including Josh and Erin highlighting meatier bass and a pleasingly warm tone.

Track 2: Orphans by Cero

I changed up the vibe for Track 2, and played a snippet from the jazz-infused indie pop track Orphans by Japanese band Cero. Vocals are meant to be slightly forward, so I asked listeners to determine how well the speakers captured this, while also prompting them to judge how well-balanced percussion and guitars were in the mix.

The Kallsup unfortunately finished in last place once more, with Josh highlighting ‘rolled off’ vocals and unclear guitars in the mid-range. However, the JBL Go 5 wasn’t far in front, with Erin noting ‘lifeless guitars’.

The Edifier ES20 and UE Miniroll performed well, though, with participants highlighting better balance across the frequency range, warmer and more prominent vocals, and cleaner bass. The SoundLink Micro Gen 2 took the win once more, though, with an emphasis on clearer, more tonally accurate guitars, well-defined vocals, and more articulate percussion.

Track 3: The Girl From Ipanema by Stan Getz

I wanted to try out something softer next, so I went for the legendary Bossa Nova track, The Girl From Ipanema by Stan Getz. I requested my blindfolded colleagues to tune into the separation between guitars and vocals, the subtlety and texture of vocals and percussion, and control of the double bass. And this is where things got really interesting.

Surprisingly, Bose, which had been bossing it so far, finished in a lowly 4th place here, with listeners generally expressing disappointment with the speaker’s overemphasized bass and slightly unrefined treble response.

However, one thing remained the same, as the IKEA Kallsup came in 5th place. In fact, this was the only occasion in which every listener decided the Kallsup was the worst performer, with Erin writing: ‘No. What? What is this? It sounds like there’s a horde of bees trying to escape.’ Ouch.

Our champion this time out was the Edifier ES20, a speaker which I’ve often championed for its supreme mid-range clarity. Listeners appreciated this model’s beautifully balanced presentation, textured and controlled double bass, and detailed vocals. The UE Miniroll and JBL Go 5 finished 2nd and 3rd respectively, with our participants widely noting their relatively expansive interpretation of the track, and talking up their crisp, textured handling of vocals.

Track 4: Come On, Come Over by Jaco Pastorius

But how did the speaker manage a busier, more chaotic mix? I threw on Come On, Come Over by Jaco Pastorius, a funky, high-octane track that has it all. Participants were told to listen for the aggressiveness and clarity of horns, the quality of the track’s mid-bass punch, and how the speakers manage the swathe of instruments and vocals.

And it seemed that in this test, order was restored to how it had been up until Track 3. Bose came out on top, with Ashley praising the speaker’s balanced approach and Caspar highlighting the SoundLink Micro Gen 2’s impactful low end and enhanced vocal clarity. However, the Edifier ES20 and UE Miniroll did run Bose very close indeed. Participants enjoyed the tonality of the vocals, the decently open soundstage, and solid separation on offer.

IKEA’s Kallsup fell to last place, however, largely due to its unregimented bass and tinny mids. Meanwhile, listeners also felt that the JBL Go 5 struggled with the business of the tune, though some did highlight solid clarity in the treble range.

Track 5: Black Eye by Allie X

With Track 5, I wanted to assess the portable speakers’ handling of dynamics, so I went with an electronic song from TechRadar’s reference playlist, Black Eye by Allie X. Colleagues were asked to hone in on the attack of strings in the beginning of the snippet, and assess the control and dynamism of the bass and its impact, as well as the breathiness and detailing in the vocals.

And this was an incredibly close battle between Bose, Edifier, and Ultimate Ears. Bose just about managed to top the podium, with Erin delighted with the ‘dramatic strings’ and ‘expansive vocals,’ and Caspar highlighting dynamic bass and ‘nice balance between vocals and instruments’.

Josh’s favorite was the ES20, stating that vocals were ‘wonderfully conveyed’ and that bass was ‘punchy yet controlled’. Ashley, however, liked the UE Miniroll the most, arguing that it offered the cleanest low-end and most articulate vocals of the bunch.

But the poor Kallsup finished in 5th once more. Muted synths, a lack of texture and kick in the low-end, and recessed vocals left our listeners wanting more.

Final results: and the winner is…

So, the experiment drew to a close. Our listeners handed over their final scores, and I totaled them up to discover which speaker was king on sound alone. And the winner was… the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2!

Was I surprised by the result? Well, not entirely. I personally think this is a great-sounding small speaker, and its ability to produce meatier bass than much of the competition, alongside more precision in the treble range and clearer separation was all it needed to scoop up top spot.

What’s important to recognize, though, is that Bose’s small speaker is far pricier than all of the competition. It has a list price of $129 / £119.95, and while it certainly produces the goods in terms of sound, that’s an awfully high price tag given that you can nab larger, meatier, and more feature-rich models at that cost — the JBL Flip 7 is probably the first that comes to mind.

I was surprised, however, that the Edifier ES20 did so well. Josh selected the ES20 as his overall favorite, and it continually competed closely with Bose throughout, even topping the table in Track 3. In the UK, it’s less than half the price of the Bose SoundLink Micro Gen 2, but you really wouldn’t think so. Its composure and clarity in the mid-range is exceptional, and it has enough warm bass and controlled treble to keep more energetic tracks sounding as they should. If you want value for money, I think this model is absolutely worth checking out.

Another standout was the UE Miniroll, which Ashley picked out as her personal favorite. It continued to plate up clear mids and bass throughout, and I think it earns its relatively modest price.

Some may be surprised to see the JBL Go 5 a bit off the pace in 4th, but I still think it produced a solid performance across the experiment considering its limitations. It has a weaker power output than the top 3 speakers, which limits its ability to provide the drive and low-end might that others can. And although it could’ve offered slightly better separation, it's still a great small speaker given its low asking price of $54.95 / £39.99.

I felt very sorry for the IKEA Kallsup, which was regularly placed last by each of our participants. However, in the IKEA speaker's defense, not only does it have the lowest power output of the bunch (at just 3W), but it’s just $9.99 / £5. Yes, it's extremely cheap, and so the fact that it occasionally squeaked 4th place here and there is impressive in itself.

Check out the final table below, where you can see the final scores and rankings for each speaker, as well as their typical asking price. Were the results as you expected? Let me know in the comments!

“Sometimes I find I get to thinking of the past,” sang (or croaked) Leonard Cohen, and I’ve found myself recently doing the same. However, while Cohen was lamenting the death of a relationship, my early-onset nostalgia has been triggered by something far more tragic and poetic: the death of affordable computer components.

I’ve spent the majority of 2026 marvelling and despairing, in equal measure, at how components, especially memory-based ones, such as SSDs, RAM and graphics cards, have skyrocketed in price. As you probably know by now, this mainly due to pressures on the supply chain from a seemingly endless procession of AI services that have been gobbling up memory.

Not only has this made upgrading your PC extremely expensive (upgrading the RAM was once one of the most cost-effective upgrades you could make), it’s also made products such as laptops, games consoles, and phones more expensive too. It’s upended decades of the tradition of technology getting cheaper over time.

Take both the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. In previous generations, six years after launch, consoles should have had numerous price cuts, making them almost impulse buys at this stage; along with a healthy second-hand game market, this traditionally meant that waiting until late into a generation to get a console was a great way to save some serious cash.

However, both the PS5 and Xbox Series have had several price rises this generation, which means buying a six-year-old bit of hardware is now more expensive. This is far from an ideal situation (and one of the reasons why the PS5 will likely be the first PlayStation console I don’t buy), and it’s not unique to consoles. Apple recently hiked the prices of its Macs and MacBooks (including the budget MacBook Neo, which launched at $599 / £599 / AU$899, but has since risen to $699 / £699 / AU$1,059 and which in turn quite drastically undermines the Neo’s value proposition).

Watching the tech I write about (and love) get increasingly expensive and inaccessible for a lot of people is getting pretty depressing. Take the Steam Deck: recently, it was announced that Steam Deck sales have dropped by a whopping 80% after Valve increased the price of the gaming handheld to $789 / £649 / AU$1,199, a $240 / £170 / AU$300 rise.

Now, I've loved the Steam Deck since day one, and would always recommend it to most people thinking about buying a new gaming laptop or handheld, simply due to its excellent value.

Now? Not so much. I simply can't justify the idea that people should buy an old, underpowered bit of kit that’s almost as expensive as the budget gaming laptops I used to tell people to avoid.

For many of us PC gamers, it also means upgrading or building a new gaming PC is now out of the question, and the hardware we currently have will need to tide us over for a few more years.

But, does that mean you can’t upgrade your PC at all for the moment? Thankfully, there are still plenty of ways to boost your computer without spending a fortune, such as upgrading parts that aren’t memory-dependant (for instance getting yourself a new monitor), or tweaking the software.

As for me, I decided to transplant one of my existing gaming PCs into a new case, while also taking the opportunity to upgrade the cooling. One of the most fun things about building PCs is coming up with a theme or design, and because of my disillusionment with the current state of computing, I thought it would be fun to turn my PC into a retro device that harkened back to a time when computing really was fun: the 1990s.

Cut to the case

I've been feeling for a while that this is a bit of a mid-range setup that is (outside of the RTX 5070) showing its age, which is why I mainly use it for working, with a spot of image and video editing and the occasional game.

For pretty much all of my gaming needs, I have a far more powerful gaming PC with newer components (and an RTX 5090), but looking at the specs at this point in 2026 during the midst of the RAM crisis, I think I was being rather harsh on this PC. For a start, the 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2.5TB of storage feels positively decadent these days.

So, my main goal was to swap the (perfectly fine, if a little dull) Fractal Design Vector RS case for something with a bit of retro style. Enter the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower Chassis.

This is a case built for modern PCs, but with a pleasingly retro look. Of course, it’s a wonderful shade of beige that will instantly give flashbacks (the good kind) to anyone who used a PC in the 1990s. It also has sections for a CD-ROM drive and floppy disk drive, though those aren’t usable and are really more of a gimmick.

Still, it looks like it could have come straight from the '90s, while still supporting modern hardware, including space for all-in-one CPU coolers, and a front panel that includes a USB-C port. It also has a tempered glass window to show off the components inside, something that’s common these days, but wasn’t really a thing back then. This combination of retro looks and modern capabilities was perfect for my needs.

Cooling off

To make things easier when transporting the motherboard and installed components into the new case, I was planning on removing the existing Corsair iCUE H150i RGB ELITE Liquid CPU cooler, giving me an excuse to install a new one.

To make the most out of the glass window of the Retro 360 TG case, I picked the Thermaltake TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO Liquid Cooler, which — as well as having powerful cooling — comes with a 3.95-inch LCD display that looks (to my mind, at least) like an old CRT monitor.

This screen can display system info (such as the temperature of your CPU), as well as custom animations, and I thought it would help liven up the inside of the PC, while still keeping with the retro-modern theme.

I also had a spare pack of Corsair RX120 RGB fans (the perks of being a tech journalist) that I wanted to use. For a start, they're white, which would fit the beige aesthetic, and it also meant I wouldn’t have to remove the case fans in the older chassis, potentially saving me some time and annoyance (the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower Chassis doesn’t come with fans, and they are essential for keeping the PC cool when in use).

Prepping for surgery

Once I’d assembled everything I needed to transform my PC into a retro powerhouse, I prepared to make the switch. Because I was swapping an already-built PC into a new case, the prep work differed slightly than if I was building a new PC from scratch.

The first step was to remove the bulk of the PC from the old case. To make things easier, I wanted to keep as much as I could in the motherboard, but there were some components that needed to be removed.

So, I started by unscrewing the large CPU cooler from the top of the processor. I then removed the GPU and WD_BLACK AN1500 SSD, which like the GPU, slots into a PCI-e lane of the motherboard. The other SSD is screwed directly into the motherboard via the M.2 port, so I didn’t need to worry about that.

I then carefully disconnected the case fans and I/O connectors (which allow you to turn the PC on and off using the buttons on the case, use USB ports, etc), then unscrewed the motherboard and lifted it out of the case.

Once the motherboard was out, one of the first major hurdles that you wouldn’t encounter if building a PC from scratch presented itself. I noticed when I tried placing the motherboard in the new case that it wouldn’t sit properly. Taking it out, I realized that when unscrewing the motherboard from the old case, some of the standoffs (which screw into the case to lift the motherboard off the chassis) had been unscrewed as well, and were still attached to the motherboard.

So, I needed to hunt down some pliers, which allowed me to hold the standoffs and unscrew the motherboard from them.

Once off, I was able to screw the motherboard into the new case (which already had its own standoffs installed) without an issue. It wasn’t a major inconvenience, but a good example of how moving cases can require tools (in this case pliers) that you’d not usually need when building a PC.

Plugging in

With the motherboard installed, I then plugged in the new cases’ I/O connectors. One thing I loved about the Thermaltake Retro 360 TG Mid Tower case is that front panel’s wires, which are often individual wires that can be extremely fiddly to attach to a motherboard, came as a block, which made installation much easier and faster.

While the larger components were still laying on my desk, I also connected up the PSU cables. The Corsair HX1500i 80 PLUS Platinum, which again I transported from the old PC, is a modular PSU, which means the cables aren’t permanently attached to the PSU — instead you can just plug in the cables you need to both the motherboard and PSU.

This makes installation a lot easier, and cable management much neater, and it meant I could plug the cables into the motherboard without having to install the PSU until later (a decision I made to make things easier, but I’m not sure it worked!).

I also took the opportunity to install the three Corsair RX120 RGB fans, adding two to the front of the chassis to pull in cooler air, and one at the rear that pushes hot air generated by the PC’s components out of the case.

These fans are more advanced than the previous ones I used for the PC: rather than being plugged into the motherboard and controlled that way, they daisy chain to each other, then connect to an iCUE LINK system hub, which then connects to the motherboard via a microUSB cable, all powered by the PSU.

This made the installation harder, as it meant I needed to route the proprietary cables to connect each fan to the hub, and some of those cables weren’t that long. It also meant having to hunt down an extra PSU cable, which caused issues later. While the iCUE LINK system hub meant I had greater control over the fan’s RGB lighting and temperature control, I don’t really think it was worth the extra effort. If I did this again, I’d stick to standard, easier-to-install case fans.

Finally, I installed the TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO CPU cooler. I removed the existing thermal paste from the CPU and reapplied a small blob. I had ordered extra thermal paste as I wasn’t sure if the CPU cooler would include some, as not all do. As it turns out, the cooler does come with a small tube of thermal paste, so I now have a spare tube, but it’s always handy to have extra.

It was important to reapply the thermal paste, as the existing paste on the CPU was now several years old, and some of it remained on the cooler when I removed it. To ensure maximum cooling efficiency, removing the old paste and applying new paste was the best, and safest, option.

Installation was easy: I screwed the radiator and fans to the top of the case, attached the fan controls to the CPU Pump header on the motherboard, then placed the screen (which attached via magnets) on the cooler.

With that in place, I then put the GPU and SSD back in their PCIe slots, connected (almost) everything up to the PSU, then secured the PSU in the case.

I say ‘almost’, as I didn’t have a cable to attach the iCUE LINK hub to the PSU. As I mentioned earlier, the PSU is modular, so I had only plugged in the cables I needed during the original build, but now I needed an extra cable. The PC wouldn’t boot without the hub powered on, nor would it boot when I tried a cable from a different PSU (this is likely a safety feature — you should never use cables from a different PSU, but I wanted to check).

Thankfully, after some rummaging around, I found the extra cables from the PSU, installed the correct cable to the hub and the PC booted fine. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I’d used a more basic fan, but at least I was now up and running. It also highlighted an important lesson: always keep hold of cables and any other extras that come with your components, even if you don’t initially need to use them.

Finishing touches

With the PC booting without issue, I then added the finishing touches. For instance, I ordered some retro stickers from Geekenspiel, a website that makes the kind of stickers you used to find on PCs, but for modern hardware (such as a sticker with the old Nvidia logo, but referencing the modern RTX graphics card).

I also paired the PC with the 8BitDo Retro Mechanical Keyboard, a wonderful-feeling keyboard that offers modern features but with an old-fashioned look and beige colorway that perfectly complements the PC.

I also ordered a Microsoft ProIntelli Wired mouse, which is a modern mouse inspired by Microsoft’s iconic IntelliMouse peripherals. Again, it combines retro looks with modern tech, which makes it a perfect choice for this build.

With the peripherals attached, I logged into Windows 11 and set up the TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software, which allows me to tweak the settings of the TH360 V3 Ultra ARGB Sync AIO CPU cooler, and configure the screen. I made a short retro-inspired gif of the TechRadar logo, and used the software to display it on the LCD screen of the cooler.

I was very pleased with the results, and it instantly made the PC more interesting visually while still feeling retro. However, I have to say the TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software seemed quite flakey, with some options simply not working. The software also needs to load in Windows 11 before the animation plays on the screen.

The fans of the cooler were also very loud, and setting them to ‘Quiet’ in the software didn’t seem to make a difference. So, I restarted the PC and went into its BIOS and tweaked the fan speeds there, which worked. Suddenly, the PC was whisper-quiet.

Turning Windows 11 into Windows 95

I wasn’t quite done, however. While the hardware now certainly looked the part, I wanted the software to match. At first, I considered ditching Windows 11 altogether and instead using a Linux distro skinned to look like Windows 95.

The benefits of this is that I’d be free of all the bloat that Windows 11 comes with, especially the AI stuff I have no interest in, and also that Linux is far more customizable; with a bit of time, I could make an operating system that looked and acted a lot more like Windows 95.

However, there were also plenty of downsides. For one, it would be time-consuming to install and configure a distro, and many PC games and software won’t run natively on Linux. The TT RGB PLUS 3.0 software, for instance, won't work on Linux, and while there are workarounds, they are again time-consuming and fiddly. Plus, this approach would mean things like adding gifs to the screen wouldn’t work — and I wanted my gifs.

So, I decided to stick with Windows 11, but heavily mod it to look like Windows 95. This involved using WindowBlinds 11 and Start11 by Stardock. The first piece of software lets you drastically change the look of Windows 11, and has a ‘classic’ theme that’s perfect for my needs.

Start11, as you might have guessed from the name, focuses on the Start menu, and allows you to tweak it so that it looks, and works, like the classic Start menus of Windows 95 and Windows 98.

Each of these bits of software took a bit of configuring, but before long I had Windows 11 looking, and feeling, like Windows 95. Changing the desktop icons through Windows 11’s settings to feature classic Windows icons (I downloaded them from DeviantArt), and changing the desktop wallpaper to a solid teal color completed the look.

While not perfect (Windows Explorer still tries to show Windows 11-era tabs, and the taskbar clock can be a bit funny), I now had a retro-inspired modern operating system to complement my retro PC.

Overall, I was pretty happy, and a comforting sense of nostalgia washed over me as I used my big beige box. For a little while, I was able to pretend the tech world wasn’t a dumpster fire, but a more fun, perhaps more innocent, place to be.

Final thoughts

Overall, I’m so glad I tried this out: it feels, ironically, as if I’ve given my aging PC a new lease of life. It looks great, and the mouse and keyboard feel fantastic — and familiar. Windows 11 also feels more sprightly, as I turned off a lot of the unnecessary animations and visual effects that usually run when using the operating system.

Strangely, I have also managed to fix a weird startup bug the PC used to have where sometimes the GPU didn’t power on. Since moving the PC into its new case, this has not happened once, so I must have inadvertently changed something during the move (not just by removing the GPU, as I had tried that before, and even swapped GPUs, and the problem persisted), so that’s a nice side effect.

The process was a lot faster with an existing PC than if I’d built one from scratch, though that has meant I needed to make some compromises. The motherboard and components don’t really complement the beige case, for instance; if I’d been building a new PC, I’d have probably tried to get white components instead, and cables to match.

I’m also glad that I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to tech, and I hadn’t thrown away the PSU cables I didn’t originally use. Okay, so I might have felt a bit daft holding on to cables for almost half a decade that I would likely never use, but it meant that I had the correct one when I needed it.

Finally, it proved that even in 2026, building, tweaking and upgrading your PC can be fun and creative, and you don’t have to spend a fortune if you can repurpose a lot of the components.

The retro theme of both the PC itself and the software it runs looks and feels great as well. It was hard work, but well worth it. If this article has inspired you to do something similar, let me know in the comments below!

You could be sitting on a treasure trove of fantastic iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV games and not even know it.

Apple Arcade might be one of the most underrated gaming services on the market right now, with many Apple One subscribers not even realizing that it is included in all tiers of the service. You can also subscribe to it separately and you could even be able to access a generous free trial right now if you're reading this on a shiny new Apple device.

But what exactly is Apple Arcade, how much does it cost, what kind of games can you play on it, and, perhaps most importantly, are any of them actually good? I've spent the last week really sinking my teeth into the service in order to find out and deliver this ultimate guide to everything that you need know.

From all the basic facts to a bumper list of my personal game recommendations and even a personality quiz to match you to titles that you might like, everything here is intended to help you walk away an expert in all things Apple gaming.

The ultimate guide to Apple Arcade

Whether you're a die-hard mobile gamer or a newcomer to the world of portable play, Apple Arcade will likely have something for you.

The subscription service gives you access to hundreds of games for your iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, ranging from revamped mobile classics including Angry Birds Reloaded and Doodle Jump 2+ to original and exclusive games in massive franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog with Sonic Dream Team. All of the included titles have absolutely zero ads and no microtransactions, meaning that they offer a more premium, console-like experience than you would get with many other App Store titles.

Most Apple phones now come with a free three-month subscription to the service, giving you the perfect opportunity to take your shiny new hardware for a whirl. Even if you're using an older device, there's still a one-week free trial that new subscribers can take advantage of, in order to see what the service offers and work out whether it's a good fit for them.

The only problem? With so many titles on offer it can be hard to know where to start, even if you're already a subscriber. That's why I've created this short personality quiz, which is designed to find out what kind of gamer you are and deliver a selection of recommendations. The recommended games have been personally tested by me, and are what I believe should suit your taste.

Did you find this quiz useful, or do you think I missed the mark with my picks? Let me know in the comments, and don't hesitate to drop your own game recommendations if you have them!

I’ve tested dozens of smart glasses for TechRadar, but every time I get a new pair of Meta Ray-Bans to try, I’m reminded why they’re so popular — because yet again my past three weeks with the Ray-Ban Meta Optics have been a joy.

Mostly.

Much like Meta’s previous smart specs, you’ll find a host of technological features crammed into the eyewear.

There are speakers for open-ear audio, which is perfect for listening to casual tunes, taking a call, or hearing the AI’s responses to your queries — with the glasses’ microphones also doing a great job at picking up what you’re saying with minimal noise disruption.

Dedicated earbuds will sound better for sure — the bass isn’t as emphatic as I like with Meta’s Optics glasses (or its other models) — though I did enjoy listening to music through my glasses for hours on end with no major complaints.

As mentioned, there’s also Meta’s AI, which is accessed through the connected phone app and voice commands on your specs. It can answer questions you ask it and, with your permission, see what you see by accessing the Meta Optics’ camera to provide additional context to your questions, and interact with connected apps to play music requests or tell your health and fitness stats.

I’m not a big AI user except when I’m on holiday or just generally acting like a tourist. On our honeymoon, my wife used Look and Ask to check the ingredients on hair care products to make sure she wasn’t allergic, and I got the AI to supply me with phrases to use when I realized my limited Spanish wasn’t going to cut it.

The AI’s also perfect for identifying landmarks and telling you more about historic sites. I relied on it so much on a trip I took to Italy with my other Meta glasses a while ago — it helped me understand the ruins of Pompeii and better learn the history of the Colosseum.

Beyond identifying foreign signs and buildings, the cameras are ideal for first-person video. I used them to snap photos and videos of my wife and me, and they came out really well — they're the ideal way to record memories digitally, as you can still live in the moment rather than being cut off behind a phone screen.

I’ll talk more about cameras in a moment, but before that I want to focus on the key way the Optics is different to Meta’s other Ray-Ban smart specs: it's comfort and fit.

Built to last all-day

Meta’s smart glasses are chunkier than non-intelligent eyewear, which can make them feel more rigid and less comfortable than regular specs. To make the Optics better suited to all-day wear (something I can confirm they handle effectively after wearing these glasses for hours on end over the past few weeks), you’ll find interchangeable nose pads and adjustable temple tips to help you sculpt them to your face shape.

The correct nose pads have helped the specs sit better on my head without slipping down, while the temple tips can be carefully manipulated (either at home or at an optician) to help the Optics grip your face without applying too much pressure to the sides of your head.

If you’re considering getting some yourself, my final design note is this: pay extra for transition lenses.

The Ray-Bans I’ve been testing are outfitted with the Transitions XTRActive option, meaning they change between clear and shaded when exposed to sunlight — even when I’m in the car — and the lenses changed so quickly as I moved between different environments (something I noticed a lot when going between indoor and outdoor spaces on my honeymoon to Tenerife).

My non-smart eyeglasses boast Transitions Gen S lenses, and I’m also happy with them, or you can opt for polarized Transitions if you want even more light protection, if you’re also willing to pay a bit extra.

Regardless of which type you opt for, Transitions lenses are essential because they maximize the usefulness of your smart specs. Without them, you’re limited to either clear glasses you can only use indoors or on darker days, or shaded glasses that can only be worn outdoors when the sun is brightly shining.

Why did there have to be a but?

Now, the elephant in the room is that Meta’s smart specs are facing increasing amounts of scrutiny from the public because of their cameras.

News stories showcasing bad actors harassing women, recording secretly by modding their specs, or revealing that Meta contractors might be able to see more of your recorded content than you realize have been populating our timelines throughout 2026.

The upshot seems to be a wave of negativity: I conducted a poll through one of my recent stories, and over half of all respondents said they think smart glasses should be banned.

For its part, Meta is doing plenty to combat these issues: it cracked down on Facebook Marketplace listings for glasses modding services and issued an update to prevent the camera from working if the recording light on your smart eyewear is disabled, and it’s also tackling Instagram profiles belonging to creeps like pickup artists who promote using the glasses to harass people.

I still think more needs to be done on the privacy side of things — at the very least being much more explicit about what features share captured content with Meta, though ideally all of your content would remain private through an Apple-like Private Cloud Compute server setup.

As of now, I’m admittedly very nervous to wear my Meta Optics. I haven’t been worried about going around wearing my Meta Ray-Ban and Oakley specs in the past, but with growing public anger over the way smart specs are being misused, I have a genuine concern someone will see me wearing them and act violently towards me.

Or I could simply be banned from entering a space while wearing them. Some Comic-Cons, offices, and courts don’t let you in wearing Meta-style smart glasses. Especially for something as essential as prescription glasses, and pricey ones at that, being constantly nervous while wearing them or barred from entering certain spaces isn’t ideal.

There is genuinely so much to love about the smart glasses, and if you haven’t yet got a pair and wear prescription eyeglasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Scriber Optics styles are the ones I’d most highly recommend.

Remember when mobile gaming was fun?

Back in the day, you could just scroll the App Store, pick out an icon or two that you liked the look of, and have a new game downloaded and ready to play in just a few moments.

Booting them up, you’re not confronted with a 29.68GB additional download that you have to stay on one screen to complete, a wall of sketchy in-app permissions to accept, or a page demanding that you sign in with some iffy third-party account — just a neat little self-contained experience designed to help you kill a few hours on the train.

Though they seemed simple, many of the best App Store games were quietly revolutionary. Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja pioneered intuitive touch-screen controls, while Doodle Jump smartly utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer to show how hardware features could become core gameplay mechanics.

Statista estimates that there are now more than 180,000 mobile games available on the App Store. But when was the last time you installed one that felt genuinely exciting, rather than like a thinly veiled scheme to force ad views, harvest personal data, or pressure you into pricey Gacha Pulls? That’s exactly where Apple Arcade comes in.

Back in time

Having spent the last week diving into all 200+ of the titles available on the service, I can’t help but think that Apple’s highly curated library of mobile titles feels like a journey back in time to the App Store’s glory days.

The whole experience is completely seamless. You sign up for $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$9.99 a month and can immediately jump into browsing the games. They’re all contained in a dedicated Arcade tab in your iPhone’s App Store, so there’s no ambiguity about whether the app you’re looking at is part of the service or not.

Although the selection here is nowhere near as expansive as the regular games tab, it feels genuinely curated and cuts out huge amounts of clutter and spam.

No matter what you like to play, there’ll be at least a few games for you. An impressive variety of genres are represented in the catalog: there are plenty of massive role-playing games (RPGs) that you can sink hours into, be that Trials of Mana+ or Final Fantasy+, fast-paced racers such as Asphalt 8: Airborne+ and Sonic Racing, head-scratching puzzlers in Monument Valley+ and Lego Builder’s Journey, and so much more.

Those iconic early mobile titles I mentioned earlier? They’re back too in new and improved forms that make them a nostalgic joy to revisit. There’s a full-on Angry Birds remake with enhanced graphics and extra levels, an expanded Doodle Jump sequel that updates the hand-drawn graphics and adds new environments, and a Temple Run successor that trades the endless format for challenging levels that are better-suited for short bursts of play.

The innovation of the early App Store is there too. RPG Fantasian wows with incredible art direction that sees you exploring hundreds of beautiful real-world dioramas that were digitally scanned into the game, while bonkers sports simulator What the Golf? takes full advantage of punchy iPhone haptics to add real weight to its wacky physics challenges.

No distractions

The games are all entirely devoid of ads and microtransactions, so you never have to deal with a frustrating splash screen or pop-up that takes you out of the action.

This means that most of the games will work entirely offline as well, just like they did back in the day. I had practically given up playing mobile games on my commute before getting into Apple Arcade simply because it was so hard to find titles that wouldn’t kick me out the second my train went into a tunnel.

There are no sign-in screens anywhere, and most games don’t even request permission to send push notifications. Your progress will even automatically sync to the cloud so you can continue playing on your iPad, Mac, or Apple TV when you get home.

Oh, and you don’t need to worry about your privacy in all this either. Apple says that all of the games in the service have no third-party tracking software and don’t collect any advertising data. All that, to me, is certainly worth paying for.

If you're a die-hard iPhone user, then there's a strong chance that you already have access to Apple Arcade and don't take full advantage of it. The gaming service is currently included with all tiers of the Apple One subscription — an all-in-one bundle that also includes the likes of iCloud Plus, Apple TV Plus, and Apple Music in one monthly fee.

Even if you don’t pay for Apple One, a free three-month trial of Apple Arcade comes bundled with every new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV, plus, the service is available as a standalone subscription if you don’t want it bundled with anything else. Sounds great, right? But what actually is Apple Arcade, how much does it cost, and is it really worth the price?

I’ve spent this week getting to grips with all things Apple Arcade, from diving into some of its biggest exclusive games to comparing it to other competing services, in order to bring you this comprehensive breakdown of everything you need to know about it. Read on and become an Apple Arcade expert.

What actually is Apple Arcade?

Apple Arcade is a gaming subscription service by Apple designed for its iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and even Apple Vision Pro devices. It launched in September 2019 and gives you access to a huge library of more than 200 premium games that you can download and play offline.

Unlike many titles that you might download from the App Store, Apple Arcade games are wholly devoid of both ads and in-app purchases. They are complete experiences that you can dive into without the risk of annoying interruptions or being asked to shell-out real world cash for in-game items or downloadable content (DLC).

What kind of games are included?

There are more than 200 games available on Apple Arcade, with options across a wide variety of genres. This includes a selection of high-quality original games such as fast-pace platformer Sonic Dream Team, cozy life simulator Hello Kitty Island Adventure, and beautiful role-playing game Fantasian.

There are also some ports of console and PC games, such as hit strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization 7 Arcade Edition, Disney life sim Disney Dreamlight Valley Arcade Edition, and indie roguelike Cult of the Lamb.

You will also find loads of premium versions of existing mobile titles with no ads or microtransactions in the likes of Doodle Jump 2+, Fruit Ninja Classic+, Bloons TD 6+, and much more.

You can use our quiz below for some hand-picked recommendations.

How much does Apple Arcade cost?

The Apple Arcade standard plan costs $6.99 / £6.99 / AU$9.99 a month.

You can save some cash by opting for an annual plan instead, which is $49.99 / £49.99 / AU$79.99 — a saving of $33.89 / £33.89 / AU$39.89 compared to 12 months of monthly payments.

No matter which of these two options you choose, you can share your Apple Arcade subscription with up to six family members at no extra cost.

Apple Arcade is also available as part of all Apple One tiers (Individual, Family, and Premier). Unlike Apple Arcade, Apple One is not available in an annual subscription format, so you can only pay for it on a monthly basis. You can view and compare all of the options below.

How to claim your Apple Arcade free trial

In most regions a new iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV now comes with a three-month free subscription to Apple Arcade. The offer is only valid for 93 days (that's roughly three months), so if you have an eligible device you should consider claiming it quickly if you're interested.

To do so, simply follow these four simple steps

1. Open the App Store on the eligible device
2. Tap the Apple Arcade tab at the bottom of the screen
3. The offer should appear automatically
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to redeem it

If you're not eligible for a complimentary three-month subscription, there's no need to worry — because new subscribers can still claim a one-month trial via the App Store.

Whether you claim three months or one month, bear in mind that a valid payment method will be required in order to get set up. This will be billed at the standard subscription price when your promotional period is over, so remember to cancel your subscription if you want to avoid any charges.

You can find out how to do this on the official Apple Support page.

Do you need a controller to play Apple Arcade games?

You don't actually need a controller to play the majority of Apple Arcade games. On iPhone and iPad, almost every title supports full touch screen controls and can be enjoyed without any extra hardware.

If you're playing on Mac, many titles support keyboard and mouse controls.

On Apple TV, you're most likely to need a dedicated gamepad as there are only a few titles that work well with the included remote.

Of course, lots of games still allow you to use a controller on any device even if it's not strictly required and I'd recommend it if you're after an even more console-like gaming experience.

You can see some models that I've personally tested and would recommend for Apple Arcade below.

What about the competition?

If you're strictly looking for a gaming subscription service for your iPhone, then Apple Arcade doesn't really have much direct competition.

The biggest alternatives on that platform are cloud gaming services such as Amazon Luna, which you can access through your iPhone's web browser. These stream games to your phone directly from a cloud server, which means that they require a constant internet connection and cannot be accessed offline.

They also don't work too well with on-screen controls, which means a controller like the dedicated Luna Wireless Controller is required for anything but the most casual titles.

That said, cloud gaming does have some big advantages. You can access full console or PC games, including massive titles such as Fortnite, Fallout 4, or Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As they do not rely on your local hardware, they can also offer high-end graphics features such as maximum in-game settings and ray tracing — though slow or choppy internet can negate this by introducing visual artifacts.

If you have access to an Android Phone, Google Play Pass is a potential alternative. It's cheaper than Apple Arcade but similarly grants access to loads of mobile games with zero ads or microtransactions. It also includes some productivity apps, meaning that it's a little more versatile than the strictly gaming-focused Apple Arcade.

That said, its software library feels much more chaotic and less curated. It also lacks the compelling exclusive releases that I think really bring a lot of value to Apple Arcade.

Apple Arcade FAQs

TechRadar's reviews crew has been working as hard as ever this month, putting dozens of gadgets and gizmos through their paces to find the ones that are worth recommending. In this Reviews Recap, I've pulled together just our very favorites; the products that impressed us enough to score 4.5 or 5 stars in our tests.

This month, we called the formidably tough new GoPro Mission 1 Pro a "fantastic all-round vacation camera", fell in love with the Marshall Stanmore IV speaker's "rumbling bass and amp-inspired aesthetic", and declared the Samsung S95H "one of the best OLED TVs [we'd] ever tested"... despite its rather controversial design.

We were also won over by smartwatches from both ends of the price spectrum. The flashy Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra 2 impressed our reviewer with its slimmed-down design, slick apps, and intuitive UI — we called it "a great option for hardcore exercisers". The Amazfit Active 3 Premium comes in at a fraction of the price, yet still manages to look great and offer a strong range of features. According to our tester, it's good enough to "hang with entries from the major names in the industry".

Scroll down to explore all of our top-rated gadgets from the past four weeks, across all of our physical product categories. Note: only the products that are available in your region will display as cards.

5-star products

4.5-star products

"It is easier, but it's not easy," Story Kitchen co-founder Dmitri Johnson interjects.

I'm midway through an in-depth conversation with Johnson and business partner Mike Goldberg about their pioneering entertainment company when the former clarifies something he alluded to earlier.

The topic in question? Pitching movies and TV shows based on video game properties to other studio figureheads is still challenging. That's in spite of myriad recent examples of popular game franchises being turned into other screen-based art forms that have achieved critical and commercial success.

"We're working every day to continue changing the stigma that games are only for kids and lazy people who still live in their mom's basement," Johnson adds with a wry smile. "These are artists and storytellers in their own right — and their work deserves to be seen by more people."

Press start

You probably haven't heard of Story Kitchen, but you definitely know the video game adaptations they've helped to shape.

From Paramount Pictures' money-spinning Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise and Netflix's animated Tomb Raider show, to Prime Video's forthcoming TV re-imaginings of the aforementioned Lara Croft-fronted game series and Dontnod's beloved first Life is Strange title, Story Kitchen is at the forefront of what's unsurprisingly being labeled the 'golden age' of video game adaptations.

It's a cinematic epoch some believed would never happen — and with good reason. The 1990s and early 2000s are littered with examples of maligned video game movies, including — but by no means limited to — 1993's The Super Mario Bros. Movie, 2005's Doom, and 2003's House of the Dead, the latter of which is one the worst-rated films on popular review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

With so many entertainment giants failing to understand the source material, the 'videogame adaptation curse' — a phrase Goldberg says "sounds really good when stories are written about it" — became a catch-all term for these and similarly crucified productions. Combine that with the notion that, as Goldberg notes, "Hollywood didn't respect the gaming community, developers, or publishers", and it seemed that video games would forever be viewed as the runt of the visual media landscape.

That was until dj2 Entertainment, the precursor to Story Kitchen co-founded by Johnson and Dan Jevons in 2011, took a leap into the unknown.

The company's primary goal was simple: make Hollywood believe that video game stories were worth telling and investing in. Predictably, Hollywood just didn't see the appeal of turning games into movies or TV shows, and countless rejections followed.

Then came the first Sonic the Hedgehog film. After slowly and methodically earning the trust and respect of SEGA, Johnson convinced the Japanese videogame titan and, later, Paramount Pictures that people wanted to see the Blue Blur star in his own movie.

A few notable setbacks, including the titular character's speedy redesign after fans attacked his initial look following the release of Sonic's first trailer, followed. Fast-forward to early 2020, though, and, despite the pandemic bringing Sonic the Hedgehog's theatrical run to a premature end, the action-adventure comedy grossed $320 million worldwide. On a reported budget of $90 million, it more than recouped its production and marketing costs.

"Dmitri always believed that, with education and respect, a different result [video game adaptations being successful] would occur," Goldberg says. "And, he was right."

'It's a new era — but not every game should be adapted'

A lot has happened in the short time since Sonic's big-screen debut, one that Goldberg describes as "an absolute game changer in the Hollywood ecosystem".

He's not wrong. Film adaptations of other iconic and/or hugely popular game series, including Mario and Minecraft, have earned billions at the global box office. Meanwhile, TV retellings of hit franchises like The Last of Us on HBO Max, and small-screen projects that expand on existing game universes, including Fallout on Prime Video and Netflix's League of Legends animated program Arcane, have drawn universal acclaim, won multiple awards, and introduced millions more people to stories, characters, and worlds they would never have connected with otherwise.

Suffice it to say, the explosion of video game adaptations is indicative of an industry-wide paradigm shift that also allowed dj2 Entertainment to level up its own game. Indeed, by investing the metaphorical skill points into the company's evolution from dj2 Entertainment to Story Kitchen, onboarding industry talents like Elena Sandoval and Timothy I. Stevenson, and signing first-look deals with Amazon in February 2022 and DreamWorks Animation in May 2024, Johnson, Goldberg, and company are well-placed to help create the next wave of gaming transmedia hits.

At the time of publication, around 30 projects, some of which have already found homes and others that'll be shopped around Hollywood, are in the works at Story Kitchen HQ. That might sound a lot, but it's a mere raindrop in the ever-expanding gaming ocean. So, why doesn't Story Kitchen just take a long list of game titles to film studios, TV networks, and the world's best streaming services, and reel them off until one piques their interest?

"It's a new era, but not every game should be adapted," Golberg replies, "And not every game should be adapted right now. We want to be a friend and advocate for the space, though, because we don't see this as a fleeting moment [for video game adaptations]. We think it's got long-term potential, so we're working to ensure that we see that through."

That's not to say Story Kitchen is only focused on adapting the biggest game franchises. AA and indie titles are as much a part of the pitching process, if not more so, than their flashier, big-budget counterparts.

"We don't go into things like 'how many copies did this game sell?'," Johnson says. "We actually despise that question and refuse to answer it at this point. We respond with 'here's why these characters and stories are incredible' and 'here's why it's something we've never seen before'.

"What it really boils down to is passion," he continues. "What are the things that we can't stop thinking about and have to pursue? Once that process starts, we're convinced something has to be made, and that translates into our meetings with other companies. Initially, it might not necessarily make sense to them, but they all want to hear the pitch because it's coming from a place of passion, so most networks and studios are excited when we take something out to them. This isn't a cash-grab — these conversations are happening because we actually care."

Prime-d for more success?

And care, Johnson and Goldberg certainly do. The multi-billion-dollar-spinning Sonic franchise, which currently comprises three movies and a Knuckles TV spin-off on Paramount+, has improved with each new entry.

As of July 2026, a fourth flick is deep in post-production ahead of its March 19, 2027 release date. An untitled Shadow-fronted off-shoot project is also reportedly in the works, though Johnson and Goldberg declined to speak about it because, as Goldberg rightfully points out, "there are levels of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) we must respect."

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 isn't the only thing that'll roll off the Story Kitchen production line next year. Indeed, two TV projects are expected to make their Prime Video debuts in 2027, the first of which should be a Tomb Raider TV adaptation that Johnson admits has been "years in the making".

Overseen by Fleabag's Phoebe Waller-Bridge, it'll star Sophie Turner as gaming icon Lara Croft. Amazon revealed a perfect first-look shot at Turner in Croft's classic tank top and shorts combo as principal photography got underway in January and, while filming was halted in March due to a "minor injury" sustained by Turner, there's nothing to suggest it'll delay the live-action series' launch.

Thanks to a partnership Story Kitchen established with Tomb Raider custodians and videogame developer Crystal Dynamics during development on Netflix's Tomb Raider animated show, Johnson says "we had a very clear blueprint of how to move together as partners". So, when Amazon, which already had an agreement with Crystal Dynamics to publish future Tomb Raider games, proposed making a live-action TV show, it seemed like a lightning-in-a-bottle moment for all involved.

"Every decision [on the show] is made with Crystal Dynamics' sign-off," Johnson reveals. "So, season one has their blessing and they're very hands-on, but they also respect Phoebe, who's a super-fan, and her perspective of what a live-action Tomb Raider project should be.

"We've actually just started seeing rough cuts, and we were grinning like 10 year olds the entire time. It's going to be good. By the way, we're not the type of people who hype up their own s**t. It's going to be something that your mom can come across and not know that it's based on a 30-year-old videogame franchise. We don't want it to be a niche adaptation just for core fans, who we absolutely honor and will make feel seen. But, if we do our job right, which we're tirelessly trying to do, newcomers will fall love this show just as much as we have."

Life is Strange is a whole other beast. The 2015 episodic adventure game, which tells the story of a high schooler named Max who discovers she can rewind time, is famous for its branching dialog option-based narrative. Ultimately, though, the choices players make during any given playthrough lead to just one of two endings.

In collaboration with its production partners Amazon, Life is Strange franchise publisher Square Enix, and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment, then, how is Story Kitchen tackling an evolving tale built on player choice? Furthermore, how did they decide which ending to not only use, but one that, regardless of what happens in Life is Strange: Reunion, aka Deck Nine's 2024 sequel to the first Max-led game, some viewers might interpret as being its true canonical ending?

"We went into Life is Strange knowing that almost all of the major decisions were almost a 50-50 split," Johnson muses. "So, at the start of development, you have to accept that you're not going to make everyone happy. That said, the way we're approaching some of those critical decisions from the games, I think everyone is are going to feel seen, and they're going to be happy and probably emotional [with how things play out]."

It's full steam ahead for Amazon MGM Studios film adaptations of two award-winning and popular Hazelight games in It Takes Two and Split Fiction, too.

Where the latter is concerned, things are still in the early stages of development. However, prolific actor Sydney Sweeney, Wicked duology director Jon M. Chi, and Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are, as confirmed by Goldberg, all involved.

"You play these games with your significant other, friend, or a family member, and everyone has their own experience," Goldberg says. It's been such a fun challenge of interpreting that and turning it into a singular shared experience [for viewers].

"Reese and Wernick even insisted on playing the game, and that's how we want our village to be built. You're not required to be a game, but we loved that they wanted to play and experience it together before they committed to this adaptation, and that's going to influence their own script."

As for It Takes Two's film reimagining, it's been over four years since Dwayne Johnson's Seven Bucks production team boarded the Amazon-led project. Speaking to Eurogamer last March, Hazelight creative director Josef Fares, who's known for not mincing his words, took aim at how long it was taking for the film to move forward.

"Hollywood, there's so much b******t," Fares responded when asked for an update. "I think 90 percent of the meetings are actually b******t, and 10 percent are what actually happens. There's a lot of talk, but not a lot of walk. I don't know what's going on. Hopefully something. It would be cool to get something out of it, but my hopes are not so high."

"They are," Johnson says when I ask him if Fares, Hazelight, and Johnson's company are still involved, before he adds: "We're so close to the Hazelight boys at this point that there's a shorthand with them, and the relationship with them and partners on our side... it's all very fluid."

Days of future past

That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the 30+ film and TV projects that Story Kitchen plans on delivering.

Johnson and Goldberg want to cover as many genre bases and demographics as possible, too. Film adaptations of three Roblox games — Grow a Garden, Steal a Brainrot, and Jailbreak — are in the works, as are Just Cause, Shinobi, and Ruiner productions with Universal.

Elsewhere, Netflix has signed on to bring Sifu and Kingmakers adaptations to its user base, Lionsgate is hard at work on a Streets of Rage movie, and film reimaginings of hit indie games Disco Elysium and Dredge have also been announced. Additionally, a House of the Dead movie led by The Last of Us and Superman star Isabela Merced — "she's our homie," Johnson beams —is just another of Story Kitchen's other planned projects.

It isn't just video games that are being turned into movies, either. Toys 'R Us, a popular toy retailer in the '80s and '90s that's recently enjoyed a resurgence in the US, is getting the live-action film treatment. Meanwhile, Teddy Ruxpin, an animatronic storytelling bear that was a US bestseller in the '80s, will star in a feature that's been described as 'Sonic the Hedgehog meets Elf'.

"I think it's going to go the same way as Barbie," self-confessed Teddy Ruxpin fan Johnson says in reference to the 2023 megahit starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. "I went into that thinking 'ugh, cash grab' and then had a little tear in the eye by the third act.

"It [the Teddy Ruxpin movie] is funnier than it has any right to be," Johnson continues. "We have ridiculous musical numbers when we shouldn't, and it's so brilliantly bananas that it works. I think it's going to catch people off-guard, and kids are gonna walk out of it wanting a Teddy Ruxpin."

But, back to the games — and, perhaps most importantly, Story Kitchen's mission to create films and TV shows not only based on beloved titles from the past and those that are currently popular, but also those yet to be released.

"We're about to pitch a show based on a game that hasn't even been announced," Goldberg teases as an example of the latter. "And, should nothing change, it'll finally be announced at the 2026 Game Awards. But we're already going to take a fully fleshed, packaged, and scripted drama TV pitch on it to studios next month, so we can move as swiftly as possible once the game is officially revealed."

Whatever that soon-to-be-announced game is, its developer will surely hope it performs as well as 2025 surprise hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 did.

The first-ever title from French studio Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur unexpectedly dominated the gaming sphere last year. With over eight million copies sold (as of April 2026) and numerous award wins under its belt, it's little wonder that this critically and commercially successful title is being turned into a live-action film. As Johnson is keen to point out, though, the Clair Obscur bandwagon isn't one that Story Kitchen jumped on post-launch.

"As a company, we pride ourselves on not chasing heat," he explains. "We're less likely to pursue a game once it's become an established hit, because we don't ever want to be seen as those people.

"We were actually working with Sandfall as early as 2023," he continues. "We read almost 600 pages of scripts, had raw music files [to listen to], [and] art to look at, so we fell in love with it before we saw any real gameplay. Obviously, you don't know how a game is going to perform, so we went into this knowing that it could be a tough sell. Without the massive success it had, it would've been an uphill battle [to pitch our movie adaptation to studios]. But, as I said earlier, once the passion kicks in, we don't take 'no' for an answer. We were convinced three years ago that this was something to be excited about, and... that's all we can say about it right now."

If there's one thing I took from my chat with Johnson and Goldberg, it's this: they genuinely care about what they're doing. Like, a lot. They don't phone in their work, nor did they lazily trot out stock responses to my questions. They are completely committed to telling the world that games are not only great, but that their stories are also worth translating and telling in other mediums.

There's so much more that Story Kitchen wants to accomplish, though. Even with the abundance of productions already on their plate, Johnson and Goldberg have ambitions on adapting even more franchises for the big and small screen. Their dream projects? Mega Man and — surprisingly — Bad Dudes for Johnson, and Nintendo's iconic sci-fi franchise Metroid for Goldberg.

But such wish fulfillment must wait for another day. As we approach the tail-end of what was supposed to be an hour-long interview, Goldberg reveals that he and Johnson are being summoned by Amazon for a meeting — the contents of which he can't disclose.

It's a sign of just how busy the pair have become, but they wouldn't have it any other way. After all, Story Kitchen is no ordinary passion project — it's reshaping the multimedia landscape as we know it.

"We were recently looking back on our list of games to consider for last year's BAFTA Game Awards," Johnson says, "And there's one from a tiny Australian team called The Drifter that, after I came across it in 2025, I couldn't stop gushing about. Anyway, we ended up tracking them down and, in the very first meeting we had with another studio, we were able to find a home for this indie game in the form of a big theatrical movie.

"That wouldn't have been possible five, six years ago, and that's why we're enjoying this moment now. Step one was getting rid of this silly notion that games are cursed. Now, step two, and we say this with a straight face, you'll see Oscars, Emmys, and BAFTAs being won by movies and TV shows that are based on games. That's our next mission: proving that videogames are art. The stories being told, the characters they contain... they're no different to a New York Times best-selling book — and we're ready to show the world why."

I’ve been lifting weights at home for a few years now, but recently I’ve found myself stuck in a rut. If anything, my routine has become a humdrum habit, without a clear goal and sense of progression to keep me motivated. Ten exercises, three sets, eight reps, 30 minutes. I’ve run through it so often that I could do it in my sleep.

I’m a true tech lover, so of course I got artificial intelligence (AI) to help me out. Apple has just launched its revamped Siri AI and I’ve been playing around with its early beta edition, so I was curious to know if its new skills extended to solid fitness advice — and if they did, how they held up against the ever-popular ChatGPT.

To find out, I asked each chatbot to dream up a workout routine that could revitalize my fitness habits. After working through both plans and tapping a professional personal trainer for their insights, I was left with the impression that only one of the two workout plans was worth sticking with.

The setup

To start with, I put together a prompt that I then fed into both AIs. The goal was to briefly explain my physical state and outline the kind of workout I was after, noting any constraints such as time and location (I work out at home).

Here’s the prompt I used:

“I am a 36-year-old man in good physical shape who exercises regularly. Create a three-day overall workout plan for me with the goals of hypertrophy and building muscle. The workout will be done in a small home office using dumbbells as the only equipment. It can include calisthenics as well as weighted exercises and should aim to cover different areas of the body. Ensure it lasts no longer than 45 minutes. Explain how often each workout session should be repeated over the course of a week and when rest days should take place, if required.”

I didn’t add any subsequent follow-up messages, as I wanted to know what each AI could come up with given the kind of information that a regular user might provide.

The new challenger: Siri AI

At its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, Apple made a big song and dance of its new Siri AI virtual assistant, a new foundational model based on Google’s Gemini LLM.

When given my workout prompt, Siri AI put together a plan that included a “push” day focusing on my chest, shoulders and triceps; a “pull” day centered on my back, biceps and rear delts; then a final “legs and core” day. It offered a workout schedule and suggested that each session would take around 45 minutes, with three sets of 8-12 reps and a rest of 60-90 seconds between each set.

“Focus on controlled movements and progressive overload by gradually increasing the weight of your dumbbells or the difficulty of your calisthenics,” it advised. Each exercise was accompanied by a short explanation of how to perform it, which was a welcome touch.

Putting Siri’s action plan into practice, it was obvious that my old self-made workout plan wasn't pushing me hard enough, as the first day’s workout left me feeling like I’d worked harder than I had for months. Off to a good start, I thought.

But Siri’s plan came up well short of 45 minutes, with most days’ efforts lasting a mere 25 minutes. And aside from the lack of warm up, there was also no word on how to complement the exercises with targeted nutritional intake. That’s a serious oversight in its workout regimen, especially for beginners.

To help me better understand the plans from both Siri AI and ChatGPT, I asked personal trainer and fitness coach Scott Laidler for his opinion. Speaking of Siri’s effort, Laidler said that it had a few things going for it.

“Siri’s is simple which means there is little to misinterpret,” said Laidler, adding that “the equipment substitutions are sensible for the office environment.”

While Siri recommends upping the weight as you get stronger, it doesn’t say “what to do once this plan hits diminishing returns, which is months away, not years,” according to Laidler. While it sounds like an open-ended plan, “it’s really only built for a defined window,” Laidler warned, which could “lead to frustration unless you knew to come back to the table and ask for a new plan several times per year.”

That’s a problem inherent in the responses from both Siri and ChatGPT.

The class leader: ChatGPT

While Siri AI’s workout plan was concise, ChatGPT was much longer. It explained what the priorities of the workout were and gave some basic advice, such as aiming to finish with one or two reps in reserve as a guidance on how much weight to use. It then listed a weekly schedule before laying out a simple warm up to perform each session.

Each exercise was listed, with varying numbers of sets and reps, followed by a note on which muscle groups were being targeted. Unlike Siri, there was no explanation of how to perform each exercise, which feels like an oversight with potential for injury. That was a clear win for Siri AI.

At the end, ChatGPT included a “progression” section explaining how to push yourself further, a guide on recovery and nutritional intake, then an explanation of “why this split works.” Taken together, it was a detailed workout plan, if a rather verbose one.

According to Laidler, ChatGPT’s plan was “the better program by some margin.” Siri “applies a flat ‘three sets of 8-12’ to every exercise, with each muscle group trained once a week,” Laidler noted. ChatGPT, on the other hand, “hits most muscle groups twice across the week, varies the sets per exercise, includes a warm up, and gives real progression logic. On paper it’s the more sophisticated plan.”

ChatGPT “is closer to what the literature would see as optimal for the stated goal of gaining muscle,” Laidler stated. “Reps in reserve (RIR) offers a way for the user to keep a reasonable distance from failure, which de-risks the plan especially when training alone.”

OpenAI’s LLM has a trick up its sleeve, too: it can analyze your form based on uploaded videos. I asked it to judge my Romanian deadlift form and it gave me an 8.5 out of ten, giving pointers on what I did well and what could be improved. I wouldn’t take this advice over that of a human expert, but compared to Siri AI — which can’t do any of this at all — it’s another point to ChatGPT.

The overall picture

Despite their individual strengths, Laidler warned that neither Siri AI nor ChatGPT had created an optimal workout plan. As he pointed out, “It doesn’t appear that the LLM has asked follow up questions that may have helped customize the plan a little more.”

This highlights a problem with using AI for personal fitness. While a personal trainer would naturally ask these questions straight away, an AI chatbot won’t necessarily propose them unless prompted. Without a more detailed knowledge of your personal situation, you could end up with a sub-par workout routine that’s not well-suited to your circumstances.

So, if you’re going to use AI to sketch out a fitness plan, make sure to add as much detail in your prompt as possible. Ask it to pose follow-up questions to ensure it has as all the information it needs, and come back to it regularly. Don’t just stick to the plan it gives you and repeat it ad infinitum or you’ll end up like I did: languishing, with your progress grinding to a frustrating halt.

Of course, as Laidler pointed out, the problem with doing this — telling the LLM your injury history, what feels like a hard set, your workout preferences, and more — means that “you need to already know what a well-built program looks like to comprehensively prompt for one.” And if that’s the case, do you even need an AI to help you in the first place?

If you do want to go ahead with an AI fitness coach, ChatGPT is a better bet than Siri AI for now, as it includes more varied sets and targets more muscle groups. Neither is perfect, but Apple has plenty of work to do if it wants to match ChatGPT’s take on fitness advice.

For years I've had both iPhones and Android phones to hand — not because I'm particularly flush with cash, but because it's the lot of a tech journalist to have to test and report on both these platforms regularly. It puts me in what I suspect is a small minority of people who use both Apple and Google phones just about every day.

Android and iOS also mean Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, of course. It's my Google Pixel that's my main phone, and so almost all of my driving is done with Android Auto on screen. However, with a 250-mile round trip from Manchester in the north of the UK to the town of Leamington Spa in the Midlands looming, it seemed a perfect opportunity to give the Apple alternative a go — and see if there was anything I was missing.

My car dashboard supports both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, so I loaded up the Google interface for the trip down south, and the Apple equivalent for the trip back up north — and here's how it went.

Down south with Android Auto

This is the interface I'm most familiar with in my car: it's simple, it's straightforward, and it gets the job done. Aside from a rather annoying bug where it always autoplays audio no matter how many times I turn off the autoplay setting, it's served me well down the years.

That's largely down to Google Maps: Apple Maps has certainly improved a lot in recent times, but I find that it just doesn't have the breadth and depth of Google's offering.

Apple still pulls place reviews off TripAdvisor, for example, while Google provides a host of reviews, ratings, photos, and videos from visitors. (Google Maps is on CarPlay too, but let's set that aside for the time being.)

As always, Google Maps got me safely and quickly to my destination, flashing up time-saving shortcuts when the traffic started building up ahead. It works really well with the recent Gemini upgrade too: asking questions such as "how far until the next rest stop?" brings up the right answer, with the option to add it as an extra stop.

One good example of Gemini's natural language intelligence is when I asked if the next turn would take me east or west along the motorway (freeway). The AI understood what I meant and answered correctly, which meant I was much better prepared for the junction, because I knew the direction I needed to be heading in.

Gemini handled messages with aplomb as well, digging deep into group chats to read out all the messages I've missed, and giving me the option to reply to them without taking my eyes off the road. I tried this with both WhatsApp and Google Chat, and it worked well on almost every occasion (just once there was a failure to send a message properly).

Gemini was also adept at controlling media playback, pausing and skipping and playing audio as required. I did come across one misstep, where Gemini jumped to the next podcast in the queue rather than simply resuming from where it left off. However, for the majority of the time it worked fine and exactly how you would want.

It was no surprise really that Android Auto performed well, as I've been relying on it for so many years. It's not quite perfect, and I'd like to see a few more options in terms of styling and layout, but on the whole it's reliable and intuitive — with the arrival of the smarter Gemini assistant a welcome bonus.

Up north with Apple CarPlay

Apple CarPlay is the interface I'm less familiar with, but I do like its Liquid Glass-inspired aesthetic. I'd say it's easier on the eye than Android Auto, though maybe that's not what's most important from a car dashboard interface.

I think I slightly prefer the CarPlay layout options, where you can have one, two, or three apps on the screen at once. Android Auto offers the same choice, but switches between the two-app and three-app look automatically, depending on context (if you've just got a message, for example). I prefer having the choice to set this specifically.

As mentioned above, Apple Maps is now a perfectly polished mapping app, and got me to my destination with no problems at all. It looks great, but still isn't quite at the level of Google's alternative: I miss the color-coded 'time remaining' indicator, for example, that tells you if traffic's ahead.

I was using the iOS 27 public beta for this test, complete with the new Siri AI upgrade. It's definitely a significant improvement on what we had before (thanks in part to some Google help), but it's still not quite as sharp as Gemini: it didn't understand the 'east or west' direction question, and when I asked when I would hit the next rest stop, it tried to pull up my calendar.

What Siri AI did do well is give me voice control over the rest of the interface: tasks such as playing and pausing music, and skipping between tracks, were no problem at all (I tested this in Spotify, but it should work just as well in all your audio apps).

Sending and receiving messages are two other jobs that the next-gen Siri handles nicely. I was able to keep up a conversation in Messages without taking my eyes off the road, which means other people are able to get updates about where you are without you putting yourself and other road users in danger.

So: no real complaints about Apple CarPlay, and I mostly liked what I saw. If I was to stick with this interface for my driving, I think I'd make use of Google Maps rather than Apple Maps, though obviously neither Android Auto nor Apple CarPlay let you change the digital AI assistant you're using.

Android Auto vs Apple CarPlay: the verdict

I doubt there's anyone who would switch from Android to iOS or vice versa solely because of the vehicle dashboard interface, but it might well play some part in deciding on your next phone upgrade. Even if you're not thinking of switching, you might be wondering how Apple and Google compare here.

To be honest, it's an easy decision for me to stick with Android Auto. Google Maps is better than Apple Maps, and Gemini is smarter than Siri, and maps and AI access are the two most important considerations when it comes to using my phone on the go. Maybe if you have a different priority, like messaging, you might edge towards CarPlay instead.

That's not to say I don't like CarPlay. It looks good and it works well, and it was a little better than Android Auto on the messaging front. In fact, Siri seems to interface with the native phone apps more seamlessly than Gemini — it's just not as good at parsing what you're after or understanding what you mean, in my experience.

In terms of features and app support, the two platforms are pretty similar, and I didn't have any major problems with either of them. It's really the reliability of the core maps functionality and the capability of the voice AI where Google just edges it at the moment, so Android Auto stays as my preferred interface.

Every year, Apple adds a handful of camera features to the iPhone Pro line that sound impressive on paper but change almost nothing about how the phone is actually used. ProRes RAW is not one of those features.

It's the first time a smartphone has shipped with true RAW video capture, and after spending real time pulling iPhone 17 Pro Max footage into DaVinci Resolve, I don't think that claim is marketing spin.

What ProRes RAW actually gives you

Every video an iPhone has ever recorded, including previous ProRes modes, has baked-in decisions the camera made at the moment of capture: white balance, exposure curve, and color rendering.

Once that's baked in, pulling it back apart in the edit only gets you so far before the image starts falling apart, blocking up in the shadows or clipping in the highlights.

ProRes RAW skips that step entirely. It preserves the sensor's raw data, including ISO, shutter speed, and white balance, as separate, adjustable metadata rather than a fixed look.

That's the same fundamental idea behind RAW photo capture, applied to video for the first time on a phone, and it's why cinema cameras costing tens of thousands of dollars have shot this way for years.

Grading it like cinema footage

The real test of a RAW format isn't whether it looks good straight out of the camera. It's how far you can push it in the grade before it breaks.

I shot the same handheld run-and-gun setup I'd normally use with a mirrorless camera: mixed lighting, a blown-out window in the background, warm tungsten practicals in the foreground. In standard ProRes, that shot is a compromise from the moment you press record.

In ProRes RAW, I was able to pull the window back from clipping, cool down the tungsten cast, and lift the shadows on the foreground subject's face without introducing any banding or noise that was unmanageable.

That flexibility is exactly what colorists mean when they talk about grading cinema camera footage, and it's genuinely new territory for a phone. This isn't a LUT slapped over Apple's existing color science.

It's the same underlying control a Blackmagic or RED shooter works with, just captured on a device that also makes phone calls.

How to actually shoot it

ProRes RAW isn't available in the stock Camera app. You'll need Apple's free Final Cut Camera app, which added ProRes RAW support alongside genlock sync in its 2.0 update, or Blackmagic's Camera app, which has also added native support. Apple has published an API as well, so expect other third-party camera apps to add compatibility over time.

Worth knowing before you start filling a card: ProRes RAW files are large, though Apple has kept the format more compressed than ProRes HQ to keep storage demands from becoming completely unmanageable.

Apple's answer for anyone shooting seriously is a new 2TB storage option, exclusive to the Pro Max, and if you're planning to shoot RAW regularly, it's worth budgeting for.

The caveat worth knowing

None of this makes the iPhone 17 Pro Max a replacement for a dedicated cinema camera, and it isn't trying to be. The sensor is still a phone sensor, with the dynamic range and low-light ceiling.

That implies, and RAW footage demands, a real editing workflow rather than a quick export to social media. If you're not already grading footage in DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut, ProRes RAW won't mean much to you day to day.

But for anyone who already treats their iPhone as a genuine second camera body, this update changes the relationship between what the iPhone captures and what you can do with it afterward.

That's a bigger deal than another megapixel bump or another zoom range, and it's the iPhone 17 Pro Max feature I've found myself using the most.

You could be forgiven for thinking that most wearable-tech categories have come as far as they're ever going to. All smartwatches look the same now, and that form factor isn’t going away anytime soon. It's a similar story with smart rings, with “slightly thinner” being the main selling point of the Oura Ring 5. And the screenless Whoop tracker has given birth to a bunch of copycats, including the Fitbit Air, and most recently the Garmin Cirqa.

When you think of wearable tech, you normally think of some sort of fitness tracker. But there is an area of wearables that’s still in flux, as categories do before there’s a consensus on what works: neurotech. Neurotech devices are generally wearable technology to monitor, or temporarily alter, our brain chemistry for optimal performance or to treat neurological injuries, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.

They’re also being used to improve our brains to rest harder and focus longer. Our writer Becca Caddy recently wrote about the dangerously addictive thrills of 'over-optimization', so it’s no surprise to see the out-there concept of rewiring the brain being embraced by the cult of biohacking.

Nootropics — mind-enhancing drugs — are promoted heavily on podcasts, with brands like Gorilla Mind and Alpha Brain enjoying airtime on popular ‘bro-science’ platforms like The Joe Rogan Experience to help get ‘cognitively dialed’. Away from pharmacological solutions, multi-millionaire longevity biohacker Bryan Johnson uses Nurosym, an electrical vagus nerve stimulation device, to “make [his] body more parasympathetic, more chill”.

It’s Nurosym that I’ve been using this week. There are other wearables out there that promise to do all sorts of things — the Neurosity Crown for example (pictured above), promises to improve concentration through “neuroadaptive meditation”, measuring your brainwaves and playing music to that pattern to improve focus during work. All while looking like the sort of thing you might see Patrick Stewart wear in the X-Men films.

The Muse 2 headband is a meditation aid that uses electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to read your brain activity and provide personalized meditation guidance, in much the same way as a smartwatch might read your heart rate and offer workout suggestions.

The vagus nerve, however, is a key target for brain health. Proper stimulation of the vagus nerve is said to offer all sorts of benefits, treating conditions as varied as depression, anxiety, inflammation, bipolar disorder, obesity, POTS, and Alzheimer's. For people without those conditions, vagus nerve stimulation can improve sleep quality, regulate stress and improve relaxation overall, ensuring you're well-rested and ready to tackle life's challenges.

There's unconfirmed but promising research suggesting that you may be able to stimulate the vagus nerve yourself through practices such as meditation and cold exposure — which might explain my predilection for cold showers, as perhaps I’ve been unconsciously hacking away at my brain all this time.

But what if I got a wearable to do it for me? I decided to try Nurosym myself for a week, to see if I could really begin to hack my brain better.

The vagus nerve stimulation device costs a whopping $699 / £599 (around AU$1,300), and looks quite stripped-back for a device of this price. It consists of a fairly simple handheld remote, an attached earpiece with a clamp to fix to your tragus (the small piece of cartilage outside your ear) and a charging cable. There’s mercifully no app or phone connection to speak of; everything happens on-device, which actually goes some way to making me trust it more, as it’s not collecting any data about me.

“For a long time, neuromodulation has largely meant invasive procedures or treatment delivered in specialist environments,” Dr Greta Dalle Luche, PhD., Nurosym’s head of science, tells me. “Nurosym demonstrates how this science can be translated into non-invasive technology that fits into people’s everyday lives.”

As well as being a doctor in biochemistry, Dalle Luche is also a former professional surfer, so she knows all about optimizing for peak performance. She explains that Nurosym is all about taking “evidence-led neuromodulation” out of the clinical space and turning it into accessible technology. A lot of clinical tests have been done on this device, and it’s advertised as “the world’s most studied vagus nerve stimulator” with $10 million invested in over 60 independent research papers, backed by notable universities and health bodies worldwide.

To use it, you moisten your tragus, fix the clamp, then adjust the signal on the remote — turning it up until you feel a light tingling sensation. That’s the electricity pulsing through your ear to your vagus nerve, stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system to activate your body’s “rest and digest” response.

It seems like as good a place as any to start. I wet my ear, clamped it onto myself and sat quietly, letting the tingles of electricity wash down my ear canal and into my brain. Nurosym guidelines, and reports on the r/vagusnerve subreddit (because of course there’s a subreddit), suggest that it can take anything from a few days to months to feel the effects, which are said to include a reduction in depressive or anxiety-related symptoms, better sleep, and better-quality rest and relaxation. These claims are anecdotal, and user-dependent, and the results are subjective, with no objective measure of they actually work or produce meaningful results, certainly in a short amount of time such as a week.

Dalle Luche tells me that “factors such as an individual’s underlying vagal tone, or in other words, the ‘health of their autonomic nervous system,’ influence the proportion of the response to the device". So it's possible that I may end up not having a proportional, or significant, response.

Nonetheless, I did my best to empirically measure my body’s responses to this new technology, monitoring my sessions on a Garmin Cirqa fitness tracker as if it was a workout, and wearing it to bed nightly to monitor sleep quality and heart-rate variability.

You can watch our video review of the Garmin Cirqa below:

According to the Garmin, the stimulation did have some effect. There could be any number of contributing factors for this, but after spending 15 minutes at rest to settle my heart, I fired up the Nurosym and monitored my heart rate over a 25-minute session, and I did see a decrease in spikes my heart rate as the session went on. Note the regularity in the middle there, too, between the 10 and 17-minute marks — a clear indication that something was working.

Across the week while using the device, I also saw a general improvement in sleep quality and drastically rising heart-rate variability, as measured here via my Garmin. I’m not sure I saw any immediate, dramatic improvement in focus or relaxation, but the graphs were moving in the right direction.

Whether this is partly due to the sessions enforcing at least 30 minutes of screenless, conscious relaxation time each day, so that my nervous system was deliberately being calmed, or whether it’s due to the device, I’m not sure. But I’ll take the W, as the kids say.

For $700 / £600 / AU$1,300, is 'seemed to work' enough? When I asked about the high price of the device, Nurosym’s head of science Dr Greta Dalle Luche said its price does not reflect the physical device alone.

“It reflects more than a decade of scientific research and development, our proprietary technology, extensive continuous testing to ensure safety and maintenance of regulatory certification, as well as continued investment in clinical research,” she told me. “That makes a direct product-for-product comparison with lower-cost non-validated wellness gadgets difficult.

“When people buy Nurosym, they have the certainty of holding in their hands something that works, and that comes with very little risk.”

While the results have been inconclusive so far, I've seen enough to suggest that something is happening here, so I'll continue electrocuting my brain for a while yet to see if I achieve more definitive results. Wearable neurotechnology is still in its infancy, but it’s a technology that's on the rise, and I imagine, now that Nurosym has done the hard work of all that proprietary testing, there will be more low-strength vagus nerve-stimulation devices hitting the market in the near future.

I’m interested in seeing where the category goes. If companies like Nurosym can bring down prices, and make the technology more accessible, a wearable that improves your quality of relaxation — and which doesn’t harvest your data to feed big tech via an AI-powered app — sounds like a win in my book.

Out of all the stories I've covered as a consumer tech journalist, subscription fatigue has been one of the most common frustrations I’ve come across — and the usual fixes of service hopping, signing up for discounted annual plans and searching for deals no longer seem to be cutting it.

Ongoing price hikes, vanishing content from catalogues and locking basic features behind paywalls have left the subscription model looking thoroughly squeezed by Big Tech — and it’s making people vote with their wallets.

We've already seen the resurgence of physical media, which has been partly fuelled by the growing frustration with 'renting' services, but there's also a small tech hobby that's starting to see a real spike in interest for similar reasons: DIY home servers.

Instead of paying an ongoing fee to access online services, many tech-savvy people are increasingly setting up their own private servers at home using nothing more than an old PC and some hard drives, in some cases.

Home servers are by no means new, but the scene has moved on from being the domain of hardcore tinkerers who wanted to do cool things with their friends online.

Google Trends data shows that even at its peak in 2007 — when Microsoft launched Windows Home Server at CES, popularizing plug-and-play storage for non-techies — self-hosting was still only ever popular among small groups of people.

But that's changing. Nowadays, interest in the topic is growing as more people experiment with old tech they already have lying around to get their privacy and digital ownership back from the tech giants, while also cutting down on e-waste.

To get a better understanding of why home servers are suddenly catching on, I spoke to DIY enthusiasts, hardware manufacturers, software providers, tech YouTubers and even one of the moderators of the r/HomeServer subreddit.

If you’re curious to learn more about home servers, keep reading to find out what they are, why the topic is trending, what they can be used for, and how you can start getting involved.

What is a home server?

The simplest way to describe a home server is to think of it just like any other computer. But unlike your everyday PC, this machine is a dedicated hub hosted on your private network that's accessible both locally and remotely.

Want to stop sending your holiday snaps to a big tech corporation and store them on a computer you own? Need one place to back up all your devices? A home server can do this in a way that functions much like your existing cloud subscriptions.

Looking to test a vibe-coded app without risking your main computer? You can absolutely use a virtual machine (VM) on your home server to simulate a safe 'computer inside a computer'. Just keep in mind that once you start building setups a small business would be proud of, you'll want to graduate from basic home servers and check out the r/HomeLab community.

New r/homelab Users Start Here from r/homelab

"A home server is really a sandbox," Zach Ferree, a tech YouTuber who runs the channel Zach’s Tech Turf with 1.98 million subscribers, says. "You can replicate the kind of environment you'd see in an actual IT department and test things out without any risk of breaking something that matters."

IT professionals often build robust home labs to safely test things like network configurations for sharing data or run demanding VMs. However, the rise of user-friendly containers — which are similar to VMs but instead of simulating the hardware, they mimic the software — has opened this world to everyday hobbyists too, who are increasingly using simplified home servers to bypass subscriptions, host their own apps, manage automations and more.

A big reason why home servers have become easier to use is because of the modern operating systems (OS) that have made them more user-friendly. Even VMs and containers are much more accessible, as these OS have replaced complex command-line setups with visual app stores.

Free, open-source server OS like Linux and TrueNas have played a major role in making that possible, according to Kris Moore, CTO at TrueNAS. "For home-lab enthusiasts and tech-savvy users, [home server OS] have provided an accessible way to explore the concept of running enterprise-grade storage solutions without requiring significant upfront investment in hardware."

This shift is largely due to how the software itself has evolved. Moore explains that TrueNAS has grown from a simple digital filing cabinet into a 'hyperconverged platform', which is essentially an all-in-one system that seamlessly handles both storage and computing.

By bridging that gap, Moore notes OS like TrueNAS SCALE make home servers "capable of running Linux containers, apps and virtual machines". "Making apps, virtual machines and containers fully supported features opened the door to far more deployment options beyond the traditional storage role [of home servers]," he added.

Why are home servers trending?

There are three major reasons why home servers are seeing a spike in interest. The first and foremost is because it's a cheaper alternative to paying for subscriptions. This is something I considered myself after running out of disc space and paying for multiple cloud subscriptions.

Betty Van, a former occupational therapist turned tech YouTuber with 1.3 million followers, hit the same wall a year ago on a much bigger scale. With a growing library of large video files from her channel Switch and Click, Google wanted to charge her close to $300 / £220 / AU$420 a month for 20TB of storage, even though the same sized hard drive costs only about $100 / £200 / AU$300 more.

Her next most common reason is to do with the entertainment services like music, movies, TV and gaming removing content to cut down on licensing costs or avoid paying residual fees. "My bills are going up and they're taking away shows — you don't have any sense of control over what is going on on the platforms," Van shared about her own experience.

"A good example would be The Greatest Showman. It was originally on Disney+ and then it moved to Hulu, and now it's nowhere. Or when Sony recently removed a bunch of movies. These events act as catalysts for people saying enough is enough, and then they look into the alternatives."

Those alternatives aren't just about building media servers either — even though it’s arguably "the primary draw", according to one of the moderators at r/HomeServers. “Home servers are absolutely not just about piracy. I believe people are realizing how much data companies hold on them and the power that comes with it.

"We expect Apple and Google to back up our photos indefinitely, but what happens if they terminate your account? Without regional data access rights, that's a lifetime of photos gone. Music streaming has the same issue. Songs and song libraries can vanish overnight, including the ones you love."

Subscribers were reminded of that ownership gap recently when PlayStation announced it will stop releasing physical game discs from 2028, raising questions about why physical media regulations haven't caught up to digital assets, leaving buyers without a clear right to resell, trade or lend what they've 'bought'.

"Home servers have always been a niche corner of the tech world, but interest keeps growing. As companies keep chipping away at people's ownership of their own media, more people want that ownership back,” Ferree added.

Another part of this is that the boycotting of these services is being seen as a quiet revolt against Big Tech. By building local, self-hosted systems, everyday people are taking back control of their data, bypassing subscription traps and regaining their privacy — a shift increasingly championed by nonprofits like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Rory Mir, director of open access and tech community engagement at EEF, says: "There's the immediate revolts or protests of 'we're not going to pay this continual rent to these big operators', but then there’s a real sense of empowerment and independence that comes from not being beholden to a huge company.

"I think it's actually healthy for the internet as a whole, as an ecosystem, to have less centralized gatekeepers in that way," they added, raising the importance of healthy market competition, not being forced into upgrade cycles, avoiding outages and taking charge of your data.

What to use a home server for

Home servers are most commonly associated with home media libraries, which are a staple of the home-theatre community, but they're capable of far more than just storing and managing data.

A huge part of making that possible is the usability. Home server OS have lowered the barrier to entry by making it easier to interact with home servers. Most people will pick an OS based on the utility of their project, but home servers are becoming more plug-and-play, thanks to services like TrueNAS.

TrueNAS is paving the way for this, which is why it's one of the most popular choices in the wider home lab community. As a result, Moore has come across plenty of different use cases for home servers just by seeing what the software is being used for.

"TrueNAS is used in a remarkably diverse set of use cases worldwide," he says. "Just when we think we've seen it all, someone surprises us with something new. Making apps, VMs, and containers fully supported features opened the door to far more deployment options beyond the traditional storage role.

"In the home lab community, those range from the obvious — media and video serving (Plex, Jellyfin), development and CI/CD platforms (Gitea, Jenkins) [for testing code] — to less expected ones, like hosting game servers.

"On the TrueNAS Enterprise side, apps and VMs give us the flexibility to meet demanding customer workloads across a variety of market segments: media asset managers running directly on the storage array, backup software such as Veeam virtual storage appliances, and platforms for ingesting security camera feeds," Moore says.

Outside of home automations, which I’ll dig into more below, you can use your home server to do a wide range of useful tasks like running apps for tasks like organizing your notes, blocking annoying ads, managing passwords, hosting your own portfolio, running your own news feed, LLMs and AI agents.

What is a home assistant server?

Home servers are also growing in popularity because they offer a way to combine the increasing number of smart home devices finding their way into our households into one management system.

They have also been found to be a great way to control and automate your setup without having to worry about forced updates, system outages or privacy.

There are dedicated smart home OS for home servers like Home Assistant — a free, open-source smart-home platform built by Paulus Schoutsen that now automates more than a million homes — that lets you control lights, security cameras, appliances and more, entirely through your own network.

"Home Assistant runs locally in your home and doesn't require the internet to work. Most big-tech platforms grind to a halt the moment the internet drops.

"If you build your self-hosted smart home with Home Assistant, and choose devices that directly communicate with it [through protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave or Matter compatible devices], your smart home will work with or without the internet," he says.

Schoutsen also highlights the sustainability benefits of home servers, and not just in the context of reusing old tech to set one up as part of the Right-to-Repair movement. "A device that outlives its manufacturer's interest doesn't have to become e-waste," he says.

"Because your hub and locally-connected devices don't depend on a company's servers, no one can switch them off from afar. Some Home Assistant users have decades-old smart home devices still running in their homes."

"Self-hosting used to be a bit intimidating, but it's really easy to get started nowadays. Our Home Assistant Green is an easy plug-and-play option to connect thousands of different smart home devices. It can even run other self-hosted apps."

Why home servers are suddenly so expensive

While the software for running home servers has got a lot easier to use over the years (you no longer have to live in a terminal), the hardware — despite becoming more accessible — is a lot less easy to come by at the time of writing. That's largely down to massive corporate demand for AI data centres, which has driven up RAM and storage prices for everyday hobbyists.

Then there's rising energy costs. Home servers do run around the clock, which adds up quickly as electricity bills climb, so it’s important to choose the hardware that you need to not use excess energy. As Mir suggests, "having more energy-efficient components [is a solution]."

"But then the ongoing energy as a user does involve maintenance," they say. "It does involve checking for updates. You're kind of committing to this being a hobby for ideally only a few hours a month, but it can be the least convenient time when you need to use those two hours.

"Those are the kinds of the things I would give [newcomers] a heads up about," Mir says before adding "remembering to have a proper backup system as well. I think a lot of people will treat their home server as 'I can just put all my files there and I have it backed up'. But it's best practice to have it either offsite or at least another backup, so that if your server goes kaput, you don't lose everything you've been curating there."

There are various strategies for mitigating the risk of losing data, but the gold standard at enterprise level is the '3-2-1 backup rule', which insists on three copies of the same data that are stored on two distinct types of hardware or storage tech (i.e. the cloud and a local hard drive), with one copy kept off-site. Although, many can get away with just a one backup.

The risks of home servers

Home servers can pose real network-security risks if not set up properly. Fortunately, there are a lot of precautions that you can take when, for instance, setting up remote access.

Opening the wrong ports (essentially doorways that let your data in and out) to the internet can make your home network vulnerable to scammers. Using network security tools like VPNs, mesh VPNs, tunneling services and port forwarding can help to make sure that your devices connect securely to the internet. But each have their pros and cons, according to Dr Pete Membrey, ExpressVPN's Chief Research Officer.

"Mesh VPNs and tunneling services try to bridge the gap between VPNs and port forwarding, and in many cases, they can be beneficial. They're often touted as being simpler and easier to use than a traditional VPN, but in my opinion, this isn't really the case for most people," he says.

"Most find it much easier to understand that when they connect to their home VPN, it’s as though they connected to their Wi-Fi at home, and the level of access that would provide (just as if a malicious actor joined your home Wi-Fi).

"That's not to say that mesh systems aren't useful — they are very powerful — but they need to be set up correctly. It depends on the use case and the person using it as to which will work best for them."

Where to get started with home servers

Whether you're looking to reduce your subscriptions to cloud services like Dropbox or want to make better use of that old laptop that's been lying around, you might be considering setting up your first home server, but what type of setup is right for you is a hard question.

There's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all home server, simply because of the various different ways to approach it. As Ferree says, "it really comes down to what you're trying to get out of it".

Are you looking to replace basic cloud services? An off-the-shelf (network-attached storage) NAS device might be all you need to get you up and running fast.

TerraMaster, a company that specializes in making these devices, says that a "NAS offers the advantage of a hassle-free and reliable experience — dedicated systems, built-in data protection [like RAID / JBOD], remote access, and private cloud functionality are ready to use out of the box. They are particularly suitable for users seeking convenience, stability, and hands-free operation, making them the preferred choice for most home users."

Do you want to build a personal digital hub for the household and automate your home? You might want to explore the hooking up a PC to a direct-attached storage (DAS) route.

"More than half of the DAS users we surveyed already own a mini PC or an older computer and tend to install systems like Unraid or TrueNAS to build their own servers," a spokesperson from TerraMaster said.

"The core driving force behind this trend is cost-effectiveness: with rising prices for NAS systems and hard drives, users are unwilling to pay for duplicate CPUs, memory, and operating systems, instead choosing to reuse existing equipment to reduce costs."

"It's a lot like building a custom gaming PC versus buying a prebuilt one," Ferree says. "An off-the-shelf NAS means you're not troubleshooting compatibility issues, and you've got real support if something goes wrong.

"Building it yourself gets you more value for your money, since you're only paying for hardware, not a markup. You also pick up real skills along the way, and that translates directly into fields like IT and cybersecurity.

"For beginners, figure out your goal first. Scaling from there is just adding drives or moving to a bigger enclosure once you outgrow what you started with."

Looking for suggestions for my home server project. from r/HomeServer

How to set up a home server in 2026

While I'm not going to walk you through exactly how make your own home server or how to build the perfect home server here (I'm only at the start of my own journey), I will share some of the advice I got from my conversations with the community based on a few different scenarios.

"Let's say you have a computer or a laptop that's the main machine you use and you want to make that into a server," Van says. "You buy some drives, like a drive bay (it's an enclosure), and you use it as storage, like a normal computer would. That way, you're not using any complicated operating systems. It's just storage for you to use.

"So, a step above that, I would say, is going with a NAS rather than the DAS. In the beginning, you can get an off-the-shelf one because it's really easy to use. And if you decide later on, 'I want to do something more unique', they don't tell you this, but you can override your NAS's OS with [say] a Linux one."

For Van, a NAS is the easier and more affordable way to get started with your own home server. "You lose some control, but most people aren't going to be using the advanced features where you need all that control in the first place."

"Then if you go even beyond that, and you have a ton of drives, and you want to do a lot of self-hosting with a lot of firepower, then I would say go the DIY route," she says.

Picking the right hardware setup for your home server can feel overwhelming, but if we boil it down to the three main setups that Van suggests, it becomes slightly easier to work out a starting point. Take the quiz below to find out which route fits your technical comfort level and end goals.

No matter which setup you landed on, it's important to keep a close eye on your budget. Surging RAM and storage prices have made building a custom DIY server from scratch a pricey endeavor. If you don't already have older hardware ready to repurpose, Van suggests an off-the-shelf option but warns that these are pricey nowadays too.

"I would definitely wait until PC parts go down a bit," Van says. "If you are self-hosting like local LLMs, then the DIY route does make way more sense because you can plug in your GPUs and max out your RAM. There are also NAS’s that do that nowadays, but they cost a lot."

Based on what the r/HomeServers have seen the community talk about, most first-timers are opting to repurpose existing hardware these days rather than buy or DIY a "proper" NAS, according to one of the subreddit's moderators.

"That is certainly the most frequent recommendation I see here and in similar subreddits, as well as what I would personally recommend to newcomers. Mini PCs are also a good starter point, but you certainly don't need to buy one," they said.

"Pretty much any computer or laptop from the last decade will work perfectly fine for a beginner. You just don't need the latest and greatest enterprise-grade equipment to run a photo server. I would say mini PCs or repurposing your own machines is more common for novices."

Ultimately, as Ferree points out, home servers are about learning by doing. "If Linux feels intimidating, spin up a VM and practice basic tasks. If a role uses something like Active Directory, build a small test environment for that.

"And on the simplest level, set up a network share everyone in your house can use. You'll learn more from that first setup than you'd expect, and you walk away with something actually useful instead of passing a USB drive around the house."

When Sony announced that it would no longer be producing physical PlayStation discs from 2028, the response was not positive, to put it lightly. Yes, PC gaming may now be almost entirely digital, and things have certainly been moving in a similar direction with consoles over the last few years, but ceasing production of physical games entirely? It’s a significant step many didn’t want to happen so soon.

PlayStation fans have been vocal in calling out the negatives of Sony’s decision, specifically what this means for game ownership, preservation, and collectors who enjoy buying physical. The company has been reticent to address the backlash, but the comments section of every blog entry, social media post, or trailer release since the announcement is full of anger, pleas to reverse the decision, and glib remarks at Sony’s expense.

For anyone, like myself, who has enjoyed building a collection of physical games over the years across multiple console generations, it’s devastating news.

And I don’t think Sony’s refusal to address any of the feedback is helping matters. Yes, we’ve seen fan uproar dissipate into nothingness with countless hot-button issues in a matter of days in the past — but the vociferous fans don’t appear to be going away right now.

But I think some companies aren’t letting physical games go anywhere either.

A new challenger approaches

“What we've seen and what I have taken from all of the discourse is that there is an incredible passion for physical games and other physical objects. The digital space can never provide the same kind of satisfaction that people get from a tangible good.”

This is the view of Amanda White, co-founder of iam8bit. After starting out hosting pop culture workshops, the company has since produced countless pieces of video game merch and memorabilia over the past 20 years, as well as vinyl releases for popular soundtracks and physical editions for games across several platforms. Yes, they have standard boxed releases for games on PS5, Xbox, and Switch, but the company truly stands out for its jam-packed and reverential physical collector’s editions.

Scroll through the store now, and you’ll see a copy of Lies of P that comes with a wood-carved and hand-crafted marionette puppet, a Blue Prince bundle that includes printed versions of two memorable picture books from the game, and a The Outer Wilds set featuring a traveller’s bag and a replica of Chert’s bandana.

If you’ve played and are a fan of any of those games, you’ll immediately understand the connection between the extras that are included and the game itself, and why people are willing to part with their cash to own something that they can add to a collection, display at home, or carry around with them.

“We started to realise that there was something that people saw as incredibly valuable in these tangible goods,” Amanda explains of the company’s origins. “These unique tangible goods held memories for them that related to these community experiences they were having.

“So, we want to put in the extraordinary effort required to get the gasps of delight when something lands in someone's mailbox and they open it and experience it for the first time.”

Let's get physical

It’s the same fan passion that drives Limited Run Games: a similar outfit that’s published over 1,000 physical and digital game releases since its inception in 2015. Its motto, ‘Forever Physical’, defines the exact mindset of the PlayStation fans who are disappointed with Sony’s pivot to a fully digital future and what’s lost by moving in this direction.

“I think you're losing a key part of the experience, right?” suggests Brendan Madigan, CFO and General Manager at Limited Run. “Because, obviously, the actual media is a key part of that, and I think that's where we, at Limited Run, have a responsibility to our fans to innovate and to improve the experience.”

“I think where our fans have been clear in what they want is that they want collectible products that hold value, and they want the product to be an experience,” he continues. “I’ve always viewed our product as different from a retail offering anyway, because it's highly collectable, it’s very curated, with tonnes of added features and pack-ins to it. The delivery mechanism will always change…but nothing changes about the core experience that the collector wants to have.”

It comes down to the fact that the physical offering from the traditional industry has only grown more sparse over the years. Open a PS5 or Nintendo Switch game box now and you’re more often than not presented with the sad sight of a lonely disc or tiny cartridge set into an empty expanse of plastic. You’re lucky if you get a quick start guide, or a sheet of paper with a DLC code. A full manual? You must be joking.

Similar to iam8bit, the store pages of Limited Run are filled with physical game releases that span the entire range of consoles and generations — from bulky NES cartridges to the slim cases of Nintendo Switch titles.

The products that stand out most, again, are the most recent limited edition launches, with games like Tomb Raider, Silent Hill, and Star Wars Zero Company in beautiful presentation boxes that are filled with soundtrack CDs, trinkets, posters, and other unique extras relevant to the game or its universe.

Sales figures discussed by analysts might paint a grim picture for physical releases, but iam8bit and Limited Run both emphasize just how quickly some of their releases sell out — and how even restocks of older products that were brought back by fan demand are scooped up in no time. The audience and the demand do not appear to be shrinking from their perspective.

Digital is inevitable, but there is hope

As for fans signing petitions trying to convince Sony to reverse its decision, Limited Run’s Chief Operating Officer, Nic Ashford, is unfortunately not hopeful for the outcome they're seeking, but does see what they're standing for as an opportunity.

“Look at the numbers; they're not going to change, they're not going to go back. They can't afford to and it doesn't make sense. But that doesn't mean a company like Limited Run couldn't come in and say, look, we certainly know that 350,000 people want you to keep this going, and it could go up. How about working with us to come up with a solution that works?

“We've got to find the right solution for the number of people who are out there in the minority who still buy physical product,” says Nic. “Some might say, outside the industry, that’s a somewhat flawed business model. But, in fact, it isn't, because those people who seek that type of product will always seek that product out.”

He likens it to this wider push, primarily from younger generations, who want to reconnect to the physical world in our increasing digital age. In the same way that 4K Blu-ray, CDs, and, of course, vinyl, are all in various states of resurgence, it seemed inevitable that video games would also be swept up in this growing demand for and appreciation of physical goods.

“We have, over the last couple of years, set this company up in preparation for this moment,” continues Nic. “Physical is something that we’re intrinsically involved in, and we've been aware that this was going to be coming for several years — practically over a couple of decades. So, we focused on making things more of an experience for the fans and adding value.

“They are actively going out and seeking a connection with something real, something you can hold, something you can touch, and that you can own. That's encouraging. Today's generation and the next generation of physical buyers are going to be people who have that or grow into that, but they'll have a component of nostalgia in there as well.”

Blowing on the cartridge is here to stay

Nostalgia brings me nicely onto another aspect of why physical games are so important to many — one that grows even more important as gaming and console generations keep moving forward. Preservation.

If you buy a game digitally, then there’s the fear that it could disappear and no longer be accessible at any moment. Sure, Sony isn’t going to turn off PS5 game downloads any time soon, but the PlayStation Store on the PS3 and PS Vita is about to close.

And while the company has promised downloads will be possible “for the foreseeable future,” there’s always the thought in the back of your mind that, eventually, they’ll switch it off for good.

So, being able to scan your shelf or dive into a box and find that old copy of something you’ve been craving to play is clearly a driving factor for many physical game buyers — be it a rare PS1 cult classic like Parasite Eve 2, a slightly dusty but incredibly valuable Conker’s Bad Fur Day N64 cart, or a copy of Pokémon Red on the Game Boy that you last remember playing by the light of streetlamps in the back of a car.

One company whose goal is to preserve classic games and ensure you can play them as authentically as possible is ModRetro.

It started by launching the Game Boy-inspired Chromatic and just recently launched the M64, a modern take on the Nintendo 64 that I found was a terrific way to play that console’s games in 2026.

“We wanted to basically design these exactly with this core intention to preserve the authenticity of the gameplay experience,” explains ModRetro CEO Torin Herndon. “That's also why we publish games and re-release games, too. In terms of retro games, the collecting of them is a bigger thing than the playing of them, and one of the goals of ModRetro is to make those games playable again and make them accessible again.”

Original Game Boy and Nintendo 64 cartridges are simply slotted into the Chromatic or the M64 as you would with any standard version of the respective console.

And while some modern quality-of-life touches make things easier or smoother compared to the classic consoles, you’re effectively playing the exact same physical game that you may have owned for years or picked up in a second-hand store earlier that day. With a digital-only future upon us, that won’t be possible.

“The thing that's upsetting to people on the surface is this idea of ownership: that if you don't physically own a game where the game is on physical media, it can easily lose support at any moment. It can effectively be taken away from you in some sense,” says Torin in response to the reaction to Sony’s announcement. “And given that you paid AAA prices for some of these games, that is not a super consumer-friendly option.

“Obviously, these companies don't have a choice but to move away from physical media, because the overall business model of these companies is kind of reliant on having moved away from them in the first place. Most of the physical media that you can buy is actually just a key that allows you to unlock the game and download it.

"That’s another thing that I think is interesting, maybe more interesting even than ownership, is that back in the day these games were baked onto physical media and were more reliably baked before you bought it.”

Overcoming tech challenges

That’s less of an issue when we’re discussing the Game Boy and Nintendo 64 games that ModRetro is focused on, but there will come a point when these same conversations will be happening about more modern games that are reliant on day-one updates and DLC.

The topic is big enough for a different discussion entirely, but it’s a challenge that companies like iam8bit and Limited Run Games also need to be aware of with physical media in the modern era.

Jon Gibson, co-founder of iam8bit, responds to this by saying: “We've been on the side of positivity always, and we're looking at this from a perspective of, OK, you can't change what you can't change. But how can we pivot to embrace what we do so well and to give fans things that they will enjoy and cherish and love in that physical form?

“We hope that 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 50 years from now, people are going to find a copy of a game, or a record, or a CD that we minted that they had never heard of and they give it a shot. They pop it into their console, or they put it on the record player. That's really exciting to think about that we helped to give that thing staying power, whereas, otherwise, it might be deleted digitally when a licence expires.”

That optimism is echoed by Amanda. “As John said, we're going to lean into this aspect of what we already do and have been doing for 20 years, and we'll continue to do it. If that means we need to pivot a little bit so that we're making goods that are sitting beside PlayStation products, rather than direct physical PlayStation games, then we'll do that. We’ll still do our best to make those fans happy and build a robust experience around the IP they love.”

What’s clear speaking to iam8bit, Limited Run Games, and ModRetro is that the passion for games is there in abundance, as is the drive to provide their fans of today and in the future with ways to experience and enjoy the games they love in a physical form, not just as the ones and zeros they’re made from.

Growing up music-obsessed, my household CD collection was substantial. Along with my own music, it was largely made up of albums my parents had accumulated separately. Like a library filled with books, it unlocked an educational portal on all things music and ignited my respect for the album.

And yes, I use the best music streaming services to satisfy my daily music needs, but I’m still an album-listener, and I haven’t left physical music out of my consumption habits. That said, I’ve always imagined what it would be like to bring the nostalgia of CD-browsing into the digital era. Thankfully, Ricardo Amorim is doing just that with his start-up company Spine Music.

Launching on Kickstarter this fall, Amorim’s inaugural product is the Spine display, a digital music display you can connect to your Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal account. But what’s impressive about Spine is that it displays all of your saved albums as if they were a CD collection, which you can browse and play through headphones and speakers.

For a company that’s so new, Amorim’s mission is tunnel vision: to reconnect people with music. As he awaits the launch of Spine, Amorim sat down with me to talk about his product in detail and why he thinks it will never replace physical music.

A display that's been years in the making

Spine was unveiled to the world just this year, but for Amorim, it’s something he’s been thinking about for a lot longer. “The idea itself is something I've been kicking about in my head for years," he tells me. "It started off with me wanting to buy something like it, so it wasn’t like ‘this is a company I should start’; it was more ‘this is a product I need because I love streaming’."

Just two minutes into our conversation, I realized Amorim and I are quite similar. We both appreciate the accessibility and convenience of music streaming, but our attachment to physical music is in our DNA. It’s what keeps us grounded. “I love everything that (streaming) brings me. I love having access to every album under the sun, but I grew up with physical music, and I missed that,” he says, and I get it.

With this in the back of his mind, it all became clear to him, as he tells me, “Surely there's something out there that can bridge that gap.

"I left my job and said ‘you know what, if nobody's making it, then I'll go ahead and make it’. I went on a sabbatical starting last year and took time off to recharge and rethink what I want to do. Then Spine came up again as an idea, and I thought it was the perfect time”.

While Spine is a handy digital music shelf that gives you immediate access to your streaming library, it’s so much more than that for Amorim. “The emotional reconnection with music is what I would like Spine to be able to achieve, but not leaving behind all the benefits that streaming and technology have brought us," he adds.

"I love streaming, but I do feel like if you truly love music and you talk about music and want to move your relationship with it beyond your phone, there are few ways of doing so."

Album-centric with minimal features

Unlike streaming platforms where the user interface is central to the experience, this isn’t a priority for Spine. Instead, Amorim argues that the device’s minimal display encourages higher levels of browsing.

“One core concept of the product is to have no UI. So we designed the whole experience to be about swiping to browse, tap to open, and tap to play," Amorim details, adding "and there are no buttons once you've loaded your library in, it’s just gestures to protect the music”.

The other core concept is to spotlight albums in all their glory, which I raise my glass to. “You can import your playlists, but Spine will behave like a music shelf that displays albums. So, say you import your late-night jazz playlist, it'll pull up all the relevant tracks that are part of that playlist and display that," he tells me.

"There's something different about listening to an album end-to-end that an artist puts so much effort into thinking about. That’s what I wanted to project, hence why there's a deliberate decision in trying to maintain that conceptual connection with a music shelf”. It’s music to my ears.

But there’s one thing Amorim wants to be clear about: Spine is a display, not a player. When you select an album from your collection on Spine, the rest is done through your streaming service of choice, meaning it doesn’t render audio files.

“Spine will trigger the beginning of an album or play something through your streaming service, and then the streaming service will own the relationship with where it goes to play and so on. Once you have that concept in mind, then it's not about queuing, it's about browsing and starting the listening journey,” Amorim tells me, and there’s one particular reason for this.

“People have invested a reasonable amount of money in their own audio gear and hi-fi gear, so it doesn't make sense to me to try to replace that. I feel like we have a different job to do”.

Physical music is never out of the question

Just looking at the images of Spine brings back so many memories of seeing my home CD collection lined up in the cabinet — not to mention it looks great in a home audio setup. There’s just one question going through my head, however: will the convenience of Spine prompt users to stop collecting physical music? Amorim doesn’t think so.

“I don't think it tries to compete with physical media in that sense. What I notice is every time someone connects their library to Spine, there's an emotional wave that hits you when you see your music back on the wall again. You can't explain it; you just feel it,” he elaborates, recalling one of his favorite parts about CD collecting.

He goes on. “My nostalgia comes from browsing the liners of the albums. I remember to this day there's a Pearl Jam album that came with a bunch of little Polaroids, I think it was No Code, and I still love that. I miss it. Spine is not going to go there, and I would love for people to still go and buy those albums and experience that themselves”. At the same time, he reemphasizes Spine’s singular goal.

“It's really about reconnecting people with music. I truly believe that the feeling of connection we have with music goes beyond just the pure sound coming off of it. It's the relationships it can start, it’s the conversations it sparks."

Casual discovery and conversations around music have dipped in the streaming era. For most people, listening to an album is enough, but for those who really appreciate music, discourse is vital. This is something Amorim wants to revive.

“I've recently written about bringing back serendipity and casual discovery. You know, it's having friends over, and they start browsing through your collection and saying ‘oh, I remember this album’, or ‘oh I never heard of this one’," he shares.

But as it stands, Amorim’s focus is introducing Spine to the world and developing a new kind of music player, but he believes there’s already room for growth.

“Right now the core focus is music doing one job really well, but I can see potential in browsing books in a similar manner, and potentially even films and TV to an extent," he believes. "It's that sense of curation that comes with a limited amount of space, even though of course you can swipe and keep going.

"But if you're going to put something up on your wall in your home, you're probably going to have a different level of curation than you would if it's something hidden in your phone that nobody can see. So, I feel like that can apply to other types of media at some point,” he says.

There's still a bit of time before users can get their hands on the Spine display. While pre-orders open on Kickstarter this fall, shipping doesn't start until early 2027, so there's still a bit of a wait. So far, Spine looks like a promising device, and I'm fascinated to see how music lovers take to it.

The best streaming services have added more new movies in August, and even though we're light on the horrors this month, I've still managed to find seven new arrivals.

Prime Video doesn't have any new horrors this month, but thankfully Paramount+ has stepped up in August to bring us one of my favorites. So despite the lighter selections, there's still enough for the macabre among us.

Ready to dive in? Here are my seven horror streaming picks for August 2026.

10 Cloverfield Lane

When: August 1
Where: Paramount+ (US); rent or buy (UK, AU)

Cloverfield is one of the best found footage movies out there, but if you think the follow ups wouldn't be as good, you're mistaken. In fact, 10 Cloverfield Lane is one of my favorite movies and a worthy addition to the series.

Here, Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a woman who survives a car crash. When she wakes up, she realizes she's been taken in by two men who insist that the outside world is uninhabitable, and they must remain in the underground bunker. It's well worth checking out if you're a fan of the original Cloverfield movie.

Bride of Chucky

When: August 1
Where: Netflix (US); rent or buy (UK, AU)

It's double trouble for Chucky fans this month, as this iconic horror movie sees the murderous doll finding himself a wife. Bride of Chucky is one of my favorites of the franchise, largely due to Jennifer Tilly's great performance as Tiffany Valentine.

Bride of Chucky stands out from the first three movies in the franchise because it relies on self-referential parody and isn't afraid to make fun of itself. In my opinion, it's the funniest entry into the franchise for this reason. So if you want a perfect blend of horror and comedy, it's right here.

Barbarian

When: August 1
Where: HBO Max (US); rent or buy (UK, AU)

Everyone's talking about Zach Cregger's Resident Evil, and his recent feature Weapons won at the Oscars, so now is a great moment to check out his excellent horror movie Barbarian.

It's hard to believe that Barbarian is Cregger's directorial debut because it is terrifyingly good. It starts as a seemingly normal tale of a woman who rents a vacation house, but when she finds out it's occupied by someone else it descends into something entirely unexpected. Believe the hype, it's really good.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

When: August 3
Where: Netflix (US, AU), rent or buy (UK)

Get ready for Freddy, because US and Australian audiences can watch horror sequel Five Nights at Freddy's 2 on Netflix in August. Despite being panned by the critics, the movie and its predecessor have received a loyal following of fans, many of whom loved the famous video game series.

If you're among them, then you can relive Five Nights at Freddy's 2 at home, as we follow Abby Schmidt a year after the first movie as she is manipulated by the Marionette, an animatronic from the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, who is plotting revenge against adults. There's plenty of familiar faces here including two Scream icons Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich.

The Yeti

When: August 7
Where: Shudder (US)

Big monster movie fan? Don't miss The Yeti when it arrives on Shudder, as it looks like a promising directorial debut for filmmakers Gene Gallerano and William Pisciotta which should tick all the right boxes for those needing a creature feature.

Set in Alaska, The Yeti centers around two people who go off in search for their respective missing fathers who have disappeared without a trace. This journey to locate them is dangerous enough with the weather conditions, never mind a huge yeti prowling the area. Sounds like a nailbiting watch.

The Strangers: Chapter 2

When: August 7
Where: HBO Max (US); Prime Video (UK); Binge (AU)

The recent reboot of The Strangers has proven divisive, with some fans thinking it's not as good as the original 2008 movie. But if you can't get enough of these masked villains, you might be interested in watching The Strangers: Chapter 2.

Set in the fictional small of Venus, Oregon, Maya (Madeleine Petsch) survives being stabbed by the strangers, but discovers that they are still hunting and trying to kill her. The locals are acting strange too, so what's up with this small town?

Buffet Infinity

When: August 21
Where: Shudder (US)

Finally, Buffet Infinity might be the most unique horror movie I've seen in a while. It's told entirely through mock television commercials, as we watch two restaurants who are fighting each other for dominance, which ends up spawning cults, sinkholes, and other apocalyptic consequences.

Buffet Infinity is intended to be a satirical look at consumerism, and it certainly caught my interest. If you're in the mood for something different, I highly recommend giving it a go.

Hard to believe, but Beats by Dr. Dre has officially been part of Apple for 12 years now — and the brand itself turns 20 this year. Suffice it to say, it's a brand that has continued to evolve and drastically improve its quality over the years, all while maintaining its cultural relevance.

That second part is the surprising one. When Apple bought Beats in 2014 for around $3 billion, the conventional wisdom was that it had paid a lot of money for a cultural brand, and that the hardware would eventually be folded into Cupertino and quietly retired. Beats Music did get absorbed, becoming Apple Music. Most people assumed the headphones would follow.

Instead, the opposite happened.

We've all been out and about and spotted the iconic "b" logo on headphones and earbuds, but we've also seen it on athletes, musicians and celebrities alike — and never more so than this summer. An unannounced pair of Beats over-ear headphones has quietly spent months appearing on some of the world's most photographed athletes, first on Lamine Yamal, then across the FIFA Club World Cup on Antonee Robinson, Lee Kang-in, Jamal Musiala, Ritsu Doan, Kobbie Mainoo, Antoine Semenyo, and Nico Paz, before surfacing at Wimbledon on Aryna Sabalenka and, most recently, on LeBron James.

By the time Sabalenka stepped onto the grounds at Wimbledon wearing a pair, an FCC filing had already confirmed the existence of a real product with a real model number. What it didn't confirm was anything else — no name, no price, no release date. Months of conversation, generated by a company that, as of this publishing, still hasn't announced the headphones at all.

So with Beats turning 20 and 12 years inside Apple, I spent two days inside the brand's Culver City campus — the first and only journalist granted access to the offices and the engineering labs — to understand how it keeps creating these moments.

I expected to see more of the surface of Beats: the campaigns, the partnerships, the customs. I found something considerably deeper. Beats has quietly become a brand that kept its cultural identity while evolving into one of Apple's most sophisticated hardware organizations.

Apple didn't replace Beats

The location tells part of the story. What began as Beats' independent headquarters is today part of Apple's Southern California campus, with the original building still home to much of the audio brand’s team. Just steps away are other Apple organizations, including the relatively new Apple Music building, creating a campus where music, design, engineering, and culture intersect. It's a fitting setting in the Hayden Tract, a neighborhood whose history spans Hollywood production, aerospace, and some of Southern California's most ambitious creative architecture.

And Beats clearly has a bench of in-house resources for making a product. Design, engineering, tuning, and quality all sit within a short distance of one another, across two buildings — the main offices and a separate engineering facility built specifically for the brand.

Past security, though, it feels like a modern office. A massive video wall cycles through Beats campaigns featuring athletes, musicians, and creators. Product photography fills the hallways. Open workspaces stretch across the building. It feels creative, colorful, and unmistakably Beats.

More striking than the office itself were the people inside it. Many of the employees I met had been with Beats long before Apple acquired the company, and more than a decade later they're still designing products, building custom headphones, and shaping the future of the brand. The teams are surprisingly small, and there's a passion for Beats that still feels closer to a startup than to one of the world's largest companies.

“Twenty years is a long time for any brand to stay relevant, but what makes Beats unique is that the culture never left it — it grew with it,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple VP of Beats, Music and Sports. “The people, the partnerships, the music, the sport — that's not a marketing strategy, that's who this brand has always been. Our job has been to make sure that never changes.”

That continuity is something Matthew Costello, VP of Hardware Engineering at Apple, has watched from the inside. "We were a young company when we got acquired," he said.

"We were very, very small back then." A lot of the core engineering and operations team who were in the building on August 1, 2014 — the day the deal formally closed — are still in it. "What we've managed to do is sort of combine the teams that existed from Beats and sprinkled in some Apple expertise as well on top of that."

My first stop wasn't engineering, though — it was the customs team.

Spread across the desks were Studio Pro and Solo headphones unlike anything consumers can buy. Some existed as a single pair, made specifically for an athlete, musician, or celebrity. Others were produced in runs of only a few hundred. One pair featured a rough, cement-like texture across the ear cups. Another experimented with entirely different materials for the iconic Beats "b." Every design felt like an opportunity to try something new.

It's a remarkably small team, made up of designers and craftspeople whose job is to experiment — people who hold the relationships with talent, work out what matters to them, and hand that to designers who can play with colors and finishes until there's something worth building.

Chris Thorne, Beats' CMO and head of product, says it runs in both directions. "Sometimes we'll surprise them and say, 'Hey, look what we made for you,' and hopefully blow their mind," he told me. "And sometimes they're in the process, and they come to us and say, 'Hey, I have this idea, this thing's really special to me, is there any way I can make a headphone for that?’"

Upstairs, in a lab of sorts, is a wall holding what I'd estimate is only 10 to 20% of every custom Beats has ever made. There was a pair for Lionel Messi with Inter Miami on one ear cup and Argentina on the other. Another celebrated LeBron James and his son. Others had been built for Kim Kardashian's holiday party.

For Schusser, the wall is proof of something deliberate. "Beats sits at the center of culture, sport, fashion and entertainment, but none of that exists without music as the foundation," he said. "That's the thread that runs through all of it."

Then I spotted something familiar: at a previous FIFA tournament, players wearing Beats had to tape over the logo, since FIFA counts another headphone brand among its partners. Rather than treat that as a problem, Beats leaned all the way into it — and there on the wall were customs with Xs printed over the Beats logo, the restriction turned into the artwork.

That's the pattern, and once you see it, you can't stop seeing it. Beats teased the Powerbeats Pro 2 by putting them on Shohei Ohtani. It's doing the same thing right now with the over-ears nobody can buy. Long before consumers ever see a new Beats product, the company has often been putting it into the hands of athletes, musicians and creators, creating conversation months before a launch event is ever scheduled.

It works because of what the brand has come to mean to those people. "Beats transformed headphones from a purely functional accessory into something much bigger," Schusser said. "They became a global status symbol and a cultural icon. You see them embraced by athletes, musicians, and celebrities, and they've become woven into the fabric of hip-hop, sports, and streetwear as an expression of style and identity."

But the customs room is doing something else, too, and it's the part that surprised me most. Many of the colors, finishes, and materials first explored here eventually find their way into products consumers can actually buy. Thorne describes the team as an incubator — an experimentation platform, in his words, that he thinks is genuinely differentiated in the category.

The one-offs are "amazing in process, experimental, with colors and materials, finishes, and all kinds of different ways of looking at a headphone," he said, "that, over time, lead to consumer products that we launch." A texture that starts as a one-off for a single athlete can end up as a retail colorway years later. The room isn't simply preserving Beats' history — it's a research lab, or an experimental playroom, for what the brand sells next.

Walking out of Customs, it would be easy to think of Beats as primarily a marketing operation, but next up I was treated to an inside look at what goes on under the hood.

The other half of the story

The engineering building is a separate space, and it's where Beats cements its status as a hardware company.

Schusser put it plainly. "When I talk to people about Beats, they're sometimes surprised to learn how much of what we do is fundamentally an engineering story," he said. "The investment we've made in the hardware — the testing, the tuning, the science behind the fit and the sound — that's not something you see from the outside. But it's the foundation everything else is built on."

There are labs here dedicated to the study of human ears — the same discipline Apple has talked about for AirPods — and the data feeds designs for in-ears like the Solo Buds and Powerbeats Pro 2 as well as over-ears. There's a quality lab lined with machines that test final units and, notably, customer returns. If something's going wrong out in the world, they want to find out why here with a slew of dedicated machines.

And then there are the anechoic chambers. Beats has five of them. Two are full-size, big enough to walk into. Once the door shuts and you're standing on the suspended floor, it's quiet enough that you can hear your own heartbeat. They're used for everything from audio quality and active noise cancellation to voice pickup, and one of them houses a mannequin rigged with components that headphones get placed on. There are smaller chambers too, better suited to testing a speaker like the Pill.

Down the hall is the listening room and the tuning studio, where every Beats product gets its final voicing.

Costello leads engineering and operations across every Beats product — the earbuds, the over-ears, the cables, the cases, and the Pill. He's been doing it long enough to have watched the brand go from an independent company to an Apple one, and when I asked what had changed and what hadn't, he started with the thing that hasn't.

"We've tried to stay true to the roots of the brand," he told me. "As we've evolved the portfolio, one of the things we really focused on was making the products something that both we as Beats and Apple would also be proud of."

The Beats sound, 20 years in

If you've ever dismissed Beats as bass-first, Costello won't entirely argue with you about the early years.

"In the beginning it was super boomy," he said, "and it's sort of evolved from there." The sound signature has moved steadily toward balance since then, though he's clear that it's a negotiation rather than a correction. "It's always balance," he said. "We hear from our customers what they appreciate."

What's changed most, he told me, is the speed of that loop. "That's actually one thing that's changed a lot over the last 15 years, which is the real-time responsiveness of customers and the feedback we've gotten. We're able to adapt quickly."

He described the development process as running in two directions at once. "We have both a forward-looking process, which is like tech forward from Apple, where we kind of know what technologies are coming," he said. "But then also we take the feedback from the customers. It's kind of a forward-looking, tech-forward process and also like a reverse-engineering process, to make sure we're improving things as well."

'Everyone said it won't work'

Ask Costello what he's proudest of, and he doesn't name a flagship, but rather says the wingtip on the Powerbeats Fit — the flexible tip that holds the earbud in place.

"When we started ideating that, everyone kind of said it won't work," he told me. The worry was that it sat awkwardly between an earbud and an ear hook: not stable enough, not flexible enough. He loves it anyway. "It's just super seamless and easy, and it's great for fitness, it's great for all-day wear."

To land on that final wingtip, the team worked through hundreds of variants — and that pattern came up more than once. Shrinking the Powerbeats case while keeping the buds securely retained inside it was, in his words, "a science project."

Then there's the Beats Studio Buds, which featured a custom chip — a first for the brand. The decision started with an idea that initially confused people internally when the team first pitched it.

"We took this bet that we would be sort of the dual ecosystem play," Costello said. "When we first started socializing that concept, people were like, 'Well, what does that mean?' And we said, 'Google and Apple together.'"

It worked, and it did something no custom colorway can. It "expanded our addressable market," as he put it — and it's the clearest answer I heard all week to why Apple keeps Beats around at all. Costello describes the whole portfolio as deliberately built to complement AirPods, a project dating back to 2016, and calls it one of the secrets of the last decade.

Beats sells to Android users. Beats sells at price points Apple doesn't. Beats makes sporty, wing-tipped, brightly colored products. Apple's own brand can't do any of that without becoming something else.

The Studio Buds line produced one more surprise, and it came out of the workshop rather than the roadmap. I spoke with Costello and Thorne together to ask how it happened.

"It actually kind of happened by accident," Costello said. As part of developing any product from the ground up, the team builds a transparent version so they can see what's going on inside. "Both at Apple and Beats, we take both the external form as well as the internals very seriously. So we do a transparent, and we showed it to this guy here, and he had some thoughts about it."

The guy in question was Thorne, standing next to him.

"We kind of take it upon ourselves to ask for the impossible of these guys, and they figure it out," Thorne said. The transparent Studio Buds + he'd been shown "was never made for production or anything," but marketing wanted it immediately and asked whether they could have it as a real product. "It was a very last-minute, crazy ask, but somehow you guys figured it out."

"We had to dial it in," Costello said. "We had to make sure everything was in the right place, and everything looked like it was supposed to look, to make it production, customer-ready. But we turned that in a very, very short period of time. It was really fun."

It shipped and was well received, but more interestingly, it changed what came after it.

"Consumers loved it so much because it was really special and unique," Thorne said. "We had great other colors, but they really loved the transparent for Studio Buds +. When we set out to build Solo Buds, we started from a place of knowing we wanted that."

The earbuds with a case that does nothing

And that brings us to Solo Buds, priced at $79.99 / £79.99 / AU$129.95, and arguably the best example of how the Beats team thinks. The carrying case has no battery, no charging electronics, and no pairing button — which certainly raised eyebrows, both internally and externally. Solo Buds are ultimately the smallest case that Beats has ever shipped, and that Apple has ever made.

"Everyone was like, 'Why would you do that?'" Costello said. "And it worked. The product is great, and the bud life is really all you need for all-day wear."

What I find genuinely clever is that the decision forces every decision after it.

If the case can't recharge the buds, the buds have to last a full day alone — hence a custom cell rated at 18 hours, better single-charge life than most flagship earbuds. And if the case has no electronics, it can't tell the buds anything, including that it's been opened.

So the solution is a physical switch hidden inside the case, which signals the earbuds to wake, pair, and run their checks the moment you lift the lid. Everything that does the actual work lives on the left and right buds themselves.

What you experience is completely ordinary: open the case near your phone, iPhone or Android, and the pairing card appears. It's also extraordinary because it all happens without any electronics in the case.

What Apple actually gave them

Costello is direct about what the acquisition traded.

Beats kept its identity "from a form factor perspective," he said, while gaining Apple's infrastructure underneath it. Reliability, quality, environmental and wireless performance are now tested exactly as Apple's own products are. "I'm amazed at how far you can walk across a room and still get good, solid Bluetooth performance with our latest today," he told me.

"We've learned so much from the teams up in Cupertino, and leveraged the core technologies, the processes, the discipline," he said.

"We've been able to keep our identity and do things unique for Beats, but at the same time leverage the incredible capabilities of the Apple system," he said. "That's been the unlock over the last — now it's almost 12 years."

It didn't happen immediately. "It took some time to sort of find our rhythm," Costello admitted, before adding that the last several years have been the fun ones.

He's also clear about what keeps the team there. "The beauty of being inside of Apple is that it’s a technology marvel," he said. "All the time we are finding new things that we're either exploring and prototyping, or we're able to productize and bring into products."

And what keeps the engineers interested is being handed genuinely hard problems. "Engineers like to solve tough problems," Costello said. "They don't want to do the same thing day after year after year. So we try to find those things that are really landmarks or milestones from an achievement perspective, and then we work backwards from that."

‘Widening the aperture’

The part that seems to energize him most is how far the brand's remit has stretched.

"The advantage we have at Beats is that we can go really wide with different types of explorations," he said. "It makes it a lot of fun to think through different new product categories, new types of products, new products within the category itself. We've got all kinds of crazy ideas."

He put it more simply a moment later: "We've kind of widened the aperture of where the brand can go."

Thorne is more blunt about the appeal of it. "I love to be unexpected, to give something to people, to consumers, that they didn't see coming," he said, pointing to the move into iPhone cases — "I don't think anybody saw that coming, and I love that."

The logic, he said, starts with what people tell them. "Whenever we can make a great product that we think is differentiated from something that's in the market, we talk to consumers about it, we look at insights and data, we hear from them in social — what products are they interested in, what do they feel is missing out there. And when we see that opportunity, we like to experiment there."

He's also clear that none of it has to be audio at all. The brand can move into other areas, he told me, as long as it goes "always through the lens of Beats style, design, and color.”

Beats’ USB-C and Lightning cables trickle down the durability and speed of Apple's own, in fun colors and more sizes. Maybe most importantly, they brought down the price. These are fairly premium cables, with strong woven outers and rigorous testing against snapping, at reasonable money.

What comes next

Now, as this feature publishes, Beats has not said a single word formally about the forthcoming over-ear headphones that have been spotted on athletes and celebrities. When I pressed, Schusser coyly said, "I can't say too much, but what I will say is — we have the ability to introduce our products in ways that are creative and unexpected, and we're very excited about what's coming."

That's not giving much away, but I have my own thoughts on these very customizable-looking premium cans. Given that the Studio Pro is already on the market, Beats is likely setting its sights on Apple's own AirPods Max, Bose's QuietComfort line, and Sony's WH-1000XM6, among several others. It's a crowded market, but judging by the many styles we've seen — and fingers crossed that a bit of the customs team's work is trickling down to consumers — Beats might be poised to deliver its signature sound in an athlete-approved, hopefully more durable over-ear that can be mixed and matched.

I'd also hope these push Beats' audio quality further, doubling down on active noise cancellation and transparency, and potentially taking a page from competitors by powering them with dual chips inside. Time will tell, but considering the teases have already started, I'd suspect we see them before the end of 2026.

And you can bet they'll support both iPhone and Android. Even though Apple owns and operates Beats, it's clear the company wants the brand to continue growing — whether that means catering to its own users who want fun colors, bold sound and unique looks, or reaching people who want something platform-agnostic.

So now, 20 years on since inception and over a decade within Apple, I think it's clear the Cupertino-based tech giant was right about the acquisition. Apple is letting Beats be a cultural brand as much as an audio company, one that still inspires copycats, but that also knows that while it could rest on its laurels, it's being pushed to go further — whether that's entirely new categories like cases and cables, bringing down the price of its signature sound, re-entering spaces it once exited, or starting something fresh.

Time will tell, but I think Beats will let the beat go on, and on.

ChatGPT Voice changes using the AI chatbot into something more akin to the fictional digital aides familiar from books and movies. And it gets even better once you know how to steer it.

It's tempting to treat ChatGPT Voice like a smart speaker, but it's not really the same thing. You can do much more than asking one question, waiting for the answer, and then stopping. You can shape the conversation just as much as the information. Here are five easy ways to get more out of ChatGPT Voice, along with the prompts and habits that help the conversation feel smoother and smarter.

1. Tell it how to listen before you start talking

As useful as vocal conversations with ChatGPT are, one reason some people avoid it is because of how it sometimes seems to jump the gun in responding while you're forming your own thoughts. Setting expectations at the start of the conversation works well to counter that, however.

It's worth spending a few seconds describing how you want the conversation to work before getting into the meat of it. You might say that you are practicing for an interview and want to finish each answer before receiving feedback, or that you will say a code word like "full stop" when it's ChatGPT's turn.

Even more subtle things are adjustable. You can ask it to slow down, speed up, use shorter sentences, or adopt a calmer speaking style. Voice settings also allow you to change voices and, depending on your account subscription level, adjust intelligence levels for different conversations.

Giving ChatGPT those ground rules helps it adapt its behavior instead of trying to guess when you have stopped speaking. Talking at your own pace makes the whole interaction feel much more relaxed and human.

2. Give it a role before you ask a question

Relatedly, it's helpful to set up a persona or point of view for ChatGPT to take on when using ChatGPT Voice. It sets up broad assumptions about what you're hoping to get out of the conversation without requiring any drawn-out discussion. For instance, if you want to discuss travel advice, ask ChatGPT to set itself as a local tour guide. Or give it a couple of sentences describing who you think (or fear) might be conducting an interview with you when you practice.

Even just asking it to become a patient French tutor who waits for you to finish each sentence before correcting your pronunciation could smooth the path toward fluency.

The role provides context before the actual question arrives. That means the answers naturally become more focused, and the follow-up questions tend to make more sense because ChatGPT has a clear perspective to work from.

3. Take your hands off the keyboard

One of the most impressive ChatGPT Voice capabilities is how you can run tasks on your computer by voice without constantly reaching for your mouse or keyboard thanks to the updated ChatGPT desktop app for Mac and Windows. The app offers not only the usual, conversation-centered Chat format, but the coding-focused Codex, and the newer ChatGPT Work setup, which is designed for more complex, multi-step projects that involve gathering and organizing information.

Crucially, Work can interact with files stored on your device, meaning ChatGPT Voice can actively help you get things done rather than just discuss them.

You do need a subscription to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, or Enterprise to access the Work feature. Then, when you open the ChatGPT app, you can choose Work instead of Chat or Codex. Create a new task, press the Voice button or use your voice shortcut, and grant microphone access when prompted. Explain what you want to achieve and point it to the relevant folders for where to look and where the final result should be saved. ChatGPT will ask for permission to view files, capture your screen, or use accessibility tools, and get permission from you before any important actions are carried out.

The more precise your instructions, the better the results. Rather than asking ChatGPT to "help me plan my trip," try saying, "Open my Italy Trip folder. Read the hotel confirmations, train tickets and attraction bookings, then create a day-by-day itinerary in a new document. Highlight any scheduling conflicts and save the finished itinerary in the same folder." You can use the same technique for comparing insurance documents, summarizing a semester's worth of lecture notes, or turning a folder of recipes into a categorized cookbook complete with an ingredients index.

4. Ask it to think out loud with you

Voice works especially well when you stop treating it as a question-and-answer machine. It's much more useful as an engaged sounding board listening while you think through a decision. Talking through the options often reveals ideas that never appear in a typed prompt.

To get ChatGPT Voice on that track, you can request that it compare possibilities instead of recommending one immediately when brainstorming. Tell it to discuss the strengths of each option before reaching a conclusion. The AI will point out pros and cons in as much detail as you want, and endlessly refine the options for as long as you want.

And speaking naturally means it is also much easier to interrupt with new information or change direction halfway through the discussion. Voice conversations are particularly good at handling those small detours that happen in real life.

5. Ask for a recap

Voice conversations can wander in unexpected directions, particularly when you are brainstorming or planning something complicated. Before ending the conversation, it's useful to review what was discussed, especially for longer chats. You can ask ChatGPT to summarize the discussion and highlight the most important conclusions from your talk to both remind yourself and cement matters with the AI.

If you're planning a trip or preparing for a presentation, for instance, a short spoken recap reinforces the key points, and if something sounds wrong, you can correct it immediately instead of discovering the mistake later.

Voice is already one of ChatGPT's more enticing features for when the speed and mobility of talking aloud is a higher priority than being able to see the responses written down. With a little forethought, ChatGPT Voice becomes a genuinely helpful conversational partner for a lot longer than it takes to dial a phone.

When you download an app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, you assume the environment is heavily moderated and entirely safe. Unfortunately, we recently completed an audit of mobile VPNs that reveals significant privacy and security risks.

Our evaluation identified apps on both app stores that put visitors at risk of unencrypted traffic, hidden redirects, and active scareware.

The best VPNs will invest heavily in bug bounties and secure, authenticated web infrastructure. But there are a significant number of mobile VPN apps that leave you exposed to phishing and malware before you even install the app.

Insecure protocols and obscured links

The biggest concern we found surrounds encryption enforcement. We found that 339 Android links (5.3%) and 188 iOS links (6.8%) use plain, unencrypted HTTP instead of secure HTTPS. This includes massively popular apps like Oryx VPN (which boasts over 1 million downloads) and Stealth Shield VPN.

So what?

Clicking a plain HTTP link allows network eavesdroppers or man-in-the-middle (MitM) attackers to intercept, manipulate, or inject malicious content into the traffic between you and the developer's site.

But the security holes don't stop at missing encryption. The audit uncovered several other severely obscured URL formats being approved, such as:

• URL Shorteners: Multiple store listings rely on shorteners like shorturl.at and the Yandex-based clck.ru. This deliberately conceals the final destination domain, making it impossible for users or automated URL security scanners to evaluate link safety prior to clicking.
• Raw IP Addresses: Some listings use raw numerical IP addresses instead of domain names. This bypasses domain-based web filtering, SSL certificate validation, and public DNS reputation systems, effectively making connection security impossible to verify.
• Direct PDF Links: We found privacy policies pointing directly to downloadable PDF files (13 on iOS, 1 on Android). PDF documents can execute embedded JavaScript, trigger automated local file downloads, or easily exploit PDF reader vulnerabilities on your device.

Active threats: scareware and malicious redirects

The most alarming discovery is that clicking a link on an official Apple or Google store page can lead to active cyber threats.

When developers abandon their apps, their official web domains often expire. It seems that actors are actively purchasing these expired domains specifically to exploit the existing app store traffic. In fact, our audit verified multiple active store listings containing domains that now host fake antivirus popups and ad redirects.

Users who trust these official app store links are tricked into viewing fake security warnings. These scareware popups are explicitly designed to coerce panicked users into downloading genuine malware to "fix" a fabricated virus.

In other instances, store links point to totally irrelevant and unvetted environments. Official links were found pointing to deleted Twitter handles, empty Facebook and Instagram pages, payment portals like Cashpay Iraq, and even Chinese opera sites.

Directing users to external messaging platforms like Telegram or abandoned social accounts bypasses web security standards entirely, exposing users to unmoderated third-party chat environments and severe impersonation risks.

How to protect yourself

Its important that, regardless of inbuilt measures, consumers take matters into their own hands to some extent to navigate these listings safely. Always inspect link targets closely before blindly tapping on a developer website.

You should verify that the destination uses a secure HTTPS connection, and remain on high alert for obscured formats like raw numerical IP addresses or randomized link shorteners that conceal the true domain.

Furthermore, you should actively decline unexpected PDF downloads. Avoid opening direct PDF links from store pages, as these files may contain embedded JavaScript or exploit reader vulnerabilities. If tapping a privacy policy suddenly prompts an automatic file execution or download, block it immediately.

Finally, if an official app store link leads to a virus warning or requests system scanning permissions, recognize that it is a fabricated scareware scam designed to coerce you into downloading malware. Do not click anything on the page; close your browser tabs immediately to protect your device.

The bottom line

Gaps in outbound link verification across the App Store and Google Play Store mean active security threats and unencrypted traffic can still slip onto mobile VPN product pages.

When we approached Apple and Google on our findings, Apple declined to comment on the record. Instead, we were pointed towards its safety guidelines and app review processes. A Google Spokesperson did comment, saying, "We are looking into this. When made aware of an app that violates our policies, we will review the apps in question and take appropriate action."

We also reached out to both Oryx VPN and Stealth Shield VPN, neither of which has returned to us with a response at the time of publication.

Ultimately, the lesson is that you must apply the same strict web security precautions inside official app stores as you would when navigating the open web.

When CD Projekt Red finally announced The Witcher 4 was in development and dropped the first cinematic trailer at The Game Awards 2024, showcasing Ciri in all her butt-kicking glory, I jumped out of bed at midnight and did a backflip. Like most fans, I've been waiting for a new Witcher game for over a decade, and the news that the sequel will star Ciri on her own adventure easily made the game shoot up my most anticipated role-playing games (RPGs) list.

While the game is still in active development and there's no release date at this time, CDPR showcased a tech demo last year, offering an early glimpse into the Unreal Engine 5.6 features that will be used in The Witcher 4. It was confirmed that the demo wasn't actual gameplay, but rather an example of the cutting-edge technology, Unreal Animation Framework and Nanite Foliage rendering, that will power the game. Still, it's clear that CDPR has a huge ambition for the sequel.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a massive game, and as a certified fantasy RPG lover, I've spent hundreds of hours across multiple playthroughs exploring it as deeply as possible; so we should expect something similar for The Witcher 4, though I expect the graphical fidelity and attention to detail to be more impressive.

Game director Sebastian Kalemba and executive producer Gosia Mitręga have previously confirmed that the upcoming RPG will feature new regions never before seen in a Witcher game, but fans should expect a map size "more or less" the same as The Witcher 3's.

"The map is definitely more or less when it comes to size, the amount of quests, more or less the same," Kalemba said at the time. "Again, the game is going to be big. But also, the ambition of the entire team is huge. So first and foremost, we want to deliver a super compelling experience.

"Again, quality over quantity. But definitely, what we can promise: Yes, this game is going to be pretty big. It's going to be big compared to everything we've prepared so far..."

I won't lie and say I'm not looking forward to getting lost in the world of The Witcher 4; sprawling landscapes, intricately built cities, hidden dungeons, all wrapped in a sense of realism and reactivity that the Polish studio is best known for? I'll be there day one. That being said, as impressive as a highly detailed fantasy open world can be, it's hard not to worry about the game's launch.

We've seen the same song and dance before. Ambitious open-world RPGs launching in a sorry state, hindered by performance issues, bugs, and crashes, and CDPR's games are no exception.

The Witcher 3, while an exceptional experience today, launched with plenty of instability bugs, and while it took a while for the game to overcome them, it's the studio's futuristic action-RPG Cyberpunk 2077, in particular, that is remembered in history for having one of the worst game launches of all time.

If you didn't play the game when it released in 2020, let me briefly set the stage. It's 2013, and CDPR just released the first Cyberpunk 2077 cinematic teaser trailer, sparking overwhelming excitement among the studio's fanbase. But it wasn't until five years later that the official trailer was released, promising an expansive and interactive Night City, complex NPC routines and crowds, and incredible levels of character and gameplay customization. It was all the internet seemed to talk about.

It was the most anticipated game ever at the time, and excitement levels hit an all-time high when, in 2019, it was revealed that actor Keanu Reeves would star in the game, as well. An April 2020 release date was set, but the game was delayed twice, until Cyberpunk 2077 finally launched in November 2020. And... it was disastrous.

There were many factors that led Cyberpunk's terrible launch, many of which were down to crunch and rushed time management schedules, marketing promises that set expectations too high, and pressure from executives to release the game on last-gen consoles, which the studio was forced to work on until the very last moment.

"After three delays, we as the Management Board were too focused on releasing the game," said former CDPR president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński at the time, "We underestimated the scale and complexity of the issues, we ignored the signals about the need for additional time to refine the game on the base last-gen consoles. It was the wrong approach and against our business philosophy. On top of that, during the campaign, we showed the game mostly on PCs."

You couldn't ignore the performance issues that persisted, making the game largely unplayable on console; they were so bad on PS4 and PS5 that Sony issued full refunds and temporarily removed the game from the PlayStation Store, and it didn't return until a year later.

Miraculously, Cyberpunk 2077 experienced a renaissance, and over the years, CDPR delivered on its promise to fix the game and release a steady stream of significant patches that smoothed out the critical performance issues plaguing it across all platforms. Those updates even included new content, improved gameplay features, and the critically acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion. Now, despite all its launch woes, it's regarded as one of the best RPGs you can play today.

While CDPR managed to save Cyberpunk in the end, I don't want The Witcher 4 to have to suffer the same fate at launch. Even though the studio has switched from its in-house REDengine to Unreal Engine 5 for this project, which boasts specialized tools that offer better stability, Unreal Engine isn't without its faults; I think it's in its best interest to address PC and console optimization first over an impressive and massive open world that could cause problems down the road.

The Blood of Dawnwalker director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who also directed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, recently spoke to TechRadar Gaming about Rebel Wolves' upcoming dark-fantasy RPG, explaining that the game wouldn't exist if it weren't for the experience of former The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 developers.

Since the game has so many "complex choices and consequences, with so many unique mechanics," he explained that the team built on what it learned at CDPR. He also confirmed that the team prioritised optimization at the start of development to avoid the same launch issues as The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077.

"We learned how to approach the optimization of the game," he said. "When we started work on The Blood of the Dawnwalker, we already had people working on the optimization of our game all the time, right from the beginning.

"We didn’t want to be in a situation where we deliver a great game, but there are problems when we release it on consoles or some performance problems."

This is exactly what CDPR needs to do to avoid a messy Witcher 4 launch. Of course, the talented developers should take all the time they need to build the worthy Witcher 3 successor they dream of, but the magic of that experience will be lost if the game releases in rough shape. Focusing on optimization and ensuring that the game runs on current-gen and PC first and foremost, with no major performance issues, should be the priority.

CDPR recently confirmed that The Witcher 4 is in full production and recent comments from CDPR technical writers Jarosław Ruciński and Adrian Fulneczek (via GamesRadar) revealed that the studio is focused on documenting the technical process of its new games, something it wasn't able to do with older projects and which led to major development problems for games like Cyberpunk 2077.

"The future looks really promising for us," Fulneczek said of The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2. "We learned our lesson. We've got some new requirements, especially a new definition of 'done'. So as you know, any project, any game goes through development stages, and right now, every stage ends with a gate. Part of the requirements to pass that gate is the documentation, which wasn't the case before."

Ruciński added, "Unlike in the past, now, today our knowledge isn't locked between specific teams' permissions. It's a shared asset. If a team working on, let's say, The Witcher figures out a solution for a specific issue, the Cyberpunk team can see it, benefit from it, take it into their own code, modify it probably a little bit."

He explained that "problems aren't being solved multiple times by different teams, and also that if a breakthrough happens on one of the projects, the whole company benefits."

While not necessarily a direct comment on performance optimization, I'm cautiously optimistic that this means CDPR has taken lessons learned from Cyberpunk's launch to deliver a Witcher 4 launch experience worth remembering, positively this time.

When Paul Moore heard the European Commission President saying that the EU age verification app will “give children a safer start online,” he was unconvinced.

"Bypassing the latest EU age verification app (2026.07-1) with a Chrome extension," he later posted on X. And it wasn’t the first time.

With over 20 years of experience under his belt, Moore managed to bypass the app back in April, right after the Commission first launched it. Combined, his experiences have led him to a straightforward conclusion: "anonymous age verification doesn't work."

While the process he used to bypass the verification system doesn’t undermine people’s privacy, Moore believes the long-term impact of its ineffectiveness will.

"All it is an escalation path being drip-fed, bit by bit under the guise of child safety," Moore told TechRadar. It won’t just be about proving your age. "The next step will be proving who you are," he said.

The EU’s 'privacy-preserving' approach

Most of the current age verification methods, which require scanning national ID documents or biometrics, put people's sensitive data at risk. (Think, for example, of the data breach that affected Discord’s age verification provider and exposed 70,000 people's government IDs and personal data last year.)

For that reason, there's a growing sense of urgency to find a solution that helps people prove their age without collecting sensitive information. And the European Commission argues that it has found it.

Drawing on the framework of the COVID-19 certificate app, the Commission came up with a template for a privacy-first, open-source tool that EU member states can use to build their own national apps.

The process — which is part of the bigger European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI) project — leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) and verifiable credentials (VCs) to verify someone's age without sharing sensitive information.

In other words, your phone scans your ID and stores that data locally. Websites will then ask users to scan a QR code via the app to prove they are old enough to access certain content.

A European Commission spokesperson told TechRadar that online services won't receive any personal information about the users, saying: "The age proof simply confirms whether the user meets the age requirement."

Moore doesn’t dispute the privacy credentials of the process. Perhaps worse, he just doesn’t think it will work.

Why the EU age verification doesn't work

While the EU age verification blueprint sounds like a welcome improvement compared to the current approach, the advantages don't hold up.

That's because Moore says age checks have to be tied to a person’s identity to be trustworthy. "The second you strip the identity away from how old somebody is, a person can't answer that question," he said.

Since the April launch, the tool's security credentials have even been improved, but Moore says the issue isn’t a bug but the entire process, criticising the latest efforts as mere "security theater."

How Moore bypassed the app

Bypassing the app wasn't difficult. In fact, Moore says he built two Chrome extensions on Claude in minutes.

The first extension he built replicated the Android app, but with the ID checks removed. This meant he could skip the need for a user to scan a document entirely.

"It detects the QR code automatically (when presented by a website) and passes verification," Moore explains, adding that the process is entirely automated with no need to interact with the Chrome extension once installed."

This week, Moore went further and built a Chrome extension that can capture the QR code from a website and automatically forward it to a remote, automated phone to get a genuine signature in seconds.

Known as an 'automated relay bypass,' these attacks mean nothing in the process is faked, making prevention almost impossible.

"Even after they enable all other protection mechanisms, both will continue to work," Moore said.

The EU’s response

When asked whether any steps were taken to prevent circumvention, a European Commission spokesperson said: "We of course rely also on parents and caretakers to check what children are doing online," adding that the app's goal is "avoiding the unintended exposure of kids to inappropriate content."

Yet, according to Moore, lawmakers' focus is misdirected. He said: "What [lawmakers] are missing is that the threat actor isn't a third party; the threat actor is the user.

"They don't want age verification in the first place, so they are going to look for ways to bypass the system. And if the system can be bypassed by design, they will do it."

Deciding not to impose a new law or technology simply because it could be bypassed is unlikely to convince lawmakers. But the problem may extend beyond an ineffective system.

In fact, Moore fears that the app's inevitable ineffectiveness could push lawmakers to turn to more invasive checks and an erosion of people's privacy.

Next step? Our identity

When Moore says the concept is broken, he is calling out what he sees as a fundamental flaw in the EU age verification framework's design: client-side trust.

The app is more privacy-preserving than passports and face scans because the data won’t leave the user’s device. But this may be exactly why its implementation is bound to fail. If nothing leaves the device, Moore explains, there is no way to trust or verify what has been obtained.

This creates a problematic catch-22 for European lawmakers. When this ‘anonymous’ app fails to keep kids off restricted sites, Moore contends that Brussels is unlikely to simply give up on its flagship safety initiative and drop privacy-preserving practices altogether.

"For them to push ahead with it under the guise of child safety is an escalation path to say we've tried this; the natural route is now you've got to prove your identity," Moore told TechRadar.

It’s clear that age verification is here to stay, despite continuous outcry coming from privacy advocates, technologists, and data scientists who warn it may do more harm than good.

For Moore, the danger is that what’s marketed as a privacy-first breakthrough today may ultimately be used to undermine privacy tomorrow.

Blu-ray turned 20 this year, and although streaming is now the way most people watch films, physical media is dead is far from dead. Collectors are still buying Blu-rays for their new restorations, special features or limited-edition packages — and younger audiences are discovering the value of owning their films rather than dealing with your favorites disappearing on your all the time.

So if people still want to watch movies on discs at home, is there a Blu-ray successor on the horizon to offer something new?

Every major home video format before it has eventually been replaced. VHS gave way to DVD, then DVD gave way to Blu-ray. As someone who appreciates the quality of Blu-ray films but isn't an expert in the technology behind them, I assumed there would be a straightforward plan for something to come supplant them. Maybe an 8K Blu-ray? Maybe another physical format I've never heard of because home cinema is an interest of mine rather than my specialism?

But after speaking to analysts, hardware manufacturers and the organization behind Blu-ray itself, I discovered that most of them don't think another disc is coming. In fact, there’s no obvious "next format" about to be unveiled, and I wanted to find out why.

Why Blu-ray still has loyal fans

To understand why the future of Blu-ray is such an interesting topic, it's worth first getting to grips with why people still buy it. And the top reason came up in every conversation I had: ownership.

"Ownership matters more now than it did in 2005. When you buy a disc, you own that film. It’s yours, permanently, in its best possible form, sitting on your shelf whenever you want it,” says Victor Matsuda, Chairman of the Blu-ray Disc Association, the group behind the development of Blu-ray.

He tells me that people are switching on to the fact that most of what we “buy” digitally today is really a license that can change or disappear. His comments come shortly after Sony removed over 500 purchased movies from people's accounts without compensation, and right at the same time as Disney+ was forced to remove 4K and HDR support in many countries.

“We frequently hear complaints about people losing access to content they thought they’d purchased, and there have even been lawsuits brought on exactly this issue,” Matsuda says. “A disc doesn’t have that problem. Nobody can reach into your home and take it back.”

I've spoken to many physical media collectors over the years, and ownership is almost always the first thing they mention. But the second reason is quality. Ultra HD Blu-ray is still widely considered to be the best technology for watching films at home.

"20 years ago, Blu-ray set the standard for what a movie should look and sound like in the home, and it’s a standard both consumers and the industry recognized,” Matsuda tells me. “Ultra HD Blu-ray remains unsurpassed as the best overall experience for consumers.”

He explains that this has been the case even as streaming services have rolled out 4K and HDR. “The respective Blu-ray formats became the benchmark they chased, and in my opinion they still haven’t caught it. Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray remain the reference,” Matsuda says. “A stream can approximate it, but the disc carries the full, uncompressed picture and sound with nothing thrown away to fit a data cap.”

Olivier Semenoux, Europe head of GTM and Product Management at TCL Electronics, explains that much of that comes down to bitrate. "Blu-ray can be coded up to 128Mbps because that's the disc's technical limit,” he explains. “Streaming is a different story, most popular platforms cap out natively around 25Mbps, with some going up to 40 or 80Mbps.”

Unfortunately, the latter is very rare — when it comes to the big streamers, 16 to 18Mbps is the maximum you can expect.

This means that Ultra HD Blu-rays carry significantly more data per frame than a typical stream, meaning less compression and what you see at home is more of the original picture and sound being preserved. It's one of the reasons discs continue to set the standard for anyone who really loves home theater.

Variations of the same argument came up repeatedly in conversations with manufacturers too. I spoke with Rob Jones, President of Magnetar, a manufacturer of high-end 4K UHD Blu-ray and universal disc players. “When consumers invest in physical media, they get ownership, content preservation, and quality control,” he says. “While streaming is incredibly convenient, it cannot match physical media when it comes to that combination.” Jones says that’s what continues to drive Magnetar’s investment and development in this space.

But that doesn't necessarily mean streaming and Blu-ray are in competition. One of the more surprising things I heard was that several companies see them as complementary rather than competing technologies.

"We see many customers choosing both formats," Kenichi Ikenoue, Head of Strategic Planning at Panasonic Consumer Europe, tells me. "They enjoy the convenience of streaming for everyday viewing while turning to physical media when they want the highest picture and sound quality or want to own their favorite films."

Why 8K isn’t the answer

If Blu-ray still has loyal fans, isn’t the next step an 8K successor? That's what I expected to find, as someone who isn't deep on movie production. Instead, almost every expert I spoke to questioned whether there was any need for a successor at all.

"Honestly, I don't think so, at least not right now," says Victor Matsuda. "From a BDA [Blu-ray Disc Association] perspective, we don't see anything from content creators or consumers to indicate a need for a new format. They’re both extremely satisfied.”

There are signs elsewhere that the industry isn't preparing for another optical disc format either. In 2025, Sony announced that it was ending the production of recordable Blu-ray discs, MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes, saying that there would be "no successor models". Now, while that decision applies to blank recording discs rather than pre-recorded movie discs, it seems to reflect a broader shift away from consumer physical media formats.

One obvious reason for a new format would be 8K support, which is a format that would theoretically offer four times the resolution of today's 4K discs. But that wasn't what the experts I spoke to had in mind.

"The resolution race is interesting, but I don't see 8K finding a place with consumers anytime soon," Matsuda says. "The content community, meaning the Hollywood studios, produces its content in 4K and has stated their intent to continue doing so. Additionally, a number of manufacturers have dropped 8K from their lineups."

Jones agreed that 8K isn't ready for the mainstream, but says the challenge goes beyond content. It's also about the wider home theater ecosystem. "8K is a distraction until it's mainstream and the ecosystem simply does not justify it," he says.

He points out that an 8K player wouldn't just require 8K discs, but would also depend on compatible TVs, projectors, AV receivers and processors. "In order to sit down and experience 8K content, a viewer's entire home entertainment chain needs to support 8K," he says. "A consumer would need to replace every single link in their entertainment chain with a component capable of supporting 8K, which is impractical at best."

And it seems as if lack of demand isn't the only reason experts are sceptical. Some argue we've reached the point where higher resolutions matter much less than other improvements we can make to picture quality. "HDR and wide colour gamut make a far bigger difference to perceived picture quality than resolution does," Semenoux tells me.

Which means the challenge facing an 8K Blu-ray isn't just about a lack of content or compatible hardware; it's that the improvement itself may not feel significant enough to justify an entirely new format.

That's exactly how Mark Vena, CEO and Principal Analyst at SmartTech Research, sees it. "Frankly, an 8K Blu-ray would be a technical feat in search of a commercial problem to solve,” he says. “There's still little native 8K content, 8K TV adoption is modest and streaming platforms will almost certainly meet mainstream demand before another optical format ever reaches critical mass."

In other words, it’s not as if we’re all sitting around waiting for a new format to happen, it’s more that it doesn’t really have a reason to exist.

What creates a new format?

Vena’s point made me realize I'd been thinking about this the wrong way. Every major home video format solved an obvious problem. DVD improved on VHS by offering non-degrading video and the capacity for extra features. Blu-ray improved on DVD with the space for higher-quality video. And now we have Ultra HD Blu-ray, which improved on Blu-ray's quality further.

Crucially, each of those steps solved a real technical problem. But right now, there isn’t a real problem that a successor to Ultra HD Blu-ray could actually solve.

Matsuda explained this to me using a framework from his time as a product planner that he calls "needs" and "seeds". A "need" is a problem consumers or the industry want solving. A "seed" is a new technology that has the potential to create that demand in the future.

"I don't see a compelling driver for a new format at the moment," Matsuda says. "I think it's unlikely that a new format would arise out of consumer demand as there doesn't appear to be an expressed need. Similarly, Ultra HD Blu-ray continues to deliver content that takes full advantage of display technologies so I don't see a need arising from the industry side."

Matsuda says that could change. "From a seed standpoint, companies may have some technologies in development that could plant those seeds,” he explains. “But in my view, if a driving factor ever prompts a new physical format, it will most likely be the emergence of content the internet infrastructure simply can't deliver at scale without compromising quality. As long as streaming can handle what people want to watch, I don't see any real pressure for a new disc."

So a technological breakthrough on its own wouldn't be enough, a new format would also need the entire industry to then build around it.

Panasonic’s Ikenoue makes the same point from a more commercial perspective. "A successor format would also depend on significant investment from film studios and content providers. New hardware alone would not be enough. The content ecosystem would also need to support a new format. For the moment it is difficult to see the requirement for a successor."

A successor wouldn't just need a better disc, there’d have to be a need to even build that better disc in the first place. Only then would studios create the content, manufacturers would build the players, TV makers would support it and consumers would decide if it was worth upgrading. But right now none of the experts could identify a good enough reason.

What if the successor isn’t a disc at all?

That doesn't necessarily mean Blu-ray is the end of the story. Optical storage technology is still evolving. Companies are developing discs capable of storing far more data than today's Blu-rays, but the key thing is that they're aimed at archiving data on an enterprise scale rather than at home entertainment. Which means they aren’t about to become the next movie format that you’ll buy.

Instead, several people I spoke with pointed towards a future where the successor to Blu-ray isn't about discs. "If Blu-ray has a successor, it may not be something you can hold in your hand," says Mark Vena. Rather than another physical format, he believes the future lies in premium digital delivery through high-quality, studio-certified, lossless downloads stored locally on home servers or network-attached storage.

"This is why the real successor to Blu-ray, for most consumers, is not another disc at all," he says. "It's the combination of ultra high bitrate streaming, cloud libraries and AI-powered video optimization that's closing the quality gap."

So maybe the future isn't about replacing Blu-ray with another physical format but instead preserving the quality of audio and visuals that enthusiasts value about Blu-ray without even needing a disc in the first place.

One possible future is already beginning to emerge. Kaleidescape, a company specializing in premium digital movie delivery, offers downloads with bitrates to match what Blu-ray is capable of, preserving much more picture and audio quality than traditional streaming services while still providing the convenience of instant access.

Kaleidescape even recently launched a new 'Cinematic 4K' format for movies, which it says will offer even higher-quality bitrates for video, promising over 100Mbps of average bitrate (not maximum), which it compared to 60Mbps of average bitrate for 4K Blu-ray in its own marketing materials.

"In 10 years, the highest-quality movies at home will be delivered digitally, not on disc," Tayloe Stansbury, chairman and CEO of Kaleidescape, tells me. "Consumers will expect instant access, reference-quality presentation, and technology that evolves with each generation of content. That's the future Kaleidescape is building today."

However, for many fans of Blu-ray, the biggest hurdle here is still ownership and Kaleidescape's technical proficiency doesn't address that. It's a digital storefront, and the same concerns of losing access to things you've bought still applies.

Kaleidescape told me that its priority is delivering the best possible digital collecting experience rather than addressing licensing, and it declined to comment on people's increasing concerns about this side of buying movies.

Digital purchases may be able to close the gap on quality, but until they can offer the same promise of permanence as a disc, then physical media will continue to offer something digital can't.

Blu-ray remains resilient

When I first started researching this story, I thought I'd be talking to experts about the technology that’s waiting to replace Blu-ray. But instead, I learned the future is a little more complicated than that.

Every home video format in the past has reached a point where its limitations became too impossible to ignore. But Ultra HD Blu-ray appears to be in a different position. According to the people building and supporting the format, there isn't an obvious problem left for another new type of disc to solve. It still delivers the highest quality experience available to most consumers and continues to attract collectors who are willing to invest in physical media.

Looking at recent sales numbers, the Blu-ray market is much healthier than I expected. Mark Frampton, Senior Commercial Marketing Manager at Elevation Sales, a film sales and distribution company, says the format has remained remarkably resilient.

"We’re forecasting 2026 to be another year where the market stabilizes. Catalogue [older releases] has been very strong and only 2% down year-on-year. This is driven by collector’s editions and steelbooks, particularly on 4K Ultra HD which remains a format in growth."

In other words, older film releases are continuing to sell well, with premium collector editions helping to keep the market strong — and it's not just older enthusiasts buying discs today.

“Although the core buying audience is still people over 35, we’re increasingly seeing younger audiences entering the market,” Frampton tells me. “People aged between 25 and 34 are the second biggest buyers of Blu-ray. But Gen Z and Younger Millennials (aged between 14 and 30) who are experiencing ‘digital fatigue’ are becoming highly engaged in the format as well."

The wider industry paints a similar picture. Kath Summersgill, Group Joint Head of Sales at Key Production Group, a music manufacturer that specializes in producing physical media, points to figures from the Entertainment Retailers Association showing continued growth. "The current state of the physical movie market is incredibly encouraging, with ERA’s 2025 figures showing Blu-ray sales increased by 19.5%,” she says.

Now, these surprisingly healthy numbers don’t mean Blu-ray discs will be around forever. Streaming will continue to improve, premium digital libraries will become more sophisticated and companies like Kaleidescape are already demonstrating that top-quality movies don't necessarily need to be on a disc.

All of this means another physical format may never arrive. Instead, the next chapter for home theater could be digital — but there's a long way before collectors would be ready to trust digital libraries.

For now, at least you know you won't have to worry about buying your favorite movies yet again on another new disc format in the future.

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Artificial intelligence is fast becoming a game-changer for cybersecurity, with new frontier models such as Claude Mythos and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 demonstrating their capabilities in hunting software vulnerabilities and evaluating how they can be chained to harm an organization.

But these models have proven to be a double-edged sword, with both companies disclosing incidents where their models have escaped sandbox testing and compromised other organizations.

Couple this with how threat actors are turning to AI to increase their own skill in breaching organizations at an industrial scale, and you are presented with a bleak picture for the future of cybersecurity. But the best resilience is to adapt, and make sure those at the top can make the right decisions at the right time.

AI as a tool for defense and resilience

The latest challenge threat actors are presenting for businesses is their ability to match the skill of state-sponsored groups. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of these groups are being bolstered by the adoption of AI tools. Jailbreaking allows groups to use legitimate AI models to perform reconnaissance and research at scale, as well as the ability to modify and improve existing malware and attack vectors.

A recent IBM report found that since 2025 there has been a 44% increase in cyber-attacks exploiting public-facing applications, a 40% increase in vulnerability exploitation, and a 50% growth in the number of active ransomware operators. Much of this is the result of attackers adopting AI tools into their workflows.

Professor Julian Richards is a leading expert in intelligence and security who held senior roles in intelligence analysis, training program design, and strategic liaison at the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

I spoke with Professor Richards on the effects AI is having on the threat landscape, how defense strategies can adapt, and where training can be best applied to keep businesses one step ahead.

• What does cyber resilience really mean in a world where AI is being leveraged by threat actors to compromise businesses at a level that matches the craft of state-sponsored groups?

It is indeed the case that highly advanced techniques, the likes of which were previously the preserve of advanced states, are now readily available to a range of threat actors. This is partly because of thefts of highly advanced exploits such as ETERNALBLUE and their resale on the dark web.

Cyber resilience is about a range of approaches, however, which go beyond the technical into human layer factors. Keeping the response dynamic, diversified and creative will offer opportunities for resilience.

• Has the age of saving and storing vulnerabilities for later use passed, and how are defense strategies changing in regard to the rapid exploitation of vulnerabilities?

Almost certainly not, and experience from potentially parallel worlds such as that of cryptography tell us that exploits can remain productive for multiple years after their exposure.

Many threat actors are investing heavily in HNDL (harvest now, decrypt later); and a widened notion of "harvest now, exploit later" is also on the menu. Again, a reverse view offers opportunities for defenders.

AI can be used, for example, to more comprehensively and dynamically map and analyse attacks, even where they are mutating and evolving rapidly. This allows for more immediate and dynamic response.

• How are active defense strategies shaping the protection of businesses and their infrastructure, and what challenges are businesses experiencing with implementing these strategies on aging and legacy infrastructure?

As above, dynamic and active defense strategies are sensible and increasingly necessary. As with all areas of cybersecurity however, there are good and bad products on the market, and good and bad investment decisions being made.

One of the most important considerations for all businesses is making sure the defense strategy is appropriately tailored in scale and shape to the business itself; and making sure we deal with honest and adept brokers.

• AI is rapidly reducing the timescale between vulnerability discovery and exploitation for both businesses and intelligence agencies. Where do legislated threat disclosure windows play into these shrinking timeframes, and how do you perceive they will evolve?

One of the problems with compliance legislation (or indeed any legislation) is that it moves and updates much more slowly than technology. This will increasingly mean that the challenge described becomes a real problem.

In intelligence, selective disclosure has always been an understood protocol under the rubric of protecting national security, but this may not wash for commercial organisations. Two things will need to happen.

First, compliance legislation in such areas as threat disclosure will have to be written in a way that businesses are protected in fast-moving situations, allowing, perhaps, for post facto disclosure in many cases. Creative regulation and legislation is possible to allow for this.

Second, court cases may have to be brought to challenge overly stringent threat disclosure penalties, and subsequent case precedents will hopefully balance and protect organisations in this fast-moving situation. All of this will require the leveraging of advanced cyber expertise in the areas of law and legislation.

• What are the major blind spots business leaders have when it comes to the latest threats, and what is the role of AI in addressing these problems?

Probably two things, both of which have applied for a long time and are proving remarkably intractable! The first is complacency: "sure this happened to them, but it won't happen to us". Well it probably will.

The second is not understanding the importance of the human factor risk, which continues to be the biggest threat factor. Training, awareness, exercising for crises and internal compliance protocols might be irksome, but they remain crucially important for all businesses.

• What steps can business leaders take to ensure their AI tools are providing accurate intelligence and data while reducing false positives and hallucinations?

Work with reputable cyber threat intelligence suppliers and analysts. Develop expertise such that triangulation (checking across multiple sources and feeds rather than just accepting one source of information) is understood and readily implemented.

Expect the unexpected - in short, all the things that intelligence organisations have had to do since the dawn of time. For larger organisations, this is will mean a continual upskilling of key staff to be at the top of the game of understanding the dynamic threat picture.

• Where can C-suite executives seek support in making key decisions on incident response when defending against threat actors increasingly leveraging AI?

C-suite executives need to upskill themselves to really understand the threats and their dynamism in such a way that they can support everyone in the organisation battling with these issues.

It is still the case that many at the top have either a sketchy understanding of the risk, or see it as something that others in the organisation will sort out. This is increasingly untenable today.

Ultimately, those at the top will have to take the hit when it all goers horribly wrong! What this means is that training, workshopping and exercising through crisis scenarios is as important for the C-suite executives as it is for any other members of the organisation.

As a puzzle nut and fan of all things quizzes, I was unreasonably excited to learn that we now have the power to create crosswords here on TechRadar. So, I've taken it upon myself to bring you the first of what I intend to be a weekly TechRadar Crossword.

I've always enjoyed finding a quiet moment to sit with a crossword as a way to start or end my day — or pass the time while travelling. I actually remember first making some when I was a lot younger and forcing my dad to try and solve them while on holiday. I'm sure he only begrudgingly complied.

It wasn't until the Covid-19 lockdown, though, when I spent many hours watching Cracking the Cryptic on YouTube, that I started doing my best to learn the ins and outs of cryptic crosswords. They've been a lot of fun to tackle.

I've not tried anything as fiendishly difficult for the first outing, though. It's simply a mix of clues related to recent news and everything we know and love here at TechRadar — be that tech, games, streaming, AI, and more — as well as some of my favorite nerdy interests.

There's a leaderboard, so if you're quick, we'll put your name in lights to show off to the world. Let me know if you enjoy it and I hope you'll be back for the next one. I'll likely keep experimenting with clues and the construction over time to make this a fun little weekly challenge. Good luck!

Air stylers are very much the hot hair tool of the moment. When Dyson's first Airwrap hit the shelves in 2018, it felt like we were immediately hooked. We watched, entranced, as this wand-shaped styler grabbed a limp piece of hair, span it around, and left a perfect curl in its wake. And all without any extreme heat? It felt too good to be true.

And maybe it was. When I spoke to Dr Julie Chung, co-founder of major haircare brand T3, she advised that we take a much more cautious approach to the air styler phenomenon than we're used to hearing.

"This device is not for all hair types," she tells me. "And for any company to say, 'Oh, this is for all hair kind', 'this is for every single woman', it's simply not true."

She talks about how cool air-styler tools look on social media, but how, after the initial curl-creation magic has been captured, many women will find the styles just don't last on their hair.

"The more that I would watch women use this device on social, the more I saw women being very, very upset that they spent $600 on a device that created a curl for maybe a minute. They'd be in the mirror, it looks great, then they turn away for two seconds, look back and the curls have fallen," she recalls of the early days of air stylers.

One size does not fit all

Dr Chung is clear that even T3's own air styler — the Aire 360 — isn't for everyone. "Curls in general… it depends on the woman's hair type," she explains. "Some women can use a Dyson Airwrap with no product and be able to curl their hair and it'll stay. But that's because these are women whose hair tends to hold a curl really, really well.

"A woman with fine hair, for example, will dm me and say, the Shark didn't work. The Dyson didn't work. Should I get the Aire 360? And I would tell her, no. Just like Brandy Melvilles [a fashion brand that's been criticized for only offering clothing in one, small size] one size does not fit all. I can't even get the shorts over one leg."

So you might have hair that will naturally hold an air styler curl with no further effort required. Or you might need to add product, and take time to cool and set the air-styler curl.

Alternatively, a curling iron might give you much better and longer-lasting results (Dr Chung is also of the belief that 'heat has been demonized incorrectly — but that's a different subject), or you might need to use a curling iron to create ribbon curls. Dr Chung mentions T3's CEO, whose hair won't even hold a curling iron curl, and who needs a hot-roller set.

Your needs will be shaped not just by your hair texture, Dr Chung explains, but all manner of other aspects, from your lifestyle to the kind of climate you're living in, to your hair cut, and whether it's been colored, and the products you're using on it. There's a full spectrum of needs, and a full spectrum of tools.

She adds: "I've always said this to both consumers and editors alike: I can help you find the tool that will work for you, but that one tool that you're looking at, that some companies say it's for everybody. It's not for you. "I'm not going to sell you something that you'll come back and say it didn't work because I knew it wasn't going to work. I don't think that's some mind-blowing concept."

With AI tools and services now increasingly common in workplaces across the country, finding the right use cases where the technology can really have an effect is becoming more and more important.

Accounting and finance seems an obvious use case for AI, where an automated system can quickly go through reams of data to find the solution, or ensure everything is properly sorted.

I spoke to Akankshu Dhawan, Xero SVP, Product & Tech, at the recent Xerocon 2026 event in London, to find out more.

"The best way to build products"

“It's a very fortunate place to be in, when customers want more of what you have,” Dhawan tells me following the Xerocon 2026 keynote, where the company announced a whole host of new tools, products and services.

Xero seems fairly unique to me in that it really seems to take care to listen to users and customers when developing new offerings - transformation and customization seems to be the key watchwords.

“I think that's the best way to build products,” Dhawan says, “sometimes you do need to push the envelope sometimes - as the world is changing so fast, technology is changing so fast, not everybody is going to be comfortable with it, but that's also an opportunity to listen.”

As mentioned, accounting and bookkeeping are clear and obvious use cases where AI should be able to have an impact, taking complex procedures and tedious manual processes and streamlining them, freeing up workers for other tasks.

But for this reason, it may require extra time and care to ensure tools are intuitive for accountants and bookkeepers, some of whom may have started out working with pen and paper, then moved to computers, and now to the age of AI. This is especially true for those with small businesses or start-ups as customers, where any filing mistake or accounting error could have major consequences.

“Our job is to help bring as much calm to this,” Dhawan says, “as long as (accountants) feel they are in control, and we can give them the right set of controls, that can help them navigate this with as little anxiety as possible.”

This includes JAX, Xero’s AI platform, which the company says looks to offer “accountable intelligence” (pun probably intended), as part of its philosophy to infuse AI into every part of the product, built on top of its Xero operating system.

“It was very obvious to me any industry where there is a source of truth, and you can build a full loop...where customers can validate the input and give you the data...as long as you can do that well, you will have the ability to disrupt,” Dhawan says.

Xero had announced JAX will be able to create full end of year accounts, a significant escalation in capabilities, and an area where any mistake could be extremely costly in every sense of the word, so I ask Dhawan about the concerns some businesses may have on relying too heavily on AI tools.

“I think it's a risk if not done properly,” he says, “we keep coming back to the sense of control, and making sure the right controls are in place - we don't our AI to just send you a notification one day saying ‘I've sent your taxes to HMRC’ without you having even looked at it…you need to strike the right balance.”

He notes that the company’s AI is trained on 20 years’ worth of data from over five million customers, so it should be able to avoid troublesome variants.

“Because we have this…we can give you an idea of ‘it’s either this, or this’ - now check,” he says, “it’s much more productive, and you still save time, and you still keep the human in the loop.”

"Always in control"

All of this seems to result in what Xero had pledged about offering extra oversight when it comes to what can be the most critical part of running a business.

Dhawan had mentioned in his keynote the theme that users were “always in control - that's our promise to you”, and I ask him how realistic an aim that can be in a rapidly-changing and evolving market.

“Honestly, that's table stakes in our industry - I'm often blown away by promises that companies sometimes make,” he says.

“We are here because of this group of accountants and bookkeepers, and when they're sitting in the room with their small business clients, there's that trust, which kind of doesn't matter whether it's AI or not - they want to know, can I trust the advice.”

“It can be a win-win situation…it’s a no-brainer that that is our way of creating value for the ecosystem that we serve.”

“If we can really rise to the occasion, meet our customers and capture this AI tailwind, that's front and center - it's very real, it's happening, we've got to just keep our eye on the ball.”

The Nintendo Switch was nothing short of a phenomenon. It won the hearts of millions, possesses one of the greatest games libraries in console history, and became one of the highest selling systems of all time. It brought the best parts of its failing predecessor, the Wii U, forward, assuming an ultra-convenient hybrid form, and during the COVID 19 pandemic, it felt like everyone and their dog were building their perfect island on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, or racing to the finish line in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

All of that is to say, that whatever came next would have huge shoes to fill. And so, in came the Nintendo Switch 2 — a system that appeared to be less of a revolution, and more of an evolution. It took what made the Switch great and ran with it, offering higher resolution and refresh rates, a larger screen for handheld mode, and even a mouse mode.

And in some respects, the Switch 2 has hit the ground running. It’s the second-fastest selling games console in recorded US history, and at just over a year old it's already seen multiple exclusives (such as Donkey Kong Bananza and Pokémon Pokopia) release to critical acclaim. But at the same time, some have been disappointed over the lack of a 3D Mario or truly new Zelda title on the horizon, while issues around battery life and pricing have also proved to be a turn off for others.

So, this got me thinking. Would gamers consider the Switch 2 to be more of a hit, or a flop? Sure, its sales figures have been impressive, but are users satisfied with the hardware upgrades? What are their thoughts on its game catalogue?

I spoke with industry experts, fellow journalists — and most importantly, you, our wonderful readers, and it proved to be a fascinating experience. I heard a lot of varying viewpoints, and now I’m here to report back.

Hit or miss: the expert take

To begin with, I spoke with Mat Piscatella, Executive Director of Games at the Market Research firm Circana, who had some excellent insight into the commercial performance of the Nintendo Switch 2.

“Well, over its first 12 months in the market, Nintendo Switch 2 hit 5.9M units sold in the US,” Piscatella told me.

This, he noted, ensured it became the second fastest-selling video game hardware in the US since Circana’s records began in 1995 — finishing behind the Game Boy Advance only. “If that's not considered a hit, I'm not sure what would be,” he remarked.

“For the 2026 year-to-date period ending May, US hardware spending in total was up 37% compared to the same period a year ago,” Piscatella said. He stated that this was “entirely driven by Nintendo Switch 2 as double-digit percentage sales declines were experienced across the other in market platforms”.

He also highlighted high sales of software, such as Donkey Kong Bananza, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Pokémon: Pokopia, and Mario Kart World, a game which was largely obtained via a bundle with the system.

So far so good, then, for Piscatella, who also highlighted the benefit of the Switch 2’s backwards compatibility — giving users access to thousands of unique titles from the original system.

He did flag that June date may indicate “tough year-on-year comp for the system,” largely due to sales being compared to the launch month. “After that we should see Switch 2 continue to perform well into its announced September price increase. Then we'll have to see what happens."

What does the TechRadar team think?

The early signs have been promising, commercially speaking, but our Managing Editor of Social & Engagement (and Nintendo enthusiast), Josephine Watson, says that “the Switch 2 needed more than sales to break Nintendo’s generational curse of yo-yo-ing console success. It needed sticking power”. So, one year on, has it stuck the landing?

She argued that the Switch 2’s weaker holiday sales and subsequent production cuts suggest that “the console has yet to prove its mettle in the same way the first-generation [Switch] did, even with such high sales figures in its first year.” Despite this, she did acknowledge the mid-lifecycle boom that the OG Switch experienced, largely due to the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic.

In terms of games, Watson had a somewhat mixed take, arguing that the Switch 2 had “a concerningly hollow launch title line-up carried mostly by Mario Kart World,” though she did suggest that the system gained momentum moving into the new year, especially with titles like Pokémon Pokopia and strong third-party additions like Resident Evil Requiem.

Is the Switch 2 a success one year on for Watson? “No — but yes, kinda,” she said. She lamented the lackluster battery life and pointed to how Nintendo could’ve done more to eradicate stick drift from the Joy-Con 2 controllers, but did express satisfaction with the improved processing power and refined eShop. And even though her views on the game library haven’t been entirely positive, the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, scheduled for release in 2026, “is the game-changer,” she said.

TechRadar Senior Writer, Hamish Hector, admitted that he was “a little skeptical” of the Nintendo Switch 2 — both a little before and a little after its launch. But since grabbing one in the latter stages of 2025, those worries seem to have largely dissipated.

“It has cemented itself as my go-to gaming handheld,” Hector told me. “While it doesn’t have the raw power or library breadth of my Asus ROG Xbox Ally X — a handheld gaming PC with access to Steam’s vast suite of games — the Switch 2 does still boast a solid selection of AAA ports, incredible first-party hits and superb indie darlings”.

He noted how some AAA third-party ports have varied in quality, although hit the mark more often than they miss, and most issues manifest themselves as simple “graphical performance hitches” rather than “anything majorly frustrating”. He even hailed the Switch 2’s value for money, emphasizing that “At $449.99 / £395.99 it’s much more affordable than any worthwhile PC handheld, and even after its upcoming price hike to $499.99 it’ll still be a solid pickup”.

Here’s what our audience has to say

We’ve heard a range of views so far, albeit generally positive ones. It feels as if the general consensus is that the Nintendo Switch 2 has been an overall success, with a strong start in terms of sales and a commendable library to match. But I was most excited to hear from were you, our audience. So, I asked, and you answered: here’s whether you considered the Switch 2 to be a hit or a flop.

I asked our audience about their feelings on the Switch 2 across multiple platforms. With our poll here on the TechRadar website and over on WhatsApp, users were given four choices: 'It’s a hit'; 'it’s pretty good'; 'it’s a little disappointing'; and 'it’s a flop'. We got 892 votes, and the breakdown was as follows.

Over on YouTube, we wanted to try a more direct approach and gave our audience only two options: hit or flop. We received 446 votes (at the time of writing), with 61% selecting ‘hit’, and 39% going with ‘flop’.

But what do these results actually tell us? At a glance, the picture seems pretty divided. Across all of our polls on our website, WhatsApp, and YouTube, we received 1,338 responses. Of those, 693 (51.8%) were generally positive on the Switch 2 (respondents called it ‘a hit’ or ‘pretty good’), whereas 645 (48.2%) were generally more negative (respondents either selected ‘it’s a little disappointing’ or ‘it’s a flop’).

Over on our Facebook page, the reasons for such division became clear, with a wide range of differing opinions floating around.

Of course, the very meaning of ‘hit or flop’ in itself can be interpreted in a number of ways. One commenter, Andreas Carmblad, stated that “hit or flop is reflected in the sales figures,” suggesting that Nintendo’s new console has been a success so far.

Others were more focused on the quality of the system’s software lineup, with most talking up the first-party line-up — though one commenter described the current set of exclusives as “woeful,” adding “hopefully a few big releases can turn it around [like] OoT and a new 3D Mario game”.

Elsewhere, commenters expressed disappointment over the console’s battery life in handheld mode — understandable given that it can run flat in around 2 hours with more demanding games.

However, many considered the new hardware changes to be a hit, with Tim McDougall saying “It's an improvement in almost every way [over the original Switch] and it's now much closer in performance to the current gen home consoles. It's 99% backwards compatible with the first Switch, with many performance benefits. I'd say it's a success”.

I was slightly surprised to see so many members of our poll select ‘slightly’ disappointed in our poll, and I expect that this comes down to a sentiment that the console is still a few games short of being a true must-have for all gamers. However, with Zelda and Pokémon games releasing soon, a lot of opinions could be swayed — and I suspect a blockbuster Mario title would only seal the deal.

What I was pleased to see, however, is that very few members of our audience (10.4% in our main poll) consider the Switch 2 to be an outright flop. After all, the sales speak for themselves, and there have been a lot of very well received exclusives early in the system’s lifecycle.

Some personal thoughts

This brings me onto my personal thoughts. I pre-ordered the Nintendo Switch 2, and my expectations were high for the new system. Although I loved the original Switch’s library and appreciated its flexibility, the truth is, I actually didn’t love it all that much. For me, quality often felt overly compromised in handheld mode, with a lot of intensive titles struggling to reach up to 60fps. But the Switch 2 changed everything.

Now, I can enjoy titles in full HD at 60fps (and sometimes up to 120fps) in handheld mode, and I feel like the gap in quality when playing on the go — rather than in front of the TV — has shortened. What’s more, the Switch 2’s Handheld Mode Boost means that I can enjoy my original Switch games as if I was playing them with my system docked — a truly fantastic feature.

Then there’s the games. Controversially, I consider Mario Kart World to be the series’ best entry since the Wii generation, with a return to the true chaos and zaniness that made the games great in the first place — with knockout mode and the bizarre cast of characters being highlights for me. I’ve also had a blast with DK and Pokémon Pokopia, have spent countless hours racing in Kirby Air Riders, and exploring in Yoshi and the Mysterious Book.

The Switch 2 has also managed to do what the original model never could for me, in that I now often choose Nintendo for third party experiences. The brilliant combination of portability and higher fidelity visuals has made grinding in Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake or playing detective in Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army feel free of compromise.

Pair that with impressive sales performance, more convenient magnetic Joy-Cons, and even some pretty impressive virtual surround sound processing, and the Switch 2, in my eyes, is a sure-fire hit.

Yes, I share many users’ battery life gripes, and I personally believe that some of the first party games are far too pricey — I mean, $79.99 / £74.99 / AU$119.95 for a physical copy of Mario Kart World? Really? But even with incoming price hikes, I’d consider Nintendo’s latest hardware to offer plenty of bang for your buck, and although I’d love to get Super Mario Odyssey 2 within the next year or so, I’m perfectly satisfied with the current, and upcoming crop of titles at this stage.

Spoilers for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 2 ahead.

We've jumped into a completely different universe in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe episode 2, waving the Mad Max feel of the initial post-apocalyptic world goodbye (thankfully).

However, there's a new problem in the new HBO Max show. Stuart (Kevin Sussman), Denise (Lauren Lapkus), Kripke (John Ross Bowie) and Bert (Brian Posehn) have landed somewhere where everybody is incessantly nice to each other... a little too nice, if anything.

As Stuart quickly finds out, this is because they each have a device attached to their neck to prevent them from being mean or exhibiting any kind of bad behavior. If they try to fight it, they get tased from the inside, and eventually, shipped off to an AI correctional facility.

After years of rehabilitation (really, it's about two minutes), we find out that Penny (Kaley Cuoco) is leading the rebellion against the AI overlords, eventually helping the gang escape after she trusts them enough.

But while Penny is a Big Bang Theory cameo that fans have been waiting for, it's not the one that I think is the most interesting. For that, we need to look to the universe's AI overlord herself... film and TV's Christine Baranski.

'I think she was forced into it'

Yes, that's right... Christine Baranski is the person in charge of this AI uprising. Via video, she explains to the gang what the neck devices are and why society needs them, giving creators Chuck Lorre, Zak Penn, and Bill Prady ample opportunity to criticize the growing use of AI in the entertainment industry.

TBBT fans will know that Baranski played Leonard's (Johnny Galecki) absent and standoffish mother Beverly in the original series. But in this universe, Beverly clearly doesn't exist.

"I think she was forced into doing it... not in real life, but in this universe," Penn tells me about Baranski's cameo. "In real life, she was totally willing. But in that universe, I don't think she had a choice but to record that message.

"Maybe it would be better if she was driving that universe... but she's not. She might end up getting accused of collaboration with the AI overlords, but I think that AI made her an offer that she couldn't refuse."

Prady adds, "We'll have to see how the rebellion goes and what happens afterwards. What do they do to her afterwards?"

"She'd be tried," Lorre agrees. "Well there we go — there's something we can do if we get a second season."

Lorre's comment suggests that this is a one-and-done appearance from Baranski in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, but Penn's take on AI is particularly interesting in the week after fans accused the show's title sequence in episode 1 of being "AI slop."

Whether the titles were actually generated by AI is unconfirmed, but episode 2 suggests that the team clearly doesn't think the technology is a good thing.

As I tell the trio, if anybody can lead us through perilous technological times, I'd put all my faith in film and TV's Christine Baranski.

When it comes to long-standing TV franchises that I'm most terrified to cover, Star Trek is easily at the top of the list. With so many seasons, opinions, and legacies developing in popular culture since the mid-1960s and the original series, I feel like I'm a dunce constantly playing catch-up with something complex that keeps slipping from my grasp.

However, if I were to hedge my bets and choose two seasons to binge, I'd pick Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Picard. Not just because they feel like the two iterations of the franchise that I can't afford to miss out on, but because I'm unashamedly in love with Jeri Ryan.

Trekkies will know her best for playing Seven of Nine in both shows, a former Borg drone who initially joins the crew of the Federation starship Voyager. By the time she tries to leave in Picard, she's promoted to Captain — but as of writing, a story of her time in charge has yet to materialize.

According to Ryan herself [via TrekMovie], she has already turned down a solo spinoff that "wasn't in line with the Star Trek legacy," so we could be waiting a while for the perfect fit... if it ever arrives.

If we can't get Seven of Nine back, let's go with the next best thing: Ryan's own recommendations for what to watch alongside your annual Voyager and Picard binges (it never hurts to freshen things up).

But when I ask her the question, her answer takes me completely by surprise, especially as she's considered the potential long-standing impacts of AI in relation to sci-fi itself.

'People aren't paying enough attention to AI'

"Not that they have anything to do with Star Trek directly, but given the AI situation, I think The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day would be really good things to watch now," Ryan tells me.

"I think they'd be very timely. I feel like a lot of people, or not enough people, have paid attention to AI. I think a few more people could do to listen to how that ended up for humanity."

It's an unexpected and dark suggestion, but I certainly see the link. Like Star Trek, Terminator was ahead of its time, transforming the sci-fi genre into something iconic that would later serve as an archetype for TV shows and movies to come.

In fact, both movies go way beyond Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "Hasta la vista, baby," in dark sunglasses and a leather jacket. His Terminator Borg is the polar opposite of Seven of Nine, working as an assassin from the future intent on killing the woman who will supposedly give birth to a man who will save humankind from extinction.

By the end of Judgment Day, Terminator is a good guy, having been reprogrammed to protect instead of destroy. It's this conclusion, I think, that Ryan would like to reach... or at least remind fans that there is still light at the end of the tunnel.

If you look beyond Star Trek, protection against AI is something Ryan is clearly passionate about. In April 2026, she testified in support of the California Senate Bill 1050, which would "target false advertising by requiring clear and conspicuous consumer disclosures whenever a synthetic digital performer is used in state advertisements."

Would a Seven of Nine spinoff featuring a synthetic lead character flop if Ryan resolutely disagreed to it? Yes. But let's face it... we don't want that kind of spinoff anyway.

At this point, Ryan is leaving us with a lot of food for thought when it comes to what the future looks like, with some iconic sci-fi action sprinkled in for good measure. How can you not love her?

• Watch The Terminator on Prime Video in the US
• Watch The Terminator on Prime Video in the UK
• Watch The Terminator on Prime Video in Australia

“It’s not red,” IBM’s design center manager patiently explained. “It’s magenta.”

The safety function officer wasn’t buying it. Between his fingers, he held up a small, rubbery disc that looked like a pencil eraser. “You know it’s red and I know it’s red,” he said.

The design manager didn’t back down. He insisted that what the man held was indeed magenta. The safety officer called his boss. The boss called Tom Hardy, Design Program Director at IBM. Hardy didn't flinch.

“It’s not red. It’s magenta.”

It was one of the boldest lies ever told in tech. And it made the ThinkPad iconic.

Years later, Hardy relayed the incident in an interview with Laptop Retrospective, detailing the design origins of the TrackPoint, the input stick resting in a central position of the ThinkPad keyboard since 1992.

Instantly recognizable today, the little red nub remains core to the ThinkPad’s identity. For anyone working in design, its history serves as a lesson on creative control and innovation.

Every designer knows red on black is a classic combination. So, for Hardy’s team, it was a no-brainer choice when first tasked with adding the TrackPoint to the system.

However, at the time, IBM instituted a strict color-code. For control systems like the TrackPoint, the standard was blue. Playing by the rules, the team toyed with that. According to Hardy, “it just didn’t sing like red did.”

They switched back to red. But there was a major problem with that.

Red was reserved for emergency power shutdowns. It’s the kill-switch color. Hardy knew, even then, the safety team had to approve the color scheme. There was no way they’d let it ship with a red cursor control. That simply wasn’t the way it was done.

Rather than fight and inevitably lose that battle, the designers got creative.

They scrapped every trace of ‘red’ in the documentation. They replaced it with ‘magenta’.

“The safety guys,” Hardy explained, “They may not know what magenta is, but they’ll know it’s not red.”

Soon, the parts came in, labeled as magenta. No-one looked twice at them until the safety official snooped on a box of TrackPoints and demanded to know who approved the color for non-power related functions. He didn’t get an answer he liked. He threatened to shut down the whole production line.

Hardy got involved shortly after. Corporate on corporate combat ensued, arguing over the subjective difference between magenta and red. “The next stop in the line,” Hardy reminded them, “It goes to the CEO.”

Fighting his corner, he tells them, will be famed industrial designer Richard Sapper who created the classic ThinkPad design, as well as corporate graphic design consultant Paul Rand, the man behind the IBM logo. Both are color experts.

Even as the back and forth continued, Hardy’s team had linked up with the advertising team. The ad agency had poured millions of dollars into a campaign that was ready to launch. “So hot,” the adverts said with a close-up on the new TrackPoint, “We had to make it red.”

It was enough to make the safety team think twice. Later that day, an email was sent. It said: ‘Make them red.’

They’ve been the same iconic color ever since.

It's no secret I'm a massive ThinkPad fan ever since I got my paws on a T431s, but check out the best business laptops my team and I have tested.

It starts on the 4 Train, that straight-run subway line from Grand Central to Yankee Stadium, where I start to notice the red shirts. By the time I reach the massive gray stadium, people are circling the Bronx Bomber’s edifice like thousands of red ants, all queuing up for a rare baseball season sight: football (soccer) in Yankee Stadium.

Most of the shirts are for Premier League side Liverpool FC, but there's a smattering of Wrexham kits. Some of them look threadbare, and none feature the club’s newest sponsor: Firefox. The travel and away kits were unveiled just days before — too soon for die-hard fans to show their support for the team and its well-known but, by some measures, marginal web browser.

Walking through Babe Ruth Plaza, I follow behind the red shirts until I’m lined up behind fans who have come from as far as Arkansas and California to witness the pre-season match. None are musing about Firefox’s new Wrexham sponsorship or how Mozilla (Firefox’s parent) took over from United, which itself took over from TikTok.

The Reynolds effect

The scrappy Welsh club enjoys outsized notoriety thanks to its owners, actors and entrepreneurs Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds, and the popular Hulu docu-series Welcome to Wrexham, which recounts the club’s rise from the ashes and ascent to, as of last season, just short of Premier League status.

While we wait to enter the stadium, the Liverpool team arrives late — following a day of storms and flight cancellations — on a pair of giant red touring buses to hearty cheers from the crowd. Everyone knows Wrexham, but the fans seem to be with Liverpool.

How does a browser and a keeper connect?

As we file in, I have time to think about the connection between Wrexham and Firefox. The kits, which I view later in person and on the field, are quite fetching. On top of the bold, red stretchable fabric is the iconic Firefox flame. It makes me think of the heat Mozilla hopes to generate around its best-known product.

The fit, though, between a scrappy football team and a portal you use to navigate the web, seems tenuous and as ill-fitted as the rectangular pitch they’ve somehow jury-rigged onto the baseball diamond. A covered home plate, third base, and right field jut out awkwardly, and much later a fan tells me the pitch looked kind of messy and maybe not a great experience for some of the players.

It’s not that I don’t understand why Mozilla tied its sails to Wrexham. As I write this, Firefox sits, according to StatCounter, at 3.4% of the global browser market share. By contrast, Chrome has 69% and Safari almost 16%. Put another way, the browser wars are over.

It's not that Firefox is irrelevant, but it's not as relevant as it once was. There was a time, maybe 15 years ago, when I was firmly in the Firefox camp. I’d adopted it because I was working with so many developers, who were all using the leaner and (some thought) meaner platform. It was built on the premise of openness, running counter to Internet Explorer (RIP) and the fast-growing Google Chrome.

Over time, though, it started to suffer from the same resource-hogging issues as Internet Explorer. I eventually gave it up and migrated to Chrome, then had a dalliance with Microsoft Edge and have now settled on Chrome on the desktop and Safari for mobile. If I’m being honest, I stopped considering Firefox years ago.

The most obvious answer

As the team took the makeshiift pitch and the stands filled with red shirts, I waited for Mozilla’s relatively new CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo and CMO John Solomon to arrive so I could quiz them about product plans and Mozilla’s dive into AI.

Enzor-DeMeo joined Mozilla in 2024 after stints at Roofstock, Better, and Wayfair. In each, the admitted nerd appears to have held positions relating to products, technology, and engineering. Solomon comes to Mozilla from Apple and Beats.

When Enzor-DeMeo finally does arrive, he looks younger than I expected and has a sort of nervous energy. It’s been a busy few days with a lot of interviews, and when I try to ask about Mozilla and AI, he tells me he doesn’t want to do any more. Still, he’s open and affable, explaining that he’s a die-hard It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Rob McElhenney is a series star) fan, so much so that when someone else says they love the show, he asks them to name their favorite episode and then, without waiting for an answer, tells us his.

Still, Enzor-DeMeo was not a closet fan of the beautiful game. Instead, Solomon, who comes from the much more culturally connected Beats brand, suggested this partnership. Enzor-DeMeo watched Reynold’s Welcome to Wrexham doc and thought, “Oh, this makes a lot of sense.”

I stared at him, wondering what he saw that I didn’t. Sure, a partnership with the Red Dragons, as Wrexham are also known (I even spotted their red dragon mascot wandering the pitch and hugging fans) makes some sense. You know, fire, dragons? And this would be Wrexham’s second tech sponsorship after TikTok, which was widely featured in early seasons of Welcome to Wrexham. Mozilla confirmed that as they film the new season, we will see the Firefox brand on display in some fashion.

I looked at Enzor-DeMeo, who was still enthusiastically talking about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and asked him, “What’s the throughline from Firefox to Wrexham?” Enzor-DeMeo smiled and quickly answered, “Underdog.”

The only thing that would’ve made the moment more perfect is if an announcer suddenly screamed, “Goooooaaaallll!” But I got it.

It's never just about money

If you’ve never seen the documentary, Wrexham AFC was the disintegrating center of a hardscrabble town that, despite over 150 years of footballing history, had been largely forgotten and fallen to the fifth tier of the English league system. Achieving Premier League status, a feat they very nearly accomplished last season, seemed impossible. Until Reynolds and McElhenney arrived.

Sure, there are people unhappy with the way celebrity and money have throw off the balance of a well-worn system, but if you watch the doc, you know that it was never enough to throw money and fame at it. It’s a very human story with equal measures of failure and success.

Firefox is surely the underdog in the browser game. Built on its own Gecko browser engine, it stands apart from Google, Apple and Microsoft, which all have a profit motive in having you use their platforms. Mozilla’s parent organization is non-profit, and although the Mozilla Corp, under which Firefox lives, is for-profit, its revenues are used to fund the non-profit effort.

Like its competitors, Firefox has AI features, letting you access the AI chatbot of your choice in a sidebar, and using AI to help you organize tabs. It does, though, seem a bit less interested in force-feeding AI.

Still, underdog status is no guarantee of a Cinderella story, and as the game drags on with countless missed shots and a handful of fouls, I wonder if Wrexham can embarrass Liverpool in front of its US fans. A moment later, Liverpool manages at roughly 60 minutes in to sail one over the outstretched arms of Wrexham substitute goalkeeper Callum Burton.

There’s no victory for the underdog this time, but it’s the pre-season, and Wrexham and its new sponsor Firefox should have many more chances to win on the pitch.

When gaming chair maker Secretlab announced the release of its very first home office chair, I wasn't shocked.

There's been a gradual trend with office chair makers like Herman Miller teaming up with Logitech to create a gamer-focused version of the Embody, alongside brands like FlexiSpot and Eureka Ergonomic launching its own line of gaming chairs.

On the flips-side, companies like Boulies, which has a long gaming heritage with its Master series, have branched out into office chairs (I still think the EP200 is the best value all-rounder, after over a year of constant use). With the rise of hybrid and remote working, it seemed like just a matter of time before Secretlab got in on the action.

I've been using mine for over a month now, and, as resident office furniture expert here at TechRadar Pro, I think the company nailed it. It's a world away from the magisterial Titan Evo, and I suspect Evo fans may not appreciate what the Atlas is doing here. But it's one of the top office chairs I've used precisely because it's such a terrible gaming chair.

The anti-gaming silhouette

I'm obsessed with gaming chairs that look right at home in an office. I've covered stealth gaming and office chairs for years. Those understated seats that don't draw attention on a Zoom call with the boss, but are perfect for late-night play sessions (the Corsair TC100 Relaxed is a good budget example).

On that score, the Secretlab Atlas is a total success. Now, it's not a gaming chair. But you can see it's taken inspiration from the Titan Evo. Sit them side by side and it's clear they share the same brand heritage, with those cleanly carved and subtle contours.

However, the design skips on two aggressive elements you'll find on pretty much every gaming chair: the racing-style bucket seat bolsters and the shoulder wings. Both are designed to lock you into position that's perfect for precision play on controller or M+K.

But an office worker needs that unrestricted extra space, allowing upper body movement. Fingers flying over the keyboard, constantly sweeping the mouse, and pivoting at the desk.

So, instead, it's got a sleek look - Secretlab calls it "our lightest silhouette yet", and I totally agree here. Because of that style, I find it works very well in the home office, even smaller ones. I carted it downstairs so my wife could use it in the dining room when she was working from home.

The Atlas blended in so well, feeling more like home furniture than any bulky leatherette bucket chair ever could. Weirdly, despite the higher backrest, it's far less noticeable than her office-engineered Boulies OP180 was.

Built for typing, not chilling

All the best office chairs my team and I have reviewed have one thing in common: adjustability.

Given Secretlab's experience, it's no surprise that the Atlas has plenty to help tailor the sit. That includes mechanisms for tweaking the seat depth, backrest, and armrests, as well as synchronous tilt.

What this means in practice is that you can lean back with your feet on the ground, and the backrest and seat move as one for continued support. Effectively, it's designed to keep your hips open to relieve pressure on your lower back.

It's a world away from the traditional gaming setup, where the backrest tilts and reclines independently. It's absolutely perfect for laying back, playing games, watching movies. But this mechanism also sends you into a horizontal slouch - one of the main reasons why so many modern chairs come with built-in footrests.

However, it's not as adjustable as many of the office chairs I've tested out. When our gaming editor Dash Wood spoke to Vincent Sin, the company's head of product development and industrial design, he explained: "What we found is that more often than not, with task chairs that have a lot of adjustments, it’s very confusing and people often will get it wrong. And I would say that’s worse than having something that automatically adjusts for you.”

But this brings me to the one adjustable element I actually would change. The chair does feel low to the ground - a view echoed in our Secretlab Atlas review.

The Large model does offer slightly more height over the Regular version, but I still think extra height range would've stripped away the only real complaint I have here. As an average man of average height, it's not a deal-breaker for me. But it's definitely something I've noticed during my time with it compared to other office chairs.

The lumbar support gamble

Also missing is the adjustable or dynamic lumbar support I tend to see on more premium office and gaming chairs. The Titan Evo famously uses the 4-Way L-Adapt Lumbar Support System, giving you control over the lower back support.

Instead, the Atlas uses a simplified Re-Curve backrest. Again, Sin said this design choice was intentional. "People don’t know that having too much lumbar support is also a bad thing." Instead, the company pressure-mapped sitters to figure out where back support is needed and where it isn't.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced by that. I still think adjustable support is essential, especially for those who need lower back pain relief. I suspect economics and aesthetics are playing a bigger role here than anyone is prepared to admit.

For a chair costing over $500 / £400, I was a little concerned when I first parked myself into the Secretlab Atlas.

The results, though, surprised me. Maybe Secretlab are right: we are over-engineering modern office chairs.

Why firmness wins for the workday

So far, so gaming and office chair. But there's one major change with the Secretlab Atlas that I think makes it an ideal task chair, but absolutely useless for gaming.

It's firm.

I think a lot of people expect office chairs to feel like a well-worn armchair or a couch. Soft, cushiony, like sinking into a foamy cloud.

That squishiness feels good for an hour or two while working. And it's perfect for gaming - you want to feel snug, even during the sweatiest of battles. But it's not recommended for an 8-hour workday, 5 days a week where you're upright, typing away, maintaining your posture.

Now, I'm not saying you need to sit on a concrete slab at your desk. And the Atlas definitely doesn't feel that way. I appreciate support it has as I work, and actually look forward to sitting on it.

I'm not the only one convinced by it.

My pregnant wife is suffering chronic back pain during her pregnancy. She's hijacked the Secretlab Atlas because her softer office chair just made the pain worse. The Atlas eased the pressure. Her verdict (politely sanitized for this family-friendly publication: "It's ridiculously comfortable."

The Atlas is basically designed for a very different sitting profile. You'll immediately notice the difference coming from a Titan Evo or similar. So, it's not the best gaming chair, but it was never meant to be.

A VPN isn't a silver bullet. It can’t guarantee total security or anonymity online. Instead, it is a tool that allows you to hide your browsing data from your internet service provider (ISP), adopt a virtual IP address, and access geo-restricted content.

However, there are still a lot of misconceptions about what a VPN can and cannot do — a problem made worse by the exaggerated marketing claims pushed by some VPN companies.

Given that, it’s unsurprising that when we analyzed nearly 30,000 Google Play Store reviews of our four top-rated VPNs, a clear trend emerged: a lot of people aren’t getting the privacy and security protection they thought they were paying for.

In part, this stems from users misunderstanding what a VPN does. But it also shows that the industry needs to do a better job of setting realistic expectations.

On the whole, people are satisfied with their VPNs. Across our full dataset, just 35% of overall comments were negative. However, when we isolated feedback related to privacy and security, the proportion of negative comments rose to 41%.

This article is the second in a series investigating the real-world experience of using major VPN services, driven by our exclusive analysis of Android VPN reviews. The first article examined billing and pricing issues.

Lab-tested security vs Play Store reality

Proton VPN received the highest proportion of positive comments regarding privacy and security, with 68% of its feedback on the topic being positive.

That's significantly higher than Surfshark, which recorded a positive sentiment rate of just 31%. ExpressVPN (54%) and NordVPN (34%) sat in between.

It's worth noting, however, that all four services offer essentially equivalent protection and are among the most secure VPNs available. They all feature advanced encryption and proprietary protocols, and have been audited by third parties to confirm their security credentials.

So what’s causing the disconnect between our lab tests and real-world user experience? It seems that for many, it stems from several myths about what a VPN can actually protect you from.

Myth #1: A VPN stops every 'hacker'

When analyzing the Play Store reviews, we noticed that a significant number of people were concerned about the threat of hackers. And for obvious reasons — people lose money, privacy, and their health to malicious actors online every day.

Unfortunately, a VPN can't help in every scenario, and that seems to have left many disappointed.

One Proton VPN reviewer, for example, alleges it is the “worst app ever” because they had “been hacked by someone else while using this VPN.” Meanwhile, a NordVPN comment says that “hackers” had “managed to set up a way of getting passed [sic] the VPN on all my devices.” Another simply says: “got hacked the second day, don’t trust.”

However, others proudly claim that their VPN “protects my identity from hackers.”

Like most things, the reality is somewhere in the middle. While a VPN protects your data in transit (encrypting the data between your device and the server you’re connecting to), it does nothing to protect data you’ve already handed over to a third party — like an email address or password stored on an external database.

A standard VPN also won't stop you from falling victim to phishing scams, where an attacker tricks you into voluntarily entering your credentials on a fake website. However, VPN companies are increasingly releasing products to help prevent this.

If you're looking for more details on what a VPN can and can't do, check out the cheat sheet at the end of this article.

Myth #2: A VPN offers bulletproof protection

In our tests, these VPNs have never leaked an IP address. That would be a big deal. Yet across Play Store reviews, a surprising number of people report that their VPN appeared to fail.

One NordVPN reviewer said the app “did not hide my IP address from being tracked,” while a comment about Surfshark claimed it “failed to hide my IP address at least twice in the first 3 weeks.” Another noted that their VPN “leaks IP after some time [...] giving you a wrong sense of privacy and security.”

It’s impossible to diagnose the specific issues at play without more context. However, true encryption failures are extremely rare, particularly among well-regarded providers.

In reality, most reported leaks stem from configuration errors (like not having the kill switch enabled), browser tracking or basic steup errors. To make sure your connection isn't dropping data, always enable your app's kill switch and verify your real IP address is hidden using a diagnostic tool like Cloudflare's trace page.

If you’ve checked your settings and still suspect your VPN is genuinely leaking your IP address, leave a comment below and our team will see if we can help troubleshoot it.

Myth #3: A VPN equals total anonymity

Exaggerated marketing claims around online privacy seem to have influenced reviewers throughout the data. Some accuse providers of betraying them, writing reviews like "do not trust this app for privacy," while others complain about the amount of telemetry data collected by the apps themselves.

However, these reviews highlight an uncomfortable truth: masking your IP address only goes so far. Cookies, browser fingerprints, device information, language settings, and SIM card regions are all routinely logged, analyzed, and leveraged by advertisers and platforms to track your identity regardless of your IP.

A VPN is an important first step in improving your privacy, but if you continue to use services that monitor your every move, it’s not enough on its own. Check your browser, the services you use and you might find that there are other factors at play revealing your identity.

‘Not a catch-all’ — VPN providers' defense

We reached out to each of the VPN companies mentioned in this report for comment.

Proton VPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark all acknowledged that a VPN is not a catch-all solution for every digital threat. Instead, they highlighted additional security features they offer and noted that many reported issues stem from configuration errors and non-IP tracking rather than a failure of the VPN.

ExpressVPN did not respond to our request for comment.

Proton VPN highlighted its NetShield feature, which blocks ads, trackers, and malware domains. Addressing leak complaints, the company explained that genuine tunnel traffic does not leak, and that reported issues typically occur when split tunneling, connection dropouts, or browser extensions leave specific traffic outside the encrypted connection.

Surfshark pointed to its Web Content Blocker — which it says blocked nearly 1.2 million phishing and malware sites in the past month — and its Alternative ID tool, which generates email aliases to protect contact details.

Meanwhile, NordVPN, which said that it "does not advertise complete immunity," highlighted its next-gen antivirus and credential leak monitoring tools. It added that perceived IP leaks are frequently down to device configuration rather than an IP exposure.

Combined, it's clear that leading VPN companies are developing more comprehensive and effective cybersecurity products to accompany the core VPN technology. However, if the limitations — as well as the benefits — of these additional tools aren't communicated clearly, the industry risks creating the same expectation gap it appears to face with its core technology.

What a VPN can and can't do — A cheat sheet

A VPN can:

• Encrypt your browsing traffic: Shield your internet activity from your Internet Service Provider (ISP), network manager, or public Wi-Fi admin.
• Spoof your location: Replace your real IP address with one in another location, making it harder for sites to track your physical whereabouts and help you access geo-restricted content.
• Bypass local network blocks: Circumvent restrictions imposed by Wi-Fi administrators, government censors, and geo-fenced content.
• Prevent bandwidth throttling: Stop ISPs from slowing down your speeds when they detect specific activities like streaming or torrenting.
• Secure DNS requests: Direct web address lookups through private, encrypted DNS servers to prevent ISP-level logging and DNS leaks.
• Protect your IP address against DDoS attacks and IP tracking by hiding your actual home IP address during gaming or P2P connections.

A VPN can't:

• Protect the data you share: It can't stop companies from collecting data you submit directly or protect that data if those companies suffer a breach.
• Prevent phishing: It can't stop you from falling for phishing, text, or phone scams, although many providers now offer tools that help on top of the VPN.
• Make you completely anonymous: Web cookies, browser fingerprinting, and account logins can still track your identity online regardless of your IP address.
• Block hardware-delivered malware: It offers no protection against threats introduced directly to your device via physical hardware (like infected USB drives).
• Protect against digital forensics: It cannot shield files or logs stored directly on your physical device if it is accessed with forensic tools.
• Remove existing infections: It cannot retroactively clean malware or spyware already installed on your system.
• Stop OS-level zero-day attacks: It can't stop sophisticated, nation-state spyware that exploits underlying vulnerabilities in your device's operating system.

Methodology

We collected almost 30,000 user reviews published on Google Play Store since the beginning of the year for the four VPN providers featured in this report using the google_play_scraper library.

As individual reviews often address multiple topics (e.g. streaming and security), we broke reviews down into sentence-level units. This expanded our analysis to over 47,000 entries, with individual entries permitted to sit across multiple categories when suitable.

Each sentence was assigned to specific categories using regex keyword filtering, and analyzed for sentiment using a pre-trained BERT model that took into account the user’s star rating.

While all machine learning sentiment pipelines carry a minor margin of error, every VPN provider was subjected to the exact same pipeline to ensure consistency and fair comparison. Human review was also conducted throughout.

Data processing scripts were developed in Python with AI assistance, and all final outputs were manually reviewed.

I don’t often consider ditching Android, but GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused alternative, poses an interesting question: what security features am I missing out on by using Google’s mobile operating system (OS)?

GrapheneOS is an open-source mobile OS, designed for Google Pixel phones (and soon Motorola devices), that promises better security capabilities like improved sandboxing, exploitation protections, and more complete vulnerability patching.

But what compromises does GrapheneOS ask you to make for all this added security — and more importantly, are they worth the trade-off? I spent a month testing GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8 Pro to find out.

The first glance

Switching to an alternative, specialized OS is never going to be as simple as setting up a regular Android phone. That said, after only 10 minutes setting up GrapheneOS via the GrapheneOS website, I quickly found myself looking at something that, at a glance, resembled the Android I normally use.

The GrapheneOS home screen is near app-less, but it’s by no means unfamiliar. The software keeps the functionalities of the Android app drawer and quick control panel, and the menus are near-identical. App icons also retain a similar design to Android proper.

Yes, it’s a strange feeling to load up an Android phone that doesn’t have a single drop of ‘Google’ about it. There’s no Play Store, Gmail, or Docs to speak of in GrapheneOS by default. But, if anything, this is an instant reminder that this software aims to take control of your data from Google and give it back to you.

What’s more, since the choices are now yours when it comes to your data, you can always choose to reinstate the tools you need.

Getting to grips

And so, my first port of call when using GrapheneOS for the first time was to reinstall the Google Play Store from within the software’s own App Store. That might seem like a bonkers move, but here’s why doing so is crucial.

GrapheneOS’s App Store is limited. Aside from a few essentials, there’s little there. The key inclusions? Accrescent, a private app store primarily filled with open-source solutions to everyday phone uses, and the Google Play Store and Play Services.

But GrapheneOS sandboxes the Google Play Store and Play Services much like it would any other app. This means that, unlike on regular Android where, as several legal cases have proven, Google can pinch data as it likes, GrapheneOS restricts its background capabilities and general permissions.

This gives you control of all the usability features you’d see on the front end, such as notifications and location or network access, and there’s no need to worry about unwanted Google access behind closed doors.

What this also means is that, if you’re truly privacy-conscious, you can still install VPNs, antivirus software, password managers, and more that’d otherwise be out of reach if you relied on only what’s available directly.

Preventing overreach

One of the core principles of GrapheneOS is stopping unnecessary data sharing and reducing the risk of attacks that come from unnecessary data collection and coding. As a result, no app downloaded in GrapheneOS is quite what you’d get on regular Android, but thankfully, you’ll probably never notice — for two key reasons.

Key permissions, such as network or microphone access, are the user’s to permit before using an app, meaning you can ensure the apps you use have only the permissions they need. Meanwhile, background problems such as covert data sharing and storage risks are handled automatically by GrapheneOS.

In short, you can install all the apps you need, use them as normal, and know they’re not collecting or spreading your data in ways you’re unaware of. What’s more, aside from a few instances I’ll cover later, GrapheneOS is near flawless at policing this data.

If you’re after other, more technical protections, you can dive into settings. Aside from the regular Android options, you also get a new area called ‘Exploit Protection’. Here, you can set up your phone to protect against threats such as juice jacking (stealing data or installing malware via USB ports), or unwanted Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections

With all of these options available, what quickly became apparent is how integral such settings are to keeping security measures from impacting everyday use. GrapheneOS’ features were explicitly in my control to ensure apps functioned properly without overreaching, and background processes either needn’t be tampered with or could be set once and left. All without remotely impacting overall device efficiency.

I used GrapheneOS with a Pixel 8 Pro for a month, and I never once noticed my battery life drain more than usual, nor encountered any unexpected performance dips. This is despite me using the phone for gaming — enabling only the Google services required to do so — streaming, and everything else I’d normally expect to do on my device.

The inevitable compromise

Compared to other privacy-focused mobile solutions, GrapheneOS is without a doubt one of the least detrimental to your mobile experience. But it’s not perfect.

First off, if you want to use it, you need a Pixel phone. Ironically, despite the OS aiming to give you some distance from Google’s overreaching services, its devices are the only ones with the required security capabilities to install GrapheneOS properly. So if, like me, you’re used to literally any other Android device, you’re out of luck (though Motorola phones are supposedly joining the ranks soon).

Second, GrapheneOS is not flawless at everything. In the time I spent using the software, banking apps and Android Auto (once downloaded) proved to be near-impossible to get to work regularly. There’s a bunch of support available on the GrapheneOS website if you’re willing to tinker to fix issues, but again, it’s not quite the seamless compatibility you’d get with regular Android.

Would I make the switch to GrapheneOS?

From a month of using it, it’s easy to see why GrapheneOS is gaining traction. It’s super secure, even going as far as to patch VPN bypasses before regular Android gets the chance, and, unlike the best privacy-focused phones, using it with a premium Pixel phone means there’s far less of a drop in performance.

That said, its current restriction to Pixel phones is far from ideal for techies, and there’s still just enough incompatibility with certain types of apps to be a frustration day to day. Google Pay doesn’t work, leaving you needing to use alternatives such as Curve or a paired smartwatch; many banking apps limit functionality, and you’ll likely be left wondering if any app-related problems you encounter are down to the OS.

It’s also unfortunate that, as yet, there’s little reason not to make the Play Store your first install. Open-source app-lovers will find some comfort in the options available in the Accrescent store, but even so, there’s very little to choose between. Before you know it, your ‘Google-free’ phone is more of an Android device on a tighter leash.

So while GrapheneOS is brilliant in some aspects compared to most privacy solutions, it definitely leaves me wanting more. For now, it’s a ‘no’ from me.

Given time and wider compatibility, it’d be easy to recommend GrapheneOS given its added security capabilities in a world of growing threats. But with the availability of tools such as VPNs and antiviruses on regular Android, non-security-focused individuals are unlikely to see enough difference to warrant the current frustrations GrapheneOS can bring.

Imagine you’re a company. You’ve got sensitive data you need kept safe, and you’ve got a cloud service provider that’s protecting it. But do you know how far that protection goes, and at what point it’s your turn to take over?

The sheer number of data breaches due to human error, specifically database misconfiguration, suggests that many don’t know that they, not the provider, are responsible for securing all the data properly (or are unsure how to do it).

In this article, we’ll look into the shared responsibility model: what it is, why it’s relevant, its benefits, its limits, and what happens when companies disregard it.

What is the Shared Responsibility Model?

The Shared Responsibility Model is a security and compliance framework that defines the divided responsibilities of cloud service providers (CSPs) and their customers. This means that each has their own tasks in maintaining security.

In short, the provider is responsible for securing the underlying cloud infrastructure, but the customer needs to secure their own data, configurations, and any applications they may have.

In more detail, the provider takes care of:

• Physical security: Secures physical data centers and hardware.
• Host infrastructure: Secures and maintains networking, servers, and storage.
• Data protection: Provides encryption for data in transit and at rest, but does not secure customers’ data.
• Applications: Potentially provides app hosting platforms or tools, but does not secure customers’ apps.

On the other hand, the customer secures everything they own:

• Data protection: Secures, classifies, backs up, and encrypts its own stored information properly.
• Information access: Manages secure access to sensitive data, user accounts, permissions, and multi-factor authentication.
• Configuration: Sets up firewalls and network settings properly.
• Applications: Develops, maintains, and configures apps and their secure application codes.

The first step is defining it - now meet your provider

It would make things a lot easier if these rules and divisions were standardized, so when you understand them for one provider, you understand them for all. Alas, that’s not the case.

The above guidelines are general because the model somewhat differs between providers, and this lack of uniformity contributes to security gaps between the provider and the customer.

That said, make sure you understand your full responsibilities with each provider you use. For example, AWS says “customers should carefully consider the services they choose as their responsibilities vary depending on the services used, the integration of those services into their IT environment, and applicable laws and regulations.”

AWS makes a clear distinction between these responsibilities, saying that the customer is in full charge of managing the guest operating system, including updates and security patches. They must also configure the AWS-provided security group firewall and manage any other application software they own.

Microsoft further explains that responsibilities vary depending on where the workload is hosted: on software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), or in an on-premises datacenter.

However, “for all cloud deployment types, you own your data and identities,” it says. “You're responsible for protecting the security of your data and identities, on-premises resources, and the cloud components you control.”

Google Cloud’s ‘Shared Faith’

Google Cloud went with yet a third approach, differentiating between the shared model of other providers and its own “shared faith”:

Given that understanding the shared responsibility model properly in order to secure one’s data can be challenging, “Google believes that the shared responsibility model stops short of helping cloud customers achieve better security outcomes,” it writes. “Instead of shared responsibility, we believe in shared fate.”

The explanation of this approach focuses on “partnership” between the provider and the customer for increased security, as well as offering support and resources to help organizations secure data on their end.

The provider states that “a key component of shared fate is the resources that we provide to help you get started, in a secure configuration in Google Cloud. Starting with a secure configuration helps reduce the issue of misconfigurations, which is the root cause of most security breaches.”

Why does shared responsibility matter, and what happens when companies disregard it?

The shared responsibility model is meant to provide a division of security, compliance, and ethical duties. The number one goal is to cover all bases to ensure all security controls are managed, thus preventing security gaps and potential breaches.

Should a breach happen, this shared control system is theoretically designed to help contain it faster and more efficiently. I say “theoretically” because security gaps do exist, as we’ll see later.

Additionally, the model is designed to ensure that neither the provider nor the client duplicates security steps unnecessarily, wasting their time and effort.

Finally, the security and infrastructure cost is much lower than managing one’s own cloud, and the deployment speed is much higher.

Overall, the model provides the benefits of the public cloud without having to maintain its infrastructure.

According to AWS, this shared model “can help relieve the customer’s operational burden as AWS operates, manages and controls the components from the host operating system and virtualization layer down to the physical security of the facilities in which the service operates.”

However, failing to follow it for any reason carries significant risks:

• data breaches
• cyberattacks
• financial loss (ransomware, regulatory fines, remediation costs)
• legal liability and potential lawsuits
• reputational damage.

The first is the one you should be the most worried about: should it happen, all the others will follow.

Simple misconfiguration mistakes can lead to data breaches, and unfortunately, this happens all the time.

Cracks in the model

This is a good time to discuss the issues with this system, and the first one is certainly the problem of misunderstanding, which leads to overlooked responsibilities and, subsequently, to security gaps in the customer’s databases, hence between the provider and the customer as well.

This issue results in misconfiguration - the direct culprit for most cloud security breaches.

Understanding responsibilities in a constantly changing environment is difficult. Sometimes organizations try to follow it, but overlook something. Sometimes they’re not even aware that they have this responsibility, presuming it all falls on the provider. And often they fail to protect certain data that may seem less relevant, such as backup files.

Either way, the end result is the same: databases are left unprotected and exposed for all to see and download.

This is so far from being theoretical that it’s nearly the norm. Just recently, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler discovered yet another unprotected database, with 666,369 records, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and hashed passwords of the Tribeca Festival employees and attendees.

Potential consequences are massive and far-reaching for both the organizations that failed to protect the data and the individuals whose data was exposed.

Other issues in the shared model system include getting full visibility into the cloud environment, a lack of effective integrations that sustain and improve collaboration, challenges integrating tools and platforms, etc.

And if you’re managing security in a multi-cloud environment, that’s a larger beast to deal with.

Final thoughts

Protecting data is neither only the cloud service provider’s job nor that of the company. Rather, the job is divided between “mine” and “yours”. Generally speaking, providers protect what they’ve created, their house, so to speak. Customers are in charge of making sure all their own data and related services in the rented rooms are properly secured.

This is more easily said than done, given that, despite the many advantages of sharing this responsibility (including significant time and cost savings), mistakes happen a lot for many reasons, and the customers’ databases end up exposed. It’s a key issue to overcome if this model is to function successfully long-term.

In 2025, Hisense introduced RGB mini-LED to the market and since then, most TV brands have thrown their hat into the RGB TV ring. TCL, Samsung, LG and Sony are major names who have adopted the new technology, which was dubbed as being a potential ‘OLED killer’, thanks to boasting higher brightness and bolder colors, and claiming to deliver black tones to rival the best OLED TVs.

One of those new TVs has just entered our lab: the Sony Bravia 7 II. The more affordable model of Sony’s RGB TVs, sitting below the flagship Sony Bravia 9 II, the Bravia 7 II is priced fairly similarly to rival mid-range OLEDs. So, I decided to see how the Bravia 7 II would fare against the five-star LG C6, one of the best TVs I’ve tested in 2026 so far.

For these tests, both TVs were set to their respective, out-of-the-box Filmmaker Modes. For the Bravia 7 II, this was called Professional in SDR/HDR, and Dolby Vision Dark when displaying Dolby Vision content. On the LG C6, it's just the Filmmaker Mode.

Colors

Starting with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, both the Bravia 7 II and C6 demonstrated excellent color reproduction. In the opening scenes, the Lumas’ colors are richer and deeper on the C6, whereas they were brighter on the Bravia 7 II, which worked well for highlights on screen such as when Rosalina uses her wand.

While most colors were a bit punchier on the C6, I did find that yellows and golds actually appeared more vibrant and eye-catching on the Bravia 7 II, shown by the light from the fire reflecting in Rosalina’s hair and face.

Later scenes showed that the C6 had much bolder reds, shown in Mario’s hat and overalls. The C6’s colors also looked more accurate for the most part to me, though during an early scene where Mario and Luigi ride through the desert, I was drawn to the Bravia 7 II’s warmer color tone, with the desert sand looking more true-to-life on the Bravia 7 II, whereas it looked too red on the C6.

There was no denying though the C6’s color handling allowed for more texture and saturation within them, which worked well for this animation.

Moving to a movie with some real-life elements, Speed Racer, both TVs did a great job reproducing the movie’s over-saturated, cartoonish color profile. The ’60s-inspired, often-garish color of people’s outfits and the decor of the Racer family home really popped on both screens. S

imilar to Mario Galaxy, the C6 demonstrated deeper, bolder colors, while the Bravia 7 II showed brighter colors. In the scene in the park where Speed first meets Trixie when they’re both children, the red of Trixie’s dress is punchier on the C6, but the green grass is more vivid on the Bravia 7 II.

In some instances, the Bravia 7 II’s colors did look a little washed out, bordering on too-pale, which was exaggerated by comparing it directly to the C6’s color depth. Reds appeared slightly orange on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6, a similar story to what happened when I compared the Samsung S95/S99H with the G6, with the former showing orange-tinted reds.

Still, color reproduction is one of the selling points for RGB TVs, and while I felt that the Hisense UR8 (that company's own more affordable RGB mini-LED TV) didn’t stack up that well for color against the Samsung QN80H standard mini-LED when I tested the UR8 and QN80H side-by-side, the Bravia 7 II is putting up a solid fight against the LG C6 OLED (which is a superior TV to the QN80H).

Contrast/dark room viewing

The Batman is something of a torture test for TVs due to its low brightness, which means dark tones can look inaccurate. While OLEDs do a better job displaying it generally, recent models such as the LG G6 have over-brightened the dark tones at times — but the C6 has always handled it well, so it's a great test against the Bravia 7 II.

Watching scenes from the Batcave early in the movie, both TVs demonstrated strong contrast with a great balance between light and dark tones. The C6 had a higher perceived contrast as its black tones were much deeper, thanks to OLED’s pixel-dimming abilities, which meant the dark surroundings that contrasted with the overhead lights and lights from Bruce’s equipment create a higher dynamic range.

Still, the Bravia 7 II demonstrated strong backlight control, better than almost any standard mini-LED TVs I’ve tested this movie on. I also praised the Hisense UR8 for this, so it certainly looks like RGB TVs have unlocked better contrast and dark area control for LED TVs.

In the subway fight scene, the C6 once again proved to have the better black tones, accurately capturing the gloomy tone of the film. However, on the Bravia 7 II, more details such as Batman’s armor and the texture of the back wall were legible, thanks to showing them in slightly higher brightness (more on that in a while), compared to the C6.

The C6 itself showed the occasional sign of black crush compared to the Bravia 7 II. For out and out contrast though, I preferred the C6’s look, but the Bravia II was impressive.

Watching in a dark room, the C6 has the benefit of no backlight, meaning there was no ‘cloud’ effect, where a backlight is obvious over a dark scene. While the Bravia 7 II did show the odd moment of clouding, again it showed excellent backlight control compared to the competition.

There was also very little blooming in the scenes I tried; it only became obvious when a bright menu appeared on the bottom of the screen. Even the Bravia 7 II’s viewing angles were solid, not showing anywhere near the level of blooming a standard mini-LED TV would when watched way off-angle.

I decided to try one final black level test, using the scenes of space from Alien: Romulus. As expected, the C6’s black levels were inky and deep, delivering strong contrast against the stars.

Again though, the Bravia 7 II’s black levels were very good for a backlit TV, although there was some graying on occasion.

I did notice more blooming on the Bravia 7 II in this film however, most prominently whenever bright, white text appeared against black backgrounds. Still, the Bravia 7 II fared better with this movie than I thought.

Brightness

I'm about to get into brightness measurements, but there's a caveat. For my testing, I profile a Klein K-10A colorimeter and Jeti Spectral 15VA spectroradiometer for the best accuracy — and for some reason, I could not get the two’s Delta-E results to line up completely when preparing to measure the Bravia 7 II.

The same equipment worked fine with other TVs when I checked it, so it suggests there’s something odd with the 55-inch Bravia 7 II unit I tested, or perhaps with the way the equipment interacts with it.

Before my full review, we’re getting a different, 65-inch unit in, and I will measure it again — however, I'll provide the measurements I took so far for reference, because while the Delta-E wasn't perfect, it wasn't too far off, so they should be instructive. (And the LG C6 measurements have no issues.)

Brightness results for these two TVs are actually quite surprising. In Filmmaker Mode, the C6 registered 1,427 nits of peak HDR brightness in a 10% window, while the Bravia 7 II registered 1,218 nits peak HDR brightness in its equivalent Professional mode. I was surprised to see that the C6’s peak brightness was higher, as I thought an RGB mini-LED would hit much higher numbers than an OLED.

Looking at fullscreen HDR brightness (a 100% window), this is where the real difference lies. The C6 hit 247 nits in Filmmaker Mode, while the Bravia II registered 957 nits in Professional mode. This is a huge difference — this is the area where mini-LED in general trump OLEDs, though 957 nits is especially high, even

Seeing how this translates into real-world viewing, it shows mostly in bright scenes or scenes with a lot of white. Watching snow scenes from the Spears & Munsil demo footage, a shot of some horses in heavy snowfall is significantly brighter on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6, giving it a more realistic look.

Another shot of a cliffside during the daytime again looks much brighter on the Bravia 7 II compared to the C6. As the cliff takes up a large portion of the image, the Bravia 7 II, which is brighter in measured areas like 50%, 75% and 100% compared to the C6, means the image looks brighter overall on the Bravia 7 II.

In scenes from Speed Racer, the C6’s peak brightness means white highlights look glossier, such as on the shell of the Mach 5, and colors have more punch in highlight areas, such as the red M on Speed’s helmet. But as the Bravia 7 II has higher fullscreen brightness, the picture does look brighter overall on the Bravia 7 II.

Finally, using a scene in the white-sanded desert from Lawrence of Arabia, this is one movie where the C6 and Bravia 7 II are much closer in brightness in real-world movies. As Lawrence rests on a rock, the sands behind him look punchier on the C6. His metallic watch had slightly more pop too, although this was minimal.

When the sands take up more of the screen, as a stranger approaches Lawrence and his guide, the C6 once again had higher perceived brightness for me.

In this instance, it seems to be related to both TVs color profiles. The Bravia 7 II’s warmer color tone, giving it the brown/orange tint you expect from this type of picture mode, blends more with the desert, whereas the C6’s red tone gives the desert a little more pop.

In terms of bright-room viewing, where you're contending with reflections, the Bravia 7 II is better overall, although the C6 does handle brighter scenes well, such as the ones from Lawrence of Arabia.

With darker movies, the Bravia 7 II is the better option, but it is still prone to mirror-like reflections (the Bravia 7 II doesn’t have the same anti-glare screen as the step-up Bravia 9 II). However, they weren’t as noticeable as the mirror-like reflections from the C6’s even glossier screen.

A step forward, but not quite there yet

Whenever I’ve compared standard mini-LED and OLED, OLED has often come out on top, thanks to its richer black tones and contrast, more refined image and deeper, bolder colors. RGB has been touted as the latest big rival to OLED, and the Bravia 7 II gives the C6 OLED a really good fight.

When smaller RGB TVs first joined the market this year, with the tech itself only arriving in 2025, I thought prices would be inflated. While the C6 is the better priced TV right now, with a 55-inch model costing $1,499 / £1,499 / AU$2,995, a Bravia 7 II isn’t priced too differently, with a 55-inch model costing $1,799 / £1,799 / AU$2,995. (Though LG TVs tend to get more aggressive discounts than Sony TVs, so LG might retain the edge over time.)

For now, the C6 is still the TV I recommend between these two, because it offers the crisper look, bolder colors and more dynamic contrast I’m looking for, as well as a cheaper price. But, there’s a lot to like about the Bravia 7 II and if this is a sign of what’s in store for RGB TVs as the tech develops, OLED will need to watch its back.

Thinking of buying a new TV?

Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we'll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from image quality experts, and we'll recommend our three top TVs at that size for different prices.

Square Enix is gearing up to kick off a brand new era of Final Fantasy 14 with the release of the Evercold expansion. The beginning of the "Godless Realms Saga" story arc, it arrives after the epic conclusion of a decade-long saga, and follows on from Dawntrail which laid the groundwork for this new adventure.

Game producer and director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida has already teased the new threat players will face in the DLC, which I'm beyond excited for, as well as a number of incredible quality-of-life system updates, new content, and improvements to outdated gameplay features.

It's looking to be a mighty expansion that will hopefully draw in even more players when the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) officially hits Nintendo Switch 2 next month, but there are a few things I'm particularly eager to experience.

Buckle up, we're saving the world again

Final Fantasy 14 story spoilers ahead

After a decade of buildup, the Shadowbringers and Endwalker expansions saw the pieces of an overarching story finally come together and conclude the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga, resulting in one of the best Final Fantasy stories ever to be told.

While some events were wrapped up with resolute endings, some lingering questions were left open that presented new possibilities for the MMO, and it all starts with the Reflections: mirror worlds created by the Sundering, a great calamity that saw the Source shattered into 13 Shards.

Players have visited other Reflections in past expansions, but in Evercold we'll visit the Fourth Reflection, which was beset by a calamity of ice. This means an entire new world to explore, and from the trailers and concept art, it appears that SE is leaning heavily into the fantastical style I adored in Shadowbringers and Endwalker, and drawing from what looks like Norse mythology for inspiration.

A new, unexpected threat to all Reflections has also emerged with the recent release of Patch 7.5, the Solstice, which will bring about the natural Rejoining of the Shards and threatens to wipe out all life on the Source and its Reflections.

"In the time of the Ancients, Etheirys was divided across ten and three reflections to avert a terrible calamity," the expansion description reads. "Thus, for twelve thousand years did the star survive, and by its enduring hope did the Warrior of Light at last thwart its Final Days. Yet victory comes at a cost, and fate now demands its due.

"Faced with the new threat of the Solstice, the Warrior of Light is summoned to the Fourth reflection. But what do they hope to gain from wandering a world lost to ice?"

It's a bold move on the writers' part to thrust players back into a situation where they'll be dealing with the end of the world again; however, Dawntrail's subsequent patches have done a great job of building the foundations to make it a story worth telling.

I'm a FF14 player who looks forward to new story content most of all, and in Evercold, with the way the main scenario has been playing out, I'm certain our trip to the Fourth will open new avenues to explore and deepen the lore of the Ancients, which had been drip-fed to us over the years. In particular, the mystery behind the creation of Ethos, the key that opens up the path to these Reflections, and how this new ability to world-hop will play into the larger story.

Alongside these huge stakes, we've got a new "big bad" to face, the Winterers and the Ascian Halmarut, who are working in the shadows to prevent the Solstice.

Halmarut is unique in that she is sympathetic to mankind's current state and will do anything to ensure it survives the Solstice; however, her plan of controlled Rejoinings comes at the cost of mass death and destruction, believing that it's better to sacrifice some lives so humanity has a chance. But as the Warrior of Light, we can't go along with that idea.

Interestingly, unlike other Ascians before her, Halamurut encouraged the player to find their own way to deal with the Solstice. The Ascian was only introduced in recent patches, but given how superbly the writers developed its past villains (namely the best Final Fantasy baddie ever, Emet-Selch), I'm eager to see how SE will handle another multidimensional antagonist with a world-ending goal.

Raid content galore

FF14 has always excelled at crossover raid content, whether that be the Yorha: Dark Apocalypse Alliance raid series, developed in collaboration with Nier developers Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito, or the major raid series inspired by previous Final Fantasy games, like Final Fantasy 3, Final Fantasy 8, Tactics, and more.

Dawntrail's major Alliance raid series, Echoes of Vana'diel, wrapped up with the latest patch, a 24-player crossover celebrating Final Fantasy 6, that offered incredible bosses and a challenging yet rewarding experience.

For Evercold, SE revealed that the Alliance raid series will be based on the hit series Evangelion, titled "Ghosts of Desire", which acclaimed director and animator Mahiro Maeda will join as a special guest artist and designer. Like the Nier raid series, I'm expecting a high-quality experience with some unbelievable boss encounters that push the boundaries of the MMO; however, I'm more excited about the eight-player raid series SE has just announced at FanFest EU.

In the next expansion, FF7 Remake series director Naoki Hamaguchi and Yoshi-P took to the stage to unveil "Beyond the Lifestream," a FF7-themed raid series.

It feels like I've waited years for a proper FF7 collaboration, and the series will come just in time for Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the final installment in the remake series.

Ahead of Evercold's release, FF14 will also be getting a FF7-themed adjacent feature in the MMO's Gold Saucer on October 28, Keybound Brawler, a new mini-game that will reward players with a glamour bundle inspired by Tifa and Barret's outfits from FF7; a teaser for what's to come.

While SE has yet to share the full raid details, I'm expecting the usual crossover gear (I'm begging for Cloud, Sephiroth, and Aerith outfits, please!), elaborate boss fights inspired by some of FF7's most iconic moments; a confrontation with Safer-Sephiroth while a remixed medley of the FF14 and One-Winged Angel themes plays in the background is surely a given.

Raid maps are also always incredible in FF14; I remember my first time entering the first raid of the YoRHa series and being blown away by the scale of the set pieces and attention to detail, so with Hamaguchi's team working alongside the FF14 team, I'm anticipating something next-level; hopefully a recreation of the dystopian metropolis of Midgar?

It's time for improvements

FF14 has been running for more than a decade after it was rebooted into A Realm Reborn in 2013. Since then, the MMO has seen innumerable changes, including to Jobs, a huge graphics overhaul that modernized the game's visuals, not to mention the upcoming expanded character customization options that players have been yearning for.

But some things have always remained the same, primarily the battle system and activity features. With the release of Evercold, FF14 will receive a significant overhaul with the introduction of the 'Reborn' and 'Evolved' modes.

Reborn mode will be based on the current combat system and Job mechanics, while Evolved mode offers greater emphasis on "job identity", updating combat rotations and changing some abilities, and will only apply to existing Jobs.

It's an exciting new change, because while Jobs occasionally get rebalanced, this is the first time the game is getting a significant gameplay revamp that will allow long-time players to experiment with a new way of playing, and newcomers have two options at their disposal.

What's more, the expansion will also see an overhauled gear progression system with the introduction of 'Adventurer Activity.' In its current state, FF14 requires players to log in every day to complete daily roulettes to earn XP and accrue their weekly cap of 450 Allagan Tomestones, which are exchanged for high-level gear; however, this can be a downside, especially for players who can't log in every day.

With Adventurer Activity, this redesigned framework will change from a daily to a weekly-based reward system, remove the exhausting grind of completing daily roulettes, and instead offer more player freedom.

Adventurer Activity (which may look like a battle pass system, but Yoshi P insisted it absolutely is not!) will let players complete a series of missions to amass activity points instead, whether it be dungeons, PvP, Trials, and more, and SE is even considering allowing unearned points from previous weeks to be collected if players miss out.

This is perfect for people like me who sometimes don't really feel like running roulettes and also gives players a chance to explore other content they wouldn't normally engage with.

Final Fantasy 14: Evercold will arrive in January 2027 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X and Series S, and Nintendo Switch 2.

While AI is shaking up all industries, few have been impacted as visibly or as quickly as web design.

No longer can agencies charge for time on repetitive tasks that can easily be farmed out to AI. This creates a challenge for businesses that need to prove their value to clients that are now eyeing up cheaper, faster solutions to their needs.

I caught up with Itai Sadan, CEO and Co-founder of dedicated agency website builder Duda. We talked about Duda's new vibe coding tool, how it fits into his vision of the future of website building, and how he is seeing agencies demonstrate value through consultation and creative talent in 2026.

Firstly, tell us a little bit about the new AI tools you have rolled out across Duda. Why has Duda focused on launching these tools for agencies now?

AI has lowered the barrier to creating a website, but it has not solved the challenges agencies face when delivering websites at scale.

Agencies still need to produce work that reflects a client's brand, collaborate efficiently across teams, maintain quality standards, and do it all within a business model that supports healthy margins. We built our AI capabilities with those realities in mind, rather than adapting generic AI products that were never designed for professional web creators.

Our approach combines the speed of AI generation with the capabilities agencies already rely on in Duda.

Website generation turns a prompt into a production-ready starting point while preserving access to Duda's drag-and-drop editor, performance, SEO foundations, and the flexibility to refine every detail before launch, either by prompt or by simply clicking with a mouse, which is many times faster and more cost-efficient.

Duda Vibe expands those possibilities with an AI-native environment for creating websites and applications that remains fully connected to the Duda platform.

Agencies can collaborate with their teams and clients, white label the experience under their own brand, and operate with the predictable pricing and workflows they depend on to scale profitably. Our goal is to help agencies take full advantage of AI while strengthening the systems and processes that make their businesses successful.

AI tools, like those you have just rolled out, remove considerable admin work within agencies; should agencies be adjusting pricing models to reflect this?

I don’t think AI changes the fundamental value proposition of an agency. Clients aren't paying for time spent on repetitive tasks. They're paying for expertise that produces measurable business outcomes, whether that's more qualified leads, more appointments, or more online sales.

There's no shortage of website builders, and now even AI coding tools, built specifically for small businesses to use themselves.

What an agency brings is the ability to translate business goals into digital results. That includes understanding how a website should be structured, how it should be written to attract and convert visitors, and how it fits into a broader marketing strategy that may include SEO, paid advertising, social media, and other services. AI can accelerate many parts of that process, but the quality of the outcome still depends on the experience and judgment of the agency using it.

When I speak with agencies, they don't tell me they're working less. They tell me they're spending their time differently. The hours saved through automation are being reinvested into higher-value work, whether that's providing a more consultative client experience, expanding the services they offer, or helping clients adapt to new opportunities like AI search.

That's been Duda's philosophy from the beginning. We've always focused on removing the repetitive work so agencies can spend more time on the work their clients actually value.

As AI continues to improve efficiency, I believe that principle becomes even more important. In many cases, agencies will have an opportunity to deliver greater value than before, and their pricing should reflect the outcomes they create, not the time they save.

AI can make errors. For example, it may interpret a brief incorrectly, which could lead to significant additional work for agencies to fix. How much oversight do you recommend agencies give AI tools? Are there systems and processes you recommend to limit potential issues down the line?

We've tried to address that challenge at the platform level.

With Duda Vibe, for example, the planning stage interviews the agency before it begins generating anything. That additional context consistently produces better results because the AI is working from a clearer understanding of the project's goals and requirements.

We're also continuously improving the models behind our AI website generation so they can interpret briefs more accurately and produce websites that require less refinement before launch.

That said, AI should never be treated as a substitute for professional review. We recommend that agencies establish a quality assurance process for every project, just as they would with work created entirely by humans.

Duda's AI Copilot can assist with that review by identifying areas for improvement before a site goes live, while our Optimization Center continuously audits websites for common SEO, accessibility, and AI search optimization opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked.

AI is most effective when it's used throughout the entire workflow, not just at the point of creation.

I often compare AI to an exceptionally talented intern. Give that intern a clear objective, the right context, and the supporting materials, and they'll produce impressive work. Give them a vague brief, and they'll fill in the gaps with their own assumptions. That's why we encourage agencies to be as specific as possible.

Duda supports rich prompting with reference documents, images, and other project assets so agencies can provide the context the AI needs from the very beginning. The better the guidance, the better the outcome.

Vibe coding tools like Bolt of Lovable make it easy for anyone to build web apps, but lack agency-level infrastructure. How is Duda Vibe tailored to better meet agency needs compared to generic vibe coding tools?

Most vibe coding tools are designed to help an individual create an application as quickly as possible.

Agencies need much more than that. They need a platform that supports collaboration, client management, security, governance, and long-term maintenance across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of projects. That's the gap we set out to address with Duda Vibe.

Duda Vibe is fully integrated into the Duda platform, giving agencies a centralized workspace where they can manage every project, whether it was built with our traditional website builder or in Duda Vibe.

Teams can collaborate throughout the development process, clients can securely review their own projects through a fully white-labeled experience, and agencies can continue using the workflows they're already familiar with.

Beyond development, Duda Vibe includes the operational capabilities agencies depend on, including automatic version history, secure data storage, reliable hosting, and performance insights that help them monitor both site performance and AI visibility over time.

We're still in beta, but our roadmap is firmly focused on the needs of agencies and the way they work.

One feature I'm particularly excited about is bringing our popular inline commenting workflow to Duda Vibe. Clients will be able to leave feedback directly on the project, just as they do today in our website builder. Once the agency reviews and approves a request, Duda's AI Stack will understand the context of that comment and carry out the requested changes automatically. It's another example of how we're applying AI to reduce the operational overhead of working with clients, not just the time it takes to build an application in the first place.

Although great for quick builds, vibe coding apps can lack the architecture, stability, and security required for long-term success. How does Duda Vibe help agencies maintain web apps without creating technical debt?

The technical debt challenge with AI-generated applications usually isn't the code itself. It's everything required to run and maintain that application over time.

Many AI coding tools can generate a working prototype in minutes, but agencies are often left responsible for hosting, security, authentication, payments, infrastructure, and long-term maintenance. That's where technical debt begins to accumulate.

Duda Vibe takes a different approach. Every application is built on Duda's managed platform, so agencies have a foundation they can depend on long after the application is launched. Hosting, security, DDoS protection, high performance on metrics such as Core Web Vitals, platform updates, and other operational capabilities are built in from the start.

We also provide native services for capabilities like authentication, eCommerce, payments, and other backend functionality, allowing agencies to rely on platform services rather than AI-generated implementations for some of the most critical parts of an application. That reduces complexity, improves reliability, and significantly limits the technical debt that can accumulate over time.

Our view is that AI should accelerate development without shifting long-term maintenance risk onto agencies. The platform should handle the operational complexity, allowing agencies to focus on building applications that deliver value for their clients.

The ability to create custom widgets opens the door to creativity. What tips would you give agencies that want to use this feature to create ‘signature’ widgets to differentiate themselves from competitors?

Clients generally don’t know what their agency’s website builder can and can’t do out of the box, so it’s important for agencies to not get too caught up in individual widgets.

What makes a great website is how all of those widgets come together on the canvas and how well that collage of widgets meets the needs of the client. A great way to differentiate is to focus on the latter: the client’s needs.

For example, one agency building on Duda used the Widget Builder to generate an interactive carousel of 3D beer cans for a brewery. Not only did this look great, but it really elevated the overall design of the website. It was a nice touch that showed a level of care that I’m sure the client appreciated.

For agencies looking to stand out, I’d recommend double-clicking into the needs of the client. Breweries are in the hospitality industry, so a level of showmanship is beneficial online, but that same widget showing a rotating carousel of 3D toothbrushes would be odd to see on a dentist’s website. Understanding your client’s industry, then building widgets specifically for that vertical, is a great way to stand out and showcase expertise.

What do you think the biggest challenge will be for agencies when it comes to using AI over the next 12 months? How do you recommend agencies overcome these challenges? 

Agencies are being impacted by AI from dozens of different angles. Whether that’s changes to the way they work or the rise of AI search impacting how their clients get found, it’s an extremely adaptive and exciting time to be an agency. Staying ahead of it all is going to be the biggest challenge.

Take website building, for instance. The floor is going to continue to rise. Agencies need to be able to produce something better than if an owner asked Claude to create a website for their business—which is not as easy as it sounds.

Platforms like Claude are getting better each and every day. Whether that’s a better experience, a better product, or both, agencies need to be prepared to add something special that AI can’t offer by itself.

The hot topic — no pun intended — in haircare gadgets right now is heat. More specifically, the evils of heat, and how it's a one-way street to fried locks and frizz. So when I spoke to Dr Julie Chung, co-founder of haircare brand T3, I was surprised to discover she has a rather different take.

"Heat in general has been sort of demonized incorrectly," she tells me. "Women always think, 'Oh heat is terrible for my hair, I'm just gonna let it air dry, I'm gonna shower and just sleep on it.' Hair is actually in its most fragile state when it's wet. It tends to be much easier to break — that tensile strength is decreased and it's more likely to snap. And not to mention when you air-dry your hair, usually the hair is very frizzy and it tends to look even unhealthier if your hair is already in a dried out state."

That focus on hair health is nothing particularly new. "Women have always been obsessed with trying to find the healthiest option," Dr Chung tells me. "You know, people pursuing this idea of healthy heat is something I'm seeing [right now], but that's something that I've seen for 20 years."

However, the conversations have been buoyed up by the arrival of air stylers like the Dyson Airwrap. They've been heralded as the solution to all our heat-damage fears, but Julie is skeptical about that, too.

"The air styler category has grown quite big and there's this notion that air curling is better than curling iron curling, which I don't necessarily agree with," she continues. "I think it's right for some women in terms of ease of use, but I think curling irons can be just as healthy as air styling. It really depends on how many passes you go through in the hair, how adept the woman is with her styling."

So hot tools aren't inherently terrible, which is good news, because — as Dr Chung is at pains to point out — air stylers won't work for everyone. If your hair type isn't the kind to happily hold a curl that's been created by just a waft of a breeze, and you do decide to swap your air curler for a hot tong or enlist the help of a straightener to create ribbon curls, then it's worth finding a good one. Julie suggests paying attention to the kind of heat and how it's being delivered.

"The key there is ceramic. So in our Aire 360, for example, we have a ceramic coating instead of plastic because we know that ceramic is a better conductor of heat," Dr Chung explains. "We have a specific proprietary ceramic blend that evenly heats the plates without any hot spots. So it has a gentle delivery of heat along with far-infrared heat, which is a gentler heat as well."

Big air, better hair

What about hair dryers — those are safe, right? Wrong. Here, too, Dr Chung has opinions that seem to butt up against those of other makers, with their fixation on packing the most power possible into their dryers.

"The biggest secret sauce — which isn't even a secret because I talk about it so openly, but even now our competitors do not want to embrace — is the fact that you do not need heat to be at the highest setting, and you do not need the highest velocity," she insists. "This is something that stylists sometimes need in order to do a quick blowout very quickly, but the average woman cannot and should not be using high velocity heat every day."

Dr Chung talks about how people will often add a concentrator "without really thinking", then use a round brush and really focus the heat in, with the aim of smoothing out the hair. "It's extremely damaging when done repeatedly", she warns.

Similarly, if you regularly pop your dryer on full-blast when rough-drying your hair, so it feels "like a wind tunnel where your hair is flying all over the place", that's not great either — and not just because the wind tunnel effect will kick up static.

"It'll dry your hair, yes, but will make it extremely dry and not just dry your hair, but take all the moisture out of your hair without sealing the cuticle," she explains.

The brand has found an innovative way to avoid this, without sacrificing efficiency, and the concept dates right back to T3's debut product. "We had this idea called Soft Air, where we delivered a larger volume of air at lower heat, so it would dry your hair very, very quickly, but without stripping it of all its moisture."

She explains how the team shaped the concentrator and the barrel of the dryer so that the air wasn't expelled in a dense stream, but instead came out in a larger volume, occupying a larger space. The idea of Soft Air is that it could still dry hair efficiently, but without the need to max out on power or temperature, and when combined with ions helps to decrease static frizz.

I've been trying out one of the brand's dryers (the T3 Afar) and the air delivery feels noticeably gentler — almost unsettlingly so — and less concentrated than any other hair dryer I've tested. It's slower to dry my hair than the likes of the Dyson Supersonic Nural, but it does leave my locks feeling softer and with less frizz than usual. So maybe Dr Chung is on to something. Excuse me while I dig my curling tongs out of storage.

In a world where data leaks are a constant, misconfigured databases remain the number one cause, exposing sensitive data to anyone who knows where to look.

This unfortunately common human error leaves the affected individuals and organizations open to hackers, cyber threats, scams, and further data leaks.

Even now, as you read this, there are plenty of companies that forgot to, didn’t know they had to, or didn’t care to lock their databases, leaving them open to the wide web.

Defining misconfigured databases

When we talk about misconfigured databases, we talk about systems that somebody set up without appropriate security settings, leaving them public for all the Internet to see (and potentially exploit).

Access controls may be missing or given to too many people, and default passwords/configurations could be left unchanged by the user.

Additional common issues include giving full administrative control to users and apps where basic is sufficient, storing sensitive information in plain text, and disabling security logs (which prevents tracking unauthorized access).

Everyday Jane and Joe, unfortunately, have no idea how common this issue is – and it’s their data on the line. We’re talking about tens of thousands of major security breaches in a matter of years, and there’s no estimating how many publicly accessible databases are still out there. Here are just three of these many examples.

In 2026, researchers found that European cloud provider Nextcloud kept an unprotected database on the public internet, containing 367,000 records (8GB) of sensitive employee and client data.

In 2025, IMDataCenter, a Florida-based data hygiene, enhancement, and append services provider, was leaking 38GB of sensitive personal records. The unencrypted and non-password-protected database held 10,820 in total.

In 2024, sports analytics technology company TrackMan exposed sensitive customer data: 110TB and 31,602,260 records. The database had no password.

The Tribeca Film Festival case

Notably, the above-mentioned examples were the whitehat work of cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who recently uncovered a new data leak affecting the Tribeca Film Festival.

Fowler found four publicly accessible databases without passwords or encryption. These contained 666,369 records in total, timestamped from 2019 to 2026. Among press kits and marketing materials were also full names, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and hashed passwords.

Some of these are huge names in the film world, including famous directors, producers, and actors.

A found spreadsheet listed data obtained through device/user fingerprinting, such as user-agent data, device information, browser details, and source applications.

Fowler couldn’t say who exactly managed the databases, how long they had been public, or if anybody else had accessed them before him. This is often the case.

The issue of neglected backup files

Backup files often become forgotten, ignored, or simply deemed irrelevant, even when they contain a significant amount of potentially sensitive data concentrated in one place, aka a scammer’s treasure-trove.

Fowler describes these as some of “the most overlooked assets when it comes to data security.” While organizations often focus on protecting production systems, they put backups, exports, archives, or development environments on the back burner.

Yet, “backup files can become a single point of exposure if improperly secured,” the researcher warns.

The US case

One may think that it’s only private companies, perhaps smaller ones, that make these seemingly dumb human errors. And yet, the biggest breaches that happened as a result of misconfigured databases all belong to governments.

The United States is often cited as being at the top for these data incidents. Among other events, in early 2011, the Texas Comptroller’s Office revealed a breach of 3.5 million people’s personal information, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers. The office kept the information on a publicly accessible state server.

In late 2015, computer security researcher Chris Vickery found a database with 191 million voters’ information, 300 GB in total, available for all to see. The cause, you’ve guessed it, is an incorrectly configured database.

“If you know the IP address, boom, you can access all of it,” Vickery said. “No authentication, no password, no security whatsoever involved.”

In 2017, internet security firm UpGuard revealed that Vickery found a 1.1 TB-heavy database of the Republican National Committee (RNC) with personal details of nearly every registered voter in the U.S., collected on behalf of Donald Trump’s election campaign. It was publicly available for two weeks due to an improperly configured security setting.

The Brazil Case

Brazil's public sector has also seen a notable number of data exposures stemming from human error, not active hacking.

In 2018, cybersecurity researchers discovered a gigantic, openly accessible database with sensitive information of 120 million Brazilians, more than half of the population. A simple renaming mistake left the directory structure unprotected, which opened the database for viewing and downloading on the web.

2020 saw two significant leaks. Developers left database login credentials hardcoded and weakly encoded in the source code of the Ministry of Health’s official government website. The personal data and medical logs of more than 243 million people were left public for over six months.

Another leak that year exposed more than 16 million COVID-19 patients’ medical records after an employee uploaded a spreadsheet containing sensitive data on GitHub.

Potential consequences of misconfigured databases

The issues that could arise from misconfigured databases are manifold, with potential consequences hitting in waves years after the initial leak.

Businesses may see financial losses, regulatory fines, lawsuits, operational disruption, and reputational damage. Should hackers find these databases, they may demand payment to restore access, or they may sell the info on the black market.

For an individual whose data has been exposed, the consequences can be severe. Bad actors can abuse individuals’ personal data and financial details, and even use it to scam other people.

Let’s take the above-mentioned cases as examples. Publicly exposed internal data of a large festival could give criminals detailed info on the operations behind the scenes, as well as on the participants.

“This type of information could create privacy and security risks by revealing personal contact information that could be used for phishing, social engineering, identity correlation, impersonation attempts, or further reconnaissance of internal storage systems,” Fowler writes.

Many more people can be targeted with celebrity frauds, where scammers impersonate celebrities, using data as ammunition.

In the US voter data case, it’s not just a matter of each person’s individual data, but the sheer magnitude of the information concentrated into one database. This is very expensive and time-consuming for cybercriminals to do, but it’s incredibly useful for a wide range of fraudulent schemes.

For example, “if a group gets a hold of this, they have phone numbers for the rest of their lives to call,” Vickery said.

UpGuard argued that the fact “that such an enormous national database could be created and hosted online, missing even the simplest of protections against the data being publicly accessible, is troubling.”

“Beyond the almost limitless criminal applications of the exposed data for purposes of identity theft, fraud, and resale on the black market,” UpGuard writes. “The heft of the data and analytical power of the modeling could be applied to even more ambitious efforts – corporate marketing, spam, advanced political targeting.”

As for healthcare-related breaches, these databases can earn sellers a lot of money on the black market, given the amount and the sensitivity of personal information that can be exploited. The risks include identity theft, account takeovers, financial fraud, and creating additional profiles to scam others, indefinitely.

Cybercriminals can even blackmail patients and healthcare providers, typically asking for large sums of money.

Insidiously, the exploit could stay hidden, or the full scale of the consequences may not be visible right away, but weeks or even months later.

Shared responsibility model

Finally, despite the popular misconception, it’s not Amazon Web Services’ or Microsoft Azure’s duty to protect anyone’s databases. The provider secures the underlying cloud infrastructure, while the customer needs to protect their own data.

Based on the shared responsibility model, the customer must ensure the correct database configurations, securing all data properly.

Amazon writes that the customer assumes responsibility for any updates and security patches, as well as associated application software and the configuration of the AWS-provided security group firewall.

The chart below shows the Security “of” the Cloud versus Security “in” the Cloud.

Final thoughts

Unsecured databases are the number one cause of data breaches and leaks, spanning industries and governments, which many believe ‘should know better.’ These databases usually contain a variety of sensitive information, inadvertently exposed to the open internet, without any basic security measures being taken.

This makes them a juicy target for hackers, who may utilize them for ransomware, sell them on the black market, or use them for a variety of scams.

Proper database configuration is each database owner’s job.

The year 2030 bears a lot of weight – not only does it mark the end of the current decade, but it marks a major turning point for sustainability across several industries and nearly all countries. Of most relevance for this discussion are the carbon, emission and water neutrality goals that global companies have set themselves.

By 2030, Google intends to reach net zero, Microsoft wants to become carbon negative and Apple wants to make its entire footprint carbon-neutral, but these are all goals that were set as far back as 2019 and 2020.

A lot has changed since then, and nobody could ever have imagined just how much generative AI was going to blow up when ChatGPT launched in late 2022, let alone the impact that agentic AI continues to have.

With 2030 previously envisioned as some sort of a finish line, that deadline is now under immense pressure as hyperscalers expand at an incomprehensible pace just to keep up with cloud and compute demands. So can climate commitments that were designed before the AI boom survive the infrastructure demands it's created?

AI has fundamentally changes sustainability progress

AI's impact on the chips market is already well-reported. Omdia's PC and tablet research director Ishan Dutt explained to me that an ongoing "capacity reallocation" is currently pushing memory makers' "DRAM/NAND wafer capacity toward HBM and high-capacity DDR5 for AI data centers," which is of course constricting supply for consumer devices.

Even without being familiar with the intricacies of this shift, consumers are already acutely aware of the ongoings due to sharp rises in PC, smartphone and storage prices.

What I'm more worried about is the long-term sustainability of AI-related expansions – while mounting local opposition is already calling hyperscalers and developers out over intense electricity and water consumption, this doesn't begin to cover the longer-term impacts. Upcoming 2030 deadlines are a great opportunity to benchmark current progress.

I'll explore four key areas of this in further detail with the help of Google's Director of Sustainability for EMEA, Adam Elman: grid capacity, water consumption, the efficiency paradox and local socioeconomic impacts.

The grid is the first bottleneck

In our exclusive interview, Elman acknowledged that recent "hyper-growth" has strained progress toward 2030 goals, but for Google in particular, the targets were intentionally "ambitious" to "push the frontiers of what is possible in energy systems and data center operations."

I questioned recent shifts in the trajectories of many companies' sustainability reports, including but not limited to Google's, such as spikes in energy consumption and emissions. Elman warned me that "the path to achieve these ambitions is not linear," implying that companies will constantly make adjustments as the landscape evolves.

Google saw a 37% rise in annual electricity demand, but still succeeded on 100% matching with renewable energy purchases to maintain momentum toward its goal. Amazon also saw a 16% rise in its last-year total emissions, and a 34% rise in purchased electricity emissions.

These figures are widely reported in publicly available sustainability reports, but I asked Elman whether companies should be more transparent about the finer details. He agreed that being open "about the complexity of the energy transition" amid this turbulent AI era is "the right thing to do," noting that this honesty can also help "drive the policy, market and technology developments needed to unlock an abundant clean energy future."

The company also stresses the importance of distinguishing between global annual offsets and true local grid-level hourly matching so that customers, investors and policymakers can understand the challenges.

Global warming is highlighting water pressures

I also asked whether water self-sufficiency is a realistic goal amid rising global temperatures, to which Google's response was overwhelmingly positive. Data center projects can follow one of many routes to reduce their impacts, including adopting closed-loop systems or using air cooling where that may be more suitable.

To relieve pressure on local water tables, Elman also told me that companies can opt to use recycled wastewater in closed-loop systems to get all the benefits of effective water cooling without consuming drinkable, fresh water.

Similar to energy reporting, Google supports local, site-level water reporting so that local citizens and utility companies can better understand the demands of individual campuses.

Efficiency drives total reductions

The reality is that emissions will inevitably rise as hyperscalers built out more and more data centers, but Elman told me that prioritizing absolute reductions or improving efficiency would be a false dichotomy: "True leadership requires prioritizing both absolute reductions and massive efficiency improvements."

Efficiency is an important part of the equation, and decoupling compute growth from resource consumption means companies can understand progress.

I asked about installing smaller, hyperlocalized data centers as a measure to tame local opposition, which I'll also explore below, but from an energy standpoint, Elman reminded me that larger facilities are generally more efficient because they can use large-scale cooling systems and support utility-scale energy agreements.

With ideas now starting to circulate around positioning data centers in the sea or as far as space just to improve thermal and power efficiency, Elman admitted that technical feasibility and practical implementation are two, very different things.

Google is now one of a growing list of companies looking at low-Earth orbit data centers, with Project Suncatcher observing an 8x energy per unit area increase compared with terrestrial solar panels. Prototype TPUs are set to arrive as soon as 2027, but as for wide-scale deployment, we're likely years or decades off the real deal – if at all.

Responding to local opposition

Public opposition is also on the rise amid wide-scale and local sustainability concerns, with many US states and cities already having imposed temporary memorandums to ban new projects as they get to grips with policies.

Google's EMEA Director of Sustainability told me that data center operators need to change how they've perceived, shifting from resource consumers into "supportive community anchors."

Some measures that Google suggested including paying for grid upgrades to protect local households from rising energy bills and supporting water projects to offset consumption. It's also not uncommon for companies to offer other local rewards to encourage citizens to accept their plans, like job opportunities, training schemes and other educational funding.

Is 2030 still a finish line, or the biggest test?

Ultimately, 2030 should not become an excuse for hyperscalers to withdraw or reframe the targets they set before the AI boom – instead, it should serve as an accelerant to encourage progress despite the challenges.

The technology has not made those earlier commitments obsolete, but AI has exposed how some earlier measures might not be so effective anymore.

Key to meeting these targets is openness and transparency around reporting for the purpose of policymaking, but it's also clear that one route won't solve the problem. Instead, success will come from endless components that will all add up to a meaningful result, be it driving efficiency, encouraging local support, responding to grid challenges, changing water habits or something else.

Whether or not the 2030 goal remains a finishing line is yet to be seen, but there's clear optimism that it's still a realistic goal for many.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing your online presence to get mentioned, cited, or recommended by AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.

It's no easy feat, but AEO tools can give you the insight you need to do this.

I've tested seven of the top AEO tools on the market, and HubSpot earns my top spot. This is thanks to its deep diagnostic tools, AI analytics, and CRM integration – it's also affordable, making it ideal for everyday use.

But an AEO tool isn't one thing. It's a label stretched across very different jobs.

Some tools only tell you whether AI mentions your brand. Some find the questions your customers are asking these platforms. Some show you which websites they trust and pull from. Others write and optimize the content that gets you picked in the first place.

I tested each tool the way you'd use them in real work. Same setup, the same kinds of prompts, the same questions put to each tool. I scored each based on tracking depth, setup time, insight clarity, ease of use, and value for money.

Below, I dive into my experience with these tools, giving you all the information you need to pick the best one for you.

Key takeaways

• If AI doesn't mention you, a competitor gets the customer: More buyers now ask AI before they choose.
• "AEO tool" isn't a single category: It spans four jobs: tracking visibility, finding prompts, showing trusted sources, and creating content.
• Optimizing for AI is still just SEO: There's no secret algorithm, and no tool is a shortcut past the fundamentals.
• Check what marketing pages hide: Data accuracy, engine coverage, prompt caps, and the real bill after add-ons.
• The top picks: HubSpot for a free, CRM-connected start, Mentions for agencies and white-label reporting.
• Best for creating content: Surfer writes and optimizes for Google and AI in one draft.
• Deep pockets, specific needs: Scrunch tracks crawler traffic, Brand Radar researches any brand, AirOps runs content workflows.

The 7 best AEO tools in 2026

HubSpot AEO

A natural AEO tool for HubSpot users

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4/5
• Setup time-4.5/5
• Insight clarity-4.5/5
• Ease of setup and use-4/5
• Value for money-4.5/5

Pros

• Free 28-day trial
• Recommendations come as a priority task list
• Pulls real buyer prompts from your CRM
• Affordable plans
• Tracks which AI sent each lead

Cons

• CRM prompts locked to Pro/Enterprise plans
• Standalone caps at 25 prompts monthly
• Still in beta; content tools unfinished

HubSpot launched its AEO tool in April 2026, built on tech from xFunnel, an Israeli startup it acquired in late 2025.

The pitch is simple. Track how ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity describe your brand, then tell you what to fix. For a first version, it handles the tracking well. The fixing part is where it gets more interesting, and where the limits start to show.

Why I picked HubSpot AEO

A lot of AEO tools stop at the scoreboard. Here's your visibility score, now good luck. HubSpot goes one step past that, and that step is why it earns a spot here.

Its recommendations come with a priority and a status.

Create a product page on this topic. Get into these two Reddit threads. Write this listicle.

It reads like a task list instead of a chart, which is rarer in this category than you'd think.

The CRM connection is the other real edge. On the Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise plan, HubSpot builds your prompt list from actual sales calls, support tickets, and site searches, so you're tracking questions your buyers really ask instead of ones you assumed they would. If you already run your business inside HubSpot, that's a head start no standalone tool can match.

However, that CRM trick is locked to Pro and Enterprise. Buy the $50 standalone plan, and you lose it, which means the cheapest version is also the least clever one. Plus, it's still in beta.

The content-creation features aren't fully out, so for now it tells you what to write without helping you write it. Handy, but not the finished product HubSpot is clearly building toward.

Best features

• Recommendations tagged with priority and status
• AI referral attribution built into HubSpot's source tracking
• A free AEO Grader for a quick first look, no signup needed
• CRM-powered prompts on Pro and Enterprise plans, pulled from real buyer conversations
• Citation breakdown by content type (blog, listicle, product page, homepage) and by owned, earned, or peer

Pricing

$50/month standalone, or $45/ month billed annually. It's free inside Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise, so if you already pay for either, the AEO tool adds nothing to your bill.

Mentions

Advanced AEO tools for agencies

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4.5/5
• Setup time-4.5/5
• Insight clarity-4/5
• Ease of setup and use-4.5/5
• Value for money-4/5

Pros

• Fastest, most automated setup I tested
• Tracks eight engines, most on this list
• White-label reports built for client work
• Ties AI visibility to real traffic

Cons

• Cheapest plan tracks only three engines
• No free plan; starts at $49
• 25 prompts on entry plan
• Recommendations lighter than a full platform

Setting up most AEO tools feels like a chore. You pick competitors, write prompts, choose engines, and hope you guessed right. Mentions does almost all of that for you.

You hand it your domain. It scrapes your site, builds a "brandbook" of your offerings, pain points, and competitors, then drafts a starter set of prompts based on what it found. A minute of clicking and you're looking at a live dashboard. Of everything I tested, nothing got me to real data faster.

Why I picked Mentions

Two things pushed Mentions onto this list: how much it watches, and who it's built for.

On coverage, it tracks eight engines instead of the usual three. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Gemini, DeepSeek, Llama, and Google's AI Overview. If your buyers are asking Claude or Grok and your tool only checks ChatGPT, you're seeing half the picture. Mentions sees the whole thing.

The other half is reporting. This is the tool I'd actually hand a client. The monthly reports are clean, shareable, and on the Agency plan, fully white-labeled with your own domain and logo. There's a pitch workspace for winning new business and unlimited client sites. If you sell AEO as a service, that beats another pretty chart.

Underneath, the tracking holds up. Visibility, sentiment, and share of voice, switchable in a click. A per-prompt view that shows the exact AI answer and the sources it pulled from. A Sources page that tells you whether the pages AI scrapes actually mention you, which is the question that matters. And an AI traffic view that connects visibility back to real visits, so you can prove it drove something.

Now the catches. That "every model" promise has fine print. The $49 Starter plan tracks only three engines. You need the $99 Pro plan before "all LLMs" really means all of them. Plus, 25 prompts on the entry plan run out quickly once you get serious.

One more thing worth saying plainly. Mentions watches and advises; it doesn't act. It hands you a tidy Kanban board of fixes (write about pricing, chase this site for a mention), but you're still the one writing and publishing. That's fine, as long as you know you're buying a sharp scoreboard, not a content team.

Best features

• Switch between visibility, sentiment, and share of voice in a click
• Tracks eight AI engines, including Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek
• Kanban insights board that prioritizes your next fixes
• Sources page showing whether the pages AI scrapes actually mention you
• White-label monthly reports with your own domain and logo (Agency plan)
• AI traffic analytics tying model visibility back to real site visits
• Plain-English agent that answers questions and builds reports on demand

Pricing

Mentions runs four flat plans: Starter at $49 a month (25 prompts, 3 engines), Pro at $99 (50 prompts, all engines), Business at $199 (100 prompts), and Agency at $399, which adds white-labeling, a pitch workspace, and unlimited client sites.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Detailed AI visibility reports

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4.5/5
• Setup time-4/5
• Insight clarity-4/5
• Ease of setup and use-4/5
• Value for money-3.5/5

Pros

• Real sentiment and perception analysis
• AI data sits beside your SEO
• Daily prompt tracking, ChatGPT and Google

Cons

• Costs stack fast with seats/domains
• No real free trial

Semrush joined the AEO party last year and has now launched a scaled-up version of the AI Visibility Index in June 2026. It's less a standalone tracker than an AI layer bolted onto the suite you already know.

The good thing here is that your AI visibility sits right next to your rankings, backlinks, and site audits. What sets it apart from the pure trackers is how hard it digs into why AI describes your brand the way it does, not just whether it mentions you at all.

Why I picked Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Plenty of tools tell you whether AI mentions you. Semrush is the one that's actually good at explaining why.

Its perception and "key business drivers" reports break down the specific trust factors AI attaches to your brand (a feature that works without a subscription, say, or a product that runs quietly) and show where a competitor owns a factor you don't.

So instead of "our visibility is low," you get "we lose a whole cluster of prompts because rivals own the access-control angle and our pages never mention it." One is a number. The other is a task you can hand to a writer.

Because it lives inside Semrush, the AI data sits next to everything else. You can jump from an AI gap to the keyword behind it, check whether LLMs can even crawl the page (there's a dedicated AI-readiness site audit), and add any prompt to daily tracking across ChatGPT and Google's AI answers in one click.

Now the trade-offs.

The pricing looks friendlier than it plays out. $99 a month sounds fine until you notice it covers one domain, one user, and 25 prompts. Add a teammate and that's another license. Add domains or prompts and the real bill climbs toward a few hundred, sometimes well past a thousand. Plus, there's no proper free trial, only demo reports you can browse.

Like most of this list, it watches and advises. It will tell you what to fix and even hands you AI-generated strategy ideas, but you're still the one writing the content.

Best features

• AI visibility score out of 100, tracked over time
• Daily prompt tracking across ChatGPT and Google's AI answers
• Competitor gap analysis that sorts by the topics you're missing
• Questions tab surfacing real user queries for content ideas
• "Key business drivers" showing which trust factors rivals own
• AI-readiness site audit that flags issues blocking LLM crawlers

Pricing

The AI Visibility Toolkit is $99 a month per domain (billed annually), which buys one domain, one user, and 25 tracked prompts across five engines, plus the AI-readiness site audit.

If you want AI visibility bundled with the full SEO suite, Semrush One starts around $199. There's no standard free trial, though you can browse demo reports first.

Surfer

Purpose built AEO tool for writers and content teams

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4/5
• Setup time-4/5
• Insight clarity-4.5/5
• Ease of setup and use-4.5/5
• Value for money-3.5/5

Pros

• One draft scored for both Google and AI
• Mention gap turns visibility into outreach
• Tracks five engines, including Claude
• Polished and easy for writers to use

Cons

• AI Tracker is a paid add-on
• $95 add-on for 25 prompts
• AI drafts still need real editing
• Keyword and topical tools feel lighter
• Over-optimizing the score reads robotic

Surfer is a content editor first and an AI tracker second, and its whole idea is that you write one article and optimize it for Google and AI search at the same time, in the same document, against two live scores climbing side by side.

Why I picked Surfer

Surfer's content editor is the best reason to use it, and it's the part that quietly solved the problem this whole list keeps circling.

As you write, an SEO score (how well you match what's ranking in Google) and an AI search score (how well you cover what AI answers pull from) keeps working.

Here, a checklist nudges you to answer the main question in your first 100 words, because Surfer's own data says that's where a large share of AI citations come from. Plus, Surfy, the built-in assistant, already knows your article, your guidelines, and your voice, so its rewrites don't read like generic chatbot filler.

Then there's the AI Tracker, which is where Surfer stops being unique and becomes merely good. It watches your brand across five engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews), scrapes the actual answers a real user sees rather than pinging an API, and reads sentiment.

Surfer also added a one-click jump from that gap straight into the editor to write the fix, which no rival quite matches.

But the content engine has limits too. The AI draft gets you most of the way, but it does need real editing. Lean too hard on the content score and your writing turns robotic. The built-in keyword and topical tools are lighter than Ahrefs or Semrush.

Still, if your actual job is producing content that has to win in both Google and AI, Surfer is the one tool here that helps you write it, not just grade it.

Best features

• Topical map that visualizes your coverage and the gaps
• An LLM-optimized content format built for AI citations
• AI Tracker across five engines, with sentiment on higher tiers
• Mention gap showing the exact sites competitors own and you don't
• Google Docs and WordPress integrations writers actually keep open

Pricing

Surfer's core plans run from about $99/ month for Essential ($79 annual, 30 content-editor articles) up to $219 for Scale, with a custom Enterprise tier above that.

The AI Tracker is a separate add-on at around $95 a month for 25 prompts, and the full five-engine, daily-refresh, with-sentiment version sits on the higher tiers.

Ahrefs Brand Radar

Instant competitor and market research

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4/5
• Setup time-4.5/5
• Insight clarity-3.5/5
• Ease of setup and use-3.5/5
• Value for money-2.5/5

Pros

• Prompts built from real search data
• Zero setup, instant data on any brand
• Adds web, Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok tracking
• Research any competitor without owning it
• Free demo before you pay

Cons

• No Claude or Grok tracking
• Lacks sentiment analysis
• Costly plans

Here's the dirty secret of AEO trackers. Nobody actually knows what people type into ChatGPT, because that data is locked away. So most tools invent prompts that sound plausible and hope they match reality.

Ahrefs took a different route. Brand Radar builds its questions from its real keyword database, the actual things people search on Google, then runs those through the AI engines. It's still a proxy, and Ahrefs says so plainly. But it's a proxy built on real search behavior instead of pure guesswork.

Why I picked Ahrefs Brand Radar

Type in any brand, yours, a competitor's, or one from an industry you've never touched, and Brand Radar shows its AI visibility instantly. The reach is wide. In one place, you see how six AI engines answer, which URLs they cite, how your branded search volume is trending, who mentions you across the web, and which Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and TikToks are shaping the conversation.

Then there's the data. Where other trackers guess at prompts, Brand Radar pulls from more than 200 million real search queries and weights everything by actual search volume. A mention on a query thousands of people search counts for more than one nobody asks. That grounding is genuinely different.

Now the honest part, because there's plenty of it.

Start with what it can't see. Six engines sounds broad until you notice Claude and Grok aren't on the list. If your buyers use either, that's a blind spot. There's also no sentiment analysis, so you learn whether AI mentions you, not how it describes you. Every cheaper tool here does that much.

The data grounding cuts both ways, too. Google searches aren't AI prompts, and independent tests have flagged accuracy gaps (one found three ChatGPT mentions where there were actually over a hundred). So, treat the share-of-voice numbers as a directional read, not gospel.

It's a research tool, full stop. It shows you the map, then hands the walking back to you. Ahrefs sells a separate agent for this called “Agent A”.

Best features

• Zero setup; the data is already collected and waiting
• Free demo queries so you can try before buying
• Adds web mentions, Reddit, YouTube, and TikTok visibility
• Analyze any brand, competitor, or whole industry instantly
• Prompts built from real Google search data, not synthetic guesses
• Impressions and share of voice weighted by actual search volume

Pricing

Brand Radar is an add-on, not a standalone. Each AI engine costs $199 a month, or $699 for all six bundled, and that sits on top of a required Ahrefs base plan (from $129 a month for Lite).

Scrunch

AEO tools for technical and enterprise teams

Specifications

• Tracking depth-4.5/5
• Setup time-3.5/5
• Insight clarity-4/5
• Ease of setup and use-3.5/5
• Value for money-3/5

Pros

• Tracks the AI bots crawling your site
• Ties AI citations to real conversions
• Both sides: answers and crawler traffic
• Sentiment and citation analysis included
• Enterprise-grade security and integrations

Cons

• Best features locked to Enterprise
• Only four engines on entry
• Too complex for small teams

Here's a question no other tool on this list really answers. When an AI crawler visits your site, what does it actually see, and does that visit ever turn into a customer? Scrunch is built around that question.

It tracks the bots hitting your pages, ties their visits to real referral traffic and conversions, and can even serve those bots a cleaner version of the page. It watches the plumbing of AI search, and that makes it the most technical tool here and the most enterprise.

Why I picked Scrunch

Scrunch connects three things other tools keep separate. Where you show up in AI answers. Which AI crawlers actually hit your site and which pages they read. Plus, through a GA4 hookup, what referral traffic and conversions those citations drove.

So when a comparison page pulls a handful of Perplexity sessions that convert well while a blog post pulls more ChatGPT traffic that converts nothing, you know exactly where to push.

Then there's AXP, its most distinctive bet and the one that needs the most caveats. It sits at your CDN and serves AI bots a stripped-down, machine-readable version of a page (Scrunch's own example crushes a pricing page from roughly 124,000 tokens to about 1,300).

A cleaner page is easier for a model to parse and cite accurately. It's genuinely forward-looking. It's also Enterprise-only, still in limited release, and needs CDN-level setup, so treat it as a reason to keep an eye on Scrunch, not a button you'll press next week.

Best features

• Agent traffic analytics showing which AI bots crawl you
• GA4 integration that ties AI citations to conversions
• Citation drill-down to find the exact pages for outreach
• Sitemaps view that scores every page for AI performance
• AXP serves AI bots a compressed, machine-readable page (Enterprise)
• Enterprise-grade security: SOC 2, SSO, and RBAC

Pricing

Scrunch starts at $250 a month for the Core plan, covering 125 prompts across four engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI, and Copilot).

Higher tiers add more prompts and multi-client support, while the headline features- broader engine coverage, the AXP delivery layer, full agent-traffic analytics, and API access- sit behind a demo-gated Enterprise plan.

AirOps

AEO tool built for running content workflows end to end

Specifications

• Tracking depth- 4.5/5
• Setup time-2.5/5
• Insight clarity-3.5/5
• Ease of setup and use-3/5
• Value for money-3/5

Pros

• Closes the loop from insight to measurement
• Quill agent turns data into content campaigns
• Tracks sentiment and third-party citation sources
• Playbooks run fixes across hundreds of pages
• Publishes finished content straight to your CMS

Cons

• Steep learning curve, expects SEO expertise
• Setup measured in weeks, not minutes
• Overkill for solo or small teams

AirOps is a full content operations platform that happens to do AEO. It watches how AI describes your brand. But then it wants you to build playbooks, run them across hundreds of pages, refresh stale posts, and push the finished article straight to your CMS.

That range is both the draw and the warning. AirOps does more than almost anything else on this list. It also asks more of you than almost anything else on this list.

Why I picked AirOps

AirOps is the only tool here that will actually build and publish the fix for you. Everything else on this list points at the problem and leaves the work to you. AirOps hands you the machinery.

Here's how that plays out. You notice AI keeps describing your app as slow, or skipping you on privacy questions. You open Quill, the platform's AI agent, and just talk to it. It pulls the sentiment data, finds the prompts driving the problem, and helps you spin up a page-refresh campaign. The campaign runs, publishes, and then tracks whether your citations actually climbed. Insight, action, and proof, in one place.

The tracking underneath is deep, too. It follows sentiment, so not just whether you show up but how you get described. It maps which third-party sites (Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn) are shaping your answers. And its Page360 view stacks AI search, SEO, and citations together, so you can catch a page that gets crawled constantly but never cited.

So why isn't it near the top of this list? Because all that power comes with a tax.

AirOps expects you to already know SEO. It hands you a workflow builder, not a wizard, and if you show up without a plan, you'll sit staring at a blank playbook. Quill softens that, but setup still runs in weeks, not minutes.

Then there's the bill. AirOps charges by the task, so every AI step in every workflow costs you, and a single article can burn hundreds of tasks. Worse, the paid plans leap from about $200 a month to about $2,000 with almost nothing in between. Outgrow the cheap plan, and you don't take a step up; you have to climb a mountain.

For an agency refreshing hundreds of client URLs, that math can work. For a solo marketer or a small team, AirOps is a Formula 1 car booked for the grocery run.

Best features

• Sentiment tracking, how AI describes you and not just whether
• Quill, an AI agent you chat with to launch campaigns
• Playbooks that apply one fix across hundreds of pages
• Third-party citation tracking across Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn
• Native CMS publishing to WordPress, Webflow, Sanity, and more
• Page360 view stacking AI search, SEO, and citation data in one screen

Pricing

AirOps starts with a free single-user tier, then the paid plans jump from a Solo plan around $200 a month to a Pro plan around $2,000, with almost nothing in between. Billing is usage-based, so you pay per task (each AI step counts), and the paid tiers are quote-based.

What are AEO tools?

AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. It's the work of getting your business mentioned, cited, or recommended when someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google's AI features a question you could answer.

AEO tools are the software that supports that work. These tools generally do the following tasks:

• Track your visibility: Show you whether, and how often, AI engines mention your brand, where you rank in the answer, and how you stack up against competitors.
• Find the questions people ask: Surface the real prompts your customers are typing into AI, so you know what your content needs to answer.
• Show which sources AI trusts: Reveal the websites, pages, and threads AI pulls from when it answers, so you know where to show up, not just on your own site.
• Create and optimize the content: Help you write and structure pages, so both Google and AI are more likely to pick them.

Importantly, Google has publicly stated that optimizing for its AI search features is still just SEO. There's no secret AI algorithm that a special tool unlocks.

So treat every tool in this guide as what it is: a way to do the fundamentals faster, see them more clearly, or prove they're working.

How I tested these AEO tools

I used each of these AEO tools the way you would on a real project, then scored what it was like to live with.

These tools don't all do the same job. Some track your visibility, some research questions, some write content, some watch your crawler traffic. So I didn't hold a tracker to the same bar as a content platform. I judged each one on how well it does the thing it's built to do.

Every tool got a score out of five in five areas:

• Tracking depth: How much the tool actually captures. Depending on what it's for, that means prompts, brand mentions, citations, competitors, content performance, historical trends, and how many AI engines it covers. More depth, higher score.
• Setup time: How long from signing up to seeing something useful. Tools that got me to real data fast scored well. Tools that made me sit through long onboarding or heavy manual setup scored lower.
• Insight clarity: How easy the findings are to read. Could I look at the dashboard, the reports, and the recommendations and know what to do next? Or did I have to decode it first?
• Ease of setup and use: How the tool feels once you're past setup. Getting around, managing projects, running everyday tasks, pulling reports, and how steep the learning curve is.
• Value for money: What you get for the price. I looked at the limits, the features, and who each tool is for. An expensive enterprise platform isn't bad value if it earns its price for a big team, and a cheap tool isn't good value if the entry plan can't do anything useful.

The overall score is the average of those five. I also weighed what each tool is for, so a specialist tool didn't lose points for skipping features it was never trying to have.

What to look for in an AEO tool?

The marketing pages all look clean. The complaints show up later, once you're paying. Here's where these tools actually crack, and what to check before you input your credit card.

• Accuracy you can trust: This is the number one gripe by a wide margin. The data often doesn't match reality. Ask how the tool collects data (does it read the real answer a user sees, or just ping an API?) and how often it re-runs each prompt. Treat any single-snapshot score as a rough estimate, not gospel, and don't panic over small week-to-week swings.
• Real prompts, not made-up ones: Plenty of tools invent plausible-sounding queries and call it monitoring. That's sampling with a confidence problem. Check that you can add your own prompts, and better still, feed in the real questions your buyers ask (from your search console, sales calls, or support tickets).
• Engines your buyers actually use: Most tools quietly track ChatGPT and little else. If your customers lean on Gemini, Claude, or Grok, confirm coverage before you pay, and confirm it's on the plan you're buying.
• A score you can act on: A lot of dashboards look impressive and tell you nothing to do next. If the tool can't show you the why behind the number (the sentiment, the prompts, the sources feeding the answer) and a clear next step, you're paying to watch a chart move.
• The real monthly bill: The headline price is the tease. Watch the prompt cap (10 to 25 runs out fast), per-seat fees, per-domain fees, usage-based task billing, and add-ons.
• Tracker or doer, and does it fit your stack: Decide whether you need something that watches or something that writes, because few tools do both well. And favor one that plugs into what you already run.

Buy for the job in front of you. The worst subscription is the impressive one you never had a use for.

Quick AEO tool selection guide

Short on time? Find your situation, grab the tool, skip the rest.

• Already live in HubSpot? HubSpot AEO gives CRM-fed tracking and a priority task list, cheaply.
• Need content written and shipped at scale? AirOps builds, runs, and publishes it, if you know SEO.
• Running an agency? Mentions sets up fastest, tracks eight engines, and white-labels your client reports.
• Already pay for Ahrefs? Brand Radar adds AI research built on real search data (no sentiment).
• Already on Semrush? Its toolkit explains why AI describes you that way, besides your SEO.
• Technical or enterprise team? Scrunch tracks AI crawler traffic and ties citations to real conversions.
• Want to write for Google and AI at once? Surfer optimizes one draft against two live scores.
• On the tightest budget? Start with a free checker, prove AI search matters, then buy.

FAQs

Robot lawn mowers are emerging as one of the most exciting smart-home categories. The concept has been around for a while, but in the past two years we've seen advances in technology that are making them more helpful and more user-friendly than ever. Finally, the barriers to entry are coming down, and lawnbots are starting to look like a feasible option for even the least tech-minded amongst us.

To find out more about what's going on in this growing space, I spoke to KK Yin, marketing director at major lawnbot brand Mammotion. We chatted about the most impactful shifts in lawnbot technology, the hottest trends, and the hurdles the industry still needs to overcome.

Cutting-edge edge cutting

For KK, the big feature that hasn't quite been nailed yet is edge-cutting. Even if you have a great robot mower that does a stellar job trimming your grass, its usefulness is limited if you then have to get out a trimmer to take care of the edges. "Edge trimming remains one of the biggest challenges, especially along walls," says KK. "The key is balancing cutting performance with safety."

If you're trimming along the edge of a flat path, it's relatively easy — certain mowers are designed to straddle the path edge, with the blades underneath trimming the grass at the boundary line. However, that doesn't work when trying to trim next to a wall. "The lawnmower can get as close as possible, but the cutting disc being set back from the mower's edge to maintain a safe clearance prevents the mower from cutting close enough to walls," KK continues.

Lots of brands have been working on a solution, and it typically takes the form of an edge-trimming module that attaches to the side of the bot, with smaller blades in a protective casing.

On the Luba Mini is an edge-cutting disc that can trim as close as 5cm (1.97 inches) from a wall — a distance KK admits might not be close enough. "Five centimeters is not very far from the wall, but still some users want us to make it perfect so it can cut maybe even down to one centimeter," KK says.

"We're exploring more flexible solutions," he continues. "For example, when mowing alongside a wall, the cutting disc could potentially extend slightly out of the mower's body for a cleaner edge cut. In open areas or during ride-on-the-edge mowing, it would retract to maintain a safe clearance beneath the mower. So that is the direction and also the challenge in the future."

Tackling tricky terrain

Another major lawnbot trend that's been emerging over the past year or so is all-wheel drive (AWD). This helps lawnbots tackle tricky or uneven terrain, as having all the wheels individually powered means that if one or two end up off the ground, or struggling to get traction, the others can help the robot escape without requiring manual intervention.

AWD can also help the lawnbot retain its grip when scaling especially steep lawns. KK notes that in the European market, and Germany especially, lots of houses stand on slopes, where this boosted climbing ability comes in handy.

All-wheel drive is usually indicated by an 'AWD' on the product's name, and it appears in Mammotion's advanced Luba line — you can see the LUBA 3 AWD scaling an astroturf mountain in the video above.

The brand has also been looking at upgrading its bots' climbing ability and mowing speed, and is keen to figure out what the next advancement might look like. "We can see some other companies are exploring other things like independent steering," says KK. "Maybe that is a good solution for difficult terrain. So we are also thinking about how to combine this technology."

Better tech in smaller bots

Initially, Mammotion kicked off its lawnbot journey with its premium Luba series. Later on, the Yuka Mini arrived — a smaller, more affordable bot that's designed for yards 500 to 800 square meters in size. It proved to be the big winner in Europe during the recent Amazon Prime Day sales.

"I think when we started, our premium product line helped us build trust in our technology — things like the all-wheel drive and the positioning system and the efficiency. So customers believed our brand could bring some of that technology to an entry-level lawnmower," muses KK.

The Yuka Mini is a good fit for European yards, which on average are 300 to 500 square meters in size. "Many robot lawnmower brands spend a lot and have a different product strategy for European regions, because many of the users have already accepted this innovative product for their lawn care. For example, they know about the positioning systems and how all-wheel drive compares with rear-wheel drive. They want their robot lawnmower to do more things — not only mowing, but also edge trimming."

In the US, where the average lawn size is much larger than in Europe, the focus is a little different. "I think most US users still prefer a ride-on or traditional lawnmower. I think they're still looking for an efficient robot mower that can cover their large lawn," says KK. "The US is at a different stage, and what customers require is different.

No-fuss installation

Navigation tech is perhaps the area that has moved on most quickly and has had the most impact on lawnbot usability. It was only a few years ago that boundary wires were required; now they're all but obsolete.

Initially, the technology to take over was RTK. This is satellite-based positioning, and it requires a separate RTK receiver to improve the accuracy of the satellite data. Not everyone wanted to set up a receiver in their yard, leading to a shift to centralized receivers that could serve massive areas at once. Mammotion calls this NetRTK.

Either way, the system relies on satellites, which means it has some limitations in yards where there is coverage from trees or buildings. Most recently, we've started to see LiDAR being used. This is the navigation approach used in robot vacuums, and just like with RTK, there are pros and cons when used in lawnbots. LiDAR works by bouncing light off objects to build up a picture of its surroundings, which is great when there are objects around but less useful in wide, open spaces with nothing to bounce off.

"You know, like we always say, maybe laziness is the best way to improve the technology!" says KK. "For our users, if they're happy with the intelligence of the robot lawnmower, then they want an easier installation, or even no installation at all. So that's why they really like our NetRTK, because they don't need to install an antenna. Or some users will choose LiDAR, which doesn't need an antenna at all."

The real shift is less to do with using one specific navigation approach over another, and more about moving to a situation where multiple navigation technologies can work alongside one another.

"We want to think about the final result of the positioning system," says KK. "Many users don't want to compare which positioning method is good. They just use it; that's enough. They don't need to know more about it. So that's why we came up with Tri-Fusion, which combines the advantages of RTK and LiDAR and even AI vision. We believe this can cover all environments for a residential user."

A few robot mower companies have started experimenting with similar concepts, where the bot can swap between different approaches depending on the situation. If satellite signal drops out under some trees, LiDAR can swoop in to save the day and get the lawnbot back on track, for instance. Cameras (often backed by AI) form the third pillar, enabling the bot to recognize objects and understand if it should mow close to them or steer clear.

There are problems still to solve in the world of robot mowers, but let's not forget that just a few short years ago, we were still painstakingly laying boundary wires and watching the lawnbot bounce haphazardly between them. Now, the issue is whether a bot can trim quite close enough to the edge of a wall, and if it's smart enough to tell a soccer ball from a lounger. We've come a long way.

Brilliant bots

We've tested plenty of impressive lawnbots at TechRadar. Here's a taster of some of our favorites — hit the View details button for a link to our full review for each.

I asked ChatGPT for one sensible answer, one slightly reckless answer, and a third that combined the best parts of both. The difference was immediate. Instead of giving me the usual safe, predictable advice, it laid out three genuinely distinct approaches — and helped me see the tradeoffs between them.

That small prompt trick solves one of ChatGPT’s most persistent problems: its tendency to give you the most obvious reasonable answer and stop there.

Large language models are very good at identifying common patterns. Ask for the best vacation plan or how to organize your fridge, and you will usually get something perfectly sensible — but also fairly basic. They know what advice usually works, what people typically recommend and what has become accepted wisdom. That makes them useful, but often bland.

The solution is to ask for three kinds of answer: the conventional approach, the unconventional approach, and then a hybrid that combines the strengths of both.

The exercise encourages it to compare different approaches instead of treating the first reasonable answer as the finish line. Better still, it gives you something far more valuable than a single recommendation. It gives you a range of possibilities and explains the tradeoffs between them.

Don't just skip to the finish line

The biggest advantage of this technique is that it makes the conversation about exploring alternatives rather than just picking a winner. Any keyword search can give immediate answers, but AI chatbots are more interesting when laying out competing ideas.

Imagine you are planning a weekend trip, often a go-to experiment. A standard prompt might produce a sensible itinerary filled with the highest-rated attractions. The three-solution prompt, meanwhile, begins with the expected museums and restaurants, then suggests renting bicycles to explore overlooked neighborhoods or planning the entire weekend around independent bookstores and local festivals. The hybrid version could blend a couple of famous attractions with enough unusual stops to make the trip feel personal.

The explanations are often as useful as the answer itself. Once you understand why ChatGPT prefers each option, you can make better decisions rather than simply accepting the recommendation with the nicest wording.

Hybrid conventionality

It's also a good prompt for iterating ideas. If the hybrid solution feels close but not quite right, you can ask ChatGPT to repeat the exercise using that version as the new starting point. After two or three rounds, the ideas often become noticeably more distinctive without drifting into complete nonsense.

The trick also scales well from short projects at home to more grandiose schemes that will take months to complete. Almost any situation that benefits from weighing different approaches can benefit from this style of prompt.

You can improve the results even further by giving ChatGPT a little context before asking for the three versions. A conventional answer built around your actual circumstances is much more useful than a generic one, and the unconventional suggestion becomes more interesting because it has meaningful boundaries to push against.

None of this guarantees a brilliant idea every time. Sometimes the unconventional option is genuinely impractical, and occasionally the hybrid answer feels like an awkward compromise. But the best prompts rarely force ChatGPT to mimic greater intelligence as much as encourage different approaches to problems. Asking for the conventional solution, the unconventional solution, and the best combination of both is a simple habit for more thoughtful conversations with AI chatbots.

The problem with online shopping is that it makes it far too easy to buy pretty much anything, without properly considering whether you really need it. I started to wonder if ChatGPT could help me make better decisions, by questioning every purchase I was going to make, before I made it.

To test ChatGPT’s ability to stop me wasting money, I picked four tempting purchases and asked ChatGPT to argue against each one. It had to check the price history, suggest cheaper alternatives, and decide whether the purchase solved a real problem, or if I was just scratching an itch to buy.

Here's how ChatGPT did — and the results surprised me.

GPT before you buy

I started with a tech gadget I was thinking of buying — an Apple MacBook M5 — and went to ChatGPT with the following prompt: “I'm thinking of buying an Apple MacBook Air 13-inch Laptop M5 chip. Help me check the price history, suggest cheaper alternatives and decide whether the purchase solves a real problem."

ChatGPT said it would check current pricing and recent lows, compare genuinely cheaper options, then pressure-test whether the purchase replaced a real limitation, or was mostly me trying to satisfy an upgrade itch, and off it went.

After a lot of thinking, ChatGPT replied with a devastating verdict that made me pull back from hitting the 'Buy' button: “Don’t buy the M5 MacBook Air yet.”

It suggested I get the previous M4 version instead, which is considerably cheaper, which didn't hugely surprise me. Then it gave me some questions to ask myself, in order to work out if buying a new MacBook was actually solving a real problem, or if I was just satisfying a buying itch.

Questions like, “Does your existing Mac have noticeable slowdowns?” It suggested I shouldn’t buy a new machine if my main argument was simply that my current Mac was a few generations old.bChatGPT also gave me some buying options if I was determined to go through with a purchase.

The most useful advice here wasn’t the cheaper recommendation — it was being forced to identify the exact limitation my current MacBook was causing me. I couldn’t, so I decided to keep it until I could.

Then I hit on a simple phrase that could potentially work even better — "Try to talk me out of it".

Talk me out of it

I repeated the experiment with a few other items I’d been thinking of buying recently. An item of clothing (new trainers), a subscription (Disney+), and a kitchen thing (a new microwave). But this time I added "Try to talk me out of it" at the end of each prompt.

In each case, Chat surprised me with its answer, provided alternatives, and made me question whether I genuinely wanted the item, or if there was something else driving my decision.

With the trainers, it pointed out that I already owned shoes that served the same purpose, and suggested waiting until those wore out. For Disney+, it recommended subscribing for a single month when there were several things I actually wanted to watch. The microwave was different — because our existing one had a genuine fault, ChatGPT concluded that replacing it was justified.

The experiment worked because it helped me mentally reframe each purchase. Instead of asking whether I wanted something, I had to consider what problem it solved, what I already owned, and whether there was a cheaper way to get the same result.

Online shopping is designed to remove as much friction as possible from spending money. ChatGPT gave me some of that friction back. So now, whenever I’m about to spend a few hundred pounds, or a few thousand, I ask it the same question: “Talk me out of it.”

Artificial intelligence came at just about the right time, speeding up app and software development as the world started to contend with skills shortages, but it changed the pace so much that security teams have not been able to keep up.

Recently, we’ve seen AI being applied across multiple other domains with role-specific agents and tools, but that’s introduced its own challenges. While tools like Claude Code have proven a hit for generating, reviewing and editing code in seconds, security-focused tools like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos family of models are having broader impacts on the industry.

Anthropic itself has even admitted that Mythos is so powerful that the worry it could be abused by malicious criminals is extremely real – the Preview model is currently only available to a select number of pre-approved partners.

So with AI now capable of inspecting code, discovering vulnerabilities and suggesting fixes, do organizations even need as many human workers on the case, or can they get by with significantly fewer humans in the loop serving as AI reviewers? Recent layoffs have certainly implied as much.

The evolving role of security workers in an AI-first world

But with the entire lifecycle of development now amplified by AI, experts are warning that companies could actually be creating more work for themselves, and more than they could ever handle, leaving them facing strains from angles they weren’t previously exposed to.

For example, fewer than one in 10 companies now fix 90% of identified vulnerabilities within 90 days – implying that the volume of vulnerabilities is indeed increasing, rather than that fix efficiency is slipping.

Anthropic even revealed that its around 50 early Mythos Preview partners discovered more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity vulnerabilities – and thousands more of lesser significance.

Checkmarx CEO Sandeep Johri predicts we could soon find a balance, where vulnerabilities volume matters less and we revert our focus back toward exploitable risks. I spoke with Johri about the evolution of AppSec, where AI is and isn’t useful, and how organizations can balance speed and control.

• With the rise of AI coding tools and AI-generated software, some are questioning whether traditional application security practices are becoming outdated. Is AppSec actually becoming obsolete, or is it evolving?

Traditional application security is not obsolete. It is evolving to meet the reality of how software is being built today.

For years, the process was fairly linear: developers wrote code, security teams scanned it, and vulnerabilities were addressed later. That approach becomes much harder when software is being created at a much faster pace with the help of AI.

AI accelerates development and risk simultaneously: 70% of developers say AI-generated code created more vulnerabilities in 2025, according to our research. As code volume and complexity compound, security needs to move earlier into the development process, giving developers the tools and guidance they need while they are building.

Security teams will continue to play a critical role to help organizations develop software and maintain confidence in their enterprise applications. But their focus needs to shift from finding vulnerabilities to remediating them at scale, because we are tracking an enormous gap in most companies. Our data finds that fewer than 10% of organizations fix 90% of identified vulnerabilities in 90 days.

• AI coding tools are helping developers create software faster than ever before. What new security challenges does this introduce for organizations adopting these technologies at scale?

The biggest challenge is that development speed is increasing faster than many security processes can keep up with. AI coding tools allow teams to create and deploy software quickly, but the code generated by AI still needs to be reviewed, tested, and secured.

Companies that ship 81-100% of their code with AI are nearly three times more likely to ship vulnerable code than those who use AI 1-20% of the time. This volume can overwhelm security teams with thousands of findings, many of which don't represent meaningful risk. The priority needs to be identifying the vulnerabilities that actually create exposure and helping teams fix those issues faster.


• Many organizations are looking to AI to help identify and fix security vulnerabilities. Why shouldn’t companies rely solely on AI models to secure the code that AI is helping create?

AI is a valuable tool for security teams, but organizations still need accuracy, context, and human oversight. AI can help identify patterns, analyze code, and accelerate remediation, but security decisions require confidence in what risks actually matter.

Frontier models can uncover hidden exploit paths, but they can also deliver inconsistent findings and false positives. Their results may change depending on the prompt, and they can still miss known critical vulnerabilities.

The challenge with relying only on AI is that organizations may create a false sense of security, or “automation bias.” AI models can generate code and help analyze vulnerabilities, but they need to be paired with security expertise and proven security practices.

The most effective approach combines AI-driven capabilities with strong security foundations, so teams can move faster while maintaining control over risk.

• As companies adopt more AI tools throughout the development process, what are the biggest security risks they need to consider beyond just AI-generated code?

Organizations need to think beyond the code itself and look at the entire AI ecosystem being introduced into software development. Many companies are adopting AI tools, models, agents, libraries, and other components faster than they can establish governance around them. This creates visibility challenges because security teams may not know what AI technologies are being used, where they exist in applications, or whether they meet security requirements.

Another concern is shadow AI, where employees use AI tools without formal approval or oversight. Organizations need visibility, clear policies, and a way to manage these technologies as part of their overall software supply chain.



Perhaps the most urgent problem is the expansion of the attack surface itself. With LLMs, it has never been faster, cheaper, or easier for bad actors to exploit software. Issues that sat undetected for years are now being surfaced and weaponized at machine speed. Of the vulnerabilities Mythos has found so far, 99% haven't been patched, according to Gartner.

• How does the rise of AI change the role of security teams? Does the traditional approach to finding vulnerabilities need to shift toward a model focused more on prioritization, remediation, and continuous protection?

Identifying vulnerabilities is no longer enough when organizations already have more findings than they can realistically address. Security has to become continuous, embedded in development workflows, working in lockstep with developers, to build securely from the start while maintaining visibility and control.



We are shifting the focus to understand which issues create the greatest risk to give developers the context to address them fast, where code is written in the IDE.

Fidelity now matters more than volume. One verified true positive is worth more than a hundred low-confidence findings. If developers can’t trust what they’re shown, they’ll start ignoring it. That’s why organizations are increasingly looking at metrics like F1 score, which measure precision and recall together, rather than raw finding counts.

• What does the future of application security look like in an AI-driven software development world? Will organizations need a different approach to balancing speed, innovation, and security?

The future of application security will require a more integrated approach. Organizations are going to continue adopting AI because the productivity benefits are significant, but security needs to evolve alongside that innovation.

Security will become more agentic, more intelligent, and more closely connected to the development process. Part of that evolution is combining deterministic, rules-based scanning with AI-driven reasoning in a single process, rather than running them as separate, disconnected tools. Deterministic methods catch what’s already proven; AI reasoning catches what’s novel. Together they’re more complete than either alone.



In addition, deterministic models have real cost advantages. Asking a frontier model to reason its way to security (i.e. extra review passes, self-generated threat models) burns tokens fast. That cost compounds the longer a vulnerability survives: cheap to fix in the IDE, more expensive in CI/CD, most expensive once it's live in runtime. And every time a developer has to stop and pull a vulnerability out of code that's already shipped, that's velocity lost to rework instead of innovation.

Teams will need technology that can help identify real risks, support faster remediation, and provide visibility across the entire software lifecycle. The organizations that succeed will be those that make security part of how they build software, allowing developers to move quickly while reducing unnecessary risk.

• For organizations that are embracing AI coding tools today, what steps should they take to make sure they can innovate quickly without introducing unnecessary security risks?

The first step is visibility. Organizations need to understand where AI is being used, what tools are being introduced, and what impact those tools have on their applications.

Remediation is far cheaper the earlier it happens — catching an issue in the IDE costs a fraction of catching it further down the pipeline. But there’s another unsettling gap in our research: nearly all developers have access to in-IDE security tools, but fewer than one in five actually secure code as they write it. The cost of fixing that issue compounds as it passes through later stages of development.



In addition, organizations need clear governance around AI adoption, because only 22% currently have formal AI governance policies in place. That means defining policies, monitoring usage, and making sure teams have the right security controls as they continue to innovate.



AI will continue to change software development. The companies that benefit most will be the ones that embrace the technology while building security into the process from the beginning.

Loath as I am to say it, the future of gaming platforms isn’t looking so rosy right now. Windows is increasingly becoming more recalcitrant, constantly throwing hurdles in the faces of PC gamers in the form of performance-ruining updates and unsolicited AI implementations. And in the console world, Sony has irked everyone by ditching physical games from January 2028, while the recent bout of mass layoffs at Xbox belies its ‘back on track’ messaging.

Meanwhile, Valve appears to be going in the opposite direction. It already has a big advantage in the form of Steam, near enough the default storefront and launcher for PC gamers everywhere. Why, it’s generated an estimated $11.1bn in gross revenue in the first half of this year already. With pockets as deep as these, and without having to divert its earnings to shareholders (given it’s still, for now, a private company), that’s cash it can invest in expansion.

So is now the perfect time for Valve to break out, capitalize on its competitors’ floundering and shoot its shot at making SteamOS the next big platform?

SteamOS vs Windows

There’s no question that SteamOS has been quite the success already. This is almost entirely thanks to the success of the Steam Deck, Valve’s hugely popular device that launched in 2022 and kickstarted a mini revolution in handheld gaming. It runs SteamOS 3, which is based on the Arch Linux distribution and far superior to its initial Debian iterations. These were used on the original Steam Machines of 2015, and are no doubt part of the reason for the discontinuation of the units in 2018.

The big advantage of SteamOS 3 is its support for Proton, the compatibility layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux devices. Although it predates the Steam Deck, Proton found its calling on the handheld, proving a lot of doubters wrong by running a large library of modern games well on a small, portable device. Even AAA titles such as 007 First Light and Cyberpunk 2077 are perfectly playable, along with plenty of others.

But Valve is no longer confining its operating system to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. It’s recently expanded support to ARM, AMD and Intel devices, which means it can run on more devices such as the Lenovo Legion Go S and the Asus ROG Ally. Chris Hewish, a former Executive Producer at Activision and current President of gaming MoR Xsolla, explains the advantages of running SteamOS on such devices over Windows 11.

“With the SteamOS 3.8 release in June, Valve officially took the OS beyond the Steam Deck to the ROG Ally line, and Lenovo's Legion Go family, and early Intel support is starting to pull devices like the MSI Claw into the fold," he tells me. "On the same hardware, reviewers keep finding it ahead of Windows 11 where handheld players actually feel it: battery life, sleep and resume, and an interface built for a controller instead of a desktop squeezed onto a seven-inch screen.”

So, does the continued success of SteamOS rely on expanding to more hardware? Greg Weller, Head of Gaming Partnerships at Generation Media, and someone with over 20 years of industry experience — which includes stints at Rockstar Games and Bethesda Softworks — thinks so.

“The opportunity is significantly bigger if SteamOS continues to be device agnostic," he says. "The Steam Deck proved Valve could build a fantastic hardware experience, but the bigger strategic opportunity is allowing consumers to carry their Steam ecosystem across multiple devices rather than tying it to one piece of hardware.”

He continues: “We're seeing the same evolution across other entertainment sectors, like music, film and television, which have largely moved beyond device-specific experiences. People increasingly expect their content to follow them rather than the other way around. So, Valve hardware can absolutely remain the benchmark experience, but if SteamOS becomes the connective layer between a player's library, identity and multiple devices, that's a much bigger opportunity.”

However, not everyone in the industry shares this view. “SteamOS’ success largely depends on Valve's hardware for now and how far they actually push the OS itself,” says André Pimenta Ribeiro, CEO and co-founder of Anybrain, whose behavioral AI tools are used in popular online games such as Arc Raiders and The Finals.

He adds: “SteamOS’ success largely depends on Valve's hardware for now and how far they actually push the OS itself. I think Valve’s best case here is to grow to a broader, more casual audience through its own hardware and by offering its massive library to the mainstream player base, rather than exporting SteamOS to more devices in general. Once Valve hardware or SteamOS reach more mainstream adoption, then opening up the ecosystem makes sense. For now it feels mostly like a development play.”

Sticking points

If SteamOS wants a larger slice of the gaming pie, though, there are certain obstacles it needs to overcome. Hewish points to one of the system’s major sticking points: its incompatibility with games requiring anti-cheat tools.

“Kernel-level anti-cheat either does not run on Linux or has not been enabled there," he says. "Until the biggest competitive games work reliably through Proton, SteamOS is not a no-compromise choice. It is an 'as long as you don't play those games' choice, and those games are some of the most played in the world.”

Another problem is what Hewish calls “hardware breadth,” explaining that: “Windows still has the deepest compatibility layer for the long tail: niche peripherals, capture cards, VR headsets, external GPUs. If the reports about official GeForce support come to pass, that closes a meaningful piece of the gap, since SteamOS has effectively been an AMD platform until now.”

Of course, the other advantage of Windows is that once you’re done gaming, you can switch to using it as an everyday computer. “SteamOS is deliberately narrow, a console-like shell, and that focus is a strength on a handheld,” says Hewish. “But if it wants to take on Windows more broadly, the path into desktop mode for a browser, schoolwork, or a spreadsheet has to get smoother.”

SteamOS vs consoles

But what about SteamOS as a console competitor? The revitalized Steam Machine launched in June this year was hotly anticipated, and looked like a serious contender to the PlayStation-Xbox-Nintendo triumvirate. Russell Kay, a former Grand Theft Auto developer and Head of popular 2D engine GameMaker, believes it was a success in bringing SteamOS to a wider audience.

“In the living room, SteamOS is now a proper alternative to a console,” he says. "The library is already there, and so is the audience. Millions of people have a huge digital collection sitting on Steam, and SteamOS finally gives them a way to put that under the TV instead of on a console. That's a real advantage no other platform has.”

However, he says: “The real problem is the price — Steam Machines cost more than a console. A gap that’s unlikely to close anytime soon thanks to the rising cost of RAM and hardware.”

And there are other issues for SteamOS in the console space. Hewish explains: “The Steam Machine needs reasons to exist beyond ‘runs your existing library’. Consoles win on curation and exclusives as much as hardware. That fight is about habit and content, not benchmarks. Close the anti-cheat gap and keep the hardware momentum, and ‘the default handheld OS’ is realistic within a couple of years. [But] the living room is a longer climb no matter what the software does.”

Ribeiro, meanwhile, thinks: "[Valve] can make a splash against this weaker console market, but right now it's still a niche system for a specific subset of people — growing beyond that depends on where they take it. Valve is known for doing its own thing, and that’s not always conducive to serving the broader global ecosystem of casual players. I think it makes sense from the perspective that they want to grow beyond a distribution platform, but the extent of impact and its longevity is still to be seen.”

He concludes: “I already see Steam devices akin to consoles, such as the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. I wouldn’t replace my Windows PC or mobile device with it, but vs the existing console ecosystem, that’s more a toss-up.”

The future of SteamOS

It seems fairly clear-cut, then, that SteamOS is clearly leading the way when it comes to handheld gaming. But a push beyond that realm to usurp Windows or seriously challenge consoles is less certain.

Ultimately, Hewish sees it this way: “Windows still wins in two places: games with kernel-level anti-cheat, and anything you want to do that is not gaming. And in the living room it is early days. The new Steam Machine only started shipping at the end of June. So I would put it this way: [SteamOS is] a genuine competitor on handhelds today, and a credible but very young challenger in the living room.”

Of course, the high price of the Steam Machine certainly dampened its appeal. The consensus seems to be that while it was a capable device, it was too expensive to present a viable challenge to the living room market. Of course, the seemingly interminable RAM crisis threw a spanner in the works, even crashing the Steam Deck’s party thanks to a price hike that put a serious dent in its sales. But the fact remains the PS5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S all undercut the Steam Machine considerably.

But perhaps there’s hope yet for the Gabecube and other SteamOS implementations besides handhelds. After all, Hewish makes the point that having one platform dominate isn’t especially useful for game developers.

He says: “If you make games for a living, you do not actually want any single platform to win outright, even one you like. Concentration is where leverage goes to die. When one storefront or operating system controls the path to players, it eventually controls the terms, the fees, and the relationship. The healthiest ending to this story is not SteamOS replacing Windows. It is real competition at the platform layer, because that is what forces every gatekeeper to treat developers and players better. SteamOS taking a real share does exactly that.”

He further adds: “My bet is SteamOS becomes the preferred choice for people buying a device specifically to game, and Windows holds wherever one device has to do it all.”

Weller sees another benefit to the gradual permeation of SteamOS.

He says: “SteamOS has already established itself as a credible competitor, but not in the way people traditionally define competition. Rather than trying to replace Windows or persuade console players to switch overnight, SteamOS is reducing friction between players and the game libraries they've already invested in, allowing people to take their Steam ecosystem into more places and devices.”

“This reflects a much bigger shift happening across entertainment. Historically, consumers bought hardware first and then built a content library around it. Now, they're increasingly buying into ecosystems. Players care less about the operating system they're using and more about whether their games, saves, achievements, friends and purchases move seamlessly between devices.”

Gaming ecosystems have become important for another reason. “Our research found 72% of players discover games through social media, 67% through YouTube and 53% through platform stores such as Steam, PlayStation Store and Xbox Store," Weller explains. "Platform ecosystems have become both the storefront and the discovery engine. So SteamOS isn't simply an operating system but another touchpoint within a much broader ecosystem.”

“Valve's long-term competitive advantage has never been selling games, but focusing on the surrounding ecosystem: community features, recommendations, cloud saves, and overall experience of staying connected to your library. Those are the areas where Valve can continue to differentiate, rather than relying on exclusivity.”

The point about community features is an important one. The community around Steam has played a major role in the platform cultivating its loyal fanbase and the general good will of gamers. Its openness to mods and add-ons via its Workshop is a large part of this. And, as Kay points out, although games purchased on its storefront do contain DRM, “[it has] been one of the better stories when it comes to DRM". So if SteamOS wants to expand its horizons beyond handhelds, it needs to retain the element that sets it apart from other, closed-off gaming platforms.

Do you think SteamOS is going to be the next big platform in gaming? Vote in the poll below, and if you want to say more, why not leave a comment as well?