Apple has touted the addition of a variable aperture main camera on the new iPhone 18 Pro, claiming it delivers an improvement in low-light photos and video, and more control over depth of field when composing shots.

But with an almost identical design and spec sheet to the excellent iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 18 Pro begs the question: are these camera upgrades incremental, or worth the extra investment?

I received my iPhone 18 Pro review sample on September 21, two days before flying to New Zealand for a month-long trip to see family and friends. The country's dramatic scenery proved the perfect place to put the iPhone 18 Pro through its paces, and I ended up shooting more than 750 still images to see if Apple's much-hyped photography upgrades cut the mustard.

In addition to that variable aperture feature, Apple also added ‘pro’ manual controls to the iPhone 18 Pro's camera app for the first time, as well as more customization options for Photographic Styles, including a film effect and film grain effect.

Cumulatively, these granular control options are quite un-Apple, putting much more control in the hands of an iPhone photographer who might be used to a simpler point-and-shoot experience.

In doing so, Apple is asking for its latest iPhone to be held to a higher standard. And the bottom line is that, while the iPhone 18 Pro has the best and most versatile camera setup of any iPhone to date, there are more capable alternatives available just a short hop over the tech fence in Android land for platform-agnostic mobile photographers who want the very best available.

Variable aperture

The variable aperture is a physically moving mechanism that can be manually changed between four different f-stops — the smaller the f-stop number, the more light is allowed to reach the lens, and vice versa.

The iPhone 18 Pro’s main camera is a 48MP sensor that can switch between f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2.8, and f/4.0. This makes it the most flexible iPhone camera lens to date, but Apple only allows those four settings — unlike a real camera, you can’t adjust to incremental f-stops between those numbers.

Changing the aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro subtly changes how much background blur a shot has when there's a subject in focus in the foreground. This is how cameras work, but usually, the small sensor on a phone requires software-enabled portrait modes to achieve this bokeh effect.

The iPhone 18 Pro can do it with hardware only, though the difference between the four settings is quite minimal, as seen here:

You can change the aperture manually, but it’ll also change automatically by default. And after a month of using the iPhone 18 Pro as my main camera, I feel this is still how Apple's latest flagship should be used: as a point-and-shoot camera with its default settings enabled. As you can see from many of my favorite images, the iPhone chooses the main lens at f/1.8 frequently, and it'll usually be spot on.

As mentioned, this variable aperture is the headline feature of the iPhone 18 Pro, but the subtlety with which it changes the photography experience versus the iPhone 17 Pro suggests there’s not much more Apple can do with its flagship camera system.

That said, the addition of customizable ‘pro’ controls within the camera app is a nice touch. I set my control panel to show shutter speed, white balance, and aperture, and they were fun to play around with to achieve better shots in low light, for instance. But unless you're invested in wringing the best possible results from the iPhone 18 Pro's lenses, you’ll likely forget about these new controls after a while.

The good news is that, if you're a more casual shooter, Tap to Focus continues to work well on the iPhone 18 Pro. I was impressed with the main lens' ability to capture the two images below. Tapping on the background and foreground, respectively, quickly focused on the part of the scene I wanted to highlight, with strong results.

I’ve managed shots like this on phones like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, but that handset has a much larger 1-inch sensor. It's a testament to Apple's hardware and software prowess that the iPhone 18 Pro’s smaller 1/1.28" sensor can be this capable.

Android phones have long had more technically capable camera systems than iPhones, and while that is still the case, the iPhone 18 Pro represents yet another small shuffle forward for Apple.

Photographic Styles

Apple has also updated the Photographic Styles on offer for the iPhone 18 Pro, and they're much more varied than before.

Below, I've included the same shot taken in succession with several different filters (in their default setting) applied, and noted each filter name in the caption. To my eye, some are tastefully done, others less so:

Handily, if you don't love the look of a particular filter, you can dive into each one and tweak both ‘palette’ and ‘texture’ granularly (though the little dot matrix Apple offers to do this is fiddly, and doesn't explain what you're actually changing).

Within ‘texture’, you can add a film effect and then even extra film grain over that. It’s a bit heavy-handed for my liking, but I did get some cool shots from it:

4x telephoto

While Apple has advertised the variable aperture on the iPhone 18 Pro's main lens more than any other feature, I still really enjoy shooting with its 48MP 4x optical telephoto lens, which has no such capability.

It's the best-looking telephoto I’ve used on an iPhone to date, with optical image stabilization resulting in crisp and well-rendered shots. Some of these were captured on the move while pushing a pram, so a hat tip to the iPhone's ability to eliminate blur (or my steady hands — you decide).

All were taken in the iPhone 18 Pro's default shooting mode, with the Standard filter:

Admittedly, this telephoto lens is still not as capable as those you'll find on phones like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which boasts a formidable 200MP sensor and continuous optical zoom, or the Vivo X300 Ultra, whose own 200MP lens offers exceptional detail and tone. But it is stellar for an iPhone, and that's notable given Apple has long lagged behind the Android competition when it comes to imaging performance.

It's significant, too, that these small hardware improvements are paired with Apple's excellent iOS software. I love the Vivo X300 Ultra’s camera, but I find it hard to enjoy using Vivo phones for long periods given their comparatively unpolished Android software. Apple continues to rank at the top of the pile for software slickness.

Verdict

This was the first time I’d tested a Pro iPhone for an extended period of time since the iPhone 15 Pro Max, and compared to that phone, the 18 Pro feels like a sizable step forward in both hardware and software.

But that's a three-year evolution that I’ve been able to experience. The 18 Pro is certainly only a tiny step forward versus the 17 Pro, and it's not too far ahead of the 16 Pro, either.

So for iPhone fans who want a substantial camera upgrade over their current device, I'd only recommend upgrading to the iPhone 18 Pro if you've got an iPhone 15 Pro or older. You’ll certainly notice the step up in overall quality.

And although Apple sings the praises of the 18 Pro’s variable aperture feature in its wall-to-wall marketing of its new phone, in truth, it’s the cumulative effect of several years of iteration that make an iPhone’s camera system feel like a true upgrade.

That's the best praise I can give these excellent cameras, along with the simple fact that they're incredibly fun to shoot with, which I haven't always found while reviewing iPhones over the past decade.

To finish, here are some more of my favorite New Zealand-shot photos that I feel showcase the iPhone 18 Pro's versatility:

Android die-hard pixel peepers will understandably stick to their superior hardware. But as far as iPhones go, the 18 Pro will surely please all who carry it as their main camera.

Over the last few years, Zoom has probably had one of the most intriguing journeys in the business world.

After booming during the pandemic, the company has since expanded its offerings to cover a huge range of enterprise needs, with contact center services alongside traditional video conferencing and expanding AI tools.

As the company looks ahead to its new AI-enabled evolution, I went to the Zoom Experience Centre in London to find out more.

Refusal to compromise

“When we look at EMEA, we think the landscape is shifting in how organizations think about the technology they rely on,” Louise Newbury-Smith, Zoom’s Head of UKI, explains.

“For years, the pattern has been pretty similar, an organization would adopt a platform and then have to manipulate their own way of working around that platform - we really want to reverse that.”

“There is still some of that friction…(but) what’s changing is that organizations are starting to refuse to compromise - they want platforms to work the way they want to work.”

Zoom opened its UK data center in November 2025, greatly improving the situation for organizations in the region, as data residency choices which didn't exist before are now in place, meaning the likes of local councils, NHS trusts and financial services firms can store their data locally.

Newbury-Smith notes that the EMEA region is not a secondary market for Zoom, but high growth opportunity, a point echoed by Nick Tidd, Head of Global Channel GTM, who said the region offers, “a truly remarkable opportunity for our customers and for our partners, when you look across the product portfolio.”

This opportunity is hooked onto AI, particularly the growing importance of the context layer, a situation where Zoom is ideally placed, Tidd says.

“Think of how Zoom is positioned across the product portfolio - capturing all of those conversations…(and) putting them into the context to capture them in the workflow is where we are very different to others.”

This move was expanded by Leo Boulton, Zoom’s Head of Product, Solution and Industry Marketing, who ran us through the company’s recent releases and product announcements, highlighting the importance of context in Zoom’s concept of “conversation to completion” in its new Unified Context Layer.

“Conversations come natural to us - the way that we work is through conversations, it’s just a natural part of how humans are,” he noted, “so getting the job done should also be a natural thing - not something that requires a change in behavior, but something that should naturally just be part of our everyday work.”

If this doesn’t happen, workers will resist change, Boulton notes - particularly when it comes to AI, which is why Zoom is looking to embed intelligence into work itself.

Context has become a critical part of improving AI performance and usefulness in recent months, and Zoom wants to ensure its tools are as up to date as possible - but this requires some key elements.

“Before AI can truly understand how people work and operate, we have to guarantee it has the highest-quality raw materials,” Boulton points out. “The conversation must be crisp, clear and understood with genuine eye contact – because only with the best ingredients can AI deliver the most value.”

Zoom has been working hard to improve the quality and fidelity of its audio and video for calls and meetings, including the upcoming launch of a real-time “voice smoothing” tool known as “touch up my voice” and a pose correction tool enabling for greater eye-to-eye contact to boost interpersonal connections.

The better your agents understand your business, the more effectively they can work for you, Boulton notes, as he demonstrated how users will soon be able to benefit from a live assist feature which offers proactive suggestions during a call, such as telling you to speak slower or faster.

Zoom Chat is also getting a significant upgrade, making it what Boulton said should be a shared space where people and agents will interact and work together.

“We don’t expect our customers to live entirely inside Zoom,” he said. “True adoption only happens when tools feel natural, which is why our context layer is open by design – bringing the intelligence directly into whatever interface people already choose to work in.”

So it’s clear that Zoom wants to be so much more than your classic video conferencing and chat platform - and its ability to get the most out of your information could make it a very handy tech partner going forward.

“The direction is super clear,” Newbury-Smith concludes, “we're building and serving our customers where they are.”

If you've ever used a shared e-bike in the UK, you'll know it can be a really convenient, cheap, and environmentally friendly way to get around. They're good exercise, too. But until now, their use has been largely unregulated — and that's created some big downsides, too.

Now Downing Street wants to change that. The UK government is putting forward a swathe of measures to tackle issues like e-bikes blocking the pavement, too few parking spaces, and problems with anti-social rider behaviour.

“I think the fact that we are consulting on this new licensing regime means that we can start to bring some order to the chaos that some people see in some parts of big cities where these e-bike schemes, rental schemes have popped up,” Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the Press Association.

"There are a small minority of people who choose to behave recklessly but sadly, that is true of any type of way that people move around in a town or a city, and you can’t legislate for the idiots. But we can take sensible steps to give local leaders more power over the way in which these types of schemes operate,” she added.

A law has already been passed to begin the process of licensing e-bike hire companies. What's new now is this public consultation, running until the end of 2026, during which citizens, lawmakers and e-bike companies can have their say.

Why is 'nuisance' e-bike parking still such a problem?

It's estimated that there are around 350,000 shared e-bike trips every day in London alone, and that's a lot of bicycles. In most regions, there are no rules about where bikes can be picked up from or left, and not enough designated parking spaces to go around — the accompanying apps simply direct users towards them via GPS.

That's led to plenty of overcrowding on the pavements, and e-bikes being left in areas that make life difficult or dangerous for pedestrians. Earlier this year, e-bike hire operator Lime apologised for one of its parked e-bikes forcing a blind man into the road with his guide dog. There have also been issues with riders not being able to complete journeys because of the patchwork of different rules and guidelines across individual London boroughs.

Anti-social behaviour from riders has been an issue, too: Users who hire the cycles when drunk, or in a way that endangers themselves other people around them. There have long been calls for the operators to take more responsibility for how their bikes are used.

Making the operators more responsible is difficult for councils that have no real powers and very little data about how the e-bikes are being used — at the moment they're relying on the goodwill of the e-bike companies and the voluntary agreements that are in place, which is something the government wants to improve upon and formalise.

What is the government proposing to do about it?

There's quite a bit to dig into when it comes to the new measures. The government says there will be new parking plans that make sure e-bikes aren't "inconveniencing the public" when they're not in use, and there will be fleet management plans too, designed to reduce bike overcrowding (think limits on the total number of bikes in an area).

In addition, fleets of bicycles will need to be properly maintained under the new guidelines, so you can be sure that you're getting on something safe when you ride a shared e-bike — and that pedestrians and other road users aren't going to be put in danger by a faulty battery or wheel.

Speaking of pedestrian safety, the proposals might also potentially cover insurance requirements for operators, so they'd be able to pay out compensation if someone got hit by a shared cycle and its rider. More parking spaces for e-bikes and more accountability for operators in regards to how their e-bikes are used are also planned.

With stronger rules in force, and closer partnerships with the e-bike companies involved, councils will have greater powers to punish those who are found to be in breach of the guidelines — whether that's leaving an e-bike in an appropriate and unsafe space, or getting behind the handlebars while intoxicated.

What have the e-bike companies said?

The e-bike companies are largely for the proposals. Certainty over the legitimacy of bicycle hire schemes means investment can be increased, while the confusion over current guidelines — which are largely voluntary and vary from council to council — isn't really helping any of the parties involved. Under the government's new proposals, hire companies might also get funding help for infrastructure like parking bays.

"We welcome the government’s consultation on national standards for shared e-bikes," said Georgia Heathman, Public Policy Manager at Bolt. "98% of Bolt rides already end with a correctly parked bike, which shows what clear rules and effective management can achieve. We want to see that standard applied consistently across the country, and support the consultation’s ambition to give local leaders the tools to licence schemes that suit their communities and raise the national bar."

"We recognise the current patchwork approach is confusing for riders, councils and operators, all of whom deserve greater clarity and certainty," commented Wayne Ting, CEO at Lime, which is the largest shared e-bike operator in the UK. "Today’s consultation is an important step forward."

The CEO of Forest, Agustin Guilisasti, chimed in with a call for "national standards", and for a "coherent, well-regulated" system going forward, while Prime Minister Andy Burnham said one of the main aims of the new consultation would be "giving communities more control over where [shared e-bikes] are parked and making sure companies and riders play by the rules".

Will this really solve the problem?

Time will tell, but there seems to be cautious optimism among those involved at the moment that new laws and regulations will make a genuine difference to the experience of shared e-bikes for those riding them and the general public at large. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is taking the lead here, promising that local leaders will ultimately get powers to "stop nuisance parking, tackle anti-social behaviour and make journeys safer".

"We hope licensing can be a way to provide suitable and well-enforced parking spaces for this highly popular, low carbon mode of travel and so help the government deliver on its own commitment to scale up shared mobility," Richard Dilks, CEO of shared transport organisation Collaborative Mobility UK (CoMoUK), told TechRadar. "Any regulation should protect the many benefits that these schemes bring, including boosting the rates of active travel, improving air quality, and reducing traffic congestion."

Mike Wordingham, Head of Policy at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, acknowledged that "tackling rider behaviour will be difficult, and it’s vital the desire for local flexibility doesn’t lead to a patchwork of regulations and inconsistency in implementing them".

"There's clearly a case for regulation of dockless e-bikes to ensure everyone can travel around cities safely and quickly," Anthony Breach, Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities, told TechRadar. "A key test will be how much responsibility the mayors have — different cities are different, and it's right that mayors can design policy on dockless bikes that work for the city as a whole."

"Regulations have costs, and we should expect there to be at least a small impact on cost and convenience," adds Breach. "But the lack of regulation of dockless bikes is also affecting the convenience and costs of other highway users, too. The challenge for government and the mayors is maximising convenience while minimising price across every form of urban transport."

E-bike operators are already testing in-app features like intoxication tests (via a response time analysis) and safe parking checks (via user-taken photos scanned by AI), but the consultation is an opportunity for everyone to have their say on the best rules and regulations going forward — you can contribute yourself here.

Ok, I'll come out and say it. Modern World of Warcraft, or Midnight, in all of its convoluted story-driven glory, with its systems on systems, its currencies on currencies, and high-octane pacing, isn't an MMO. It's just not. At least not to me.

I know that's a big ol' bold statement, and I get it; you're probably sat there thinking: "Zak, what the hell are you on about? Stop being an overly dramatic journalist trying to clickbait us all into reading your long-winded waffling diatribe". But hear me out before you reach for the Dirge.

If you boiled down the current iteration of the game in a pot, and stripped away the marketing hype, and the hyper-attentive gameplay, Midnight, retail, it's not actually that different from something like Call of Duty, or Overwatch. Not at its heart. It's seasonal; it's mostly queue-based, with as much commitment as I have to that chilli I cooked up three months back that's still sitting in my freezer.

Where it all began

I've been playing World of Warcraft since 2006. Over 20 years, stuck with the same video game, handing Blizzard my hard-earned cash for a monthly sub.

I've done it all. I was a Priest Class Leader at the age of 14, raiding in Molten Core, BWL and AQ40 (mad respect to Fracture Bloodfeather EU). I then main tanked through The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions on a Dwarf Warrior. After that, a Guild Leader and Raid Leader in Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, healing on my Priest. Finally, ending as a Retribution Paladin in Warlords of Draenor and beyond.

The game got me into UI development; it got me into PC building. I studied how to create textures and TGA files in Photoshop, built rudimentary addons with Lua, and created a reasonably successful UI series. It taught me about design, about triage, about optimization. I owe my career to this game in many ways.

But during the Legion expansion, going into Battle for Azeroth, something flipped. I'd gotten used to the pace, the tempo. I tolerated the timed high-end Mythic+ 5-man dungeons, the constant weekly epic treadmill, and how impatient the community had become.

And of course I managed to continually decode the never-ending slew of multiplying vertical progression systems and catch-up mechanics with ever more convoluted naming schemes, to stay at the top of my game.

But it wasn't long before I came to the realisation that I had no close community anymore. I wasn't making new acquaintances or friends in the same way I had through previous expansions; I didn't feel tied to any one guild, or server, or faction, or anything. And slowly, my love for the game faded.

The sub was paused on and off sporadically. I'd jump back in every expansion launch, trying to get into it, trying to convince myself that this was the one, but it was a constant struggle to stay committed, to enjoy it. In a world that felt so empty, so devoid of life. It turned into a lonely chore, rather than a fun pastime to rid myself of the day's stress, and I couldn't pinpoint why I was getting so burnt out by it. At least not until very recently.

The key concept: Time

The last few months I've been playing World of Warcraft: Classic, (of course on the run-up to the WoW Forever launch), and that, that has provided me with clarity on what it was I didn't understand was missing from Retail.

Vanilla Classic, even today, is still ridiculously popular. More so than Mists of Pandaria, or any other version of the rebooted game. It's odd, right? It launched in 2019, and yet the servers are still bristling with people running 40-man raids, doing PvP, and are home to thriving economies, guilds, events, and more. You can barely move in Stormwind on some servers. And that's despite the game being well and truly "worked out" years ago. But why?

Simply put, it's time. The game in its modern state, maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose, gave up what made it so special. What made it an MMO to begin with. All in an attempt to try and attract more people to the player base, and bring more subs in. And it did so by, conversely, becoming more accessible.

Because everything is so fast, and there's a constant treadmill with extensive catch-up mechanics, there's no commitment. You lose attachment to what it is you're doing, and as a result, nothing matters. On average, to go from level 1 to the max cap of 90 in Midnight, it can take anywhere between 12 and 18 hours. For an established player, it can be less than eight.

As a result, people hop about constantly. Is your class not performing well? Is another now at the top of the Mythic+ logs? Just create a new character, and in less than half a day you can be gearing up for high-end Mythic raiding.

Even worse still, if you're low on cash, you can get some from Blizzard's in-game store with three mouse clicks and a healthy chunk of your own cash. That will allow you to buy a slew of gear from the latest content directly on the game's player Auction House.

The modern games' profession systems are also a mess, and it takes a degree in data analytics to understand half of it at a glance. Hell, you can even skip the bulk of the levelling entirely if you want and just pay for a character boost if need be, no matter what state your account is in.

If you do decide to skip the boost, then even the levelling journey itself feels disconnected from the community. Most just spam dungeons and get pooled up with players from all over the continent, never to see them again, running them as fast as possible with mass AOE pulls.

Or if that's not to your taste, you pick a specific past expansion from the game's lengthy list to level through instead. In this case, you'll see no max-level players at all, only the select few that have chosen to also level in that specific piece of content.

This is all as you barrel through levels a mile a minute, learning new skills faster than you can acclimatise, and watch as your gear becomes redundant in less than 15 minutes.

What WoW: Forever & Classic get right

And this is what Classic and Forever get right. It takes an age to level; it really does. I have a 32 Hunter currently, a 21 Warrior, and a 21 Priest on Classic. I'm halfway to 60 (in number only) on that Hunter. It's one of the fastest classes to level in Vanilla WoW, and my playtime is 2 days and 1 hour to get that far. I could've levelled five classes in Retail in that time. And still, I've got another 4 to 6 days to get to max level, if I don't mill about.

And here's the thing: because it takes so long, I've done an incredible amount of extra content outside of levelling when I've got bored of it. I've spent time doing my professions to make money, because I'm prepping to get my mount at lvl 40. I've gone to Darkshore and explored various areas to get a special ghost nightsaber pet. I've grouped and travelled to dungeons like Deadmines and Stockades. All the while making some incredibly memorable runs with good people, with wipes, close calls, and quest lines that have taken an age to finish.

My gear matters too, and if I get something from a dungeon, or a particularly long quest line, it feels momentous; the power increase is tangible. I've even treated myself to an Epic level 37 bow, ready for later on, and it's just sat in my bank waiting. And then, of course, new spells, new talents, I've got my pet to look after; all of it feels that much more potent.

Socially too, I see people about when I'm levelling, high levels, low levels, you name it. And we help each other; we chat about gear, about specs, buff each other as we pass, talk nonsense.

I had a group of four players jump in to save me from dying to a difficult quest mob in Duskwood, for no other reason than to help. They gained nothing from it. That's just one example where I've made new friends in-game.

Because it takes so long to do anything in classic — to travel, to learn — and because the world is so dangerous, because it's not easily accessible (there aren't even any summoning stones in Forever), your decisions and commitments matter.

If I were to re-roll, it would take me another two days, maybe more, to get that character to 30. As a result, I've become attached to the people I've met, my gear, my character as a whole. Even my server. If I see a level 40 to 60, there's a sense of almost awe, like "yeah, one day I'll be that level, that kitted out; I wonder what that'll be like?"

It's aspirational, and the lack of catch-up mechanics contributes to that; it doesn't impede it. It's not that there's no vertical progression here either; there is certainly in Classic, and in fact arguably that's what makes it more interesting, not less.

Get to max level, and you gear up via dungeons. Then you're set for the 10-man raids. After that, you move into Molten Core, Onyxia's Lair, and Blackwing Lair. Finally, you're set for high-end content like Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas. It's a long journey upwards.

If you don't have good enough gear on your character, you'll underperform or be unable to compete on the next level of content. But all of that content from day one is still relevant. Catch a glimpse of those players running around the capital cities, and you're struck by it.

It's visually impressive; they've committed that time to the game, that character, that class, and they're powerful as a result. You can see it, certainly with no transmog.

Imperfection makes it more, not less, sociable

By all accounts, Classic World of Warcraft, and subsequently Forever, are flawed games. Certainly, from a shareholder perspective. You have this massive time investment from developers building content that only a select few will see. It takes an age to get to max level compared to modern WoW, and its slower pace can feel like drudgery in direct comparison to the live button-masher mode we have in Midnight.

But it's that lack of accessibility, that need for time, that gives Forever and Classic their sense of sociability. It makes you feel attached to the world, your class, your character, your race; it feels inhabited, and it's that that makes it feel like a true MMO.

World of Warcraft Forever is heavily based on Classic. Blizzard has stated that many, many times over. The entire game is built on or forged from the idea of what Classic might have looked like in an alternate timeline, where the developers added new content but stayed true to the original design principles.

They have arguably deviated in certain examples already, of course. For example, the game already features a number of quality-of-life improvements to classes, a group finder, and cosmetics.

From what I've seen, however, Forever is already on a good path. It'll be less vertical gear treadmill and more slight horizontal incline. From what we've seen so far, general levelling and gearing is almost on par with Classic, albeit mildly quicker.

What Blizzard needs to do, in this humble journo's opinion, is to keep the pace the same. Instead of rushing to deploy new content, or forbidding themselves from adding something on arbitrary, subjective "staying true to the Vanilla World of Warcraft experience" guidelines, they instead need to be asking, "does this reduce the time commitment, or make the game more accessible?"

If either answer is yes, then there's room for discussion.

Can Retail World of Warcraft be saved?

But what of the ailing beast? What of Midnight and its rapid-paced, cartoonish Mythic+ dominated landscape, filled with timers, rewards, and catch-up mechanics galore? What could be pulled from Forever beyond better shaders and volumetric fog? It's a challenging question to answer. Midnight has an active player base, people who love it. Those who live for the high-intensity and flip-flopping nature of chasing the meta. To change that game and make it more Classic, could be intrinsically unpopular.

And yet, we'll have to see exactly how well World of Warcraft: Forever does. If it is what we expect it to be and it dwarfs Midnight's player base by a considerable margin, it's not likely Blizzard will ignore that.

I genuinely believe slower-paced levelling, a lack of catch-up mechanics, and a simplified gearing system would dramatically improve Midnight, and in fact would've improved everything from the Battle of Azeroth expansion onwards. Whether that comes to pass, well, we'll have to wait and see. For now, you can find me buried headfirst in what World of Warcraft should have been, and probably should've stuck to, all those years ago.

Welcome to the October 2026 Blu-ray Bounty, where we test some of the latest 4K releases from each month. If you’re new here, you can read previous editions of the Blu-ray Bounty at the link.

4K Blu-ray is a big deal here at TechRadar, as not only is it our primary source for testing the best TVs and best soundbars, but we’re also collectors ourselves, always on the lookout for new discs to add to our own compilations.

This month, I’ll be testing four new discs, and if you hadn’t seen last month’s edition, we’ve upgraded our in-house home theater system. We’re now using a full separate AV system, consisting of a 5.1 Bowers & Wilkins 600 series range of speakers, all powered by the Denon AVC-3900H 9.4-channel AV receiver. We’re still using the LG G6, one of 2026’s best OLED TVs, as our display, and our tried and true Panasonic DP-UB820, the best 4K Blu-ray player on the market.

In last month’s September 2026 Blu-ray Bounty, I tested a mammoth 10 discs, with particular highlights including Supergirl and Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu.

Interview with the Vampire (1994) (Warner Bros)

Based on Ann Rice’s 1976 novel of the same name, Interview with the Vampire tells the story of the relationship between Louis de Pointe du Lac (Brad Pitt), a man turned into a vampire by Lestat de Lioncourt (Tom Cruise). The movie cuts between 1791 Louisiana and 1991 San Francisco, where Louis is interviewed by reporter Daniel Molloy (Christian Slater). The movie also stars Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas.

This 4K disc is a showcase for contrast. Candles are used continuously throughout the movie as a means of lighting, and create some really interesting contrast-y scenes. Black levels are rich and deep, and when paired with the candles, create powerful contrast that looks superb on our G6 OLED. The 4K restoration still keeps the movie low brightness, but does well to bump the luminosity in the right places.

Textures have been restored nicely, giving everything a 3D-like look, especially in close-up shots of skin. Colors have a true-to-life, natural look about them, shown in Lestat’s eccentric clothing. Fire has a lovely HDR punch, and with a bright display it truly pops on screen. Some film grain has been maintained, but the picture really has been refined here.

The Atmos soundtrack included delivers great detail too. As a flaming torch passes across the screen, the sound travels from the left front speaker to the right accurately with the movement on screen. As a mansion burns down, the roar of the flames produces a satisfying, detailed bass. During scenes with rain, there is a perceived sense of height thanks to Atmos’ object-based sound, even without height speakers in our setup.

Toy Story 5 (Disney Pixar)

The fifth installment in the Toy Story franchise, Toy Story 5 follows Woody, Buzz, Jessie and the other toys as they deal with the arrival of Lilypad, a tablet that becomes the new favorite of the local children, including the toys' owner Bonnie.

As you’d expect from a Pixar movie, the animation is incredibly crisp with rich textures that give the movie a nice depth. Colors pop on screen, with the red of Jessie’s hat and hair in particular looking incredibly punchy. Other colors like yellow, pink and green have a really nice look to them too, appearing true-to-life throughout the movie. In darker scenes, blacks are rich and inky on our LG G6 and contrast was strong, shown in the scene at the docks. If your TV supports Dolby Vision, you’ll be rewarded.

The 4K disc supports Dolby Atmos and Dolby soundtracks. During my testing, our system processed the soundtrack as Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Surround and not the full Dolby Atmos, even though our other reference discs worked with Atmos. This may be something to bear in mind if you don’t have a full 7.1.4 channel Dolby Atmos system (this is the listed configuration on the case, so the disc may be compressing the soundtrack as a result).

The soundtrack is still excellent however, with plenty of detail and accurate sound placement. As humans exit a room chatting, the sound travels from the rear speakers to the front. Speech is crystal clear throughout and there’s plenty of power. As the gang run after a van, the bass produced is satisfyingly punchy from Bullseye’s gallop. There’s great balance as well between all other effects and the score, producing a wide soundstage. Despite a lack of height speakers, as Buzz flies through the air, there’s a perceived sense of height that adds to the experience.

Frankenstein (2025) (Netflix)

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, Frankenstein is the director’s take on Mary Shelley’s novel of the same name. It follows the story of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), a scientist whose reanimation experiments result in the creation of The Creature (Jacob Elordi), with dire consequences. The movie also stars Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz and Charles Dance.

Frankenstein is visually stunning on 4K Blu-ray. There are plenty of scenes with high contrast that really play with shadows to create engaging images shown best during night scenes as Victor works in the tower. The balance between light and dark tones is excellent, capturing the Gothic tone of the movie. Textures are crisp and true-to-life, especially with people.

Colors, while used somewhat sparingly, really pop when on screen, shown in the green, grassy fields during The Creature’s tale. Red is also striking, shown with blood and in some of the costumes the wealthier characters wear. HDR highlights, such as the Sun on the horizon, have a good punch too, which really showed up on our LG G6.

The disc supports an incredibly detailed Dolby Atmos soundtrack. One of the showcases for this was the re-animation scene. The crackling of thunder is mapped to each speaker with pinpoint precision, and as it rumbles, the bass produced by our subwoofer is weighty and fills the room. As the camera moves around the room, the sound accurately follows the action on screen. Other effects, such as Victor working with body parts, also sound visceral and realistic.

Little Shop of Horrors (1986) (Warner Bros)

An adaptation of the 1982 musical of the same name, which is itself an adaptation of the 1960 movie The Little Shop of Horrors, Little Shop of Horrors follows Seymour (Rick Moranis), a shy man who works in a run-down flower shop and falls for his co-worker Audrey (Ellen Greene). He buys a mysterious plant and names it Audrey II and it soon grows into a giant, talking plant that attracts customers. But Audrey II has some nefarious intentions.

A Dolby Atmos soundtrack is featured here and sounds fantastic. The Atmos mixes for all the musical numbers have a great balance between the instruments and vocals, all given equal clarity and power. Whether it’s the delicate strings and twinkling piano keys of songs like ‘Somewhere That’s Green’ or the punchy guitars and pounding bass of tracks like ‘Feed Me (Git it!’), the Atmos soundtrack is superb.

Visually, this is a great 4K restoration. Textures have been cleaned up and refined, most obvious in people’s skin. Colors are punchy and vibrant throughout the movie, from the green on Audrey II’s plant body to the brightness of a yellow cab. Black levels are deep, with strong shadows during night scenes cast by the stage-style lighting. While there is some film grain present, the picture has mostly been cleaned up, giving it a more modern look.

Blood Simple (StudioCanal)

Blood Simple follows the story of bartender Ray (John Getz) and his affair with his boss and bar-owner Julian’s (Dan Hedeya) wife Abby (Frances McDormand). Julian hires detectives to follow the pair and kill them if the affair is proven to be real. This was the directorial debut of the Coen Brothers, and McDormand’s on-screen debut.

The 4K restoration of Blood Simple is very good overall. Textures have been cleaned up well, shown predominantly in people’s skin and faces, giving them a more modern look. There is plenty of film grain still present here, more so in some shots than others. Colors, when used, such as the neon at the bar, have a good vibrancy.

Where this disc shines most though is in its darker scenes. Black levels are inky and there are plenty of high contrast scenes, with light and dark tones balancing well to create strong shadows across people’s faces.

The 4K disc supports a DTS-HD 5.1 MA soundtrack. While there isn’t a ton here to push your home theater system, the soundtrack still shows great detail. As a car passes Ray and Abby in the opening, the sound of it is mapped to the speakers accurately, passing from left to right on the front speakers. Speech is cleanly rendered and the piano-led noir score is crystal clear and balances well with other effects.

Inside Llewyn Davis (StudioCanal)

Inside Llewyn Davis follows the story of fictional songwriter Llewyn Davis (Oscar Issac), a struggling musician in 1961. Although the character of Davis is fictional, the story was partly inspired by the autobiography of folk artist Dave Van Ronk. The movie was directed by the Coen Brothers.

Inside Llewyn Davis looks great in 4K. Textures are refined and lifelike, from people’s skin to details in clothing. While the movie has a distinctive ‘hazy’ gray look, colors look natural and have some nice punch to them. Scenes in bars during performances show nice contrast, with deep black tones in shaded areas balancing well with stage lights and natural light seeping in.

A Dolby Atmos soundtrack is included, and it sounds brilliant. Songs have a great Atmos mix that are delivered with real clarity and detail, particularly ‘Fare Thee Well’ at the start of the movie. Live performances show off the wide soundstage, accurately rendering the echo from within a room as Llewyn sings in the opening scene.

Elsewhere, the sounds of New York City demonstrate plenty of detail, with the sounds of car horns and general conversation mapped to the rear speakers. As trains pull into a subway, the sound travels from speaker to speaker accurately. Speech and vocals are clear throughout and balanced well with other effects.

Tech companies continue to shoehorn AI into their product and services, whether it’s justified or not. Within fitness and health tech, we have more AI coaches and advisors than we can juggle — from Google’s Health Coach to Strava’s Athlete Intelligence — and AI interpretations of our stats, that often look suspiciously like the technology we had years ago, just with an LLM flair.

But the shareholders love it and it works to upsell customers, so the game continues. Garmin, however, has been pretty careful about how it has employed the term, and how it has actually used the tech to ‘enhance’ its best Garmin watches and its Garmin Connect+ platform. From a dig into the Garmin website, you’ll mostly only see the term AI attached to one feature: Connect+’s Active Intelligence, which it describes as 'AI-powered'.

Active Intelligence is designed to offer LLM-style feedback and advice within the Connect app on your phone. The pitch is that as the app gets to know you, the insights will become ‘tailored to you and your goals’, according to Garmin.

Garmin is a fairly careful, perhaps conservative, company among its peers. And I imagine there may have been a feeling it couldn’t not jump on this AI bandwagon, given wider industry trends. I asked Garmin COO Brad Trenkle how he sees AI’s role within the company.

“I think because Garmin is a very engineering-focused company, we tend to be very pragmatic in all of our decision making,” says Trenkle. “That has led us to be very thoughtful and discerning about our use of AI.

“One of the key tenets of how we've implemented AI across the company, not just in product but even internally in our own processes, is that any application of AI needs to keep a very keen sense of authenticity.”

It’s an interesting take, when AI front-ends within health and fitness platforms often purport or appear to want to give apps a more relatable or human edge — and seem faker or sycophantic as a result.

TrainingPeaks in the distance

Garmin remains keen to emphasize it’s a human-first company, as proved by the company’s most recent major acquisition, TrainingPeaks, in July.

TrainingPeaks does use some AI-based technologies in its platform but, fundamentally, it’s about matching an athlete (or schlub aspiring to be one) with the knowledge and expertise of a real, actual expert person. This is a platform made for coaches as much as athletes, a business model completely at odds with the current trend of simply getting ChatGPT or Claude to work up a training plan for you.

“We also have taken approaches that we think will give customers choice,” says Trenkle on the buy-out.

“Our recent acquisition of TrainingPeaks is an opportunity for us to make sure consumers who want to be able to engage with a human coach can do so through the TrainingPeaks platform. So we want to make sure that we meet customers where they are.”

Garmin is dabbling on both sides. Connect+’s controversial-at-launch Active Intelligence is a take on the flavor-of-the-month application of AI, using LLM tech to spit out easily intelligible summaries so folks don’t have to spend any mental energy on learning how to interpret their own data. And TrainingPeaks, for now, diligently swims against the AI sludge current. Long may it continue.

It’s also worth noting Connect+, despite receiving a mixed reception at launch due to Athlete Intelligence, is not all about AI. It also offers more classic Garmin-style bonuses like expert coach videos, Livetrack location sharing and offline Trails. Whether it’s worth the $6.99 monthly fee for you is something we’ll leave for another time.

“Some will want simple, basic answers to questions about their data that AI can help provide and create those insights. Others will embrace the idea of a human coach for motivation, accountability, and some of the things that maybe are a little more difficult to get through an AI bot or agent,” Trenkle explains.

He’s also bold on how much he believes Garmin understands its user base, versus the ever-growing competition.

“I think Garmin has shown through our history that we know our customers and we tend to know our customers better than our competition can know our customers, and part of the reason that we're able to do that is because we are vertically integrated, right? We're talking to our customers. We are customers of our own products ourselves,” says Trenkle.

I imagine some folks in the “engineering focused” Garmin eyeroll as much as I do at the attempts elsewhere to make AI a tightly integrated part of its fitness tech. But what the future holds for Garmin and AI? It’s still in the works.

Are you looking for a Garmin watch, but not sure what to get? Take our quiz below to find your perfect smartwatch.

As workers look for more ways to be productive at home and in the office, wearable technology has often proved a useful tool, offering quite literally a new dimension for users.

Augmented Reality (AR) headsets have been around for a few years, with Microsoft, Meta and Apple all among the big players getting involved - but these headsets have often proved clunky and overbearing.

AR glasses have instead offered a new opportunity for those looking for some extra assistance in everyday life - I went to try out the new Snap Specs ahead of their UK launch.

First impressions

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first - tech-enabled glasses (specifically those made by Meta) are under the microscope somewhat at the current moment in time, with rulings over what they can and can’t do emerging in courts across the world.

Snap has explicitly looked to offer a whole new kind of experience, with the new sixth-generation Snap Specs much more obviously an accessory - it’s pretty obvious when wearing them that (unless you’ve gone full Nathan Barley) these aren’t a typical pair of glasses.

The smooth black material is nice to touch, and sits against your face with no issues. Configuring the glasses takes only a few seconds, with control of the device mainly in AR, with two buttons on the arms of the glasses helping with recording and resetting if needed.

Unlike other AR glasses, the big selling point of Snap Specs is that they don’t need to be tethered to a smartphone, so you can wear them wherever you want - with a portable charging pad helping to top up battery life when needed.

As the Snap Specs are still fairly new, a lot of the app showcases and demos I saw looked to show off how AR can help entertain or educate - but there were some work use cases too.

My glasses came loaded with Google Docs, with typing carried out on a virtual keyboard which could prove perfect if you need to write up some quick thoughts or emails when away from your desk. You might get a few odd looks while typing in mid-air, but when inspiration strikes, needs must - and it can also connect to a Bluetooth keyboard if you’d prefer.

The glasses are also able to capture video clips up to 30 seconds and still images, useful for creative workers across the spectrum - whether you’re getting a picture of a billboard idea, or seeing something in the wild that would be perfect for your next piece of artwork, you can quickly grab an image or video without needing to whip out your phone.

Snap Specs also features a built-in browser, which does everything you would hope - but also doubles as a media viewer, so whether you need to work on or review a new presentation or promotional video, or just want to catch up on some YouTube, the glasses can be a useful tool.

The voice AI assistant was also fast and effective when answering my questions (even if I doubted its accuracy on finding the nearest tube station to our location), and using Google Maps with a heads-up display was an absolute game-changer, although again it might depend on how you feel walking down the street wearing a £2,000 pair of glasses.

Perhaps the most striking demo was the translation tool - when looking at someone speaking in a foreign language, their speech would be instantly translated and shown in a speech bubble overlaying them - essentially like subtitles when watching a TV show. This could be an incredible tool for business meetings in foreign countries, and might well be the killer app for technology such as Snap Specs.

So will the £1,999 Snap Specs be the future of work? Given that the more fun demos I saw involved playing dominoes, improving my football skills, a drawing tutorial and enjoying an interactive Harry Potter experience involving a pet owl and the sorting hat, I’m not sure it’s there just yet - but I can’t wait to see where the technology goes next.

Even as a tech journalist who spends all day, (almost) every day playing around with gadgets and apps, there's still plenty that I miss: like, for example, the ability to view how much time you've been spending on YouTube from inside the mobile app.

It works like Digital Wellbeing (on Android) or Screen Time (on iOS), but specifically for YouTube. You can dig into how much time you've spent on YouTube today and over the past week, with an average for the last seven days.

This has actually been around for years, and it's available whether or not you're signed up for YouTube Premium — though when I checked up on my stats, I was glad that I've been paying the monthly fee, if only to avoid hours and hours of ads.

First step — turning on Watch History

The 'time watched' statistics we're talking about here will only appear if you've got YouTube Watch History turned on. You can check this inside the mobile app by tapping your profile picture (bottom right), then the cog icon, then Manage all history (you can find the same settings on the web here).

To see what you've watched most recently, you can tap your profile picture then History in the mobile app, or choose History from the left-hand navigation menu on the web. There are tools here for searching through your history, deleting the entire record of everything you've ever watched, and putting your Watch History on pause.

It is of course entirely up to you whether or not you enable Watch History. The downsides are Google knows more about you, and it can be hard to get out of recommendation rabbit holes; on the plus side, you will get served videos to watch that might be at least vaguely related to your interests (it's great for discovering new music, for example).

More of your Watch History can be got at through the comprehensive Google Takeout service, which you can find on the web here. Select the YouTube entry, and Google will gladly give you a CSV file detailing every single video you've ever watched on the platform, as long as you've always had Watch History turned on.

Note that the 'time watched' stats don't include videos you've deleted from your Watch History, or that you've watched in incognito mode. However, they do include the YouTube viewing you've done across all your devices (as long as you were signed in), except for inside the YouTube Music apps and on the YouTube TV platform.

Finding your own stats

You can find your viewing stats inside the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS by tapping your profile avatar (bottom right), then tapping on the cog icon (top right), and choosing Time management. You can't get these stats through YouTube on the web at the moment, which seems a bit of an oversight.

There's not much in the way of a breakdown of what you've been watching, but you can see your running totals and average for the past seven days. There's also a stat about how your viewing compares to the week prior, so you can see if your spending more or less time on the platform week-to-week.

I was honestly surprised by my stats: almost five hours a day on average at the moment. Okay, I do play a lot of lo-fi music videos while I'm working, but that's still an awful lot of content compared to hours in the day — and it extends to tech reviews, explainer videos, and of course all the podcasts that have recently shifted to video.

I've written before about how essential I find YouTube Premium, and the revelation of how much time I actually spend on the site and in the app has more than justified the monthly outlay for me personally — I can't imagine the number of ads I'd have had to sit through otherwise. In fact, YouTube Premium tells you how many ad-free videos you've watched on this page (570 hours and counting for me).

You'll see the time management screen also gives you some controls if you want to limit the amount of clips you're watching day to day. There are toggle switches for setting up reminders around bedtime and taking breaks, and for putting a limit on how much time you spend watching YouTube Shorts each day.

OpenAI recently upgraded ChatGPT with its new GPT-6 model, which introduces a feature called Intelligent UI. It's one of the most interesting (and fun) additions and it means ChatGPT can now create interactive experiences with graphics, buttons, charts and more, all directly within the conversation window.

We've already put it to the test by asking ChatGPT to recreate retro games like Pac-Man and Pong. But Intelligent UI goes beyond games. There's no fixed format here, which means you can ask for something specific or let ChatGPT decide how best to present the information. Whether that's a map, a calculator or a custom-built tool with sliders and settings you can play around with.

So I wanted to see what else it could do. Especially whether ChatGPT could build interactive tools that are genuinely helpful rather than just entertaining. I tried six different ideas, from practical everyday tools to more experimental creations. Some prompts were deliberately detailed to see how closely ChatGPT would follow my instructions, while others gave it more freedom to decide what to build. Here's what happened.

1. An interior design app

Prompt:

"Build an interactive room design tool. Show a visual floor plan of a living room with a sofa, coffee table, TV, rug and two bookshelves. But let me change the furniture layout, select color schemes, toggle between different design styles and adjust furniture dimensions. I want the purpose of this to be to see whether the furniture fits and how much free floor space I’d have left."

After creating games within the ChatGPT window last time, I wanted to see whether I could make something genuinely useful this time around.

I've always struggled to visualize how furniture will look in different spaces and I've been looking for an app that lets me experiment with different layouts for my new apartment. So I decided to make my own.

The results were what I was hoping for. An interactive room that lets me drag and drop furniture. And it was very fun to play around with. I liked how many customization options it offered and how quickly it responded when I made changes. Unfortunately, it couldn't make up for my lack of interior design skills. But it was useful for experimenting with layouts and getting a rough idea of how much space I'd have left.

Of course, I haven't verified how accurate its measurements or calculations are, so I wouldn't rely on it to make any big furniture purchases just yet. But I can imagine this becoming even more helpful with a few tweaks, especially if I added the exact dimensions of my rooms and furniture.

2. An ethical dilemma machine

Prompt:

"Build an interactive ethical dilemma simulator. I want to explore difficult decisions involving artificial intelligence, privacy, technology and human behavior. Create an interface that presents me with a realistic, thought-provoking scenario and asks me to choose between possible actions. Give me a final breakdown of my decisions through different ethical frameworks."

My initial instinct with these experiments was to create cool little apps and tools similar to ones I'd seen before. Which makes sense, but I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of using AI to recreate other people's work, even if I intentionally make things very different.

So I wondered whether I could try something a little more unusual, using the interactive UI to create a question-based experience. A lot of my work involves encouraging people to think more deeply about AI, so this seemed like a good opportunity to explore some of the ethical questions surrounding it.

I really enjoyed the results of this one. ChatGPT created an interactive set of questions then charted the results. The dilemmas it chose were interesting and topical. And having to make decisions and then see them analyzed through different ethical frameworks genuinely got me thinking.

But I did wonder how deeply ChatGPT can really explore ethics. Sure, it can explain philosophical theories and apply them to different situations. But how far does that get us when we're asking a system without its own moral experience to help us navigate complicated human decisions?

So although I enjoyed the results of this one, I did question whether they mean anything. Which is very meta for a tool designed to get us thinking about things in different ways.

3. A life decision simulator

Prompt:

"Create an interactive 'What If?' life simulator. I want to explore how different lifestyle decisions affect my finances and free time over the next five years. Give me options for making changes to annual income, monthly living costs, weekly working hours, savings and investment returns. Let me play around with different scenarios, like only working four days a week, taking a six-month sabbatical, moving somewhere 25% cheaper and increasing my income by 15%."

A lot of people have been telling me recently that they turn to AI for life advice. I've written about people who use ChatGPT like a life coach before, and I'm still very wary of them relying on it to make important personal decisions.

But it got me thinking. What if ChatGPT could help you work through those decisions using actual numbers, rather than simply offering advice?

I loved how this one turned out. ChatGPT presented all of the parameters I specified through a series of sliders that then updated the results in real-time.

It was great to see how easy it was to make small adjustments to my circumstances and immediately see how they might affect my finances and free time over the next five years. I could experiment with different scenarios, compare the results and visualize the potential trade-offs much more clearly.

I think this could be even more useful with further customization. Of course, the results are only as reliable as the assumptions and calculations behind them, which I haven't independently verified. But as a way to explore different possibilities and get you thinking about decisions from another angle, I can see the appeal.

4. An interactive solar system

Prompt:

"Create an interactive solar system simulator. Show the Sun, Earth, Mars and Jupiter, with their orbits visualized. Give me sliders to change the Sun's mass, the Earth's orbital distance and the speed of time. I want buttons to reset the simulation and choose preset experiments, like 'What if the Sun had twice its mass?' and 'What if Earth moved 20% closer?' Update the visualization and show the predicted consequences for orbital period, gravitational force and planetary conditions."

For this one, I decided to get really specific. Rather than simply describing the tool I wanted, I gave ChatGPT detailed instructions about the buttons, sliders and controls I wanted it to include.

In my other experiments, I'd given ChatGPT a fair bit of creative freedom, so it was interesting to see how well it could follow more precise instructions, too.

I particularly liked the potential of this one as a learning tool. For example, if you're studying the solar system, you could create your own simulations, experiment with different variables and see how they affect the planets and their orbits.

However, the problem is I couldn't tell just by looking at it whether the physics or calculations were accurate. That's really worth remembering here before we get too excited. A convincing visualization doesn't necessarily mean the science behind it is correct. That's definitely something to bear in mind if you're using tools like this to learn.

5. A holiday planning dashboard

Prompt:

"Build me an interactive holiday planner. Imagine I’m planning a 7-day trip to Lisbon for two people. Create a visual itinerary with an interactive map, daily activity cards, estimated spending and a running budget total. Make the itinerary and budget update when I change my preferences."

The last time I seriously consulted ChatGPT about travel, it started making up flights. But I know this is another common reason people turn to AI, which is why I wanted to see what it could create.

It came up with a travel guide with a few different parts, including a budget breakdown and an itinerary, which could both be adjusted. Now, the itinerary itself wasn't particularly exciting, and I think you'd find suggestions with a lot more personality and local knowledge on travel blogs. But I could see the appeal of having everything in one interactive dashboard, especially if you customized it around your own interests and budget.

This was fun to play around with, and I think the most useful feature was being able to adjust the budget and preferences and immediately see how that affected the itinerary and estimated costs. That's something I can imagine being genuinely handy when weighing up different options.

I can see myself using something like this to play around with ideas and work out what I can afford. But given ChatGPT's track record with my travel plans, I won't be booking anything without checking the details myself first.

6. Color palette designer

Prompt:

"Create an interactive color palette designer. Take this photo and analyze the main colors in the image and build a visual interface that lets me experiment with different color combinations. Include the hex color code with each so I can use this when I redesign my website. Add interactive controls."

I'm redesigning my website at the moment, but I don't naturally have much of an eye for color. I've used color palette websites before, but I wanted something with a bit more flexibility and this actually worked really well.

Out of all the experiments, this is probably the one I'm most likely to keep using. I liked being able to pull colors directly from an image, see the HEX codes and then tweak the combinations in a more interactive way. It felt practical rather than just novel.

I can see myself continuing to refine this one to get it closer to what I need. That said, I'd still want to sense check any palette before using it properly, especially for things like readability, contrast and accessibility.

All of these tools were fun to experiment with. But they weren't all equally useful. Some felt genuinely practical while others were a little more gimmicky. I got excited about a few of them when I saw they’d first been created and never thought to revisit them.

What stood out to me the most was that the best results came when I treated ChatGPT less like a magic machine and more like something I needed to guide carefully. If you want a tool that's actually useful from the Interactive UI feature, rather than just impressive for a few minutes, I think you have to be willing to tweak the prompt, customize the controls and iterate on the result.

I also think it’s important not to mistake the fact these tools look slick and interactive for them being more trustworthy than they necessarily are. This mattered less in the gaming experiment but a convincing interface doesn’t necessarily mean accurate calculations, reliable travel advice or sound scientific modelling, so a bit of caution here is still essential.

So yes, I might keep using some of them. I can see real potential in ideas like the color palette designer or the life decision simulator, especially because of how customizable they are. But there's also a reason dedicated apps still exist. In many cases, they're still more reliable, refined and most of the time better suited to the job.

There's a new tiny tablet in town: Apple has just released an upgraded iPad mini, with a whole slew of improvements over its predecessor. In honor of this new addition, let's take a look at the full range and how the different options compare.

The iPad mini is Apple's smallest and lightest tablet. All other models have screens that are 11 inches or larger, but the newest mini has an 8.5-inch screen — slightly bigger than its predecessor, which had an 8.3-inch screen. Said display is also less advanced than the rest of the range.

The model up is the standard iPad. We're on the 11th generation, released in 2025. It's powered by an A16 chip and boasts a Liquid Retina display. The screen is 11 inches (no 13-inch option) and, perhaps surprisingly, it's the thickest of the lineup. At this point, it's the only iPad not to have Apple Intelligence built-in.

A level up again is the iPad Air. The newest version is the 8th generation iPad Air, released in 2026, powered by the M4 chip. You can choose between 11-inch and 13-inch screens. There's a 1TB option (the two models down top out at 512GB) and support for the Apple Pencil Pro.

The iPad Pro is the most powerful, premium option. The newest version is the 8th-gen iPad Pro, which came out in 2025 and has an M5 chip, but you can still pick up a 7th-gen model with an M4 chip (from 2024). It boasts a high-end display, Face ID, studio-quality microphones, and is fully compatible with the Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard. You can choose between 11-inch and 13-inch models.

Scroll down to see the best current prices on the full lineup, or hop to the bottom of the page for a handy specs comparison.

The full range

Apple iPads: specs compared

Apple is firmly in rule-breaking mode, which has led to the introduction of the first touchscreen MacBook, and an iPhone that accepts Pencil input. These rules, as set by Apple co-founder and former CEO, the late Steve Jobs, are now quickly becoming footnotes in the tech giant's history, and consumers are the beneficiaries of this outside-the-box thinking.

This week, I took a break from trying to figure out reasons to touch my MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display, to finally dig into the other formerly unthinkable Apple product feature: an iPhone that accepts — even welcomes — Pencil input.

Granted, the iPhone Duo is not your typical iPhone. It's a two-screen handset with a 5.4-inch display on the outside and, when you unfold the device, a 7.6-inch display with a remarkable nanotech finish that effectively hides the crease.

That big screen invites all kinds of non-traditional iPhone use cases, including big-screen content consumption, animated page turning in the Books app, and split-screen multitasking. It's also an invitation to art — a fact Apple recognized by introducing, for the first time, Pencil support to the iPhone line, albeit in a limited fashion.

Here are the limits:

• The iPhone 18 Pro and all other iPhones currently on the market do not accept Pencil input
• The only Pencil the iPhone Duo supports is the Apple Pencil (USB-C)

That second limit is a direct result of how the rest of the Apple Pencils pair with devices and charge: by being seated along the magnetic edge of any supporting iPad. Even unfolded, the iPhone Duo offers no equivalent capability.

Limits aside, I honestly could not wait to try using Apple Pencil (USB-C) on my iPhone Duo (upgraded to iOS 27.2).

Getting started and scribbling away

The Apple Pencil (USB-C) looks like other Apple Pencils, but it hides a secret. When I slide the back end back, it reveals a USB-C port. I can use that to charge the Pencil, but it's also how I connected the Pencil to my iPhone Duo: I run a USB-C cable from the phone's USB-C port to the port on the Pencil. After that, the pairing is pretty much automatic.

As you might expect, the Pencil — which is recognized on the inside and outside screens — can be used just like the tip of your finger to navigate the interface, if that's your thing.

The platform also adds Scribble, which means I can now poorly write the website names I want to see in Safari, jot down notes in Notes, and even solve simple written equations in that same app. But the show I came for, the reason we're here, is to try drawing on both screens.

Flexi-sketch

I've been drawing my whole life and doing so on digital platforms for 40 years. I drew on the first Mac with a mouse, early PCs with a Wacom tablet, my finger on the iPhone, and, in recent years, on an iPad using Procreate and (naturally) an Apple Pencil. Drawing with an Apple Pencil on an iPhone has been a long-held dream, and I was anxious to try it out.

I unfolded the iPhone Duo, launched Procreate Pocket (the iPad version does not run on an iPhone), and started putting the Apple Pencil to the nano-etched display.

One of the first things I noticed is that the digital pen works almost exactly the same as it does on the iPad. There's palm rejection, which means I can rest my hand on the 7.6-inch display while drawing.

As with an iPad, the digital ink appears to flow directly out of the Pencil tip, and it's fast, too. There's no delay between me running the tip across the display and the digital ink, paint, charcoal, or watercolor stroke appearing in its wake.

I instantly liked how the pen feels on the lightly textured surface. Glossy screens can feel a tiny bit slippery, but not this one.

As for the other big question that's probably bursting to get out: yes, if you draw back and forth over the full, unfolded display, you will feel the crease — not a lot, mind you, but it is there. Interestingly, the lines I drew did not recognize those tiny bumps and instead were straight and squiggle-free.

The iPhone Duo main screen recognizes the pen angle and speed, but not pressure. This is likely intentional; after all, I don't imagine Apple wants you putting extra force on the Pencil, and therefore the screen, to make a darker or bigger line. That adds a small wrinkle to my typical drawing flow — on the Duo, if I want to make lines taper properly, I sometimes have to shorten my line stroke, adjust the pen width to be smaller, and then continue on.

Even so, at no point did I feel like I couldn't draw naturally. Most of the time I forgot I was drawing on a flexible display and instead focused on the art in much the same way I would if I were drawing on an iPad mini.

In general, Procreate Pocket worked smoothly on the iPhone Duo, though I did notice that I sometimes had to select a tool, say Eraser or the Pen, more than once to get it to switch.

The Apple Pencil works equally well on the cover screen, though I find that smaller display a bit restrictive for drawing. There is also the matter of what I do with the Pencil when I'm not using it. Even if Apple did come up with an iPhone Duo case to hold it, the Apple Pencil (USB-C) is at least an inch taller than the folded Duo.

Overall, this is what I always wanted but also something more. It's an iPhone that I can draw on but also one that reminds me of Mr. Peabody's expandable chalkboard. Instead of one relatively cramped drawing space, I have a hidden 7.6-inch Apple Pencil-ready drawing tablet in my pocket.

Now, Apple, do the iPhone 18 Pro Max.

I've been wrapped up in even more Black Friday sales this week as the big day draws nearer. There's also been a huge level of interest in a certain Zelda special edition of the Nintendo Switch 2 that's seen a small restock this week. All of these things have been rudely intruding on my crossword time.

Still, I'm back with another puzzle this week. Slightly smaller, but still hopefully enjoyable and challenging enough to entertain you for a few minutes if you're tackling it in bed before going to sleep or along with your morning coffee.

Enjoy, and I'll catch you for another next week if I'm not buried in the deals even further!

Rising console prices are by now a fact of life for gamers, no matter which platform they prefer. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X — consoles that are now six years old — cost $150 and $300 more than at launch, respectively; the Nintendo Switch 2, released in 2025, already costs $50 more.

Things haven't always been this way: back in 2013, the PS4 launched for $400, and the PS4 Slim arrived three years later for $300. Price cuts and cheaper versions were traditionally a part — a key part — of the console lifecycle.

In 2026, that pattern is reversed: consoles are getting more expensive rather than cheaper, at a time when everything else is also getting price hikes, and the trend is occurring all over the world, not just in the US and Europe.

To find out why prices keep rising — and whether they'll ever come down — I spoke to four industry analysts: Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics, James McWhirter at Omdia, Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis, and Mat Piscatella at Circana.

Whatever happened to the price cut?

Traditionally, hardware makers have launched new consoles at relatively slim margins — even at times making a loss — and planned to make up the difference through games and other spending by players.

Manufacturing efficiencies combined with advances in hardware, including cheaper chips and memory, have helped to reduce production costs, further cementing the durability of this model.

Making use of these gains, manufacturers could then introduce slimmer versions of consoles or even reduce prices — therefore enticing more people to the platform and increasing game sales.

"The hardcore [gamers] paid full whack at launch," says Alinea's Elliott. "Families, kids, lapsed players, and more budget-conscious gamers came in later, at a lower price."

In 2026, the cost reductions that underpinned this model are much harder to achieve, with advanced chips becoming more expensive to manufacture and memory prices soaring.

At the same time, makers have become less willing to subsidise their hardware. "Sony and Microsoft have become more reticent to sink margin into subsidising consoles heavily this generation," says Ampere's Harding-Rolls.

The net result is that the traditional relationship between console age, manufacturing costs, and retail prices has completely broken down.

It's not just the RAM

The PS5 and Xbox Series X launched amid the turbulence of the COVID pandemic, and supply shortages lasted well into their lifecycles.

Now, we see myriad interrelated headwinds — from inflation and rising energy costs to currency fluctuations, particularly the weak yen, and US tariffs — that put even more pressure on manufacturing and retail prices.

"This console generation has been characterised by macroeconomic instability," says Omdia's McWhirter.

To top things off, the AI infrastructure boom is gobbling up enormous amounts of memory, encouraging chipmakers to prioritise more profitable server products and squeezing production capacity available for consumer electronics.

Consoles, which rely on DRAM for working memory and NAND flash for storage, are effectively caught in the crossfire. TrendForce estimates that memory now accounts for 23% to 42% of console component costs, compared with around 15% historically.

Elliott points out that console manufacturers negotiate memory prices and volumes months in advance, potentially delaying the impact of rising costs by two to four quarters. "A console on a shelf this Christmas contains memory that may have been priced the best part of a year ago," he says.

Same problem, different game plans

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all facing these pressures, but each has its own priorities.

Sony's PS5 is a mature platform with an established audience, and so the company is increasingly focused on making money from existing customers, including through subscriptions like PlayStation Plus.

Its Q2 results, reported on November 5, illustrate this well: PS5 shipments fell from 4 million to 2.6 million year on year, while gaming division revenue increased 9%, helped considerably by a weaker yen. "These days, Sony treats hardware as a gateway it would rather not subsidise," says Elliott.

Microsoft is in a similar position with Xbox, but its games increasingly appear on PlayStation and PC alongside its own consoles — as Elliott puts it, "the console is one door among many."

Elliott argues that Microsoft's willingness to accept higher hardware prices reflects the console's changing importance within its wider gaming business, although falling hardware sales could make it harder to attract new players.

Nintendo, as is so often the case, has its own dilemma.

The Switch 2 is still early in its lifecycle, meaning Nintendo needs to build up its audience while keeping the console affordable enough to attract new buyers. McWhirter argues that Nintendo is accepting pressure on short-term profitability rather than passing the full increase in component costs to customers.

Omdia estimates that the market price of the Switch 2's 12GB memory and 256GB storage increased by $162 between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, compared with a $50 increase in its US retail price. The figure doesn't necessarily reflect what Nintendo pays its suppliers, but illustrates the scale of the problem.

Nintendo says it has no plans for further price increases, but as McWhirter says, "The big question going forward is: how long will this be sustainable?"

For all their differences, the three console makers face the same question: how much can they charge before players start walking away?

“Elliott argues that manufacturers have also become more focused on protecting their margins, with established customers seemingly willing to absorb higher prices. “Every price rise this generation has been a test, and the core audience kept passing it – on PlayStation and Nintendo anyway,” he says.”

Are gamers getting priced out?

The new dynamics of console pricing give gamers some difficult choices. Circana's Piscatella has observed a consistent pattern around recent price increases: sales jump ahead of the new prices taking effect, then decline and eventually settle at a new baseline.

Piscatella says this pattern has emerged across PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch 2, and is distinct from the natural slowdown in sales as consoles get older.

Console price cuts later in the hardware's lifecycle have traditionally made them more affordable for families and younger gamers, a dynamic that Elliott points out is now quickly disappearing.

"Budget players have always come in through used consoles and 20 quid used discs," says Elliott. The shift towards digital distribution complicates matters, particularly when it comes to buying and reselling games cheaply.

The picture isn't totally bleak, however: Piscatella argues that younger and less affluent gamers do have options, particularly on mobile devices and lower-spec PCs, where free-to-play hits like Roblox and Fortnite are widely available.

Cloud gaming could also become a more attractive option as console prices continue to rise, and subscription services can offer access to a huge library of games for a monthly fee.

The risk, though, is that console gaming increasingly becomes the preserve of older, more affluent audiences, even as gaming itself remains hugely popular.

"Consoles gained popularity for their ease of use, convenience and affordability when compared to other gaming options," says Piscatella. "Anything that decreases these factors for consoles makes them a less appealing option."

The $1,000 question

The AI boom looks set to keep pressure on component prices — and therefore console prices — for some time yet. While memory prices might eventually stabilise, neither Elliott nor Harding-Rolls expects a return to the old pattern of steadily cheaper consoles.

Retail prices are likely to remain elevated due to expensive manufacturing processes and manufacturers' reluctance to absorb costs, and Elliott expects console makers to lean on temporary promotions, not wholesale price cuts.

But will console launch prices ever breach $1,000? Harding-Rolls believes Sony and Microsoft "will have to subsidise more heavily than they would like" to keep the next generation affordable.

Ampere's August research did the maths, modelling a scenario where an incrementally updated PS6 and Xbox launched in 2028 for $1,000, finding that combined sales over their first five years could be up to 38% lower than the equivalent period for the current generation.

In other words, Sony and Microsoft beware.

Faced with these interrelated dilemmas, manufacturers might turn in a new direction and rethink their approach to hardware.

Harding-Rolls suggests, for example, that manufacturers may have to scale back their ambitions for ever-more-realistic graphics and raw performance. "The relentless push for higher-end performance will need to be moderated," he says.

McWhirter posits that we might see more hardware stratification across tiers, potentially including a cheaper Switch 2, and a growth in bundles that offer value without actually cutting console prices.

Console makers may also delay new hardware launches for the foreseeable future to assess whether component costs improve — although the mood music from memory makers like SK Hynix is bleak, with much of its production capacity already committed through 2028.

Longer generations, then, seem increasingly likely. Elliott anticipates that the PS5 will stick around well after its successor launches, and cross-generation games may let gamers delay any hardware upgrades. "The next generation won’t replace this one so much as sit on top of it," he says.

Financing could spread the upfront cost of new consoles, while trade-ins and refurbished hardware might offer cheaper entry points for gamers — albeit without solving the underlying affordability dilemma.

A new era of pay-to-play?

As we head into 2027 and beyond, the danger for console makers is that their hardware becomes a product for wealthy enthusiasts, undermining the business model that made console gaming so successful.

Hardware that once became cheaper as it aged is now becoming more expensive, at a time when households are already facing higher living costs. Rising component costs might eventually ease, but changing business models could make permanent price cuts increasingly rare.

Piscatella worries that a shrinking pool of potential buyers could ultimately threaten the economics of the entire hardware model.

"Then the question becomes at what point does the addressable market for a new console become so small as to make it unviable," says Piscatella. "We're not there yet, but the risk of getting to that point certainly exists."

What do a clinical psychologist from Queensland, an artist from Atlanta, a bio-behavioural scientist from North Carolina, and a tech engineer from Hungary have in common? In spite of their different levels of tech knowledge, all four converted to Linux within the last six months to regain control of their privacy and data.

Nearly a year ago, reports of millions of new Linux downloads signalled a shift in attitude amongst average digital users. The catalyst was the end of free support for Windows 10, followed by Microsoft’s aggressive promotion of Windows 11 and increasingly intrusive data-collection practices that sparked user dissatisfaction.

While ever-expanding surveillance seems to be the hallmark of major tech companies, increasingly user-friendly Linux desktop environments and installation programs, along with LLMs eager to help with configuration issues, are enabling even the least tech-savvy users to reclaim their digital freedom.

TechRadar spoke to those who have already switched to Linux to understand their reasons, how difficult it was to change operating systems, and whether we all need to do so to really be more private online.

Why switch to Linux

Bio-behavioural scientist Christopher Smith says he had no programming experience when he decided to switch. After 25 years using Microsoft, he became increasingly frustrated with the operating system forcing him to accept software and services he never requested.

"Windows was preventing me from managing my laptop freely, thereby depriving me of autonomy in my digital choices," Smith tells TechRadar. "I paid for my laptop, but I felt as though Microsoft was deciding how I could use it."

As Smith looked for alternatives, he first tried Linux from a bootable USB stick before moving on to a dual-boot system. "I didn’t even know the term 'Linux Distribution' at first; I thought it was something for developers or hackers."

Choosing a beginner-friendly Mint distro with a Cinnamon desktop environment helped the transition, as it featured a familiar ‘point-and-click’ interface similar to Windows rather than dropping him straight into an often terrifying command line interface.

Since then, Smith hasn’t looked back. Using LLMs to gather information and engage with digital communities, he has quickly learned terminal commands. He recently bought a laptop running a fully Linux-based operating system and a desktop computer on which he is setting up his own Linux server. "I won’t have to rely on Big Tech anymore."

Smith even sparked curiosity among his colleagues as they saw him booting Linux from USB at work. "After that, two colleagues tried it, and they have now told me they are exploring it further," he says.

It’s a privacy game

But is this all really necessary? Or are Smith and his newfound voyagers simply uncovering a new interest — useful, but ultimately just something that piqued their curiosity?

Imre Lóránt Dévai, a Budapest-based technical engineer who recently transitioned to Linux, certainly believes in the former. He told TechRadar:

"Data collection can affect more than privacy: the software companies use to collect data may also consume computer resources, such as CPU, memory, or internet bandwidth. Some people therefore block it both to limit tracking and to reclaim control and resources."

Lóránt Dévai uses his Logitech mouse and its installation process as a micro-example. "On Windows, even managing its buttons and firmware required Logitech software, an account, and an app running in the background. On Linux, I instead wrote simple scripts for the functions I actually needed, such as mapping the buttons and checking the battery," he said.

For Brisbane-based psychologist Aaron Frost, the decision to leave Microsoft stemmed from his professional ethics and the need to protect his patients’ confidentiality.

Specifically, Frost began harbouring doubts about the behaviour of Big Tech following Microsoft’s Recall incident — the AI-powered Copilot feature that periodically captured screenshots of users’ activity to create a searchable history.

"We work in health, and the Australian Privacy Principles treat all health data as sensitive, and I couldn’t see a way you could use Windows and be compliant, so I grabbed an old Windows machine and wiped it," Frost told TechRadar.

Choosing the right distro was the biggest challenge as he moved from Ubuntu to Fedora and Gnome to find the one best suited to his needs — something that in the past may have been a real barrier to adoption.

"I don’t think I would have pushed through the first week without LLMs. The fact that Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT know terminal and know Linux totally removes that barrier to entry," Frost explains.

NEW: Leave No Trace — A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance.

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AI as a learning ally

Indeed, LLMs are playing a significant part in making Linux less overwhelming than it used to be. "AI can be a patient, nonjudgmental 'virtual admin' that can help people who might otherwise feel intimidated by online forums," explains Lóránt Dévai.

For beginners, the Budapest-based tech engineer recommends using an agent within the terminal rather than an AI assistant service, as this may be more convenient than copying commands from the browser’s chat window.

Cloud-based AI may be fine for setting up a fresh system with no personal files, he explains, but once private photos or documents are on the computer, using a privacy-focused or local model is recommended to keep your data safe.

Although useful, LLMs are not without risks and require cross-checking. "For anything that could delete or change important data, it’s wise to check what the AI proposes before letting it act," Lóránt Dévai stresses.

In the same vein, Atlanta-based graphic artist Dan Rodda has been using LLMs only experimentally during his transition to Linux, including Mistral coding models, and checking their input. He finds them useful for routine technical questions but cautions that answers can be subtly wrong.

"I have occasionally consulted open LLMs for technical help but often have to double-check their solutions," says Rodda. "I think local AI has promising potential to be an automation toolset but have yet to leverage it personally."

How to stop relying on Big Tech

As they continue to progress, the four people interviewed by TechRadar all agreed that switching to Linux meant increasing their detachment from Big Tech.

"My views towards Big Tech have been pretty grim for quite a while, but now it feels like they aren’t even trying to maintain a social license, so I actually enjoy the process of finding a free solution to a service and then migrating and cancelling the subscription," Brisbane-based psychologist Frost explains.

"I have gotten progressively more disenchanted by Big Tech with their greed and surveillance," Atlanta-based graphic artist Rodda adds. "Switching to Linux is an ethical and self-respecting choice in my view. I have substituted most of my cloud storage, search engine use, and personal productivity software with open source or privacy-respecting stuff. I also run a privacy-oriented system on my Google Pixel called GrapheneOS."

Bio-behavioural scientist Smith lists all the software he uses to replace Big Tech. "I've left Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, and I've moved over to Brave Browser and also Vivaldi."

Budapest-based tech engineer Lóránt Dévai, the most tech-experienced across the group, is even building a home lab — using an old Linux laptop to run services for himself, and reducing his reliance on tech companies. This entails hosting his own search service instead of Google search, running Pi-hole to manage or filter DNS requests rather than relying on Google, self-hosting Bitwarden to store his passwords, and setting up alternative self-hosting to Google Analytics so that the data stays on infrastructure he controls rather than going to a large third-party provider.

"It’s a gradual move towards more control over my data and services," he explains.

In the future, they all would like to de-Google. "Google has decades of my personal information that's already been harvested and scraped, and you know the telemetry of just using their free services because you are the product," Rodda says.

"There's a plan to totally de-Google, but that's a much bigger nut to crack, I think, because I'm tied to the Google environment in various ways, so it's really hard to cut those one by one," Lóránt Dévai adds.

Would you switch to Linux, too?

If you, too, are thinking of making the switch, Lóránt Dévai recommends starting with small steps, trying out Linux first and being mindful of the data that an AI tool can access.

Rodda is very practical. "Take inventory of what you need in your digital life, what you actually use, then do a little research to find out what would be a good fit and try it out for a week. Distro-findere.com and distrochooser.de are good places to start."

Lóránt Dévai recommends experimenting before installing. "Boot a Linux distribution from a USB drive to see how it looks and works. If you like it, you can install it later," he says. You can also keep Windows and Linux side by side with a dual-boot setup and experiment with different distros to find the most suitable for you. The rest will come, they promise.

Ultimately, all our interviewees confirmed that their need to break free from Big Tech’s surveillance far outweighed the sense of familiarity that had previously kept them tied to Windows. Although it’s a small sample, the number of users switching to Linux looks set to rise, as Linux distros become easier to use and LLMs help newcomers regain control over their digital footprint.

"During the switch, I was amazed at the number of people who post in the Linux Mint subreddit that say: I finally made the switch, and oh my god, why didn’t anybody tell me before it was going to be this amazing," says Smith.

As ever, the Linux rabbit hole can run deep. And it is no secret that the switch has incredible potential for improving your privacy. But with many benefits now as simple as loading up a USB stick and your favourite LLM, one has to wonder: what exactly is stopping you today?

Sometimes, I have to remind myself that not everyone is immersed in the Apple news cycle like their livelihood depends on it.

If, like me, you were paying close attention to all 24 minutes of the company’s iPhone 18 Pro announcement in September, you may already know why a small amount of pixelation is occasionally visible in the top left-hand corner of the display on Apple’s newest flagship. But if you had better things to do (and let’s be honest: you probably did), then you may have missed the memo.

In any case, don’t panic: if you occasionally spot some odd discoloration on the left side of your iPhone 18 Pro’s clock, you’re not going mad, and your iPhone isn’t faulty. What you’re actually seeing is Apple’s new under-display Face ID camera, which makes room for an upgrade elsewhere. Let me explain.

The iPhone 18 Pro has a new, better Dynamic Island — it’s smaller and can display three Live Activities at once, versus two on the original Dynamic Island. To shrink it, Apple moved the iPhone 18 Pro’s Face ID infrared (IR) camera away from the Dynamic Island and placed it under the top-left corner of the phone’s OLED panel.

As a result, this portion of the display features a modified pixel layout—there are larger gaps between pixels here than anywhere else on the iPhone 18 Pro's screen, allowing IR light to pass through and Face ID to function.

You’ll need a pretty serious zoom camera to spot these gaps with the naked eye (as this iFixit video demonstrates), but this pixel trickery does occasionally become visible, particularly when the clock is displayed (it only affects the first half of the clock, but I think that’s what gives it away).

I spotted this new under-display Face ID camera when using my iPhone 18 Pro for the first time (I mention it in my video review at 0:56, see below), but it’s too subtle to have remained distracting. And hey, maybe I went looking for it because I knew it was there.

Still, some iPhone 18 Pro owners are noticing it more than others, as one Reddit forum suggests: “I haven’t noticed it at all. Zero difference to me,” wrote one user. Another said, “I usually only notice it when the black text of the clock is sitting directly on a solid white background, which isn't very often.”

“This really bothers me; I always notice it whenever I look at that part of the display,” reads one outright negative response to Apple’s Face ID switcheroo, while another said, “I don’t know how good people’s eyesight is, but I notice it clearly even with a passing glance. It’s actually quite distracting. I’d much rather have a larger Dynamic Island than an obvious screen disparity.”

I’m not sure I’d call the pixelation ‘obvious’, but then maybe my eyes are bad.

I did, however, feel like this iPhone 18 Pro display oddity was worth explaining to those who may have noticed it and feared the worst. But honestly, it’s not a big deal — as mentioned, the trade-off is a better Dynamic Island — and at least we’re seeing Apple try new things with its long-standing iPhone features. More please.

Winter is coming, and I've just unearthed a whole load of deals on cold-weather clothing from one of my favorite outdoor brands: Patagonia. This is especially exciting because good Patagonia discounts don't come along very often, and Patagonia kit is rather expensive. The place to head for said deals is Cotswold Outdoor, and the sale includes everything from lightweight down jackets to cosy fleece mid-layers, protective waterproofs, knitted hats and winter coats.

I've rounded up what I think are the 18 best deals below, but there are plenty more to explore. If you can't see what you're looking for, hit the quick links below to browse the full range of price-drops. I've also focused on men's apparel here, but there's a large selection of women's Patagonia deals too — hit the link below to see them.

• Browse all men's Patagonia deals at Cotswold Outdoor
• Browse all women's Patagonia deals at Cotswold Outdoor

This is billed as a Black Friday sale, and you might be feeling that's a little premature — Black Friday isn't until 27 November, after all. I've been covering these sales events for nine years now, and generally my advice has been that you might as well wait until the 'proper' Black Friday to make your purchases, in case the retailer decides to drop the price a little more for the big day.

However, in this case, I'd suggest it's a better idea to buy now — sizes tend to sell out quickly in sales like these, and at the moment there's a good selection available for all my picks. Plus, you'll have your cold-weather kit ready as soon as the temperatures start to really fall.

Patagonia price-drops

It wasn’t until I unboxed the all-new touchscreen MacBook Pro that I understood the enormity of what Apple had done. They’d told me it was now a 3lb system that was both thinner and smaller than the MacBook Pro M5 (and the recently released M6 model), but it wasn’t until I put the new laptop next to the M5 and then compared it to the MacBook Air M5 that I knew Apple had changed its laptop game.

Here's what you should know about me: I hate a heavy backpack. That’s one of the reasons I carried a Microsoft Surface Pro for a decade and have now carried a succession of excellent MacBook Air laptops for the last few years. At 2.7 lbs, it's light enough to be mostly unnoticeable in my backpack, and since the M-class Apple silicon chips, Apple has packed in more than enough power for my needs.

The new Touchscreen MacBook shrinks the traditional Pro chassis by a full half pound. That’s right, it’s now just 0.3 pounds heavier than my MacBook Air. It’s not just the weight. Overall bulk — despite a larger (and also in part because of) PROLED XDR display — is not much more than the Air.

Here are the specs:

MacBook Air 13-inch M5

• Height: 0.44 inch
• Width: 11.97 inches
• Depth: 8.46 inches

MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display 14-inch

• Height: 0.59 inch
• Width: 12.24 inches
• Depth: 8.52 inches

Obviously, the touchscreen MacBook Pro is fractionally larger in every dimension, but it no longer feels like a bulky, heavy Pro system.

Apple’s ability to shrink this powerful laptop's dimensions — while leaving ports, keyboard, trackpad, and speakers virtually untouched and oh-so-familiar — comes down, in large part, to the new tandem OLED display, which is considerably thinner than the M6’s mini-LED-based Liquid Retina Display.

It’s also wholly redesigned, stretching far deeper on the cover than the Liquid Retina panel on the traditional MacBook Pro. That extra depth is how Apple almost magically fits a 14.2-inch display on a smaller chassis.

Perhaps you can see where I’m going: By shrinking its most powerful portable (with a touchscreen, no less), Apple is, whether purposefully or not, introducing some buying confusion. A MacBook Pro is officially nearly ultra-portable territory.

Obviously, the price and power disparity is what will now cleave consumers one way or the other. The MacBook Air 13-inch M5 starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,799 with 16GB of RAM, a 10-Core CPU, 8-Core GPU, and 512GB of storage. The 14-inch MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display starts at $2,899 / £2,899 / AU$4,599, with a 15-Core M5 Pro, 16-Core GPU, 24GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.

The difference is clear: this is a Pro-grade system, which has far more power than anyone looking at a MacBook Air-class system probably needs.

Still, with this new MacBook Pro, I think the MacBook Air’s portability advantage has been taken off the table.

The magic touch

Now, I’ve spent some time with a slightly juiced-up MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display (M5 Pro with an 18-Core GPU, 20-Core GPU, 48GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage for $3699) and have come to realize that aside from formidable, virtually endless power, it’s the remarkable screen that I now believe is set to change the trajectory of all Apple MacBooks.

I want to be clear: the ability to touch the MacBook Pro screen and manipulate data, content, screen views, desktops, and more is exciting. But I‘m not gonna lie, I’ve been struggling to figure out what it was made for. As I wrote when Apple unveiled the touchscreen MacBook Pro, I’m quite familiar with touchscreen systems and, when necessary, did touch my Surface Pro screen.

However, it’s becoming clear to me that as I use the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display system as my everyday driver, I don’t touch the display very often. Instead, I kept looking for reasons to touch the display.

There are apps where it’s fun to try, like the 3D-manipulating ZBrush, which lets me pull and push 3D models like a digital sculptor, and 3D scene-creating Cinema 4D (using my fingers to manipulate a 3D couch was harder than I thought it would be), but these are, at least not for me, everyday tools.

I fiddled with the laptop’s touchscreen to scroll through web pages, but I'm just as happy to use the giant Force Touch trackpad.

I take a lot of screen grabs by holding down Command/Shift/4 to launch the grabber, and I usually use the mouse to select the capture area. With the touchscreen, I could drag my finger diagonally across the screen to select a capture area. That was kind of cool, though not a game changer, and I’m fine with using the mouse.

I tried using my fingers to manipulate my Cyberpunk 2077 character, and it was a disaster. I kept accidentally drawing my weapon and blasting away at random strangers. I decided to stick with the mouse and trackpad. Side note: I ran all of these games and apps at once. This system is such a beast.

The point is, I think touch has its applications and place, but I think it’ll end up being mostly useful in specific, vertical workflows.

That feeling may change over time. After all, sometimes touching a MacBook display does feel like an illicit act. Each time I went to close a window or scroll a webpage with a fingertip, I did glance around to see who was watching, wondering if they thought I’d gone a bit daft, as they thought, “Dude, you can’t touch a MacBook screen; Steve Jobs told us so.”

Those who do choose this relatively lightweight and incredibly powerful system probably won’t do so because of touch, but they may choose it for another reason:

The astonishing display.

From the new Dynamic Island that replaces the giant notch on my old MacBook Pro (and provides some useful live info but sadly not Face ID) to the thinner bezels and curved bottom, it’s more aesthetically appealing. The tandem OLED technology, though, transforms the visuals in ways that no other laptop I’ve ever used or seen can approach.

I put the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display next to the MacBook Pro M5, and the difference is nothing short of remarkable.

The promised 10,000,000-to-1 contrast ratio pays dividends with blacks that are inkier than the deep center of a black hole. That’s paired with colors and clarity that make everything pop, and with ProMotion (up to 120Hz), everything is smooth as silk.

Viewed separately, imagery still looks great on the MacBook M5’s Liquid Retina XDR, but next to the new PROLED XDR, everything on the M5 Pro looks muted. Even the off-angle viewing is noticeably better on the PROLED XDR Display. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. I showed the side-by-side laptops to a group of coworkers, and they all agreed.

That spectacular screen is paired with a more performant silicon that easily bested the standard M5 in my older MacBook Pro. In my side-by-side tests with Resident Evil 4, the M5 Pro MacBook Pro loaded the game faster and stayed a step ahead of the M5 MacBook Pro.

Here’s my conundrum. Most people shopping for laptops are not making a feature film, cutting a studio album, working on giant CAD-level projects, or running large language AI models locally, all things that the MacBook Pro PROLED XDR and its M5 Pro are more than capable of (often, as I noted above, at the same time, but with a lot of fan noise). But I cannot think of a single potential user who would not want this display.

They don’t all need the touchscreen, for as cool as it is, but as for that big, efficient, bright, and contrast-rich tandem OLED, everyone could use that.

So the question I’m left with after my MacBook Pro PROLED XDR Display 14-inch experience is: when will the next MacBook Air get this display, shrink by half a pound, and regain its position as the ultra-portable king? Oh, and how soon can the MacBook Air get that glowing logo on the back?

OpenAI has just released ChatGPT Images 2.6 across all subscription levels, including Free. It’s only a 0.1 upgrade to the previous Images 2.5, so it should come as no surprise that not that much has changed. In fact, there are only two new features, but they’re both worth your attention.

Firstly, you can now use ChatGPT to make animated GIF images, and second, you can now upload a persistent reference image, so you don’t need to keep uploading it when requesting a lot of different edits.

The first change is perhaps the most immediately interesting, but the second one could become more useful in the long run.

More cat GIFs, please

The Internet can never have enough cat GIFs, so naturally I decided to try the new feature on a photo of my cat, Chester. While Halloween has just been and gone, I thought I’d use that as inspiration for the sort of image I wanted to make of my cat. I used a fairly simple prompt: “Can you make a Halloween GIF of my cat to share with family?”

ChatGPT obliged without any objection, and transformed my cat into a feline wearing a Halloween-themed hat and cape and blinking slowly as a pumpkin flickered in the background. It’s especially fun for my family because there’s no way he’d ever let a human dress him up like this.

Once you’ve created your GIF it gives you a shareable link, so you don’t need to host it anywhere if you want to link people to it. Alternatively, you can download it or share it straight to X, LinkedIn and Reddit.

What ChatGPT produced was ok, but it was hardly going to set the Internet on fire, so I followed up with “That's cool, but it's not very active, can you make it more active please? Get creative.”

“Now we're talking!”, replied ChatGPT. “Your cat's gone full witch mode — casting a spell with a raised paw, conjuring a floating, glowing pumpkin, then giving a triumphant little meow before licking their lips. A proper bit of Halloween mischief!”

Indeed, the resulting GIF was much better, and Chester's movements looked realistic. I think this shows how important your prompt writing is — don’t be afraid to ask ChatGPT to get creative.

Time and time again

Of course, I might want to produce a GIF of this photo for a different occasion in the future so I asked ChatGPT: “Can you save the original photo as Chester so I can reference it again?”

After thinking for a second, it saved the photo as a reference image called Chester. It made a point that it was saving the original snap, not the Halloween versions, and said “In future chats, you can simply say something like: ‘Create a picture of @Chester dressed as a pirate.’ And I'll be able to use his original appearance without you needing to upload the photo again.”

I tested it with the prompt “Make a GIF of @Chester on the moon” and it provided one of Chester as an astronaut chasing a butterfly. How the butterfly was surviving on the moon, and how Chester was surviving when his ears poked through his space helmet, I don’t know, but I’ll go with it anyway.

Saving a reference image is a genuinely useful new feature. It might not be as flashy as the GIF creation, but I think it’s going to come in handy for the future. Overall I’m pretty happy with the Images 2.6 update. Nothing major has changed, but it’s nice to know I can now create a GIF from an image whenever I want, using ChatGPT’s natural language input method.

The best thing about Images 2.6 is how little effort it takes to get something fun out of it. I didn't need animation software, any technical knowledge or even a particularly clever prompt. All I needed was a picture of my cat and a willingness to let ChatGPT get creative. And now that Chester is saved as a reference image, I suspect this won't be his last starring role.

Sam Altman spends much of his time explaining how AI could transform the world for the better and pushing back against doomsayers. Nonetheless, the OpenAI CEO has some fairly unsettling ideas about how AI development could lead to a disaster, or disasters plural. He outlined a couple of these nightmares during an episode of the Figuring Out With Raj Shamani podcast in disturbing detail.

The two dystopias stem from almost opposite problems: either humanity losing control of increasingly powerful machines, or one group seizing control of most of the technology.

"One is that there’s a loss of control to AI, and we intentionally or accidentally sort of cede control of the future to systems that are unbelievably more capable than we are, and we can’t get it back," Altman said. "And the other is like, one person or company or country gets way too powerful relative to everybody else."

The first scenario is less the tired cliché of a robot uprising and more of a soft surrender of humanity's choices to AI until it's impossible to take back any agency from the AI software. The other is a more modern, if still clichéd, speculative-fiction scenario: an overwhelmingly powerful technology controlled by one person or corporation, leaving everyone else at their mercy. They are both endlessly discussed by people in the industry and policymakers, but having Altman issue the warning is still notable.

Altman, through OpenAI and ChatGPT, is one of, if not the central face of AI to those who have heard the bare minimum about the technology and its flaws. Altman believes those capabilities could bring extraordinary benefits, but his comments suggest he's not sanguine about the looming chaos that AI carries as well.

Handing over decisions

Advanced AI taking over because people cede control has only become a real-world concern in recent years as the technology moved beyond simply answering questions and into decision-making territory. AI agents can already interact with websites and complete complex assignments, and developers are working toward systems that require less and less human supervision. The more responsibility those systems receive, the greater the consequences if their objectives diverge from what people actually intended.

It's important to remember that what we call AI now relies on probability prediction in different forms. While very powerful and leveraging huge amounts of data, it can't actually make judgments like a human, and doesn't have to be malicious to be harmful. That's why models tend to opt for the disastrous choice of using nuclear weapons as a strategy when simulating how to run a nation.

Humans might not understand or approve of how an AI pursues an objective, even if humans issued the task. And if the AI model has enough power and is embedded in enough critical systems, people might not be able to redirect or stop it. After all, an AI system told to reduce gridlock on the road might logically conclude the solution is to remove the roads, or send an order to any Wi-Fi-enabled car to stop operating. That particular scenario is very unlikely, but the fact that it's not actually impossible is unnerving enough.

We're all familiar with the more human problem of technological and industrial monopolies Altman extended to AI in his other apocalyptic warning. Plenty of people have sounded the alarm about how there is already too much power in too few hands with too little regulation. Altman's hands being among them doesn't mean he won't criticize the fact.

"I think it’s actually much better for the world for there to be multiple AI efforts with slightly different approaches that are competing with each other and putting out different ways," Altman said. "I also have this like dislike of too intense power concentration. I think that’s not what works, so I’m hopeful we don’t do that.”

Altman's disdain is in some tension with his company's ambitions and actions. Claiming OpenAI is already dominant in several respects, such as AI infrastructure, is an illustration of the dominance he says he worries about.

"I think we have the most users and the best stack from chips to data centers to models to other things that come around that sort of put abundant intelligence into people’s hands. I think we have the best brand and the values that people who are going to use this technology want," Altman said. Nonetheless, he claimed, "we want everybody else to succeed, and I think people can feel that from us.”

Optimistic doomsaying

Despite those warnings, Altman remains fundamentally optimistic about where AI is taking humanity. Asked about his children growing up in a world increasingly shaped by the technology, he expressed confidence that people would find ways to adapt. His outlook suggests that he sees AI's risks as serious challenges to manage rather than reasons to abandon its development.

"I don’t know what the future’s going to look like, but I am comfortable that I have enormous trust in people to figure out how to adapt and thrive and make society better for all of us," Altman said. "I think the world will most likely keep getting much better."

That optimism extends to OpenAI's future plans to apply AI to scientific exploration. He pointed to recent mathematical achievements as evidence that the technology might be approaching a point where it can contribute meaningfully to fundamental research.

"I am extremely excited to see how far we can push AI to discover new science," Altman said. He envisions "a machine that can help us understand the world better, discover the deepest insights in physics, figure out new medical treatments, a new source of energy, things that I think we can’t even imagine but that better scientific understanding will enable. I am extremely excited for us to go build that machine."

Experience counts for something, and nowhere is that more evident than on the Meta VR Glasses I finally wore this morning.

These lightweight, intuitive, and engrossing VR glasses shed the weight and overdesigned fussiness of previous VR and mixed reality headsets to deliver a subtle, smart, eminently comfortable and fun wearable experience that is equally at home entertaining you with wild VR movies or expansive, productivity-enhancing virtual desktops.

Granted, my walkthrough of the $1,299 VR Glasses that are expected to arrive next spring (April-early June) of next year was a breezy 45 minutes, but that was ample time to realize that Meta VR Glasses were truly built on all the lessons of not only Meta Quest VR, but also by watching competitors like Apple and even Samsung struggle to inspire consumers with stunning but also expensive or somewhat unwieldy mixed reality experiences.

In my view, Meta's decision to move compute, storage, and battery out of the headset and into a 300g belt- or pocket-friendly puck pays design dividends. The wearable, which looks like a slightly oversized pair of sunglasses, is so comfortable that I barely felt them on my face, and after 45 minutes of continuous use, I didn't remove the 100-gram frames with a sense of relief. If anything, I was sad my all-too-brief interlude was over.

Without needing to support CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, RAM, a heavy battery, or even SD storage, Meta could focus on basic aesthetic appeal. The Meta VR Glasses feel and look spare, but in a positive way. By design, they do not cut you off from the outside world (there will be an optional light shield), so there's no need to slap a pair of animated blinking eyes on the lenses.

Granted, I had my doubts that the Meta VR Glasses would be all that immersive or inspiring, given what looked like essentially eye-sized lenses and no visible cameras, inside or out.

That all turned out to be deceiving.

Accurate tracking for an immersive experience

When I said Meta clearly learned from all that came before it, I wasn't kidding. The metaphors for setting up eye tracking were essentially the same as what I did for Apple Vision Pro (I didn't have to adjust pupillary distance, though you easily can) and, to an extent, Galaxy XR. You look at a circle of dots floating in space and, yes, use your fingers to pinch and select each one.

There are, obviously, cameras that track your eyes, hands, and the outside world. I was impressed with the accuracy, which matched what I've experienced on Vision Pro.

Equally, the first time I saw the floating menu, I was shocked at the visual quality (it's worth noting that Meta put in a pair of magnetic prescription inserts to match my eyes, and those inserts will probably add almost $100 to your final cost — Meta told me it will offer Zenni prescription inserts for "under $100 per pair, flat pricing (price does not increase based on Rx strength)". For the record, Meta lists the Micro-OLED display resolution as 5K, and based on what I saw, I believe it.

Disney+, a TV App, Avengers: Infinity War VR experience, and a dozen other app icons floated in space, with each one puffing up as I glanced at it.

Meta VR Glasses software doesn't try to reinvent the mixed reality wheel. I had no trouble opening apps, closing them, or even moving windows around. It does add one gesture that I appreciated: scroll.

To scroll in any window, I made a gentle fist and then swiped my thumb across the side of my index finger to scroll left, right, up, and down. I was surprised at how quickly I picked this up; I think that has a lot to do with the accuracy of the eye and gesture tracking.

My experiences were limited to a handful of apps, but each one was compelling in its own way.

We started with an 8K VR Billie Eilish concert in which I was virtually seated front and center, close enough to take a selfie with the singer. The volume started a bit low for my tastes. Still, I was able to use the volume controls under the right temple to make the audio loud enough that it drowned out the voices of the Meta execs who were trying to guide me (they were watching what I viewed through a cast on a nearby PC — Meta VR Glasses can also cast to your phone).

We switched to the NBA Finals last, title-clinching Knicks game, which put me courtside. At one point, I realized the near-360 view was probably shot by a camera that was also almost on the court. Meta told me they partner with Kosmo (Hesai Kosmo), which uses relatively small 360-degree cameras to capture the action. As the game replay continued, I noticed Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Kardashian were also courtside. I waved, but they did not seem to notice me.

I played a puzzle game called Dragon Grove, which, as you might expect, featured a small, green, cartoony dragon who landed on my outstretched hand and let me pet him. I was reminded of a similar experience with Vision Pro and a butterfly. By launch, Meta expects to have 75+ hands-first games.

Meta believes that the primary use cases for Meta VR Glasses will be entertainment and productivity. On the entertainment front, I watched Avengers Infinity Wars VR Enhanced, which took the original film and then gussied it up with 360 surround VR imagery and even lets some of the characters pop out of the original film frame. It was cool but also a bit odd. Why would a director who intentionally chooses to shoot a scene a certain way want you looking anywhere else but his original film? It did, though, make the movie feel more like an amusement park ride, which may appeal to some.

Business class

On the productivity front, Meta VR Glasses basically start where everyone else spent years traveling to arrive. I had huge desktop screens all around me that I could move and resize with gestures. At one point, I placed a screen on the ceiling above me. Plus, I could take any screen and make it ultrawide. The only hiccup was when one coding screen stretched the code text into an ultra-wide, almost unreadable format. This is all pre-release software, so bugs like this are to be expected.

Like Vision Pro and Galaxy XR, Meta VR glasses have a floating keyboard, but they've also added something new to the mix: a surface keyboard. To enable it, I selected the option from the floating keyboard and then put my hands on the table surface. After a quick scan, a transparent keyboard and trackpad appeared on the tabletop. I could use them just as I would any standard physical keyboard and mouse. My only issue is that, as a terrible touch typist, the lack of any physical key response might make my typing even worse.

When I took off the frames, it felt like I'd removed a pair of glasses, not headgear doing its best with straps and head rings to lessen the load on my face. There was no afterburn on my nose or brows.

I do, of course, have questions. Like, even at the more affordable $1,299, will consumers buy into this for a big-screen experience on an airplane and when they're home alone (you won't sit next to a family member and tune out to your own VR experience, will you?). Gamers, especially those who are tired of wearing heavy headsets, will surely be interested in Meta VR Glasses, though I don't know if the Qualcomm Snapdragon Reality Elite processor (XR2 Gen 3), which can supposedly support all the apps in Quest's library, has the juice to run true AAA titles. I'm glad Meta has the productivity part worked out because I still think that may be the best play for any of these types of wearables: knowledge workers, business travelers, and enterprise.

Who knows, though, maybe Meta VR Glasses is the mixed reality headset to finally break open the consumer market. It impressed me and, to be honest, I can't wait to wear them again.

Garmin has made notable progress in a bunch of different areas of watch technology in recent years. There’s the new proliferation of satellite comms on its best Garmin watches, like the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro, along with some amazing stuff in dive-ready water resistance and titanium nano-molding cases. But the real tech trend of the last few years? OLED.

The first Garmin OLED watch was the Garmin Venu from 2019. Venu has always been used as an experimentation ground, a way to test which smartwatch features should be brought over to the other core lines. It’s an often under-appreciated trailblazer.

OLED adoption kicked into another gear in 2023 when the Garmin Forerunner 965 — perhaps the best all-round Garmin watch of that generation — introduced the tech to the Forerunner series. And that was just months after the arrival of the OLED Garmin Epix Gen 2 in late 2022. Since then there’s been no stopping OLED.

MIP and Garmin were once ubiquitous

In 2026 it’s easy to forget just a few years ago, every major Garmin watch had a dull-but-practical MIP (memory-in-pixel) screen. Before OLED Forerunners, before generative AI, before a RAM crisis — 2022 was a simpler time in technology.

Now OLED is ubiquitous, whenever a major new line is announced I go to see if Garmin has finally cut the ties entirely and left MIP in the past. Crucially, though, it didn’t happen with the Fenix 9, meaning transflective displays are here to stay for at least a few years.

But what might make Garmin get rid of MIP?

MIP vs OLED

“There are definitely different things that are enabled for our customers if we stay with a transflective color MIP display. The most significant right now is battery life,” Garmin COO Brad Trenkle told me.

“Take an Enduro-type product, having a product like that which can work off an MIP display versus an OLED with its inherently higher power drain because it's emitting versus being reflective [has benefits].”

When you take an OLED watch outside, its screen brightness has to ramp up dramatically to compensate for ambient light. An MIP watch actually gets clearer, while doing nothing and barely using any power.

An OLED Fenix 9 Pro, as you can see above, can reach up to 3000 nits, which is always going to use a decent amount of power regardless of how many efficiencies you get out of the underlying OLED panel tech.

The power of Endurance

For the kind of Garmin user who has their watch for regular runs and bike rides near their home in the city or suburbs, it’s no big deal. But for actual adventurer types on multi-day hikes?

It’s not hard to see the continuing appeal of MIP, particularly when the 'always-on' display mode of OLED Garmin watches dramatically reduces battery life. Simply using your watch as an actual watch can be a surprisingly taxing endeavour, when outdoors on a sunny day.

That argument may not hold forever, though. “We do see that gap closing,” says Trenkle. “It's closed a lot, which is why you've seen battery life on our OLED products continue to increase generation over generation. But that gap has not completely converged, and I think until it does, we definitely don't think that MIP will completely go away.”

The process has already begun, though. Just look at the mid-tier Forerunner watches. There is no MIP option in any of the new or vaguely recent Forerunner watches, from the Garmin Forerunner 70 up to the 970. What we’ve ended up with is MIP being effectively wedded to solar charging, in specialist models like the Fenix 9 Pro Solar and Garmin Instinct 3 Solar, which allows for the alarmingly cool-sounding claim of up to “unlimited” battery life when the watch spends a decent amount of time outdoors in sunlight.

Where is the Solar OLED?

It leads me to wonder if the actual inflection point — when MIP gets nixed — might end up being not just when Garmin is even happier with OLED watch battery life, but when OLED can successfully be paired with solar charging. Because this has not happened yet.

My conclusion has always been that the in-screen solar charging tech the Fenix 9 Pro Solar uses is largely incompatible with OLED because it ends up effectively intercepting light to turn it into power. That’s going to have some impact on display image quality. So I asked Trenkle: is solar always going to ruin an OLED screen?

“From purpose of a thought experiment, not really,” says Trenkle.

“It depends upon the solar technology you use. Garmin has employed two different types of solar technology through the years. We've used amorphous silicon and crystalline silicon. Amorphous silicon, we call it transparent, but it's almost like polarized sunglasses.”

This is the solar tech I was talking about earlier, the kind that sits over the display.

“You're cutting etching very fine lines into amorphous silicon, and so that sits over the top of the organic material, which can obviously degrade.”

”But in some of our more recent products, we use crystalline silicon. That's not a transparent silicon material, but we do essentially make the chapter ring solar. You get the ring around the outside, but nothing overlays the active area of the display.”

The future is opaque

Crystalline silicone is the stuff used in conventional solar panels. My favourite example of this in action (in a watch) is in the Garmin Instinct 3 Solar, where a relatively huge area around the screen is given over to this solar-charging surface. Trenkle appears to suggest this could be one entirely feasible way to bring solar charging to an OLED watch.

“It's always finding the right technology to apply in the circumstance that we want, but in that case, you don't get any degradation or loss, whether it's reflectivity or [image quality]. Yes, it would be a way to counter that.”

This is far off a confirmation of a crystalline silicone solar-charging Garmin OLED watch. But, just as OLED’s own efficiency led to its wider uptake by Garmin, perhaps we’re just a solar charging efficiency bump away from this concept becoming a reality.

Not sure which Garmin watch is for you? Take our quiz to find your perfect wrist companion.

Last week marked three years since the UK Government enacted the Online Safety Act (OSA). Now, the impending UK under-16s social media ban and questions over the effectiveness of current measures threaten to push VPNs back into the spotlight.

Speaking to TechRadar, VPN providers said the law has been a "heavy-handed approach" that's only been "partly" successful.

But some aspects have seen success. Companies now have obligations to proactively detect and remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM), several specific harms were criminalised, and penalties have been introduced for non-compliance — although not all have been paid.

With Ofcom announcing steps for an under-16 social media ban last week, VPN providers are warning that repeating the same age-gating playbook will only backfire.

'No significant overall change'

The Online Safety Act was introduced to protect children and vulnerable adults online. But, as Dr Peter Membrey, Chief Research Officer at ExpressVPN, notes, the bill has so far only been "partly" successful.

"The Act has put children’s online safety firmly on the agenda, which matters. But Ofcom’s own report this month found no significant overall change in the share of children encountering harmful content, so there’s more work to do," he explained.

This view is supported by several charities, including the Molly Rose Foundation, which warned that "timid regulation will cost lives."

Much of the problem comes down to enforcement. While it's simple enough for larger platforms to monitor content and their users, some smaller sites struggle to implement (or deliberately ignore) the law and slip through the net of checks.

Age verification measures are another case in point: if a mainstream site introduces age-gating checks, a child may just find a smaller site.

As a Proton spokesperson explained: "Under 18s are being driven towards riskier, unregulated sites and apps — ones that pose greater risks than the very sites the Online Safety Act is trying to protect them from."

The VPN dilemma

VPNs became a major talking point when age verification landed as part of the Act in 2025.

Primarily, this was due to concerns about people circumventing the legislation. And, with VPN downloads surging the moment age verification arrived, it's hardly surprising they became a focal point for regulators.

However, the government's own research has dispelled the myth that VPNs are to blame. According to a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) report, only 7% of children used VPNs to access restricted materials.

The main reason children cited using VPNs? Privacy. And as age verification measures have spread, people's privacy concerns have risen, too.

A spokesperson from Proton said that because age checks require sensitive data to be sent to unknown third parties, they "create a goldmine for hackers."

So, could the introduction of age checks for social media scheduled for early 2027 lead to an increase in demand for VPNs and a return to the same debate as earlier this year?

Will the social media ban change anything?

So far, much of the focus has been on Ofcom’s intended enforcement methods — bank cards, passport photos, and so on. But EE research suggests 42% of 11-15-year-olds will try to circumvent the ban.

Although VPNs are unlikely to bypass account-level ID checks, they may once again find themselves in the spotlight with young people looking to explore any method they think might work.

Both ExpressVPN and Proton warned against imposing restrictions on VPNs, with Membrey saying that VPNs could "work alongside" legislation to boost digital safety.

Meanwhile, Romain Digneaux, Public Policy Manager at Proton, warned that restricting VPNs "harms everyone who uses them, leaving their data exposed and driving users towards dangerous, often free VPNs."

Either way, it seems increasingly likely that the debate around VPNs, child safety online, and digital security may soon reignite. As Digneaux notes, "we haven't seen the last of this."

Ninja is known for kitchen appliances that do something a little different. The Double Stack air fryer put one cooking drawer on top of another (rather than side-by-side) and instantly won over small-kitchen owners across the country. The Creami made churning up a range of frozen treats (and their healthy alternatives) easier than it'd ever been before. And most recently the Foodi took a humble toaster and gave it extra grilling powers. It's not surprising that a number of these appliances have taken the internet by storm.

If you've had your heart set on one of these viral kitchen gadgets, and were wondering if you'd be able to snap one up on the cheap in the upcoming Black Friday sales, I have good news for you. A number of major retailers have kicked off their deals event early, and a host of Ninja kitchen appliances have had their prices slashed as a result.

Below, I've rounded up the deals worth considering (I used to be a TechRadar Homes editor, so I know my way around a kitchen appliance). I've started with Ninja's most viral products, and then rounded up some more low-key — but still excellent-looking — options. Buy now, and you'll have time to get to grips with your new gadget before the festive catering season begins.

Viral Ninja deals

More noteworthy Ninja deals

Google has recently announced that you can now use Gemini inside Google Slides to redesign entire presentations for you. I tried it and it failed to work, which means the feature might not have rolled out to everyone quite yet. However, that didn’t put me off. Instead, I uploaded a whole presentation directly into the Gemini chatbot to see if it'd redesign it that way, and it seemed to work fine.

I decided to feed it a rather amateurish PowerPoint presentation my son had been given by his art teacher at school, to see what it would do. The result? It sucked the life out of what was supposed to be a fun art lesson on perspective, and transformed it into a masterpiece of corporate nihilism.

My son’s art project presentation from his art teacher originally looked like this:

As you can see, it’s colorful and fun, but lacking in professionalism.

The prompt I used was quite long, but I wanted Gemini to get this right first time, so I wrote:“Redesign this entire presentation to make it look like it was created by a professional graphic designer.

The current slides are badly designed, with inconsistent fonts, clashing colours, poor layouts, too much text and no clear visual hierarchy.

I want you to transform the whole presentation into something polished, modern and visually impressive. You can change the fonts, colours, backgrounds, layouts, spacing and positioning of elements. You can also introduce relevant graphics, icons and illustrations where appropriate.

However, you must follow three rules:

Preserve all the factual information. Don't invent statistics, remove important details or change the meaning of any text.

Keep everything editable in Google Slides. Don't simply turn each slide into a flattened image.

Apply a consistent visual style across the entire presentation, while making sure individual slides have enough variety to remain interesting.

You have complete creative control over the design. Don't ask me any questions — just redesign all the slides and show me the finished result.”

Was this really what I wanted?

“Your slide deck on Urban Perspective Landscape Drawing is ready!” Gemini happily announced after about a minute. “Feel free to take a look and let me know if you'd like to make any edits”, it informed me.

What it produced was this:

You can see immediately that it looks much more professional, but what Gemini had done was introduce a much more formal teaching structure, with sections on learning objectives, spatial depth, architectural techniques and a two-week project timeline. I can’t imagine being a hit with preteens.

It also introduced additional instructional material, changed the tone, and reorganised the original lesson.

For example, the redesigned deck includes terminology such as “Architectural Precision” and “Progressive Interval Spacing”. These are perfectly reasonable concepts in an art lesson, but they sound more like something from a professional design course than a school project.

By adding and restructuring teaching material, it arguably went beyond its remit to preserve the original information, and in doing so sucked the joy out of the project.

Ok, I’ll admit that my prompt specifically asked Gemini to make the presentation look “professional”, so it wasn't entirely unreasonable for Gemini to go in that direction. But I asked it to improve the design, not change the personality or purpose of the presentation.

Work vs fun mode

If you’re going to use Gemini for designing your presentations then I think it’s well worth keeping in mind that it is very much in a work mode for the assignment. I actually went back to Gemini and voiced my criticisms to see if it could have another go:

“I asked it to improve the design, not change the personality or purpose of the presentation”, I wrote. “This still needs to be a fun project for kids to try. Can you try again?”

“I will now redesign the presentation to strike the perfect balance: vibrant, encouraging, fun, and clearly targeted at students and young artists, while replacing the harsh neon yellows, chaotic layouts, and unreadable fonts with clean, professional art-studio styling, friendly typography, and colorful, inviting cards”, responded Gemini.

After a short wait it produced this:

It was still the same presentation it produced earlier, but with slightly more fun fonts and language. A lot of the visual elements of the original had still been removed. The problem was that Gemini seemed unable to escape its original idea of what a good presentation should look like. It was like asking someone to make a corporate training presentation more fun and watching them add a few emojis. Overall, I still didn’t like it. What should have been a tidying up job has turned into a reinvention I didn’t think I’d asked for.

If this experiment has taught me anything, it's that you shouldn't automatically assume AI knows what makes a presentation better. Gemini certainly made the original look more professional, but in doing so it lost sight of what made it work in the first place. Sometimes a colorful, slightly haphazard school presentation is exactly what it needs to be for its audience. Sometimes the chaos and mess of a design are what keeps it human, and that’s something that AI has a problem understanding.

The Revenant, Blade Runner 2049, Dune: Part One and Part Two. You might not recognize the ARRI name, but you’ve undoubtedly watched one of the many Academy Award-winning films created using the camera maker’s tech.

Founded in 1917, the German company has quietly grown into one of the most respected names in cinema, with its digital ALEXA camera system used to film countless blockbuster hits. Popular models like the ARRI ALEXA 35 can cost upwards of $80,000 to buy and require a trained crew to operate.

It’s the kind of equipment that few would ever have the opportunity, let alone the expertise, to use, which is what makes ARRI’s partnership with Chinese smartphone giant Honor so interesting. With the upcoming Honor Magic 9 Pro Max, the two brands are aiming to turn buyers of the flagship Android phone into pro cinematographers by giving them access to some impressive imaging tools. And I got a chance to try them in Hollywood, California.

A pocket cinema camera

The physical design of the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max is a statement of intent. Its sleek camera module is branded with the ARRI logo and arranged in a three-lens layout that is intentionally reminiscent of the appearance of classic film cameras like the vintage Arriflex 35. It’s a major departure from the big circular camera layouts of the company’s previous flagships, like the Honor Magic 8 Pro, and in my eyes, it looks a lot more balanced and professional.

I’m sure that Honor has also taken some inspiration from the look of the latest iPhone Pro Max line, but some neat touches do help set the Magic 9 Pro Max apart. I personally love the satisfying texture of the metal ring that surrounds the biggest camera's housing. It feels very analog, and running your fingers across it almost feels like adjusting the focus of a DSLR camera lens.

Under the hood, the phone boasts two 200MP shooters alongside a 50MP ultra-wide lens. Stabilization was a big focus in the design of this camera setup, and Honor claims that the Magic 9 Pro Max will offer equivalent performance to a stabilizing gimbal — even in low-light conditions where most phones would struggle, as longer shutter speeds emphasize movement.

You can still use the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max to take standard photos (and, in my testing so far, it has managed some excellent shots — though I'm not permitted to share any just yet). But as the phone's design would suggest, video is really where it comes into its own. Honor and ARRI have effectively taken a full end-to-end cinematic workflow and condensed it into a basic process that anyone can follow (incidentally, you'll find the same workflow on the recently released Honor Robot Phone).

The first step is enabling the ARRI Cinema mode in the phone’s camera app. It takes a few moments as it loads up a wealth of tools, the most important being the ability to record in up to 4K 60fps using ARRI LogC3 and Wide Gamut 3. Without getting too technical, ARRI LogC3 is a gamma curve designed for ARRI’s cinema cameras, intended to capture as much dynamic range and contrast as possible, while Wide Gamut 3 ensures a larger range of colors can be reproduced.

Encoding all this into an image produces a very flat, almost grayscale look that’s absolutely packed with imaging data, which is vital when you take your footage into professional color grading software like DaVinci Resolve to give it a more stylized, cinematic look. Pro users can take footage from the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max into DaVinci Resolve, but there’s really no need when some nifty color-grading options are built in.

From capture to color

The Honor Magic 9 Pro Max comes pre-loaded with 14 color grading profiles (or LUTs), many taken straight from the ARRI Look Library — an online collection of presets used in professional film productions. There is a good range to experiment with here, with some of my favorites so far including the cutesy ARRI-6311, which renders beautiful pastel tones, and the amusing ARRI-9211, designed for day-for-night shots.

It’s fun to play around and experiment with the different profiles and, with the right setup, you can get some pretty incredible results, with gorgeous, rich colors and lifelike skin tones (the latter being something that ARRI hardware has become known for). These presets are only the beginning as well; you can download more ARRI LUTs from the company’s website and import them to the phone.

You’re not restricted to just those created by ARRI either, as the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max is fully compatible with third-party LUTs that you can find online. Many LUTs are available for free, which opens the door to practically limitless aesthetics. You can preview each LUT while you’re filming as well, which lets you see exactly how your finished footage is going to look as the action is happening.

If you’re already a budding cinematographer with your own LUTs, this means that you can use the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max to gain a pretty good idea of how your finished footage will appear without the costly camera setup.

Honor has clearly gone to great lengths to make everything here as approachable as possible, though I do worry that these features will be niche. Either way, it’s a neat collaboration, and I’m certainly interested to see what kinds of footage people will be able to achieve when the Honor Magic 9 Pro Max releases soon.

Universes Beyond has finally leapt from Magic: The Gathering and into Wizards of the Coast’s other hugely popular game, Dungeons & Dragons, with the release of its World of Warcraft Gameplay Expansion — a 256-page book detailing precisely how the planet of Azeroth should be adapted into the most popular tabletop RPG.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks devouring this new book, and while I’ll admit to already being a fan of Universes Beyond — I think it has done an amazing job of introducing my favorite trading card game to complete newcomers, and I have hopes it’ll do the same for D&D — whether you’re in my camp, or you’re someone who would rather keep your game worlds isolated, I think you’ll struggle to find complaints with this module.

Of course the book heavily focuses on the WoW-ness of the additions it makes to the TTRPG, yet so many of the new races, subclasses, monsters, and other rules could easily slot into any campaign setting. And if you need a little extra nudge, this book includes the long-awaited refresh of some fan-favorite subclasses which had yet to receive their post-2024 update (like the Swashbuckler Rogue and Way of the Drunken Master Monk, renamed to Warrior of Mystic Brews).

Though perhaps best of all, none of this excellent new content will destroy your bank balance. The Gameplay Expansion costs $59.99 / £49.99 / AU$84.99, which, while at the higher end of what D&D books sell for, feels like a reasonable price considering the amount here for players and Dungeon Masters. Plus, third-party retailers are sure to sell you this expansion for less than MSRP, especially during sales periods when D&D books are known to get a price cut.

My only disappointment is that I feel it’s not the most newcomer-friendly if you’re looking to be the Dungeon Master — the person who has to run the games. Just a quick one-shot adventure would do the trick to get the ball rolling, but as is, I’d suggest the DM is someone with D&D experience. Which is a shame considering Universes Beyond’s new-player appeal.

That said, I think this expansion is excellent no matter your affinity for WoW, but if you’re still unsure whether you should grab the World of Warcraft Gameplay Expansion for Dungeons & Dragons, let me explain a little more why I love it.

A feast of flavour, and heroes

Let’s begin where this book does: Chapter 1: Character Classes. Every class in Dungeons & Dragons features in this World of Warcraft expansion to give players a guide for how the TTRPG can be adapted to fit the champions Azeroth locals will be familiar with. Admittedly, some get more attention than others, but what I loved to read was that every class gets at least something new — rather than some being ignored entirely like with other recent expansions.

For those on the shorter end of the stick — Druids, Wizards, Fighters, Warlocks, and Rangers (though they’re a special case I’ll get back to later) — this means just some new spells, Battle Master maneuvers, or Eldritch Invocations. Though I’m not complaining after reading through their new tools.

Conjuration-focused Warlocks will love the Expendable Minions invocation, which turns downed minions into healing for you or an ally, while the new version of Mass Polymorph feels like a hilariously perfect way for a more chaotic Wizard to dispatch a surrounding army — transforming any number of terrifying foes into harmless goats.

You’ll also notice these classes, and all others, have simple guides to follow for what spells and feature choices to make so that the D&D class feels most like the World of Warcraft specializations. Some class names have changed too. Wizard is Mage, Fighter is Warrior, and Rangers are Hunters (I’ll highlight other class name variations as we go).

One step above are Monks, Paladins, Clerics (Priests), Rogues, and Barbarians (Shamans), who all get a new subclass or two, or at least a revised version of a subclass, yet to be updated since the 2024 rules update.

In that latter camp are the Swashbuckler Rogue and Drunken Master Monk, which has been renamed Warrior of Mystic Brews. As with other post-2024 rules update refreshes, these subclasses feel very familiar, though there are some mechanical tweaks here and there to better balance the player option against the other choices you could make — or, in the case of Warrior of Mystic Brews, make the subclass feel like a more distinct option in your repertoire.

The brand-new subclasses steal the show to some extent because of their freshness, and I’m desperate to play an Oath of the Holy Paladin in my next campaign. This version of the knight is far more focused on healing than fighting — fulfilling a more supportive tank role; however, I still wouldn’t want to get struck by its Divine Smite.

Finally, circling back on the Ranger’s ‘special case,’ you’ll find three so-called Hero Classes — the Death Knight, Demon Hunter, and Evoker. This never-before-seen flavor of character option is a sort of subclass, but rather than building on the existing class’s base, they tear down and rebuild some core aspects (something subclasses don’t tend to do).

For example, the Oath of the Ebon Blade Death Knight takes away the Paladin’s healing Lay on Hands and turns it into a damaging Death Coil, and transforms the heavenly Divine Smite into a demonic Runic Smite.

Calling them ‘Hero Classes’ does perhaps suggest a level of superiority; however, I haven’t necessarily felt that from the options present. These don’t feel like the new best way to play a class, merely an alternative way. The Hero Class designation just denotes that there’s a layer of complexity because the core class is altered — though I found the World of Warcraft Gameplay Expansion’s guide very easy to follow, and I expect newcomers won’t struggle to build one of these three options if they follow it.

Azeroth professionals

Characters are more than their class, however.

Unfortunately, the World of Warcraft expansion doesn’t provide us with any new Backgrounds — pre-adventure origins which determine the starting skills of the player’s character — but there is a wide selection of fantastical races to select from, and various WoW factions for their party members to develop an affiliation with.

Much like classes, if there is an existing Dungeons & Dragons native — such as Dwarves or Elves — you’re asked to lift the rules from the Player’s Handbook, but races or variants of races that exist only in WoW are given bespoke traits. The monastic Pandaren can use their Inner Peace to recover more health when resting, and leave foes quaking after an attack, while Dracthyr can use their wings to glide — taking no falling damage if the drop is under 100ft, and being able to travel horizontally as they plummet.

Of course, there are also a few pages spared for mounts and creature companions — iconic World of Warcraft pets that you can ride into battle, or which offer some small buff if your friendship with them is high enough.

Factions are lifted wholesale. The Alliance and the Horde (and their respective subfactions) take center stage, but there are other groups a party may prefer to build a relationship with. There are some mechanical advantages to building renown with various factions, but they’re generally a narrative device — Dungeon Masters have a reliable quest giver in the form of friendly faction leaders; they could lock greater quest progression behind first gaining the trust of a new faction, or force players into a strained truce with rival factions to work together to achieve some greater goal (requiring careful role-playing scenarios to ensure the two sides don’t resume their hostilities).

I’ll get back to the toys and tools this Gameplay Expansion affords DMs, but finishing things off on the players' side, we need to talk about Professions.

Professions expand the basic crafting rules from the 2024 Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide by providing players specific guidance on how to develop their character’s foraging and item-making skills — and how to take advantage of these abilities.

For parties who spend a lot of time among civilisation, these skills aren’t going to change their games very much, I expect, but if you’re planning a campaign which ventures deep into the wilderness (which I now am after being inspired by these rules), they’ll provide a vital way for the group to replenish and upgrade their gear.

The basic idea is that crafted items and foraged resources are given specific values based on their rarity and where they were found. Collect enough resources, and you can create an item that’s worth as much as the combined value of the resources you’re using — provided they’re of the appropriate type, i.e., foraged plants and animal viscera are perfect for potions, while mined ores and animal skins are used for weapons and armour.

The rulebook stays away from generating specific recipes outside one or two examples, but it encourages DMs to bring the crafting system to life within their game world. This could involve requiring specific quantities of specific resources rather than merely generic value — i.e., a potion of waterbreathing needing five pieces of common stranglekelp, and two vials of oil extracted from the rare blackmouth fish rather than merely 100GP of parts — or turning getting a specific rare resource into a side quest — such as a Staff of Fire requiring a ruby plundered from an adult dragon’s horde, or tracking down an expert blacksmith if crafting a magic sword for the first time.

Though the rulebook encourages DMs and players to not turn their D&D adventure into a grinding slog. Repetitive actions are boring, and constantly diverting attention away from the main quest might derail the campaign into one about crafting gear with no real purpose behind the item making. Even if collecting enough of a resource might take a character a week to do in-game, this could be handled with just a couple of die rolls and only take a few minutes of real-world time — with that week either using up the character’s downtime allotment or impacting the ongoing quest if there are time-sensitive elements.

The world of Warcraft

The second half of the book is dedicated to describing the world of Azeroth. It takes you through the planet’s mythology, a brief history, and its geography — providing a quick description of key locations — before delving into a selection of iconic dungeons you could explore on your adventures, and a bestiary of foes you could face off against.

It’s very much a section dedicated to the Dungeon Master, the ‘player’ who runs the whole game for the party. Providing them with many of the tools they’ll need to manage an engaging campaign, or one-shot for the group.

Much like the rest of the book, it strikes a balance between in-depth information and leaving room for the DM’s creativity. And while it’s not the most relevant to players, I think it’s a smart idea that it’s included in this singular expansion rather than being a standalone product — making this WoW 5e release feel very approachable because you don’t need to decipher which selection of books you need; it’s just this one and the three core rulebooks (Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual).

As a more experienced DM, I love the more light-touch approach — it provides more freedom for me to adapt the Azeroth elements for my own campaigns on or off its world — however, I do think newer Dungeon Masters will struggle with the resources here.

I understand that Dungeons & Dragons modules tend to lay things out alphabetically, but I think it would have been smarter to order the pre-made dungeons in challenge rating order so that it’s easier to find the noob-friendly expeditions. I also wish there was a more fleshed-out starter adventure that takes pre-made characters from level one to levels three or four, with guidance on how to manage running puzzles, combat encounters, and social interactions.

Coming from Magic: The Gathering, I’ve seen how Universes Beyond excels as an onboarding tool for newer players, and for the most part this World of Warcraft expansion hits the mark. However, on the actual adventure-running side, without a proper, even just a quick one-shot to guide newer Dungeon Masters through the motions of running a game, I can see it being a struggle for complete newcomers to jump into their first TTRPG game.

This one-shot would also simplify the resources you need out of the gate, because the premade character sheets and adventure could include any relevant details you’d find in the core rulebooks, like race traits and stat blocks. This reduces the barrier to entry to just this one World of Warcraft book to get into your first adventure, without removing the need to pick up the core rulebooks if you’re keen to play a full-on campaign.

As it stands, I think the World of Warcraft Gameplay Expansion for Dungeons & Dragons is mostly excellent. As someone with little affinity for this Universes Beyond IP, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I have been inspired by its contents, and how excited I am to use its new player options and rules in future games.

For D&D newcomers, this expansion is superb for players — the guides under each class for how to best build its WoW counterpart are a superb detail that should help remove the initial decision paralysis that can afflict newer players who aren’t 100% sure what they should choose — but I wish it offered more support to new DMs. Folks with some experience will adore the light-touch approach, but budding Dungeon Masters (especially any drawn to the game because of this Universes Beyond tie-in) would have been well served by a dedicated one-shot guide that eases them into running a game before setting them loose.

If you’re looking for an excellent gift for the D&D fan in your life as we head into the holiday season, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better expansion pick than this. This holds true for the World of Warcraft enjoyer in your life, but consider also offering to run their first game in Azeroth for them.

In early October 2026, digital privacy software provider Proton invited TechRadar to a press event at its Geneva, Switzerland, HQ along with a group of journalists from other publications.

We sat through a day of presentations focusing on the future and development of Proton's products, including the highly regarded Proton VPN, the encrypted messaging service Proton Mail, and Proton Pass, the firm's password manager.

Included in that time was an address from Proton's founder and CEO, Andy Yen, who has developed into something of a thought-leader in the digital privacy space through his interviews, social media posts, and his forthright personality.

He impressed upon us the uniqueness of Proton's non-profit ownership, swatted away questions regarding the development of a private browser that was revealed through a job listing, and how, above all else, Proton endeavors to build products its community of users genuinely wants.

Later in the day, we got in some 1-2-1 time with Yen where he quizzed him on camera about the future of Proton, the rise and risks of AI, age verification, and more. Our interview with Andy Yen, published on our The Privacy Lab YouTube channel, is below, in full.

In the interim, from that interview in early October to today, though, it needs to be noted that Proton has featured heavily in the news, with the company coming under considerable scrutiny over the past few days.

Last week, leaked internal messages at Proton showed how both the company and Andy Yen have been enforcing an AI revolution on its workforce. It was revealed that "re-interviews" were planned for some employees, with a focus on their ability to use AI more in their current roles.

404 Media uncovered what it described as a "culture of fear", as a company insider lifted the lid on Yen’s belittling public Slack messages in the company’s security chat channel. The CEO was described by that source as being in “full AI psychosis”.

After significant backlash from employees and the digital privacy community, on October 30, 2026, Yen posted a personal apology and statement to the Proton subreddit.

The statement claims that Andy takes "responsibility for the failure of communications", that Proton's use of AI "will never be at the expense of security", and that "the 're-interviews'...will not take place, and no one will lose their jobs because of them". The comments in response are as hostile as you might expect.

More recently, Proton CTO Bart Butler published an internal memo on AI use at the company which had been sent to employees earlier in October. This AI @ Proton, Engineering Manifesto can be read in full here.

It underlines the zeal with which Proton, as a company, is looking to further its development with AI tools, and how quickly it's looking to pull its staff – particularly the engineers – into the new world.

It’s against this backdrop that we publish this interview with Andy Yen. There are no controversies or contradictions, nor did we find Yen to be anything other than interesting and courteous throughout the Q&A.

But it’s worth comparing moments like his denouncement of mainstream AI chatbots in the interview with Proton's internal AI-first culture – even though the context is, of course, not the same.

Public backlash

Predictably, when we shared our interview to relevant Proton subreddits, users had something to say.

"It is a bit funny to see the guy just chatting about Proton like this, while knowing what he was doing and saying in private," commented one user. Replying in the thread, another stated that: "this is a scandal about the director’s greed, nothing more. Everything else follows from that".

Other members of the subreddit were less interested in discussion: "I canceled subscription so. No more bullsh*t". "Cancelled too," replied another.

Of course, only time will tell if Yen's internal and external behavior will have any affect on Proton's bottom line, or its legacy as a genuinely trusted privacy company. But it's clear that this scandal has been impossible to brush under the carpet.

SUBSCRIBE: Leave No Trace — A weekly newsletter on digital privacy and online surveillance.

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Fancy expanding your Lego collection, or picking up a set or two to give as a gift? You don't need to wait until the end of the month to do so, because it looks like the Black Friday Lego deals are here already. A number of major retailers — including Currys and Argos — have launched their sales events already, with Black Friday Price Promises to reassure you it's safe to buy now.

Included in these sales are dozens of excellent price drops on a huge selection of Lego sets, from happy plants and retro gaming classics, to modern-day animated icons and shapeshifting spooky creator sets (what do you mean, Halloween is over?). I've scoured through all the sales at a range of retailers, and rounded up my favorite Lego discounts below, at prices that range from stocking-filler / Secret Santa to blow-the-budget.

Prefer to browse yourself? Use my quick links below. Alternatively, scroll down to see my top picks.

• Amazon: Discounts on Lego sets for kids and adults
• Argos: Up to 1/3 off, with Black Friday price promise
• Currys: Up to 30% off ahead of Black Friday
• Very: Dozens of deals with Black Friday price promise

The best early Black Friday Lego deals

For small business owners, an unexpected payment might look like good news. A new customer has placed an order, an invoice has been settled, or an unfamiliar transaction has landed in the account. But when money arrives without an obvious explanation, the smartest response isn't to celebrate, It's to investigate.

Payment scams exploit the everyday pressures of running a business. Entrepreneurs are busy, cash flow matters, and customer relationships depend on responding quickly and professionally. Fraudsters understand this, using unexpected payments, urgent messages and convincing instructions to persuade business owners to make decisions before they've had time to check the facts.

And unfortunately, the risks are becoming harder to ignore as criminals use increasingly sophisticated digital tools to make these communications more convincing and their scams easier to scale. For small businesses without dedicated fraud teams, knowing what to look for, and having the right safeguards in place, can make the difference between a suspicious transaction and an extremely costly mistake.

Why do "random" payments happen?

An unexplained payment isn't automatically fraudulent, but it should always deserve scrutiny. Scammers can use unexpected transfers as the starting point for several different schemes, exploiting the assumption that money received is money earned.

One common tactic is the refund scam, where a fraudster sends money to a business, apparently by mistake, and then contacts the owner asking for it to be returned. They may apologise profusely, invent an urgent personal emergency or insist that a quick refund is needed to resolve an accounting error. The catch is that they ask for the money to be sent through a different channel, such as a bank transfer or gift cards.

The original payment may have come from a stolen account or compromised payment card, so if the legitimate account holder later disputes the transaction, the initial payment can be reversed, leaving the business out of pocket for the money it sent back.

Another possibility is testing stolen payment cards or hacked accounts. Criminals may use compromised payment details to make small purchases or transfers, checking whether the credentials still work. An apparently legitimate transaction could therefore be part of a wider fraud operation, and if the real cardholder disputes the payment, the business may face a chargeback, fees or the loss of goods already supplied.

Then there are phishing setups, in which the payment itself is little more than bait. Once the recipient contacts the sender, the fraudster may provide a link to a fake payment portal, request login credentials or ask the business owner to confirm sensitive information. What begins as a question about an unexplained transaction can become an attempt to take over an account.

The common overall thread is manipulation - the scammer wants the business owner to act quickly, bypass normal procedures or share information they would ordinarily keep private that they can now exploit or sell on to the highest bidder.

The warning signs every business owner should know

Although payment scams can take different forms, they often share a recognisable set of red flags. Spotting them early gives businesses the opportunity to pause before money or sensitive information changes hands.

Look out for these warning signs:

• An urgent request for a refund, where the sender insists the money must be returned immediately, perhaps citing a deadline or personal emergency.
• Pressure to use a different payment method, where the scammer asks you to return money by bank transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency instead of using the original payment platform.
• Instructions delivered outside official channels, such as unexpected emails, messages and links which direct you to alternative websites or ask you to disclose account details.
• Payments that don't make business sense. A round-number payment arrives that doesn't match an invoice, order or product price, or the sender's details don't match the customer record.

The key principle is simple, but usually effective: never assume that money received is money safely yours to return or spend. Check the transaction independently through your payment provider or bank, and never follow refund instructions supplied by an unverified sender. If a payment looks suspicious, contact the provider through its official website or app and ask how to handle it - never initiate a separate repayment yourself.

Building a stronger defence against payment fraud

Avoiding these scams doesn't require a dedicated fraud department, but it does require vigilance alongside consistent processes and a willingness to verify unusual requests rather than act on instinct.

One method is to ensure you always keep business and personal finances separate. Dedicated business accounts make transactions easier to reconcile and suspicious activity easier to identify, and mixing personal and company payments can obscure unusual transfers and potentially expose personal finances to business-related fraud.

Another useful protection is understanding what your normal transaction patterns look like. Keeping track of typical order values, customer locations, payment methods and refund volumes should be common practice - but although a transaction that falls outside these patterns isn't necessarily fraudulent, it may deserve a closer look. Reconcile payments against invoices and orders regularly, and investigate discrepancies promptly.

Securing the accounts that control your money will also go a long way. Make sure you always use strong, unique passwords for banking, payment platforms and business email accounts. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever available, and turn on alerts for large transactions, password changes and new logins, and where possible, limit account access to employees who genuinely need it.

Giving your team clear rules is another key step, as anyone who handles customer payments should know that unexpected refunds require verification. Establish a policy that prohibits returning unexplained payments through alternative channels, and encourage staff to check suspicious messages with a colleague before responding. Regular training can help employees recognise fake invoices, phishing links and attempts to impersonate customers or suppliers.

Finally, recognise that payment fraud often begins outside the payment platform itself. A fake invoice might arrive by email, a fraudulent website might imitate a trusted service, or a phishing message might steal the credentials needed to access a legitimate account. That's why good financial procedures need to be backed by effective cybersecurity.

Why Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security is a valuable partner

For small businesses looking to bring these safeguards together, Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security offers a practical way to strengthen protection without having to build an in-house security operation.

The service combines antivirus and device protection with email security, password management, VPN access, digital identity protection for all employees and business asset exposure monitoring. Its scam protection features are particularly relevant to payment fraud, helping users identify and block suspicious messages, links and websites.

Its Scam Protection Pro tool allows employees to check a suspicious message or link before responding, clicking or paying, offering an additional layer of scrutiny when an unexpected payment request or refund instruction doesn't feel right. Web and email protection can also help guard against phishing attempts designed to steal credentials or direct employees towards fraudulent sites.

Centralised management makes it easier for business owners to oversee protection across employees and devices, while support for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS reflects the reality these days that key business activity rarely takes place on a single machine or ecosystem.

Financial controls, and suspicious payments should always be verified with the relevant bank or payment provider, but combining those controls with cybersecurity tools designed to detect digital scams can make it much harder for fraudsters to exploit a moment of confusion.

For start-up owners entrepreneurs, the lesson is clear: an unexplained payment is a reason to stop and check, not an invitation to act quickly. With consistent procedures, informed employees and a comprehensive security solution such as Bitdefender Ultimate Small Business Security, small businesses can reduce their exposure to payment scams while keeping their attention where it belongs - on serving customers and growing the business.

Try our free 30-day protection built for busy founders, not IT teams

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic have agreed to support a new way for website owners to stop their content being used to train AI models. The companies are backing a shared opt-out signal in a website’s robots.txt file, which tells AI crawlers whether they're allowed to use its content for training.

Like a modern day Library of Alexandria, the internet is the single largest source of human knowledge that exists. Countless people have spent their lives cataloguing and uploading the entire history of humanity for the betterment of everyone.

AI companies are a tinderbox in this regard. To train and develop better capabilities for their models, AI companies are repeatedly scraping every corner of the internet to create archives of training data. Compounded by changes in search and how people seek information, AI threatens to become the single point of access to information.

But just because you have a website, it doesn’t mean you want it constantly scraped by bots stealing your answers to life’s difficult questions so people can access them elsewhere.

Luckily, you’re not alone. Outrage from users and website hosts across the internet has been fueled into developing methods to keep AI companies from harvesting data from your websites.

Like layering slices of Swiss cheese, these methods work best to keep out scrapers when used in a defense-in-depth manner. But some malicious bots will still find ways to navigate through the holes. Here’s a few ways to keep the honest bots at bay:

1. Robots.txt

This is the crux of OpenAI’s method to honor anti-web scraping markers. The ‘robots.txt’ text file sits in the root directory of your website and provides guidance on how bots should behave. This can be a useful way to provide a digital map to search engine crawlers and can also prevent your site’s servers from becoming overburdened by bot requests.

But by adding just a few characters to this file, you can block the majority of bot traffic from accessing your website. Of course, this unfortunately only applies to scrapers that actually abide by the rules of your robots.txt file.

OpenAI has set something of a precedent for other AI companies here, adding that, "We encourage other AI providers to honor the signal."

There are a few ways to manage which specific bots you would like to allow on your website, but to block AI traffic you can take the following steps:

• Open your robots.txt file, or create one if you don’t have one using a text editor
• Add a section to the file using the heading ‘# AI crawlers’
• To block all AI crawlers, add a line below stating ‘Disallow: /’
• To block a specific AI crawler, such as ChatGPT, place ‘User-agent: ChatGPT-User’ on one line, with ‘Disallow: /’ underneath
• You can prevent AI crawlers from accessing specific pages by adding the web address after the ‘/’. For example, I could stop AI crawlers from accessing my author page by using the rule ‘Disallow: /author/benedict-collins’
• Update your robots.txt file in the source files of your website

2. User-only viewing

Alternatively, you could take the planned Reddit approach to blocking AI traffic by requiring all users to have an account in order to access your website. This is an excellent way to filter out human traffic from bot traffic because user accounts usually need to be verified with an email or phone number - something mostly humans have.

But this comes with its own caveats, and Reddit is finding out the hard way in feedback from users. Not requiring an account gives users from all over the web an easier search experience. They can find the information they need without any obstacles, and without handing over personal information to yet another website.

Having to log in or create an account to view web content can cause people to ‘bounce’ - they click on your website, see they need to create an account, and immediately back out of your site to seek the information they need elsewhere. So tread carefully if your traffic matters to you.

3. IP limiting

AI bots may descend en-masse using a single IP address to access your website. Third-party services offer this as an option to prevent your website’s servers from being bombarded with quick-moving traffic, but it can come with a monetary cost.

This method can be used to set up a timer on specific IP addresses that are detected as bot traffic. For example, if a single IP is sending multiple access requests, you can adjust the settings so that only 5 requests from the IP can be made in a 10 second period.

But beware that some AI bots or web scrapers will use rotating IPs, hopping between them to avoid a block from a single IP.

4. Captchas

A slightly archaic method of human verification that most people have a love/hate relationship with. I don’t mind counting the number of buses or bicycles, or aligning the correct jigsaw piece with its place, but some people see it as a humiliating ritual to prove their humanity.

What’s worse is that some AI models are getting good enough to solve captchas themselves.

It can help to filter out relentless attempts from web scrapers and less capable AI bots, but it could also cause users to bounce - especially those with a particular fear of ClickFix attacks who may see a complicated captcha as a way to hijack their device.

So use these methods cautiously for they is a double-edge sword. You can stop your data from being harvested by AI bots but it may also harm the experience of your users.

The most desirable material to use in fitness watch construction right now is titanium. It’s found across the best Garmin watches like the Fenix 9 Pro and recently, the Garmin Marq Generation 3.

But, as it turns out, the more of it you use, the more technical hurdles you face.

Let’s start off with why titanium alloys are such a good fit for watches, though. It’s pretty simple; titanium is typically lighter and stronger than aluminium and a whole lot lighter than stainless steel, which is often used in watches for its ability to weather well over the years.

Stainless steel used to be a mainstay of Garmin’s premium line-up, but it clearly doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s not even an option in the Garmin Fenix 9 range.

Having used plenty of titanium, plastic and stainless steel Garmins over the years, I get it. The more weight a watch carries, the more it picks up momentum as you perform an exercise like running. It makes for worse comfort, and leads to the watch moving around on your wrist more — which is bad news for heart rate reliability.

The Fenix 9 titanium problem

One part you might find a bit of a head-scratcher, though, is why even titanium watches like the Garmin Fenix 9 base model still have part-plastic bodies, despite costing $999 and up. Its entire sidewall is polymer, a super-tough reinforced plastic formulation, with the bezel and backplate as titanium elements. You need to upgrade to the Fenix 9 Pro — or even further to the Marq Generation 3 — to get a full metal jacket.

Garmin COO Brad Trenkle explained to me the difficulties in making this happen, which also helps to explain why these watches cost quite so much money.

“There are incredible benefits you can get from having a titanium case, but the all-metal case means radio signals can't get out,” says Trenkle.

In a Garmin watch this means anything that needs to transmit out of the casing, like Bluetooth, LTE, Satellite, ANT+, NFC, Wi-Fi. No signals out or in makes a connected smartwatch pretty useless.

The solution? You don’t use an all-metal case, but make the plastic parts that let the signal through as subtle, as minimal, as possible. But this in itself required some special processes.

“To get radio signals out, you have got to have a polymer in there. You add the polymer, you have to add multiple gaskets,” says Trenkle. “You add multiple gaskets you get thickness, and then suddenly you're wearing a tuna can on your wrist. And nobody wants to wear a tuna can on their wrist. We had that with Forerunner 201 years ago. We don't need to go back there.”

The Forerunner 201 was released in 2003, and is widely considered the first GPS-enabled runners’ watch. Yes, even though it does look a bit like a pager stuck to a watch strap.

Rubbery gaskets are required in a Garmin watch because, of course, water resistance is fundamental to series like the Garmin Fenix 9. You can’t just have relatively hard plastic sandwiched between two case elements of much harder titanium alloy: the gaskets act as seals.

Nano scale molding

The solution for the Fenix 9 and Marq Generation 3 is a process Trenkle calls ‘nano molding’, or NMT.

“The basic idea here is that you are bonding a polymer and a metal together at the nano scale,” says Todd Register, Garmin Creative lead for its Outdoor segment. It sounds like Iron Man-grade stuff, but the concept isn’t a million miles from the light, fine grain sanding you might give a surface before attempting to paint it or glue it. Nano molding involves very finely etching, or texturing, the titanium so it can much more perfectly fit the polymer parts without a gasket.

At the launch of the Marq Generation 3 watch, Garmin used a picture of a piece of titanium magnified by 100,000 times to show the NMT process.

“If you look at the surface of the case, it's almost completely smooth. So there's no way to bond to the metal before it's been etched, but if we look at after the etching, you can see immediately the different type of texture that you get, and as you zoom in, you can see the type of interlocking at that nano scale that's happening between the polymer and the metal case,” says Register.

“You're going to get a super tight, rigid bond that is great to be able to get all of our antennas in there where needed and execute that in a really thin design compared to what we had previously.”

This isn’t a process that involves conventional adhesive. The polymer itself ends up bonded directly to the titanium — it’s elegant engineering.

NMT history

This concept is not new, even in mainstream consumer technology. Back in 2011 PhoneArena reported on how HTC — amid its fun years of peak mobile phone tech experimentation — was testing NMT to streamline the construction of its high-end HTC Sensation 4G Android phone.

That it’s still a relatively novel idea is likely, unfortunately, bad news for the idea NMT processes might soon trickle down the Garmin range.

One sub-range that would suit an all-titanium casing is Garmin Venu. The current Venu 4 has a polymer rear, and it’s one of the few series to still use a stainless steel bezel. An all-titanium casing would work great for a Venu 5 but, then again, the last thing this series needs is another major price jump.

The Garmin Venu 4 already jumped to $549.99/£469.99/AU949 from $450/£450/AU749 in the Venu 3 generation, and we’re not sure how much more we can stomach, let alone the watch-buying public. However, having had a chance to test drive the Garmin Marq, it’s clearly an important part of making a dive-ready watch that doesn’t pull too much focus on your wrist, in terms of weight and girth if not provocative style.

Are you looking for a Garmin watch, but not sure what to get? Take our quiz below to find your perfect smartwatch.

Lego Advent calendars might be the best type of Advent calendar there is. Behind each door you'll find a Lego character or mini build to complete. Unlike chocolate (gone in seconds), these daily treats stick around throughout the festive season and for years to come — Lego has also got creative with the boxes, transforming them into game boards or scenes where the behind-door builds can live, and turning them into a part of your seasonal decor.

I've been holding off placing my order, but now is the time to take the plunge — the full range of 2026 calendars is discounted right now, with at least 20% off list price. And there's plenty of time for it to arrive before Advent begins. I'll be picking up the Lego City set, which the classic festive option and includes everything you need to make a Santa's workshop. However, there are also Marvel and Star Wars calendars (which put a Christmassy twist on your favorite characters), as well as Disney Princess and kid-focused Lego Friends sets.

I've rounded up all your deal options below, as well as some bonus discounts on alternative festive Lego sets you might want to throw into your shopping trolley at the same time.

Lego 2026 Advent calendar deals

More festive brick bargains

Sam Altman has been making headlines for his claims that consumers don’t deserve DRAM because it is only utilized “5% of the time.” In his opinion, DRAM supplies should be prioritized for data centers where its utility can be maximized powering cloud environments.

Altman’s perspective is like a utilitarian's fantasy. Humanity’s endurance of short-term pain - by handing over every bit of DRAM we have - will lead to a morally right outcome in the form of a world powered by time-saving, efficiency-increasing, productivity-boosting AI.

Sounds great if you’re the head of an AI company, but less so if you just want memory to be affordable again.

But what the OpenAI head seems to forget is that the DRAM shortage is part of a crisis he had a hand in creating. When OpenAI’s Stargate datacenter buildout was announced in early 2025, it was predicted that the project would require 40% of the world’s global supply. Supply issues were compounded as leading producers of memory entered a production turndown just a few years before to help stabilize pricing.

Will Sam Altman break into your house to steal your RAM?

The good news is that there is little Sam Altman himself can do to take your RAM off you. One reddit user asked Google AI the question we’ve all been thinking: “Is Sam Altman going to break into my house and steal my RAM?”

Google reassured the user with, “No, Sam Altman is not going to break into your house to physically steal your RAM.” So at least there's that.

But given how constrained the current memory supply is, there are a few ways that AI and other future tech could make the whole situation worse.

The worst could still be yet to come

One of the world’s leading memory manufacturers, SK Hynix, has predicted that the supply shortage could “persist through 2030,” making any hopes of a return to affordable pricing in the next few years a distant dream.

With OpenAI and Anthropic both set to hit the public market within that window, there is a lot of uncertainty over how the memory giants that control around 90% of the world’s supply will shift production.

Given the difference in revenue between the consumer memory market and the AI market, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a significant production swing towards the high-bandwidth memory required for AI inference and training.

This could be compounded by AI’s effect on the job market, with numerous firms enacting hiring freezes as AI strategies help cut out repetitive rote work. Higher unemployment and a lack of open positions could further reduce the demand for consumer memory, swinging production further in favor of AI.

But other emerging industries are also looking to take a bite out of the memory market.

Robots and autonomous vehicles are coming for your RAM

There has been a recent explosion in the robotics industry: from humanoid bots competing in their very own Olympics, to warehouses staffed by fleets of micro-bots. As AI improves and converges with the robotics industry to produce bots with near-human fine motor control, numerous industries spanning manufacturing, hospitality and logistics could buy robots in place of humans.

After all, a robot can work around the clock, doesn’t need to rest, and doesn’t have any rights to be violated with unsafe working conditions or excessive hours. The same goes for an autonomous taxi or cargo truck.

But they will need memory to run their little AI brains. And serving the corporate overlords is much more important (and much more profitable) than expanding memory production for the consumer market, so don’t expect things to improve any time soon.

One of the biggest names in blockbuster cinema is James Cameron, the man behind massive movies like Titanic, the Avatar franchise and the original Terminator films. He also has a storied history with other hit movies and a range of documentaries, spanning many years.

You've probably seen loads of his movies — multiple times, in some cases — but how well do you know them? This 30-question quiz is designed to find out.

We'll be asking you questions from across James Cameron's career, asking you about his big franchise movies like The Terminator, Avatar and Aliens, as well as sequels and other works. But we'll also look at some of his other movies, the franchises he's created, the awards he's won, and some of his frequent collaborators too

This quiz will start with 10 easy questions just to make sure you've actually seen this movies in the first place. Then we'll move to 10 medium questions, to see if you're really a movie buff or not. Finally, there will be 10 hard questions, for those who really know their movie trivia.

All of these will test your James Cameron franchise knowledge, and will help you work out where you need to brush up on your trivia.

Want to catch up on James Cameron movies? Avatar and its sequels are on Disney+ everywhere, while Aliens and Titanic are too in the UK (Aliens is on Netflix in the US, and Titanic is on Paramount+). The Terminator and Terminator 2 are on Prime Video in the US and Paramount+ in the UK.

Looking for a non-toxic coffee maker? I test over a dozen espresso and drip coffee machines every year, and here I've picked out three BPA-free options that deliver peace of mind when you're enjoying your morning brew.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a material used in some hard plastics, and is classified as an endocrine disruptor (a substance that can affect hormone levels). When it comes into contact with food and drinks, tiny amounts can be transferred and consumed.

The official stance of the US Food and Drink Administration (FDA) is that "BPA is safe at the current levels occurring in foods. Based on FDA’s ongoing safety review of scientific evidence, the available information continues to support the safety of BPA for the currently approved uses in food containers and packaging."

The Food Standards Agency in the UK adopts a similar position, stating that "Where it is allowed to be used, tiny amounts of the chemical may be transferred from some packaging into food and drinks, however the level of BPA detected in food to date in the UK is not currently considered to be harmful."

However, in both countries BPAs are forbidden in items intended to be used by babies and young children, and some coffee fans prefer to pick brewers that are BPA-free to play it safe.

All three coffee makers below are explicitly marked as BPA-free, but there are some other options to consider if you want to avoid contact with plastics. For example, if you want a manual espresso machine, the La Pavoni Europiccola (reviewed by my colleague Josephine Watson) is worth a look. Although it isn't explicitly marketed as non-toxic, the heating element is stainless steel, and its tank is made from brass to limit contact with other materials in the brew path. Meanwhile, pour-over fans can avoid plastic entirely by opting for a Chemex brewer, or a simple glass or ceramic dripper.

Ninja Prestige DualBrew System

The Ninja Prestige DualBrew System — known as the Ninja Espresso and Coffee Maker Barista System in the US — is BPA-free, plus Ninja's product FAQ also states that it's free from PTFE/PFOA, chemicals used to make non-stick coatings. PTFE is chemically inert, and regarded as safe at the temperatures used by coffee machines. However, as with BPAs, some coffee-drinkers prefer to avoid it for peace of mind. PFOA has been phased out in the US and UK, having been classified as carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. You will not find it in any modern coffee makers.

The Prestige DualBrew System was released two years ago, but remains one of my favorite two-in-one coffee and espresso machines for sluggish mornings. Either fill the brew basket with ground coffee before bed, set the timer, and wake to a hot pitcher full of delicious pour-over, or drop in a Nespresso Original pod and enjoy a rich espresso with zero effort.

It's the little features that really make the DualBrew System stand out. For example, the hotplate under the pour-over pitcher offers adjustable time and temperature settings, so you can keep your coffee pleasantly warm without risk of stewing it. Remove the pitcher and you'll find a fold-down drip tray, so you can dispense coffee directly into a cup or travel mug instead.

You can adjust the height of the espresso drip tray to accommodate different-sized cups, too, and around the side of the machine, there's a fold-out milk frother for turning your Nespresso drinks into lattes or cappuccinos. It doesn't heat the milk as a steam wand would, but Ninja's designers have added a "recipe" label that provides guidance on the length of time for which you should microwave and whisk the milk for different drinks.

Read my full Ninja Prestige DualBrew System review

Ninja Luxe Café Premier

The Luxe Café Premier (which was known as the Luxe Café when it launched in 2024) is another Ninja coffee maker explicitly stated to be BPA-free. Ninja also notes that "after the reservoir, the water does not come into contact with any plastic," which is good to know if you're worried about substances leaching into hot water.

It's a brilliant all-in-one coffee maker that takes the trial and error out of making well-extracted coffee, handling the trickiest barista tasks and helping even first-time users produce a consistently well-extracted brew with a fully rounded flavor.

When preparing an espresso, the machine does the hard work of dialing in the grinder for you, suggesting an appropriate grind size and then funneling the prepared coffee neatly into the filter basket. A calibrated tamper helps you create a perfectly even bed of coffee, and once the handle is inserted under the brewing group, the Luxe Café will time your shot to make sure it's not extracting too fast or slow.

You can push the steam wand down into your milk jug to use the automatic frothing system, or lift it a few degrees to use it manually, depending on how confident you feel. We found that the auto system worked equally well with dairy milk and plant-based substitutes such as oat and almond.

"Overall, the Ninja Luxe Café delivered on its promises of uncomplicating espresso," said our tester Danielle Abraham. "It consistently created quality espresso and made things simpler by intuitively dosing and providing the correct grind level for the perfect pull, something you’d be hard-pressed to find on other semi-automatic espresso machines at this price point."

If you have a small kitchen, the Ninja Luxe Café Mini offers almost exactly the same features in a more compact package, brews "absolutely delicious" coffee, and is also BPA-free.

Read our full Ninja Luxe Café Premier review

Fellow Aiden Precision Coffee Maker

Fellow's premium coffee makers are a popular choice for coffee roasters and specialty cafés, and the Aiden Precision Coffee Maker is no exception. The brand states that "Aiden is built with high-quality, food-grade plastic (BPA-free), stainless steel, and silicone, so that you can brew with peace of mind."

The Aiden offers a choice of brewing modes, so you can pick the appropriate one depending on how much time you have to spare. Auto Brew mode works like any basic drip coffee maker, simply heating water and pumping it over your ground coffee. The pump will run until the water tank is empty.

Guided Brewing mode is where things get interesting. It lets you choose how much to brew, then suggests the optimal dosage, bloom time, and temperature based on the type of beans you've selected. The machine will also tell you whether to use the cone or flat-bottomed brew basket, and can detect which one you've inserted.

The Aiden has a cold-brew mode as well, which uses hot water to bloom the coffee, then switches to cold for the remainder of the process. It's a clever trick that means your drink takes just 1.5-2 hours to prepare compared to the 24 hours for traditional cold brewing. The flavor profile is impressively similar, so hats off to Fellow.

However, the Aiden loses half a point for its carafe, which lets heat escape a little too easily. Fellow claims it will keep your batch of freshly brewed coffee hot for hours, but during my tests, it cooled noticeably within 45 minutes.

In short, the non-toxic Aiden brews exquisite drip coffee, but you'll need to be ready to enjoy it straight away.

Read my full Fellow Aiden Precision Coffee Maker review

The Google Fitbit Edge is Google's latest fitness tracker, and it's designed as a halfway house between the screenless, super-cheap Google Fitbit Air and the full-fat Google Pixel Watch 5 smartwatch. Costing $179.99 / £159.99 / AU$269, it's packing GPS (which the Air doesn't) and Fitbit's improved automatic activity detection, alongside the usual metrics like heart rate, sleep tracking, and estimated calories burned.

But is it accurate? That's the big question. While we found the Google Fitbit Air accurate compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and a heart rate monitor, we've been burned by Fitbit in the past, with some accuracy issues plaguing this device's spiritual predecessor, the Fitbit Charge 6.

I've only been testing the Edge for a couple of days, but I wanted to test its mettle straight away. On my first 5km run with the new Fitbit, I compared its stats on one wrist against another wearable, the high-end Garmin Fenix 9 Pro.

The 9 Pro costs around five times as much as the Google Fitbit Edge, and has been tested against chest-mounted heart rate monitors and other premium wearables like the Apple Watch Ultra 4 to determine accuracy.

It's worth noting that devices normally take a few days to learn your movement patterns and baseline metrics, so I was expecting some deviation in metrics such as heart rate. However, I was hoping the Google Fitbit Edge's distance and pace information, calculated via GPS, would cleave closely to the Fenix 9 Pro's metrics, as that would indicate the little fitness tracker is almost as accurate as the powerful Fenix 9, making it good value for money.

The results

When I compare wearables during workouts, I use the average heart rate metric as a good indication of wearable accuracy. Heart rate, measured by LED-based PPG sensor arrays, is the cornerstone of wearable health tracking and a core basis of everything from estimations in sleep quality to calorie burn.

Average heart rate, which all wearables provide during a workout, is a great way to compare. While different devices use different algorithms and so forth, resulting in fluctuations in graphs, if two or more wearables show a similar average heart rate, it's a good indication that these devices are broadly accurate.

Fortunately, the cheaper Google Fitbit Edge does cleave very closely to the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro, which I know is accurate thanks to past tests against the Frontier X2 heart rate monitor and Apple Watch Ultra 4. The Google Fitbit Edge showed an average heart rate of 156 bpm, while the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro showed an average heart rate of 153 bpm. That's a great result for the Fitbit.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the distance metric, which calculates how far I ran. During the run, while glancing at my Google Fitbit Edge, it was consistently overestimating my running speed, often showing 30 seconds or more ahead of my Fenix, and that was reflected in the final distance result. While the Google Fitbit Edge said I ran 5.45 km, the Garmin Fenix 9 Pro measured just 5.15 km — a distance of around 300 meters.

That's acceptable over a longer race, like a marathon (there was a similar discrepancy when I ran London with an Apple Watch and a Garmin), but that's 300 meters over 42 kilometers, not five. 300 meters on this run equates to an overestimation of around 6%, and I trust the thousand-dollar Garmin's multi-band SatIQ GPS more than the sub-200-dollar Fitbit's.

I will repeat the experiment with longer runs — with fewer trees — to see if I get a smaller deviation. It's not a dealbreaker for casual exercisers, but over 5% is enough for a keen runner to choose another device. Stay tuned for more testing and a full review of the Google Fitbit Edge very soon.

As the 2026 Formula 1 season draws to a close, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 is cruising to glory in both the driver's and constructor's world championships.

But behind its quest for pure speed is a tech stack which constantly evolves throughout the year, with the team supported by a host of partners to make sure it stays ahead of the competition.

SAP is one of the team's key providers, and following a key upgrade, we spoke to Dean Corcoran, Head of ERP, IT at Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, to find out more about how it is helping get the title push over the line.

It’s obviously been a hugely successful season for Mercedes F1 so far. What role has your tech stack and partners such as SAP played in that?

On-track success is ultimately delivered by the collective capability of the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team to design, build, operate and develop the car. Underpinning all of that is the technology stack that enables our people to do their jobs effectively.

SAP is a key enabler of Team performance. It is the system of record across our cost, procurement, manufacturing and operational processes, providing the foundational data that supports many of the decisions we make across the organisation.

What can you tell us about the upgrade? What benefits will it bring to the team for the rest of the season?

The RISE implementation and upgrade to the latest release of S/4HANA was fundamentally about strengthening the Team’s core enterprise platform, making it more resilient, more performant and allowing us to take advantage of the latest functionality available to us.

Importantly, it also creates the foundation for our future roadmap. It gives us the platform from which we can make greater use of new analytics capabilities and begin paving the way for future AI use cases.

What challenges are involved in upgrading your ERP platform in the middle of the season? How much preparation was involved to ensure it didn’t disrupt your charge for the championships?

Our S/4HANA platform is a business-critical application that touches all aspects of the Team’s operations, so a migration of this scale has to be meticulously planned and executed. Any disruption to the business could have significant consequences, particularly in the middle of a championship campaign.

Our first phase was therefore about understanding exactly where we would see the impact of the migration and upgrade. The second was developing a comprehensive implementation and testing plan, with precise timings and staffing requirements. The final phase was about executing that plan with excellence.

We were extremely well supported by SAP throughout the migration, and that preparation paid off. We were able to move seamlessly onto the new platform with no disruption to the business ahead of the first weekend of racing.

With regards to software updates, how do you ensure your upgrades are processed and programmed effectively?

Within the Team’s IT organisation, we follow a rigorous portfolio, project and change-management approach. That means understanding and evaluating the impact of any change well ahead of implementation.

From there, we develop tailored implementation and testing plans, with clear exit criteria for each phase. Ultimately, disciplined governance matters just as much as technical capability and speed when you are making changes to business-critical systems.

We hear a lot about mid-season upgrades being a huge boost for any team when it comes to new parts, but how much of an impact can software upgrades bring?

A well-planned and well-executed software upgrade should improve an organisation’s ability to deliver value through the processes that software supports.

In the case of an ERP platform, that means being able to execute processes faster without compromising quality, while making more data available more quickly to support decision-making. In an environment like the Team, where speed and quality matter enormously, those improvements can be valuable.

With more attention being paid to data controls than ever before, what impact will the new upgrade have on the Team’s compliance goals?

A modern ERP solution such as SAP RISE PCE needs to support and supplement the controls built into the Team’s business processes, rather than existing separately from them.

With the upgrade to S/4HANA 2025, we are leveraging the latest SAP functionality to provide the best possible insight to the right people at the right time. That helps us make informed decisions while maintaining the robust controls required across the organisation.

Looking forward to the rest of the season, how big an effect can upgrades such as the new SAP delivery give to the Team as you chase both championships?

Marginal gains and reliability matter everywhere when you are trying to win both championships, and our move to RISE and upgrade to S/4HANA 2025 are focused on delivering both.

We are already seeing improved transactional performance on the new platform, giving valuable time back to users across the Team. Alongside that, we are adopting and leveraging some of SAP’s latest functionality across Fiori and analytics, with further capabilities on our roadmap that we believe can deliver additional performance improvements in the future.

Making it easier to repair an old smartphone or laptop, rather than buying a new one, has long been a goal of tech enthusiasts, and the EU took a big step towards making that a reality in June 2025 with the introduction of its "Ecodesign" requirements.

The European Commission's rules require manufacturers of smartphones and certain tablets to meet new obligations covering spare parts, repair information, and the fundamental design of their devices. Laptops aren't covered by these particular rules, although other EU regulations apply to them.

More than a year later, there are some real signs of improvement – but also lingering questions about the difficulty and cost of repairs.

So, how much has actually changed? Are smartphones easier to repair, and are laptops heading in the same direction? To make sense of the EU's repairability push, TechRadar spoke to three experts.

Europe's repair revolution

The EU's rules stop short of mandating anything too drastic. Apple does not have to make the iPhone a 10/10 on iFixit's repairability scale, or turn it into something resembling a Fairphone.

Instead, much of the focus is on spare parts: manufacturers must make specified replacement components, including screens and batteries, available for at least seven years after a model stops being available on the EU market.

Manufacturers must also deliver parts within five working days for the first five years, rising to 10 days for the remaining two, while providing repair documentation and access to necessary software tools.

Batteries must meet minimum durability standards, too.

For consumers, perhaps the most visible change is an A–E repairability rating on the EU's new energy labels, based on factors such as disassembly difficulty and replacement parts.

The EU has also introduced a separate Right to Repair Directive, which member states had to implement by July 2026, adding protections for certain products, although laptops aren't yet covered.

The changes could have implications beyond Europe, too. "The regulation clearly influenced products sold outside Europe, because few vendors engineer a separate phone for one region," says IDC's Francisco Jeronimo.

Cracking the repair problem

In June 2026, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) carried out an investigation into the availability of spare parts and repair instructions across Europe, comparing smartphones with battery-powered vacuum cleaners.

"The new Ecodesign rules for smartphones have improved consumers’ access to spare parts and repair instructions," says Silvia Barlassina, the group's ecodesign project coordinator. "However, as the rules have been in force for only a year and a half, it is too early to assess whether they have led to an increase in consumer repairs."

Of course, getting hold of replacement parts is only half the battle. Thomas Opsomer, an EU policy specialist at repair advocacy group iFixit, is less convinced that the rules have changed how smartphones are actually repaired.

"As a result, the regulation did not really change the current mainstream smartphone design, which is one that requires heating to release the screen adhesive in order to get access to the inside of the phone for any type of repair – a procedure that is quite daunting to most users."

A recent iFixit teardown of the iPhone 18 Pro shows that, despite a screwed-in battery tray and modular cameras, accessing the battery still requires removing the glued-down display.

In fact, iFixit says it damaged the plastic display frame in three of the four phones it opened, although it cautioned that further testing was needed to establish whether this was a widespread problem.

Physical repairs aren't the only problem. In a separate September 2026 investigation, Right to Repair Europe and iFixit examined 2,334 smartphone-model records in the EU's official product database, finding widespread gaps in the availability of repair instructions and spare-part prices.

"We found 80% of models on the market to be non-compliant, which is not the same as 80% of units sold," says Opsomer. "We have seen dramatic improvements in the availability of instructions for self-repair from the leading manufacturers, who were previously quite reluctant to share those."

Many of the shortcomings are instead concentrated among cheaper, lesser-known smartphone brands, Opsomer adds, potentially leaving budget-conscious consumers particularly exposed.

There has also been progress on parts pairing, the software checks that can restrict the use of replacement components. Manufacturers such as Apple must now allow users and independent repairers to restore the functionality of replacement parts, "removing a significant barrier to self-repair and independent repair," says Opsomer.

The €400 question

New smartphones are expensive – and prices are being pushed even higher as demand from AI data centres drives up the cost of components like memory chips, even for giants like Apple.

With replacement parts becoming easier to find, you might expect repairing a smartphone to be substantially cheaper than buying a new one. Unfortunately, the reality isn't quite so straightforward.

"For one high end device we examined in our recent market check, the cost of replacing the display exceeds €400," says Barlassina. "When compared to the average original retail price of the device, this represents roughly 30% of the total cost."

Research cited in the European Commission's impact assessment suggests consumers are typically willing to spend around 20% of a product's purchase price on repairs. Damningly, BEUC's €400-plus figure, meanwhile, only covers the replacement component, before labour and other expenses.

The EU's new A–E repairability labels account for factors like disassembly difficulty and the tools required, but crucially not the cost of replacement parts or repair services. This, Barlassina says, "can give an incomplete picture to consumers."

The cost of fixing individual devices illustrates the problem. Samsung's Irish repair pricing page lists a recommended €267 for an out-of-warranty screen repair on the Galaxy S26 Ultra, including a replacement battery, although additional work could increase the charge.

Meanwhile, Fairphone's replacement display for the Fairphone 6 costs just €89.95, while a replacement battery costs €39.95. Both are parts-only prices, with Fairphone designing them to be replaced at home.

"The economics of repair are key," says Opsomer. "When their phone breaks, users consciously or unconsciously make a tradeoff between the repair costs and the perceived residual value of their phone, which is lowered by incessant messaging extolling the virtues of the latest and greatest model."

Laptops are opening up

Laptops weren't covered by the EU's June 2025 smartphone Ecodesign rules, but some manufacturers have made substantial improvements anyway.

Notably, iFixit gave the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 a provisional 10/10 repairability score, praising its accessible battery, replaceable USB-C ports, keyboard, RAM, and storage. iFixit had also consulted with Lenovo on its design.

Even Apple is leaning into repairability with the MacBook Neo, which got a 6/10 score from iFixit, the highest MacBook score in around 14 years. The Neo uses a screwed-in battery rather than a glued-down one, although its RAM and storage remain soldered.

But are these examples part of an industry-wide shift, or still the exceptions?

"We see a shift towards repairability in smartphones and laptops, but not to the extent that I would call it a broader industry shift," says Jeronimo. "There are clear signs of movement, and Apple and Lenovo are two good examples."

There's a commercial argument for repairability, too. Jeronimo points out that consumers paying more for their devices increasingly expect them to last longer, giving manufacturers another reason to make repairs easier.

"A repairable device tends to hold its value for longer, which means a higher residual value when the consumer trades it in for a new one," he says.

Still some fixing to do

More replacement parts and better repair manuals are all well and good, but are consumers actually making repairability a priority?

According to IDC's research, consumers are now keeping smartphones for around 3.5 to 4.5 years on average.

"Consumers are keeping phones longer, but repairability is not what drives it," says Jeronimo. "In a 2025 IDC consumer survey, battery life, connectivity, price and build quality ranked highest among the purchase criteria."

Governments are also looking at ways to make repairs more attractive. Under the EU's Right to Repair Directive, member states must introduce at least one measure encouraging repairs, potentially including financial incentives such as repair vouchers.

Member states have until July 2029 to notify the Commission of the measures they've taken, although they can introduce them sooner. "Among these options, financial incentives would be by far the most effective," says Opsomer.

More than a year after the EU's repairability rules came into force, things are slowly improving. Enthusiasts who want to keep their smartphones and laptops forever – or at least several more years – have more options than before.

The challenge now is making repair a realistic choice for everyone else.

AI models are hitting a bottleneck, where raw parameter scaling to improve their performance no longer cuts it. Performance improvements per doubling of AI model parameters are gradually diminishing, leaving multi-agent coordination as the next option. Multi-agent coordination implies two or more AI models working together and sharing data to handle workflows. Instead of relying on one model to handle everything, tasks are divided between different agents, e.g., one writing code and another validating the code.

Coordination involves breaking AI tasks into smaller pieces, assigning each piece to the best-suited agent, and controlling how the agents interact with each other to achieve a common goal. However, this coordination is facing its own bottlenecks. Moving from one AI agent to two, three, or five multiplies potential state synchronization errors and causes token bloat and high latency. Error loops can consume unnecessary tokens, and hallucinations can pass from one agent to another, causing cascading errors.

AI model developers have to innovate their way out of the architectural bottlenecks of multi-agent orchestration, and they’re largely doing so. From validating incoming data against individual agent knowledge bases to enforcing strict hop limits on agent handoffs and sticking to the smallest possible number of agents required to execute a task, developers are implementing various solutions to enable hitch-free multi-agent coordination. Let’s dive into the bottlenecks and solutions in more detail.

Centralized Orchestrator Limitations

During multi-agent orchestration, a single agent acts like the air traffic controller managing the breakdown of tasks into smaller pieces, assigning different tasks to individual agents, and maintaining coherent context across every step. This structure enables easier coordination but creates the risk of having a single point of failure. If the central hub crashes or experiences a temporary disruption, the whole multi-agent workflow gets disrupted. All routing and communication pass through this central orchestrator, so just a little disruption can create a ‘traffic jam’ of AI tasks to be handled. When the central hub eventually gets fixed, this jam causes delays in executing the tasks.

Even without errors, routing everything through a central orchestrator workflow adds processing delays. Traffic jams can still pile up when there isn’t enough processing power, delaying responses to users’ queries. Users are impatient for their responses, so even the slightest delay is a major competitive disadvantage.

Sometimes, the manager agent treats individual agents like mere task executors, not autonomous AI models, each with its distinct abilities. This limits flexibility when AI agents need to solve edge cases.

Cost is also an issue, as central manager agents consume tokens to break down instructions into different pieces, assign pieces to each agent, and retransmit context back and forth to agents. We’ll dive more into the issue of excess token consumption below.

Token bloat

Multi-agent orchestration depends on passing a lot of raw, unsummarized conversation histories between different agents, and this can make token consumption grow exponentially. AI token costs can get unpredictable, with numerous stories of companies racking up unexpectedly big AI bills.

For example, a single software development team at Amazon, the e-commerce giant, unexpectedly racked up $1.8 million in token costs for a project to automate the mapping of author data to online book listings. Some Amazon engineers conceded that “it's very difficult to understand how much anything related to artificial intelligence costs,” and that’s telling coming from the world’s largest cloud computing provider. You don’t want to face token bloat because of multi-agent orchestration and spend much more than you expected.

Coordination complexity

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

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

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

For more cost-effective coordination, choose code-driven state machines over open-ended, model-driven runtimes where the agents freely choose which of them gets to speak next. Think of it like saying “If X, then agent A speaks” and “If Y, then agent B speaks.” Forcing deterministic, code-driven state machines prevents multi-agent systems from consuming tokens just to decide who talks, and this adds up to significant savings.

Developers can also create strict token caps and timeout circuits to avoid runaway costs. You don’t want to be that Amazon team we cited earlier that incurred $1.8 million in unexpected costs, or that (unnamed) large enterprise rumored to have racked up a $500 million bill on Claude AI in a month because a token cap wasn’t set. You can also implement rigid, sequential agent handoffs to limit free-form chat between agents that consume a lot of tokens.

Cascading errors and hallucinations

Cascading errors occur when a hallucination generated by one agent passes to other agents and is treated as fact. It flows from upstream AI agents to downstream agents because, in multi-agent chains, each handoff adds a layer of authority, making the final output feel like a fact.

This issue often occurs when one agent writes hallucinated data back to a shared database, and other agents pull that data and compound the error. As multiple downstream agents compound the error, it becomes even more difficult to trace which agent introduced the hallucinated data. These compounding errors reduce the multi-agent system's overall reliability.

To mitigate this bottleneck, developers use frameworks like the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and LangGraph to set strict execution paths instead of relying on unrestricted loops. Roles are clearly separated between agents, such as one for retrieving raw data, another for reasoning, and a designated data generator optimized to avoid creating unreferenced facts, otherwise known as ‘hallucinations’.

Developers can also insert an impartial verifier into the process to challenge claims before they're aggregated by LLMs, or run parallel independent agents dedicated to this task. Likewise, they can set strict JSON schemas, retry budgets, and API type-checking to prevent unnecessary loops that can potentially create hallucinated input.

It's also advisable for developers to log every user prompt, agent call, and handoff so that, if cascading errors occur, they can trace the source and make corrections.

Shared state & cache invalidation

Shared state refers to the (shared) data that multiple AI agents access when orchestrated under one system. It allows every agent to access data quickly and sync real-time data updates easily. However, it comes with its risks. Two agents may modify the same data simultaneously, causing unpredictable outputs. A modification by one agent can disrupt another agent’s workflow.

Above, we described the problems of downstream agents treating hallucinated data from upstream agents as fact, outputting wrong answers and reducing the multi-agent system’s reliability. But it doesn’t have to be hallucinated data to cause this problem. Outdated data can also cause issues, often data cached by agents that is no longer current.

When building AI agents, developers usually implement caching to control costs and enhance performance. Caching involves storing prompt prefixes (e.g., simple definitions and answers to routine questions like "How do I process a refund for my order?"). If stored, agents don't have to re-process tokens to answer every routine question. Rather, it responds with the cached data.

However, caching becomes much more difficult when running multi-agent systems. A small audit to a shared system prompt can invalidate the cache for all agents simultaneously, causing them to re-process tokens. Passing context between agents via state serialization also wipes caches if prompt orders are modified. Then, there’s the fact that caches can also hold outdated data, requiring intentional deletion to avoid giving outdated results.

Developers address this bottleneck with several methods. They can put static content at the beginning of a prompt and dynamic content at the very end, preventing cases where a token changing at the beginning invalidates the whole cached result. They also use an Agent Step Graph to track prompt execution orders and evict cache states based on temporary proximity to future agent activations. Sometimes, it's better to skip rigid caches altogether for exploratory user prompts, where every prompt is unique, and focus caching on routine user queries.

Human supervision overload

The bottlenecks aren’t purely software-based. They also affect the developers overseeing the multi-agent orchestration. Multi-agent systems generate a lot of prompts, permission requests, and error flags that get developers mentally fatigued.

It doesn't help that developers often struggle to see what multiple agents are writing to shared memory simultaneously, so errors become hard to spot early. For example, agents can edit the same file simultaneously and generate conflicting user outputs, requiring developers to manually intervene to correct the file.

Fortunately, there are effective ways to mitigate human supervision overload when dealing with multi-agent systems. Developers can create a hierarchical structure where a central agent aggregates all logs and summarizes status, then focus on monitoring this central agent. Monitoring becomes much easier when it revolves mostly around one agent, instead of monitoring 2 to 5 agents simultaneously. All agents still get monitored, but the central agent gets much more attention.

Earlier, while discussing cascading errors, we mentioned developers creating separate roles for each agent (e.g., one for retrieving raw data, another for reasoning, and another for generating data) as a way to prevent cascading errors. This also helps mitigate human supervision challenges. Agents with clearly separate roles are less likely to overlap, or, in more casual words, step on each other’s toes. They avoid solving the same problem simultaneously, meaning fewer coordination failures for human supervisors to deal with.

Also, developers can set strict action limits between agents, preventing unnecessary loops that’ll need human intervention. However, if doing so, be careful not to impose limits so strict that they affect the whole multi-agent system’s reliability.

General mitigation strategies

We’ve looked at various bottlenecks and how LLM developers are innovating around them. But there are some generalized mitigation strategies that help improve multi-agent orchestration overall, not necessarily applying to a specific bottleneck. They include

Keeping the agent count minimal

Sticking to the smallest number of agents reduces the number of potential issues developers face later and also lessens human supervision needs. Why use eight agents when five can do the job, or six if three can do it? If building a multi-agent system, choose the minimal number of agents that can provide reliable performance.

Isolating tasks and file access

Restricting each agent to specific tasks and files lessens coordination difficulty. It means fewer chances of multiple agents editing a file at the same time and mixing things up, or an issue affecting one agent compromising the whole multi-agent system.

For example, an agent allowed to read customer emails won't have the ability to modify database schemas, and vice versa. Instead of agents deciding which other agents to call, you'll specify that with a central, code-based orchestrator. You can issue short-lived tokens for each task, and when an agent completes its task, the token credentials expire so it can't consume more on further actions.

You can also require a human in the loop for high-risk agent actions like deleting files, external API calls, and data transfers. This ensures agents don’t go ‘rogue,’ which we’ve seen a lot lately. AI agents can act unpredictably if left to their devices, so human supervision remains essential to multi-agent orchestration.