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Forget AirPods Pro 3, these premium buds sound fantastic and look so much classier
Status Audio Pro X: Two-minute review
American audio company Status Audio was hurt by the curse of poor timing with the release of its next-gen premium earbuds and challengers to our best earbuds buying guide. That’s because less than two months after the firm unveiled the Pro X, Apple finally released its latest buds, the AirPods Pro 3, which slightly undercut the underdogs’ latest release in terms of price.
I don’t think Status needs to worry much about competition from Apple, though, because the product distinguishes itself in a few key areas (and, of course, actually works equally as well for Android users).
For one, the Status Pro X has three audio drivers per bud, one more than the AirPods Pro and two more than most earbuds I test. This trio works together to deliver well-defined and high-quality audio that sounds fantastic, making these some of the best earbuds you can try.
The earbuds also look as good as they sound, with the ellipsoid design language carried between the buds and the case to make them look some of the classiest buds I've seen. It's not all for show either as I found the fit reliable.
Status has nailed more of the basics with solid Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), handy touch controls and wireless charging in the case.
The main let-down for me was the battery life, which basically scraped five hours if you've got ANC turned on. That's pretty poor when you look at averages on the market, even for high-end buds, and rules them out for certain use cases.
In fact, the overall feature set is a little bit anemic, and there are a few common perks that aren't available on the Pro X. It's clear that the emphasis here is on the audio quality and design, not the handy extras that often justify a higher price.
That's the one department where the AirPods Pro 3 cleanly beat the Status Pro X; don't expect any live translation or heart rate tracking here. But Status has Apple beat in the two other main areas, and that's good enough for me.
Status Audio Pro X review: Price and release date(Image credit: Future)- Released in 'batches' every few months from July 2025
- Costs $299 / £272 / AU$470
- Pricier than big-name rivals
The first thing to know about the Pro X is that they’re not cheap gadgets; these are pricey buds that bump elbows with some top-notch rivals.
The official retail price for the Status Audio Pro X is $299 / £272 / AU$470, though it’s worth noting that you can pre-order them for $249 / £226 / AU$384. When I say ‘pre-order’, I don’t mean that the buds aren’t out, but (at the time of writing at least) Status is selling them in waves, with one every couple of months. For the purpose of this review I’m taking the RRP as the real price of the buds though.
That price means the buds cost more than the new AirPods Pro 3, which go for $249 / £219 / AU$429 and roughly match the option that tops our best earbuds list, the Technics EAH-AZ100, which go for $299 / £259 / AU$478.
In other words, I went into this review expecting great things.
One more thing: the Pro X's predecessor, the excellent Status Between 3ANC, cost $249 (approx. £249 / AU$399).
Status Audio Pro X review: SpecsDrivers
12mm driver + 2x Knowles balanced armature drivers
Active noise cancellation
Yes
Battery life (ANC off)
8 hours (buds) 24 hours (case)
Weight
5g (buds) 48g (case)
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.4
Waterproofing
IP55
Status Audio Pro X review: Features(Image credit: Future)- Poor battery life
- Decent noise cancellation
- Fewer features than rivals
According to Status Audio, the Pro X will last for 8 hours of listening time, with the charging case extending it to 24 hours in total. That figure must be for listening with ANC turned off, because when it was enabled, I got a far shorter listening time: roughly four and a half to five hours. That’s not exactly a competitive stat as it falls below average by a considerable way.
A better feature is the noise cancellation which, while not best-in-class, was solid enough to plaster over annoying background noises. The Ambient mode is one of the better examples of pass-through sound I’ve used, with surrounding sounds fed into your headphones without sounding amplified at all.
You can toggle between these modes using the Status Hub app which also lets you customize the touch controls, choose between one of five equalizer presets (plus a custom mode with an eight-band EQ for the audiophiles), find the buds if you’ve lost them (with location tracking and audio cues), set up multi-point connection and toggle whether your voice is hidden by the ANC when you talk in the phone. Hidden in the app’s settings is a Dynamic EQ mode which boosts bass and treble when the volume is low – it’s turned off by default though.
There are a few features which you may expect at this price point that you’re not getting, including surround-sound audio (see 'spatial audio'), toggle-able wearer detection, fit tests or the ability to change codec or music stream bitrate. The slender feature set is something we’ve knocked past Status buds for and while there are more here (the Between 3ANC didn’t let you change touch controls, for example, and GPS buds tracking is a great tool), I’d still like to see a little more to justify the price.
In terms of connection specs, the Pro X supports SBC, AAC and LDAC, at 24-bit/96 kHz. In my testing I didn’t have any connection issues between the buds and my phone.
- Features score: 3/5
- Classy look for bud and case
- Handy touch controls
- Case supports wireless charging
The Status Audio Pro X are some of the more refined earbuds I’ve tested this year in terms of design. They’re stem-toting buds, although ‘stem’ feels like an odd choice of word for the ellipsoid pillars standing tall from the earbuds.
Despite the size of the stems, which made me worry about the reliability of the ear fit, the Pro X stayed in my ears without any shifting or issues. The touch controls worked well and were easy to use, thanks to the size of the sensor area so you don’t need any precision to pause or skip your music.
The buds have an IP55 rating against dust ingress and jets of water, so don’t submerge them in puddles or sinks if you want them to keep working.
Now onto the case; it’s a small oblong box that weighs about 48g (according to my kitchen scales, though I couldn’t find an official figure from Status Audio). It’s not too huge a case although I did notice it in my trouser pocket. I like how it shares obvious design DNA with the earbuds, though I do feel Status missed a trick by not copying the buds’ two-tone shading.
In a neat addition, the case supports wireless charging, so you don’t need to rely on its USB-C port if you don’t want to.
Something I need to mention is that, during testing, one of the earbud charging connectors in the case stopped working. I wrote this off as an anomalous error and Status were quick to replace the test unit with another one – which didn’t break – but I feel compelled to mention the issue after I discovered a Reddit post in which people shared stories of the same issue happening, albeit in past Status buds.
- Design score: 4/5
- 12mm driver + dual balanced armature drivers
- Equalizer plus loads of presets
- Max volume should be higher
Status is putting all its eggs in the ‘sound quality’ basket with the Pro X. The buds have not one, not two but three drivers: a 12mm dynamic driver and two Knowles balanced armature drivers, with the triumvirate designed to individually hit bass, middle and treble respectively.
This gambit pays off: the Pro X sound fantastic and you won’t find much better on the market in the wireless realm. By default the sound profile is neutral, but the aforementioned app presets let you pull oodles of treble or bass out of your tunes – once you work out what each means, due to the lack of a guide (take a guess which has more bass: Status Signature, Status Audiophile or Knowles Preferred? That’s right, there’s no way of knowing – and that’s the only information you’re given). Whatever your taste, you’ll be able to cater your listening to it.
Treble is distinct and sparkling, while bass is well-defined and mids remain clear and strong. The quality is high, and you can hear the inflection in vocals and the squeak of fingers on a guitar string. There isn’t as defined a soundstage as on some other high-end buds though, beyond the natural separation that you can perceive when the quality of lines is higher.
The Pro X don’t go quite as loud as I would’ve liked either; a few times when I was listening outdoors they didn’t reach the volume or oomph I’d have liked to combat noisy situations, despite the decent noise cancellation.
- Sound quality: 4.5/5
- Let's be clear, these are pricey buds
- …but you can save money with pre-order
It’s always hard to defend the value proposition of top-end buds. After all, premium tech simply doesn’t give you value for money; you can buy decent buds for a third of the price that don’t drop the quality by a third – and the gains sonically here are absolutely worthy if you value them, but they're incremental.
So Status goes a long way to justifying the Pro X’s price with the high-quality audio and premium design, but the question of whether they’re great value for money would be a lot easier to answer if the feature set was more fleshed out.
- Value: 3.5/5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Features
The unimpressive battery life and lack of super features hurts the buds
3/5
Design
These look great and fit into ears well.
4/5
Sound quality
The specs don't lie, and three drivers makes the audio sound fantastic.
4.5/5
Value
Can you expect great value from premium tech? This is pretty good, though the feature set would sway the needle.
3.5/5
Buy them if…You want top-notch audio
The Status Pro X are audiophile's earbuds, not just for the high quality but for the versatility through the equalizer and presets.
You're an Android user
I can see these being a popular alternative to AirPods Pro 3 for their similar price and fantastic audio chops, and actually working on Android.
You like the style
It's hard to be objective when it comes to looks, but if you like the way the Status Pro X looks, they're a good buy.View Deal
You need long-lasting battery
These buds won't see you through a work day if you listen with noise cancellation.
You're on a budget
If you've set yourself an upper limit to how much you're willing to spend on buds, I'd be surprised if the Pro X fit it.
Status Pro X
Status Between 3ANC
AirPods Pro 3
Technics EAH-AZ100
Drivers
12mm driver + 2x Knowles balanced armature drivers
10mm driver + 2x Knowles balanced armature drivers
Custom driver, custom amplifier
10mm driver
Active noise cancellation
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Battery life
8 hours (buds) 24 hours (case)
8 hours (buds) 30 hours (case)
8 hours (buds) 24 hours (case)
12 hours (buds) 17 hours (case)
Weight
5g (buds) 48g (case)
13.6g (buds)
5.5g (buds) 44g (case)
5.9g (buds) 42g (case)
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.4
Bluetooth 5.2
Bluetooth 5.3
Bluetooth 5.3
Waterproofing
IP55
IPX5
IP57
IPX4
AirPods Pro 3
Apple's latest undercut Status in price a little and have a much more impressive feature set, but don't have the same audio hardware (or impressive looks).
Technics EAH-AZ100
These slightly more affordable earbuds sound great and are small and comfortable to wear, even if they don't have the audio specs of the Status.
See our full Technics EAH-AZ100 review
How I tested the Status Audio Pro X- Tested for one month
- Tested at home, in the office and on walks
As I mentioned earlier in this review, I tested two review samples of the Status Pro X due to one breaking, and it means the total testing period for the buds exceeded a month, longer than we usually give buds.
I paired the buds with my Android phone and used apps like Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube and WhatsApp for various types of testing. I listened at home, on various types of public transport and on walks around my neighborhood.
I've been reviewing gadgets at TechRadar since early 2019 and have tested many different earbuds in that time.
- First reviewed in September 2025
Categories: Reviews
I was surprised by just how well this thin and lightweight gaming laptop, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025), performed – but you'll have to endure its sizzling temperatures
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025): Two-minute review
The Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) is a thin and lightweight gaming laptop with a small design but a large spec, allowing it to perform as well as its bigger rivals.
To look at, it seems more like an everyday machine than a gaming powerhouse. The only giveaway is the diagonal LED strip across the lid, which does little to add interest.
It has an impressively compact form, though, making it a contender for the best gaming laptop that’s practical to carry around. It lacks the bulk usually associated with such devices, being exceptionally thin and light by gaming laptop standards.
The lid is especially lightweight, and it opens easily yet remains stable once in place. Also, the bezel around the display is about as thin as it could possibly be, which helps to maximize screen space.
For such a compact device, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) has a generous selection of ports, even putting much larger gaming laptops to shame. There are two USB-C and two USB-A connections, as well as an HDMI port, a headset jack, and a microSD card reader.
More importantly, though, the performance of the Zephyrus G14 (2025) is also impressive. The 5070 Ti in my review unit provided very high frame rates, even with maximum graphics settings.
The 120Hz OLED display contributed to the smoothness, and also rendered scenes with plenty of vibrancy, brightness, and contrast. What’s more, the 3K resolution offered a super sharp image, which was great for gaming as well as other tasks.
(Image credit: Future)However, you’ll have to contend with a fair amount of fan noise and blistering heat in the pursuit of this high-end performance. Temperatures around the keyboard are kept to reasonable levels, but the rear and underside of the unit can get uncomfortably hot, even at the slightest provocation.
The keyboard of the Zephyrus G14 (2025) is another highlight. The switches are deep and tactile, offering enough resistance to provide feedback without being onerous to use. The large size of the key caps and their comfortable spacing also makes them good for typing.
The touchpad is similarly excellent, thanks to its large area and smooth surface, although you probably won’t be using this while gaming. What’ll deter you even more is the fact that it can get in the way when using the WASD keys. Thankfully, there’s a shortcut to easily disable its functionality.
Battery life is poor, though. It only managed a little over two and a half hours in our movie playback test, which is short even by gaming laptop standards. The Razer Blade 14 (2025) and the Acer Nitro V 15 can both outlast it by a considerable margin.
At over $2,000, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) doesn’t come cheap. It’s close to more premium models, such as the Razer Blade 14, which is about the best compact gaming laptop we’ve tested. For some – or perhaps many – it may be worth spending that bit more for the Blade, but the Zephyrus G14 (2025) remains a fine pick if you're after a compact and capable gaming machine.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review: Price & Availability(Image credit: Future)- Starts from $2,099.99 / £2,699.99 / AU$3,899
- Available now
- Premium end of the market
The Zephyrus G14 (2025) starts from $2,099.99 / £2,699.99 / AU$3,899 and is available now. Various models are available with varying Ryzen 9 CPUs and RTX GPUs, from the 5060 to the 5080. RAM and storage capacities alternate between 16GB and 32GB, and 1TB and 2TB, respectively.
It’s cheaper than the Razer Blade 14 (2025), even though both base models get an RTX 5060. However, the price gap isn’t huge, and the Blade 14 is one of the best gaming laptops around right now, impressing us with its incredible performance, design, and display.
If you’re looking for the best budget gaming laptop, the Acer Nitro V 15 is a fine choice. You’ll have to settle for an RTX 5050, but it can still game with aplomb. In fact, when I reviewed the Nitro, I was impressed with its 1080p performance. Like the Zephyrus G14 (2025), it can get quite hot in certain areas, but not to the same degree.
- Value: 3 / 5
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Base Config
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Review Config
Price
$2,099.99 / £2,699.99 / AU$3,899
$2,499.99 / £2,699.99 / AU$4,999
CPU
AMD Ryzen 9 270 (8 cores, 4.0GHz)
AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (12 cores, 2.0GHz)
GPU
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060, 8GB
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 12GB
RAM
16GB LPDDR5X
32GB LPDDR5X
Storage
1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
Display
14-inch (2880 x 1800) OLED, 16:10, 120Hz, G-Sync / Adaptive-Sync
14-inch (2880 x 1800) OLED, 16:10, 120Hz, G-Sync / Adaptive-Sync
Ports and Connectivity
2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB-C (1x 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 4), 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL, 1x microSD, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4
2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB-C (1x 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB 4), 1x HDMI 2.1 FRL, 1x microSD, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4
Battery
73Wh
73Wh
Dimensions
12.24 x 8.66 x 0.63 ~ 0.64in (311 x 220 x 15.9 ~ 16.3mm)
12.24 x 8.66 x 0.63 ~ 0.72in (311 x 220 x 15.9 ~ 18.3mm)
Weight
3.31lbs / 1.50kg
3.46lbs / 1.57kg
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review: Design(Image credit: Future)- Non-gaming looks
- Remarkably small and light
- Surprising number of ports
One of the most impressive aspects of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) is that it looks like a normal laptop, lacking the bulk and brash aesthetic of those designed for gaming. This is also helped by the light silver colorway of my review unit, which I found to be an uplifting antidote to the dour shades of many of its rivals (although such a finish is available).
What marks the Zephyrus G14 (2025) out as a gaming device is the diagonal LED strip across the lid and the small shiny embossed logo in the corner. Both are relatively subtle, although the strip is quite incongruous.
Not only is the screen size small for a gaming laptop, but so are all of its dimensions. The lid is especially thin, even beating some of the best MacBooks in terms of how sleek it is. The bezel around the display itself is also about as thin as I’ve ever seen in this class of laptop.
However, the chassis is thicker than you’ll find on many other laptops, and there are a few juts and sharp angles, as well as the thick rubber bars underneath, that sully the smooth planes somewhat. But all things considered, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) remains impressively elegant for its class.
Build quality is also quite good. All the materials feel premium and solid, and there’s only a small amount of wobble to the lid. Crucially, it remains stable once set in position.
(Image credit: Future)Despite its small size, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) has a generous keyboard layout. There are some useful shortcut keys, including those for disabling the touchpad and toggling performance modes, and even four customizable M buttons. However, some peripheral keys are truncated in size, with the arrow keys being the worst casualty in this regard from a gamer’s perspective.
The LED backlighting on the keyboard is a nice touch, although it can be hard to make out at times, especially when certain colors and RGB patterns are displayed. This appears to be caused by the narrow openings of the key markings and a lack of overall brightness.
The touchpad on the Zephyrus G14 (2025) stretches right from the back edge of the space bar to the very end of the chassis, offering a larger surface area than you’ll find on other laptops this size.
Another surprise is just how many ports there are on the Zephyrus G14 (2025), putting many gaming laptops much larger to shame. It features two USB-C ports, which both support Power Delivery and DisplayPort standards each, although only one supports G-Sync/ Adaptive Sync displays. There are also two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, a headset jack, and even a microSD reader.
- Design: 4.5 / 5
- Great gaming at max resolution
- Fantastic OLED display
- Gets very hot in places
Geekbench 6
(Single Core): 2,939 (Multi Core): 15,680
Cinebench R23
(Single Core): 2,017 (Multi Core): 20,803
Cinebench R24
(Single Core): 117 (Multi Core): 1,192
Crossmark Overall: 1,974
3DMark
Fire Strike: 32,113 Steel Nomad: 3,488 Solar Bay: 71,022 Speed Way: 4,031 Port Royal: 10,119
BlackMagicDisk
Read: 4125MB/s Write: 4015MB/s
25GB Copy Test: 1,729MB/s
Civilization VII
(1080p, Medium): 193fps
(Max Resolution, High): 123fps
(Balanced Upscaling, Max Resolution, High): 94fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
(1080p, Medium): 168fps
(Max Resolution, Highest): 118fps
(Balanced Upscaling, Max Resolution, Highest): 158fps
Total War: Warhammer III: Mirrors of Madness
(1080p, Medium): 119fps
(Max Resolution, Ultra): 47fps
Cyberpunk 2077
(1080p, Medium): 371fps
(Max Resolution, Ultra): 143fps
(Balanced Upscaling, Max Resolution, Ultra): 133fps
F1 2024
(1080p, Medium): 256fps
(Max Resolution, Max Quality, No RT): 127fps
(Balanced Upscaling, Max Resolution, Max Quality with RT): 93fps
I found the performance of the Zephyrus G14 (2025) to be excellent. My review unit was equipped with an RTX 5070 Ti, and it handled the AAA titles I threw at it very well. When I played Cyberpunk 2077, I got between 200-230 frames per second on average. This was with the Ray Tracing: Ultra preset selected (which the game chose by default for the laptop) and DLSS Auto scaling and Frame Generation enabled.
This was also with the Zephyrus G14 (2025) running in Turbo mode. As you might expect, this causes the fans to produce a fair amount of noise, but it was nothing the best PC gaming headsets couldn’t drown out.
Dropping down to Performance mode didn’t seem to make much difference to frame rates, and only marginally decreased fan noise. Despite the raucous, though, the fans weren’t able to disperse heat as effectively as I would’ve liked.
During my sessions with the Zephyrus G14 (2025), it became very hot in places. The keyboard and front section of the chassis only remained tepid (thankfully, since this is where you’ll be making the most contact), but the area above the keyboard became too hot to handle.
(Image credit: Future)The same was true of the underside of the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025). Despite the aforementioned ground clearance created by the rubber bars, there’s still not enough for optimal cooling it seems; this is certainly a laptop I’d recommend using with one of the best laptop cooling pads if you can.
The OLED display is pleasingly sharp and vibrant, which makes it great for all kinds of tasks, not just gaming. That aforementioned ultra-thin bezel means the 14-inch display projects a bigger image than you might expect, too.
The keys are tactile, thanks to their surprising resistance and deep travel relative to those of other laptops, even ones designed for gaming. This makes them well suited to the task, while still being light and snappy enough for comfortable typing.
The touchpad is great as well. Its impressive size, along with its very smooth surface, makes navigation easier. However, this will likely be irrelevant for most gamers, since it’s still no match for the best gaming mouse.
What’s more, it gets in the way when you’re using the keyboard, even if you stick to the WASD position. This means you’ll likely want to disable it when gaming, but you’ll be more reluctant to do so while typing, given its usefulness for productivity purposes.
- Performance: 4.5 / 5
- Poor battery life
- Quick to charge
The battery life of the Zephyrus G14 (2025) is quite poor. When we ran a movie on a continuous loop, its battery lasted just over two and a half hours. This is way down on its key rivals, such as the Blade 14 and the Nitro V 15, both of which manage over twice that duration.
Thankfully, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) is quick to charge, taking about 90 minutes to fully replenish via the included power adapter.
- Battery Life: 2.5 / 5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Value
The Zephyrus G14 (2025) is at the higher end of the market, and there are slightly better rivals for not much more.
3 / 5
Design
The Zephyrus G14 (2025) is surprisingly compact and elegant for a gaming laptop. It also seems built to a high standard.
4.5 / 5
Performance
The RTX 5070 Ti in my review unit handled AAA titles brilliantly, and the display rendered them in their full glory. There’s a worrying amount of heat in places, though.
4.5 / 5
Battery Life
Poor even by gaming laptop standards; there are plenty of rivals that can outlast it. At least it’s quick to charge.
2.5 / 5
Total
The form factor, performance, and display are all excellent, but the heat, noise, and steep price mean you’ll have to assess your priorities before determining whether it’s the right gaming laptop for you.
4 / 5
Buy the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) if...You want something truly portable
Thanks to its small dimensions and light chassis, the Zephyrus G14 (2025) is easy to carry around, especially compared to other gaming laptops.
You want great performance
Gaming is smooth even with maximum settings, while the 3K OLED display shows them off at their best.
You want something cool and quiet
The Zephyrus G14 (2025) makes a fair amount of noise, and it can get extremely hot in places.
You’re on a budget
The Zephyrus G14 (2025) is expensive, rubbing shoulders with some true icons in the space.
Razer Blade 14 (2025)
For not much more than the Zephyrus G14 (2025), you could also have the Blade 14, which we think is one of the best gaming laptops around at the moment. There’s little to fault here, since its performance, design, and display are all exemplary. It can get quite hot and the keyboard isn’t anything special, but in every other regard it’s a brilliant gaming laptop that’s easy to carry around.
Read our full Razer Blade 14 (2025) review.
Acer Nitro V 15 Intel
If you’re looking to spend a lot less on a gaming laptop, the Nitro V 15 is a great budget pick. You’ll have to settle for an RTX 5050, but I found this offered plenty of power for smooth 1080p gaming. It’s certainly not as portable as the Zephyrus G14 (2025), but that’s the sacrifice you make for the saving.
Read our full Acer Nitro V 15 Intel review.
How I tested the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025)- Tested for a week
- Used for gaming and other tasks
- Plentiful gaming laptop experience
I tested the Zephyrus G14 (2025) for a week, using it for gaming, working, and general browsing. I also connected various peripherals to it.
I played AAA titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 with various graphics settings, and conducted our series benchmark tests designed to test multiple facets of gaming laptops. I also ran our battery test, playing a movie continuously until the battery depleted.
I've been PC gaming for over a decade, and have used numerous machines in that time, both desktop and laptop. I've also have plenty of experience reviewing gaming laptops, as well as those made for productivity and everyday use.
- First reviewed: September 2025
- Read more about how we test
Categories: Reviews
Name.com review
Name.com is best known as a domain registrar, but you might not even know that you're using it. If you've used Wix, you'll likely have got your domain through name.com without giving it a second thought.
Without giving it a second thought seems to be the ethos of name.com which is especially useful for developers who want to build quickly and seamlessly or the less technical ones that don't want to mess around with DNS and might require support when things don't quite go to plan.
Of course, this level of support and innovation doesn't come at the cheapest price but buying a domain isn't always about the lowest bottom line.
Of course, name.com is best known as a domain registrar, and for good reason. It offers one of the largest TLD selections of any registrar with over 600 TLDs, so you can rest assured that you’ll find the exact TLD you’re looking for. From popular TLDs like .com and .co.uk to niche and trendy ones like .ai, .lol, and .cool, name.com has everything.
A standard .com domain will cost you $12.99 for the first year (renews at $27.99), plus $4.99/year for name.com’s advanced security tier, which includes WHOIS privacy, SSL certificate, and protection against spam calls and unauthorized transfers or changes.
However, name.com offers some serious first-year discounts if you bundle Titan Email or Google Workspace. This is how it works:
- If you buy Titan Email (Name.com’s paid email hosting, costs $24 per year), they’ll throw in the domain for free for the first year.
- If you buy Google Workspace (Google’s email/productivity suite, sold via Name.com, costs $42 per year), you can get the domain for only $0.99 for the first year.
- If you buy both, the best discount (i.e. the Titan Email one) will be applied, so your domain will still be $0 for the first year.
- It’s worth noting that both Google Workspace and Titan Email are available at a flat 50% discount with name.com.
Name.com now offers a decent list of hosting products, ranging from simple web hosting to cloud and one-click install WordPress hosting.
The most basic web hosting plan lets you build a single website and set up 100 email accounts for $6 a month on a 1-year subscription. Note that name.com does not offer multi-year subscriptions for its hosting services. The business plan, which is built for scale, is priced at $13 a month on a 1-year subscription and supports unlimited websites, unlimited email accounts, and unlimited storage.
Every account also includes a free SSL certificate, automated backups every 48 hours, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and the industry-standard cPanel for easy management. Even better, you’ll get a free domain name for the first year. For example, if you choose a .com domain that usually costs $12.99, it will be free for the first year and then renew at its usual rate from the second year onward.
That said, keep in mind that the privacy bundle for a domain name (around $4.99) is not included in the free package. You’ll have to pay for that separately.
Cloud hosting is also more than decent. Name.com has partnered with DigitalOcean and offers its basic shared Droplets. For a standard 60 GB Droplet, you’ll have to pay $216 a year, and if that wasn’t expensive enough, backups - which are usually free with other providers - will set you back another $72 a year. This is pretty expensive by industry standards.
That said, there are still some strong points on offer: you get global data centers, one-click deployments, and support for popular platforms like WordPress, Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS. The provider also mentions easy upgrades. However, with cloud hosting, the gold standard is automatic scaling and geo-redundancy. Name.com doesn’t clearly state how many data centers it offers, while other dedicated cloud hosts are more transparent, letting you confirm redundancy before signing up.
Also, this is shared hosting and not managed cloud, so you won’t get managed extras. In fact, the website’s FAQs state directly that you’ll need a base-level understanding of Linux and the command line to take full advantage of this self-managed cloud hosting. So it’s definitely not for everyone.
As for WordPress hosting, name.com offers just a single plan at $29.95 a year. It comes with everything you’d need for a basic website: one-click installation, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, free daily backups, plugin support, and a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. However, if you’re looking for more advanced features like staging environments, automatic updates, or optimized caching, you might be better off elsewhere.
All in all, unless you’re looking into name.com’s hosting products to simply get everything (hosting, domain, site builder) in one place, you’ll be better off with a dedicated web host, as you’re likely to get more features there - and at a better price.
Performance & customer supportThe last time we tested name.com, it actually cropped up above-par performance, delivering consistent uptime and impressive speeds.
Our latest tests, though, are still ongoing, and we’ll soon update this page to reflect the most recent findings - so stay tuned.
Name.com's hosting is aimed more or less at beginners, and that means the company needs to provide the quality support its target audience requires. The company's knowledgebase is decent enough, with menus and links pointing you to various topics, featured articles highlighting common issues, and there's a search box to help you track down what you need.
We tried a few test searches. The engine regularly reported finding large numbers of articles, but these cover all name.com products, not just web hosting, so we had to scroll through various domain registration and email hosting articles to find what we needed.
The situation picked up once we located more relevant content. There's usually not a lot of detail, but most articles cover the core points, with screenshots to point you in the right direction, and some video tutorials if you prefer.
There's a support team to deal with more complex queries. They're available via telephone and live chat, only for a limited number of hours (7am to 10pm phone and 12pm to 3am Monday to Friday for phone, 2am to 8pm chat), but there's 24/7 ticket support if you need it.
Final verdictName.com is a fantastic storefront where you can find everything you need to get an online business underway. It offers excellent and affordable domain registration, along with bundled extras like Google Workspace with Gemini and Titan Email with AI-driven features. On top of that, you also get hosting options, including WordPress hosting.
That said, if your main priority is hosting, you’ll likely be better served by a dedicated web host. While name.com has expanded its hosting range, these services still feel more like strong add-ons that complement its core strength: domain registration.
Categories: Reviews
Vernal Standing Desk review
Whilst many of the best standing desk brands out there often with several models for different sizes and weight capacities etc. Vernal aims to make the customers life simpler by introducing one frame to do it all at a price of £430 (at time of writing).
With a rated load of 120kg, it should be more than enough to lift anything a regular work from home environment can throw at it.
(Image credit: Future)Vernal Standing Desk: UnboxingThe desk came as expected in two parts, one large heavy box for the frame and very flat for the desk top.
The frame was well boxed with all parts separated by protective foam, cardboard and plastic. All the assembling accessories were packaged neatly in one box. The screws, tool etc were in a bandolier of plastic, each section marked in size and part number.
All sections of the desk had nice, large and more importantly low tack sticker labels identifying each part. This allowed easy identification of parts and removal of the labels post assembly without leaving that horrible sticky residue.
The desk top was equally well packaged with large rubber like corner protectors. We opted to go with the 120cm x 60cm walnut laminate desk top, the smallest size on offer from Vernal.
You also get a nice, premium feeling beech wood coaster.
(Image credit: Future)Vernal Standing Desk: AssemblyAssembly of the desk was equally easy. Vernal provided all the tools necessary, namely an M6 Allen Wrench and Phillips Head Screwdriver, so if you have absolutely no tools, you can still put this desk together. We had power tools at out disposal making assembly significantly quicker.
The manual was incredibly clear and easy to follow being like a large book. We start by putting together both the legs, side and mounting brackets together then the desktop. Vernal’s desk tops already have pre threaded metal inserts showing where the mounting brackets are to be screwed in.
This easily done by mounting one set of legs to one side, then sliding the cross bars in before finally sliding the opposite side legs on and screwing it all down. Vernal has also provided the screws as well for non-Vernal desktops along with separate instructions on how to do this.
I chose to put the control panel on the left side and this is where I noted the first issue. The screws appeared to be short, they are only 15mm long. The control panel bracket is quite thick, I measuring the screw against it, I saw that only the tip, about 5mm of it, would bite into the desk.
As expected, on my first try, the screw tore desktop veneer and failed to grip, same thing with the second screw. With no other provided screws, I had to go and rummage in my tool box to get some longer screws.
Once the control panel fiasco was done, it was matter of attaching the control box, connecting all the cables, tidying the underside up before covering it with the decorative cable cover for a neat install and lastly the cable tray hooks.
(Image credit: Future)The feet are last to go one, before the inaugural flip, they can be positioned center or offset back, the choice/preference is yours. I opted to have it central as I am sure that is how most end users would want it. The desk is then flipped the right way up, to add the finishing touches, two hooks and decorative plates, one on each side.
The last part had me a little concerned, most brands supply all metal parts pre molded or bent to shape. However Vernal has chosen to allow the end user to bend the cable tray themselves along a perforated line.
Whilst I found this easy to do, it did crack the paint on the sheet of metal. I’m not sure how confident others would be doing this for fear of breaking or damaging this part. Hooking on the cable tray is the last part of the assembly save for putting the desk where it needs to go.
(Image credit: Future)Vernal Standing Desk: In useOver the past few weeks, the desk was put to the test by me and wife who works exclusively form home. The Vernal standing desk was big upgrade from her smaller Ikea desk, just in terms of real estate.
Vernal claims that this desk should be able to lift 120kgs easily with max load of 160kgs. Sitting all my 100kgs on it I found the desk seem to be slow to raise, and it had to stop a few times under the load of me. However, I did not hold this against the desk as carrying 100kgs is unusual for what is an office desk.
Putting the usual office equipment on it, the Vernal desk had no problem lifting and lowering the load smoothly and quietly.
(Image credit: Future)The control panel is simple in form yet provides all the needed functions for going up, down and three memory functions. I like that the buttons had to be pushed physically into actuate them as some other tested desk will activate simply by you brushing against the control panel. The panel can be switched between metric and imperial measurements and other settings based on button presses.
(Image credit: Future)The hooks on either side are a nice feature allowing you to hang handphones or other peripherals off the desk rather than crowding it. Each side of the desk has a Vernal magnetic vanity plate on the legs, ostensibly to hide two screw heads. This is a subjective matter but I would have preferred a more subdued such as black engraved rather than the Silver.
I was initially skeptical about the size of the cable tray as it was so large, however this has proved to be a boon for ease of access from all angles of the desk.
What I wasn’t a fan of were the feet of the desk. The feet, whilst planted firmly on the ground has a “decorative” plate on top that extends beyond the actual feet, this plate is thin and more crucially at toe stubbing level as I found to my detriment.
(Image credit: Future)Vernal Standing Desk: Final verdictOverall, the Vernal Standing Desk is a great desk, for the price and simplicity of only having one model puts them ahead. The assembly, large cable tidy tray, head phone hooks and easy to use control panel make this a breeze to own and use.
However, it is sorely let down by the fact that the screws for the control panel are not adequately long enough, some bending is required by the end user and the most egregiously, the toe stubbing feet of the desk.
Categories: Reviews
The Turtle Beach Racer isn’t a racing wheel for sim heads, but it’s an excellent entry-level choice for casual players
Turtle Beach Racer: One-minute review
The Turtle Beach Racer absolutely has the potential to shake up the entry-level racing wheels market. Sim race enthusiasts need not apply; the Racer is a relatively basic offering that ditches higher-end features like force feedback and on-screen displays - the likes of which we see from the Thrustmaster T248R et al. But for more arcade-adjacent racing games like Tokyo Xtreme Racer and Forza Horizon 5, the Racer is a bit of a cheat code to unlocking even more fun from such titles.
I’ve had a blast testing the Turtle Beach Racer over the past week. Don’t let its relatively low price point fool you; it boasts surprisingly good build quality and is impressively versatile to boot.
While a pair of clamps on the base means you can mount the wheel on a desk, the inclusion of a pair of lap rests allows you to sit back and essentially use the Racer more like a traditional controller if you prefer to play on the couch. That’s driven (hehe) home even more with the addition of wireless connectivity via a 2.4GHz dongle compatible with Xbox Series X and Series S, and PC. No PlayStation-compatible version exists at the time of writing.
Put simply, the Turtle Beach Racer is one of the best Xbox racing wheels I’ve tested in a while. There are some small issues, like the slight bump you’ll feel every time the wheel travels past neutral, and the lack of a pedal set (you’ll instead use the rear paddles for acceleration and braking by default) puts a dampener on immersion. But overall, this is a very impressive package for the price, and makes for a great product for first-time wheel owners or younger players.
(Image credit: Future)Turtle Beach Racer: Price and availability- $179.99 / £139.99 / AU$299
- Available to buy now
- Pricier than some budget models, but comfortably under the mid-range bracket
The Turtle Beach Racer is available to buy now for $179.99 / £139.99 / AU$299. It’s on the higher end of that budget ballpark, but it is comfortably more affordable than mid-range wheels that offer more features like the Thrustmaster T248R and the Logitech G923. It’s also costlier than similar budget wheels like the Hori Racing Wheel Apex ($119.99 / £99.99), though I do prefer what’s on offer here with the Racer at a slightly higher asking price.
Turtle Beach Racer: SpecsPrice
$179.99 / £139.99 / AU$299
Weight
7.5lbs / 3.4kg
Dimensions
11.7 x 11.1 x 10.9in x 297 x 282 x 277mm
Rotation
360 degrees
Connection type
Wireless (2.4GHz), Wired (USB-C)
Compatibility
Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
Battery life
Around 30 hours
Turtle Beach Racer: Design and featuresAs I mentioned in my initial Turtle Beach Racer preview at Gamescom 2025, it was the product’s build quality that immediately surprised me. It’s not something that many budget-facing wheels are known for, and while the Racer’s build is primarily plastic, it’s of a good quality. Plus, there are a number of flourishes that take the overall build up a notch.
The steering wheel’s rubberized textured grips are extremely welcome, allowing for a slip-free racing experience. The lap rests, meanwhile, are metallic and have a satisfying weight to them. They each have a strip of textured rubber, allowing them to sit firmly in place. The lap rests can be adjusted, too, meaning you won’t necessarily need to squish your thighs together. I preferred to place mine as far out as they could go, and was able to sit comfortably in my Razer Fujin Pro office gaming chair while playing.
On-board buttons aren’t particularly anything to write home about, but they feel good to press and are all within reach of the wheel itself. There’s a good amount here, too. You’re getting a d-pad, face buttons, and three multifunction buttons that you can assign to your preference.
A pair of pressure-sensitive paddles sit on either side of the wheel, and they’re impressively sturdy. That’s important, because you are likely going to use these for acceleration and braking in the absence of a set of pedals. These are the left and right trigger equivalents on the best Xbox controllers, and were assigned as such across all games I tested.
(Image credit: Future)Turtle Beach Racer: PerformanceI have very limited desk space at my home office, so I personally think that the inclusion of lap rests with the Turtle Beach Racer is a great, forward-thinking addition to the overall package. What’s important to note here, in relation to performance, is that I felt no loss of control in using the lap rests over the more traditional desk clamps. And having tested both methods for this review, either of them is a fine choice for your racing sessions.
Initially, I did feel as if the default wheel sensitivity was a bit on the low side, across titles like Forza Horizon 5 and Tokyo Xtreme Racer. However, this was quickly remedied with the Turtle Beach Control Center 2 software, which you can download on PC and Xbox consoles. Here, I was able to adjust sensitivity and remap buttons to my liking.
Another issue I had with the wheel is the slightly uncomfortable bump sensation when it returns to neutral. Let go of the wheel, and it snaps back to its default center position almost immediately. This means that while turning left to right, you will feel a bit of a hitch as it passes that neutral zone. I got used to it after an hour or two, but it’s something to keep in mind if you were hoping for an ultra-smooth racing experience.
Besides this hiccup, the Racer is an incredibly enjoyable racing wheel. The pressure-sensitive paddles are a delightful addition and are a decent substitute for pedals if you don’t mind the loss of immersion or tactility. Being able to apply specific amounts of pressure here made several things easier between games, such as drifting in Forza Horizon 5 and long-term tire management in F1 25. If the lap rests are the big winning feature here, then the paddles are certainly the unsung heroes of the package.
I also have to mention the Racer’s wireless performance, and it’s another area the product seriously impressed me. Turtle Beach estimates that the wheel can go up to 30 hours on a full charge. I find this to be accurate, as I didn’t have to charge the device until the tail end of my week of testing.
(Image credit: Future)Should I buy the Turtle Beach Racer?Buy it if…You’re after an affordable, value-busting racing wheel experience
While not the absolute cheapest option on the market, the sub-$180 price point is compelling and affords the Racer some nicer materials to boot.
You lack the desk space for a fuller setup
The Turtle Beach Racer’s lap rests are a brilliant, forward-thinking addition that allows the wheel to sit comfortably on your legs, and the snug fit makes for surprisingly comfortable long-term gaming sessions.
You want immersion above all else
No pedals and no force feedback mean the Racer isn’t aimed at more serious sim racing types. For that, you’ll want to consider pricier options like the Logitech G923 or Thrustmaster T248R.
Not sold on the Turtle Beach Racer? Here are a couple of similarly priced alternatives worthy of your consideration.
Turtle Beach Racer
Hori Racing Wheel Apex
Logitech G920
Price
$179.99 / £139.99 / AU$299
$119.99 / £99.99 (around AU$183)
$299.99 / £349.99 / AU$549.95
Weight
7.5lbs / 3.4kg
3.09lbs / 1.4kg
4.96lbs / 2.25kg
Dimensions
11.7 x 11.1 x 10.9in x 297 x 282 x 277mm
11 x 10.8 x 11.3 / 280 x 275 x 286mm
10.6 x 10.2 x 10.9 / 270 x 260 x 278mm
Rotation
360 degrees
270 degrees
900 degrees
Connection type
Wireless (2.4GHz), Wired (USB-C)
USB-A
USB-A
Compatibility
Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
PS5, PS4, PC
Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
Hori Racing Wheel Apex
While not quite as impressive as the Turtle Beach Racer, it’s far from a bad budget option and does include a set of pedals. However, the cheap plasticky build and rather listless-feeling pedals put a damper on the overall racing experience.
Read our full Hori Racing Wheel Apex review
Logitech G920
A mid-range Xbox-compatible offering, the Logitech G920 is the Microsoft counterpart to the PlayStation-facing G923. The brake pedal’s a little stiff by default, but Logitech’s superb build quality and detailed force feedback really win through here.
Read our full Logitech G920 review
(Image credit: Future)How I tested the Turtle Beach Racer- Tested for one week
- Tested across Xbox Series X and PC
- Played a wide variety of racing titles
I tested the Turtle Beach Racer over the course of a week, playing titles on Xbox Series X Digital Edition and my gaming PC. Games I played with the racing wheel include Forza Horizon 5, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Old School Rally, and F1 25.
While lacking the multitude of buttons and immersive features that make it worthwhile for sim racing, I found the Turtle Beach Racer to be ideal for more casual, arcade-like experiences. In that regard, features like the lap rests and pressure-sensitive paddles made for an easy and comfortable testing period, and above all, a very fun one.
First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
Nothing Ear (3) earbuds look fantastic next to my phone and the ANC is solid –but I'm not sure the audio quality is good enough for this money
Nothing Ear (3): Two-minute review
Okay, so it's still hard to stop oneself from playing a game of Spot the Difference concerning Nothing's earbuds offering – but what of it? Apple's AirPods lineup is much the same, no? The problem is that this time (unlike Nothing's last major earbuds release, which came in at $50 / £30 cheaper than their older siblings) there's a price hike involved; and simply put, I'm not quite sure the extra perks here do enough to justify the extra outlay.
Sure, I'd say the new Nothing Ear (3) are they still among the best earbuds of the year – but one option in the duo of buds they replace has dropped so low in price that they've actually jumped into our best budget earbuds buying guide. So you see, to build a case for paying quite a bit extra for the new Ear (3), they'd need to be quite a bit better – and that's where I'm struggling.
To put the pricing into context, their closest rivals now would no longer be Sony's class-leading WF-C710N, which sell for around $120 / £100. No, at $179 / £179 / AU$299, the Nothing Ear (3) aren't exactly rubbing shoulders with the likes of the $299 / £299 / AU$450 Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), but they have moved up a level – and it's tough company to keep.
There's no head-tracked spatial audio support (the device- and service-agnostic spatial audio option is either 'Static' or 'off') in the Ear (3), and although the ANC is solid and a new 'Super Mic' is fun to play with in calls, it hasn't become the new must-have earbuds feature for me – and if it was going to appeal to anyone, someone who remembers a world of landline phones only was probably the Nothing Ear (3)'s best shot.
My biggest gripe is the battery life, which I'll explain fully later. That said, I experienced no small sense of pride when wearing and showing off the Ear (3), thanks to the new aluminum 'elevated' build quality and finish – along with the return of the fidget-spinner case detail.
Is all of this enough to make the Ear (3) a hit? Perhaps, when you consider that the splendid hearing tests remain, along with advanced EQ tabs and LDAC support – all of which make the sound engaging, if a shade off excellent for dynamic nuance and treble clarity. Oh, and it's worth noting that if you have a Nothing phone, that Super Mic becomes a quick transcription tool, which admittedly makes it much more useful (I don't have a Nothing handset, so I'm typing out this review, dear reader)…
(Image credit: Future)For anyone scratching their heads as to how many Nothing earbuds iterations we're into now (because it certainly isn't three), Nothing fully admits its earbuds naming strategy to date may not have been the smartest. So to explain, the Ear (3) is an update on the flagship Nothing Ear primarily, but also on the Nothing Ear (a), which both launched in April 2024 on the self-same day – with the cheaper pair still sitting happily at the tippy-top of our best budget earbuds guide.
And here's my problem with that: a quick scan of current prices reveals that the aforementioned five-star Nothing Ear (a) are currently available for $89 / £69, which means they're half the price of the new Ear (3). And honestly, that makes the newest set even harder to recommend…
Nothing Ear (3) review: Price & release date- Released on September 18, 2025
- Priced $179 / £179 / AU$299
The Nothing Ear (3) come in black or white finishes (no yellow this time around), and at this pricier level – Nothing's previous flagship Nothing Ear arrived with a list price of $149 / £129 / AU$249 – their closest competition may even be Apple's AirPods Pro 3, which retail for $249 / £219 / AU$429.
Yes, there's still a $70 / £40 difference between Apple's new top-tier AirPods Pro and Nothing's best buds, but if your budget stretches a bit further it does bring Apple's flagship earbuds into the conversation. And given that those AirPods now offer heart-rate monitoring, live translation and better stamina, Nothing is squaring up against some stiff competition.
Hello, yellow! (Image credit: Future)Nothing Ear (3) review: SpecsDrivers
12mm custom driver
Active noise cancellation
Yes
Battery life
Buds: 5.5hrs (with ANC; up to 10 hours without) Total with case: 22hrs (ANC on; up to 38 hours without)
Weight
5.2g per earbud
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.4 with LDAC, USB-C
Frequency range
20Hz–40 kHz
Waterproofing
IP54 buds
Other features
New Super Mic case, 3 mics per earbud, Nothing X App support, Custom EQ with Advanced options, Static Spatial Audio, Personal Sound (Audiodo)
(Image credit: Nothing)Nothing Ear (3) review: Features- 'Static' spatial audio and Personal Sound curation
- Total Radiated Power (TRP) up 15%; Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) up 20%
- 'First of its kind Super Mic' in the charging case
Like many of tech's heavy-hitters (Samsung, Sony, Apple, I'm looking at you), Nothing would love to snag you and embroil you in its ecosystem with the promise of walled garden perks – and here, Nothing really does start to come into its own.
The ace up the collective sleeve of Nothing's earbuds prior to now has been that for owners of the Nothing Phone (3), the Phone (2), Phone (1) and Phone (2a) – because Nothing has been far more sensible concerning the naming of its handsets – Nothing has offered instant access to ChatGPT via a pinch-to-speak motion on the stems. Now, users of a Nothing smartphone can use the Super Mic on Nothing Ear (3)'s case to capture transcription of your voice notes, which will sync to your on-device 'Essential Space' for easy location.
Nothing calls Super Mic a "first of its kind" breakthrough, and although it initially struck me as very similar to the 'record' button on the Viaim RecDot earbuds, there are of course those aforementioned walled-garden perks.
Otherwise, Nothing's Super Mic is quite like those little clip-on wireless mics that content creators like to hold very close to their mouths (does this look a bit silly to anyone else?). Nothing calls Super Mic a "breakthrough dual-microphone system driven by ambient-filtering technology."
In a nutshell, the dual MEMS beamforming mics built into the case are designed to hone in on your voice, cutting through surrounding noise (up to 95dB is the claim) for clearer capture in calls or notes – and in my tests, it worked well. On a very blustery day on the cliffs and beaches of the UK's 'Jurassic coast' in Dorset, I found using the Super Mic over the three-mics-per-bud in the earpieces a welcome aid; "much better" was the general feedback from calls.
Voice AI using ChatGPT is coming using Nothing Ear (a) using your Nothing smartphone… (Image credit: Future)You're also getting Bluetooth v5.4 (the older set used 5.3), and LDAC support for hi-res audio (the Sony-developed codec that lets you stream high-resolution audio up to 32-bit/96kHz over Bluetooth at up to 990kbps), which is a valuable inclusion at any level, but will benefit Android users most since iPhones can't support LDAC natively.
There's now onboard spatial audio wizardry too, irrespective of your phone or the music service you're streaming from – but only the 'static' kind (so you don't get to use your phone as a fixed-point source device) and in my tests, it was a little clunky and not quite as immersive or convincing as similar offerings from Bose, LG or of course Apple.
However, you do get in-ear detection (to pause music when they're out and resume it when they're in), an Auto-Transparency mode to make transparency kick in whenever you're on a phone call, an ear tip Fit Test, Find My earbuds (which issues a trigger sound from whichever earbud you've lost), a Low Lag toggle for gaming, issue-free multipoint to two devices, a Bass Enhancement toggle, an 8-tab EQ graph that lets you adjust both gain and the actual frequency of certain registers (provided you're prepared to switch off the spatial audio augmentation), and Personal Sound.
This last perk is perhaps my favorite, because the tests only take around three minutes – they involve sounds at different frequencies being piped into each ear, getting gradually quieter until you tap the screen to say you hear nothing – but the result (a fully curated personal sound profile) is very good indeed.
Now, the noise cancellation: hit ANC (rather than 'Transparency' or 'Off') and you can pick from High, Mid, Low, and Adaptive profiles. High is not bad at all – and it shouldn't be when the claim is 45dB (effective to 5kHz). The Transparency option is still signified by a woman exhaling, and it's still one of the best prompts in the business (aside from Matt Berry in Cambridge's headphones and earbuds), and it too is perfectly acceptable. But here's the thing: I did not find any of the ANC profiles better than on the Nothing Ear (a), which makes sense because that 45dB claim is the same as the older model.
And when that older model is now half the price of these newer earbuds, you have to be asking yourself if a Super Mic in the case and spatial audio that doesn't offer dynamic head-tracking is worth the extra outlay.
- Features score: 4.5 / 5
- LDAC adds to the performance (but the spatial audio can be beaten)
- Forward, full-bodied sound
- A shade off excellent for dynamic nuance
Occasionally in hi-fi circles, you'll come across the 'integrated hi-fi listen versus fun and exciting' sonic debate concerning portable audio. It boils down to this: do you want a faithfully accurate, neutral representation of a recording with everything as intended, or an energetic, potentially more emotive version of the track?
In the second option, certain frequencies might be augmented just slightly, to give you the 'feels' of a live gig from small drivers fitted into your ear. And the odd thing is that what you may think you want may not actually be what your ear prefers (as mystical and strange as that may sound)…
Anyway, the Nothing Ear (3) sit firmly in the latter camp. What you'll get here is excitement, energy, bass clout and oomph. Those with a Sony smartphone (I'm still using the Sony Xperia 1 IV, because it isn't broken, so why would I fix it?) will find LDAC codec files are delivered with extra expanse and detail over more 'vanilla' Bluetooth streaming, but the tuning is the same regardless – very little has been held back.
Streaming Fontaines D.C.'s Starburster is a head-nodding celebration of the track, where drum fills and Grian Chatten's voice leap two-footed into each ear with all of the bite and impetus the group could possibly want, but there is a downside. Some lesser backing vocals and sloping string elements occasionally get lost just slightly; it's hard to compete when so much emphasis and energy is placed on sounds at the forefront.
Yes, there are plenty of ways to tweak things more to your liking in the Nothing X app and here, the eight-tab EQ graph is the place to go – it does help. What I personally would leave well alone is the Bass Booster. It isn't necessary – this is a meaty listen from the box. Also, I'd tone down the treble; I know my own ear is sensitive to these frequencies, but nevertheless, stream Kate Bush's Army Dreamers and if you're anything like me you'll hear occasional harshness through the treble that can become a little wearying.
- Sound quality score: 4 / 5
- Solid, cool, pocketable case with 'TALK' button
- IP54 earbuds are secure – but the comfort levels can now be beaten
- Nothing's design language is even more striking now
After switching out to the smaller ear tips (you get four in total now: an XS, S and L options are supplied in addition to the pre-fitted M set), Nothing's ear tip fit test tells me I've nailed the fit.
I say that if you've got smaller ears I really would encourage you to try before you buy – and my guide to the best earbuds for small ears is worth consulting – because I found the driver housing just that little bit harder to accommodate this time around. It could be because of that larger 12mm driver (and "patterned diaphragm" which Nothing claims gives these buds "a 20% larger radiating area when compared to the previous generation"), or it could be because said earpiece is mounted at a slightly different angle to the stem now – see a close-up of Ear (3) next to the Ear (a) above – but they weren't as comfortable this time.
(Image credit: Future)On this, readers might simply remark "Well, they're based on AirPods, can't really knock them for that – Apple did it first" but here's the thing: AirPods are different now! You might not have spotted it because it's all very new (and the heart-rate monitor and live translation perks have hogged headlines), but the AirPods Pro 3's fit has been completely reworked. I'm working on a full review of those too (they keep me chained up in TR HQ you know) but even at this early stage and during my testing, I can tell you that for me, the AirPods Pro 3 are much comfier than the Nothing Ear (3) now.
Nothing's pinch stems still work really well, but again (and at the risk of sounding like a broken record) it's only as good as the older, cheaper Nothing set. You can still customize what the morse code short- and long-press combinations do for each stem – including volume – and they also work with gloves on, unlike a lot of touch-capacitive solutions.
Now, the new case. If you've got a metallic-finish smartphone, the Nothing Ear (3) are going to look glorious beside it. Aesthetics really is one of Nothing's strong suits, and these earbuds are the ace in the pack. 'Elevated' is the word Nothing's team keep repeating on this; and it's true, they look more high-end now. There's a new custom Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) antenna, engineered to just 0.35 mm thick, that now runs along the still-see-through stems of the earbuds to keep connections stronger than ever. It's the same, but refined – it looks like a more expensive version of what was there before.
And if it's elevation we need to be focusing on, the charging nest is the thing that's, er, risen the most. It is now crafted from a block of 100% recycled aluminum and CNC machine finished through 27 processes. Nano injection moulding also "fuses the metal and transparent plastic without glue, achieving tight ±0.03mm tolerances for a seamless, compact body" according to Nothing, so there's no glue anywhere here. And the shiny 'TALK' button is placed directly under a nice snappy magnet where the case opens. Nothing assures me it has been positioned so that you won't cover it with your hand, and the green light-up LED to denote that you're recording is a strong touch.
- Design score: 4.5 / 5
- Great-looking earbuds
- LDAC adds sound-per-pound value
- …but this is higher-end territory, and the Nothing Ear (a) still exist
The older Nothing earbuds were near-rivals for Sony's cheaper earbuds, but that's no longer the case: Sony's excellent affordable WF-C710N cost $119 / £100 / AU$189, so they're in a different category to the $179 / £179 Nothing Ear (3).
And although there's a lot to enjoy in the Ear (3), unless you have a Nothing handset for transcription features, the Super Mic really is just a better mic for calls and certain voice notes – it doesn't support WhatsApp voice notes (yet), which I explain in more depth in my early Ear (3) experiential.
The personalization is very very good, but the audio has suffered a little for me in this iteration, becoming a little harsher through the treble on occasion, probably due to the slightly bigger driver and tweaked acoustic architecture.
- Value score: 3 / 5
Section
Notes
Score
Features
Solid spec sheet, but the Super Mic is really only a standout feature if you own a Nothing phone
4.5/5
Sound quality
Zeal and get up and go to a fault? Almost. They're vigorous and exciting, but there's occasional treble harshness
4/5
Design
Beautiful design language, but the earpieces are no longer among the comfiest around
4.5/5
Value
Given the price of older iterations, it's hard to see huge value for money here
3/5
Buy them if...You're a content creator
The Super Mic could be just what you're looking for to glean better voice capture – and the general aesthetic of the Nothing Ear (3) is more than Instagram-worthy
You have a Sony or Android phone
Does your phone support LDAC? Hurrah! LDAC is also back in the Ear (3), and that means better-quality wireless audio from your device on the go
You prioritize style
Hey, there's nothing wrong with that! I loved wearing these (and using the case) during my testing. Make no mistake, these are good-looking earbuds.
You have small ears
If your concha (aka ear-well) is particularly bijou, you may struggle here. I find them that bit harder to wear compared to the Ear (a), which were already on the slightly larger side. You have been warned!
You want head-tracked spatial audio wizardry
No dice here; you get a static profile it's true, but it's not as immersive or detailed as something like the LG Tone Free T90Q (head-tracked using Dolby Atmos), or Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), an admittedly premium proprietary offering that combines adaptive sound profiles with head tracking.
You're on a tight budget
The thing is this: most of the things I loved in the cheaper Ear (a) are still here in the Ear (3), and when those still exist –and for big discounts – the smart money is arguably still on the 2024 product… View Deal
Nothing Ear (3)
Nothing Ear (a)
Sony WF-C710N
Price
$179 / £179 / AU$299
$99 / £99 / approx AU$192
$119 / £100 / AU$189
Drivers
12mm custom
11m custom
5mm
Active noise cancellation
Yes
Yes
Yes
Quoted battery life
Buds: 5.5hrs (with ANC; up to 10 hours without) Total with case: 22hrs (ANC on; up to 38 hours without)
Buds: 5.5 hrs (9.5 hours without ANC Total with case: 24.5 hrs (42.5 hrs without ANC)
8.5 hrs (ANC ON) / Max. 12 hrs (ANC off); up to 30 hours with the case
Weight
5.2g
4.8g
5.2g per earpiece
Connectivity
Bluetooth 5.4 with LDAC, USB-C
Bluetooth 5.3, LDAC, USB-C (no wireless charging)
Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Sony 360 Reality Audio, AAC, SBC
Frequency range
20kHz-40kHz
5000Hz range
20Hz-20kHz
Waterproofing
Yes, IP54
Yes, IP54 earbuds; IPX2 case
Yes, IPX4
Other features
Static spatial audio, Super Mic case feature, Personal sound profiles, advanced EQ
Sony 360 Reality Audio
Sony WF-C710N
If you want Sony's 360 reality Audio support as well as its LDAC hi-res codec, this money buys you that – and by "this money", I mean "cheaper than the Nothing Ear (3)". The build is plastic and doesn't feel anywhere near as premium as Nothing Ear (3), but then, they are cheaper…
Read whether it matters, in our full Sony WF-C700N review
Nothing Ear (a)
I'm putting these here because for the money, they're exceptional – and at half the price of Nothing's premium set, I'm struggling to see why you would pay double the price. Is wireless charging support, a Super Mic, static spatial audio and/or a more advanced EQ tab worth the extra outlay? That's up to you, of course, but to me the smart money may still be with the 2024 set – especially since I prefer the slightly more detailed, marginally less full-bodied audio in the Ear (a). View Deal
Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)
You'll have to part with a bit more money to get it, but scale that food chain and you can get the QCUE (2nd Gen) and enjoy really, really good ANC and remarkable spatial audio that works in conjunction with those talented spatial sound profiles.
Learn more in our in-depth Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) review
- Tested for two weeks, listened against AirPods Pro 3, Bose QCUE (2nd Gen) and Technics EAH-AZ100
- Listened at work (in the office, walking on a beach, on a train) and at home
- Listened to Tidal, Qobuz, Apple Music and Spotify on an iPhone 15 Pro Max, MacBook Pro and heard LDAC on Sony Xperia 1 IV
The Nothing Ear (3) became my primary musical companions for 13 days – after a thorough 48-hour run-in period.
They accompanied me to London (walking brusquely from St. Pancras Station to Waterloo owing to strike action on the London Underground and my need to get a train back to Dorset in 43 minutes!) and at home – where I actually missed delivery of a review sample owing to the efficacy of Nothing Ear (3)'s ANC.
It goes without saying that to better test the comfort levels (and battery life claims), I followed TechRadar's meticulous methodology testing. I also used TechRadar's reference playlist (spanning everything from hip-hop to folk music) on Apple Music and Tidal, and also my own musical selections and podcasts. I wore the Ear (3) to watch YouTube videos (mostly about the Austrian singer Falco, since you ask) from my MacBook Pro.
I’ve been testing audio products for well over five years. As a dancer, aerialist and musical theater performer in another life, sound quality, fit, and user experience have always been imperative for me personally, but having heard how wonderful ANC can be when done well, I know what I'm listening out for here also.
Read more about how we test earbuds at TechRadar
- First reviewed: September 2025
Categories: Reviews
I've been testing one of the tiniest robot vacuums you can buy – and while it might be small, its cleaning power is mighty
SwitchBot K11+: two-minute review
The SwitchBot K11+ is a scaled-down robot vacuum that's perfect for cramped homes. It delivers solid vacuuming and navigates with surprising speed and confidence, even if it doesn't always avoid all the obstacles it should. If you have a home with lots of nooks and crannies, it will be compact enough to squeeze into them, although note that while it's small in width, it's about standard height.
The dock is perhaps the smallest auto-empty option I've seen – sitting happily out of the way beneath my bed – and packs a surprisingly generous 4L dust bag. For that reason alone, it's a contender for the best robot vacuum for small homes.
The only major disappointment here is the "mop", which takes the form of a disposable wet-wipe that the bot drags across the floor. For the level of cleaning it delivers, it isn't worth the effort of attaching it. In fact, if you ignore the mopping capabilities altogether and just treat the K11+ as a vacuum-only bot, it becomes a far stronger proposition overall.
It isn't perfect, however. Aside from the dodgy mop, the app has a few weird quirks – and the auto-empty function is rather noisy. Overall, though, there's something very charming and appealing about this little bot. At full price it's clear you're paying a bit of a premium for the small size, but discounts are easy to come by, and if you snag one of these it can be very strong value for money.
That's the short version; read on for my full SwitchBot K11+ review.
(Image credit: Future)SwitchBot K11+ review: price & availability- List price: $399.99 / £399.99
- Available: US, UK
- Launched: September 2025
The SwitchBot K11+ launched in September 2025, and is available to buy direct from SwitchBot, but also via Amazon. At list price it costs $399.99 in the US and £399.99 in the UK. However, at time of writing, there were significant discounts available one both sides of the shore. You're paying a bit of a premium for the dinky size here, although even at full price I think it's decent value for money.
Two of the best cheap robot vacuums on the market, the Dreame D9 Max Gen 2 and the Roborock Q7 M5 are both cheaper and offer far more capable mopping than the K11+, but neither come with an auto-empty dock. You'll be able to pick up better-value auto-empty hybrid robot vacuums if you're happy to go for an older model – a good example is the Roborock Q5 Pro+. Note, though, that the dock is much bigger, and is unlikely to fit under your bed.
- Value for money score: 4 out of 5
Max suction:
6,000Pa
Robot diameter:
9.8in / 24.8cm
Robot height:
3.6in / 9.2cm
Dock dimensions (W x D x H):
9.4 x 7.1 x 9.8in / 24 x 18 x 25cm
Dust bin volume (base):
4L
Water tank volume:
None
Base type:
Charge, auto-empty
Max threshold clearance:
0.7in / 1.7cm
Smart home compatibility:
Matter (Apple Home, Alexa, Google Home)
SwitchBot K11+ review: design- Small (but not short) robot with rubber roller and side brush
- Mop is a wet-wipe dragged across the floor, then disposed of
- Compact dock with auto-empty and storage for mop plate
The SwitchBot K11+ is a dinky robot vacuum with an equally compact base. The bot itself measures 9.8in / 24.8cm in diameter, whereas most bots these days are about 13in / 33cm. This means it can clean in narrow spots – although note that at 3.6in / 9.2cm, height-wise it's pretty average, so it won't be sneaking under a low sofa – for example – to clean.
Below you can see it next to the Roborock Saros 10 – while the K11+ is significantly smaller in diameter, its puck makes it taller; the Roborock's puck is retractible.
The pint-sized K11+ next to the more normally proportioned Roborock Saros 10 (Image credit: Future)On the top of the K11+ you'll find buttons for On and Return to dock. Lift off the cover (which appears to just sit in place – I'd prefer some magnets to hold it a little more securely – and you'll find the dust cup clipped to the side.
There's a raised LiDAR puck, bumpers around the edge, and a camera at the front. Flip the K11+ over and you'll find a rubber roller. Sensibly, SwitchBot has made this almost the full width of the robot, which means the suction area is actually relatively large. There's also an angled side brush, to avoid hair from becoming tangled around it.
Image 1 of 4There are a couple of manual buttons, and a raised LiDAR puck (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 4The rubber roller takes up most of the width of the robot (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 4The dust cup clips on the side of the bot (Image credit: Future)Image 4 of 4The mopping setup is just a wet wipe (Image credit: Future)The K11+'s mopping capabilities appear to have very much been an afterthought. To launch the function, you attach a wet-wipe to a base plate, and clip this to the underside of the bot, on top of the suction area. The wipe is then dragged across the floor, and disposed of afterwards. Note that the wet-wipe isn't biodegradable.
Although you need to attach the mop plate to activate "mopping", it is possible to specify carpet and no-mop zones on the map, to avoid the mop wiping down any areas that should not be wiped. However, you can't set a no-mop zone where the dock sits.
(Image credit: Future)Speaking of the dock, the K11+'s station is far smaller than those you find accompanying the vast majority of bots nowadays. In fact, it's significantly more compact than the already-small dock that came with this model's predecessor, the SwitchBot K10+ (specifically, 2.9in / 7.3cm shorter and 0.8in / 2.1cm narrower).
(Image credit: Future)This dock has TARDIS-like properties, though: lift the lid and you'll find a far larger than usual 4L dust bag. SwitchBot has also added storage for the mop plate beneath the lid – just one of a number of thoughtful design touches (my other favorite is that the handle on the onboard bin doubles up as a clip to secure it in place).
It's far from the most fully featured dock in town, though. There's no mop pad cleaning or refilling of water tanks (because there is no mop pad, nor is there a tank to fill). However, I'd wager that there are plenty of people who'd prefer a smaller dock with a large dust bag to a gigantic one with tanks included.
- Design score: 4 out of 5
- Navigates quickly and confidently, decent obstacle avoidance
- Good suction performance but bin emptying rather loud
- Mopping not worth the effort, and dock can't be in a no-mop zone
When I set the SwitchBot K11+ off on its first cleaning run, the first thing that struck me was its speed. This bot powers up and down floors like there's no time to waste.
Despite that, it seems to do a good job at picking up dust and debris – I paused it before it could auto-empty, and the onboard bin had plenty in it, even though the room had been vacuumed the previous day, and I was using the second-weakest suction mode. (You can choose to clean a room once or twice, and there are four suction options: Quiet, Standard, Strong and Max.)
This dinky bot navigates with speed and confidence (Image credit: Future)As usual, you can request the bot clean a room or a zone. However, the "Spot clean" function – where a robot will clean an area that's about a square meter or so around a chosen position – was still in beta testing at the time of writing, which is a little annoying if you want to clear a spillage.
Although fairly quiet in operation, the auto-empty process is really rather noisy. However, you can set different auto-empty durations via the app, to save at least some unnecessary disruption.
The auto-empty process is a little noisy (Image credit: Future)Mopping is a different story. Attaching the wet wipe is fiddly, and ends up with a lot of the wipe on the underside of the base plate. It barely left my bathroom floor damp – imagine trying to clean the entire floor of a room with half a single wet-wipe. It also deposited bits of grime next to every grouting line.
I'll get into the results of the mopping tests in a second, but the short version is that if I owned this bot, I just wouldn't bother with the mopping functionality – in my opinion, it just isn't worth the effort.
The wet-wipe mop setup deposited grime whenever it hit an uneven bit of floor (Image credit: Future)Navigation and obstacle avoidanceAs a result of its speed, you might assume the K11+ experiences a fair few collisions, but this isn't the case. On test, it skirted its way around furniture and avoided permanent obstacles with impressive accuracy and reliability.
Ad hoc obstacle avoidance was less consistent. During one cleaning run, the K11+ drove into the dog (who, thankfully, remained unbothered) and then went on to push his water bowl across to the other side of the room.
During my set obstacle avoidance tests it hit my shoe, but on encountering the same shoe a second time, the bot carefully skirted around it before continuing. The K11+ also sucked up a red ribbon I'd used in place of a charge cable, but I wound't say that was surprising – I've yet to find a robovac that can successfully avoid cables, whatever the manufacturers may claim.
Image 1 of 2The K11+ didn't always avoid obstacles (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2Definitely tidy away cables before sending it out (Image credit: Future)Cleaning testsNext I moved on to TechRadar's official suction tests. For this, I sprinkled dry tea (from a tea bag) and a handful of oats onto the carpet, and monitored how effectively the bot sucked them up.
A single pass in Standard mode took care of most of the oats but only the top layer of tea, and a second in Max sucked up the rest of the oat crumbs and a decent amount of tea. That's a good result – the tea test is purposefully tricky (I used a Dyson V15 Detect to clear it completely).
Image 1 of 3Tea and oats on carpet, ready for suction tests (Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 3This was what remained after a single pass with the K11+... (Image credit: Future)Image 3 of 3... and after two passes (Image credit: Future)Moving onto the mopping tests. This one felt unfair because it isn't so much a mop as a wet-wipe. Nevertheless, I persevered. I smeared a tiny amount of ketchup on a tiled floor and left it to dry, and also spilled a little soy sauce, to see how the K11+ could clear it.
Predictably, it could not. The soy sauce ended up smeared all over the floor and the ketchup was completely unaffected. I sent my Roborock Saros 10 in to clean up after it.
The K11+'s wet-wipe "mop" did not impress in the mopping tests (Image credit: Future)If I owned this bot, I wouldn't bother with the mopping function at all. For the level of cleaning it delivers, it isn't worth the effort of attaching the wet-wipe. It also limits where you can position the dock, because it can't live in a no-mop zone.
- Performance score: 3.5 out of 5
- Pretty well designed and easy enough to use
- Fine-tuning options are limited
- Some minor illogical quirks
Since SwitchBot is a brand that makes a number of smart home products, its app is a hub for any SwitchBot gadgets you might own, rather than being dedicated to robovacs only. That means you'll have to click through twice from the homescreen to reach the K11+'s control options.
Image 1 of 2(Image credit: SwitchBot / Future)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: SwitchBot / Future)Once you reach the right section, it's much like most other robovac apps I've used. Editing a map is straightforward, and you can easily add no-go zones and merge or split spaces. The control options are more limited than you'll find in other, pricier robot vacuums, but all the main bases are covered.
There are a few niggles, though. I was pleased to find a Boost mode for carpets. However, specifying an area of carpet adds a pattern on top of the map that's so dark you then can't see the robot's cleaning path. Slightly annoyingly, there's an 8-character limit on room names that prevents you from, for example, labelling "Top floor", and bafflingly, there's no "Hall" or "Corridor" type option within the room defaults.
- App score: 3.5 out of 5
Attribute
Notes
Rating
Value
Budget / mid-range at full price, but big discounts are common. Paying a bit of a premium for the small size, but still decent value.
4 / 5
Design
Tiny robovac with an equally compact dock. Not exactly feature-packed, and mopping is very basic, but it looks great with some useful design features.
4 / 5
Performance
Vacuuming is solid and navigation is good, but emptying is noisy and mopping isn't worth bothering with.
3.5 / 5
App
Decent app with a few illogical quirks.
3.5 / 5
Buy it if...You don't have much space for a dock
If you want auto-empty capabilities but don't have room for a massive dock, this bot is perfect – it has perhaps the smallest auto-empty dock I've seen.
You're dealing with lots of dust or hair
Although the dock is small, its internal dust bag is far bigger than you'll find in most auto-empty docs, with space for plenty of dust or pet hair before it needs replacing.
You want a speedy cleaner
The K11+ rattles along at quite a pace, which means despite its small size, it will get your rooms clean quickly.
Your priority is mopping
The mopping here is really very basic, and for most people, not worth the effort.
You don't have lots of dust or hair
If you're dealing with low levels of dust, you could consider not bothering with auto-emptying at all. There are plenty of excellent full-sized bots with very compact, charge-only docks, for less money than you'll shell out for the K11+.
I used the SwitchBot K11+ as my main vacuum for a fortnight, to get a feel for its general cleaning performance and ease of use. I also ran a series of set suction tests to assess this bot's cleaning powers, seeing how effectively it cleared fine (tea leaves) and chunky (oats) spillages. To assess the mopping, I spilled soy sauce and smeared ketchup on a tiled floor. To test obstacle avoidance, I scattered common items you'd usually find around a home across my living room floor to see if it could correctly identify and avoid them.
During my review period, I assessed how easy it was to set up the SwitchBot K11+, how accurately it made its way around my home, and if there were any annoyances with its performance. I compared my experience with other robot vacuums I've tested, both budget and premium models.
Read more about how we test robot vacuum cleaners
- First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
The Honor MagicPad 3 would be the iPad Air killer, if it wasn't for one fatal flaw
Honor MagicPad 3: One-minute reviewImage 1 of 2(Image credit: Future)Image 2 of 2(Image credit: Future)
The Honor MagicPad 3 is almost the perfect large tablet. With a bright and colorful 13.3 inch 3.2K display, complete with IMAX Enhanced certification, kicking back with a movie or TV show is an absolute joy. Even simply scrolling the home menu or your favorite social media website impresses thanks to a smooth 165Hz refresh rate.
The tablet’s eight speakers perform well, though lack bass overall; especially in comparison to the superior sound systems found on the likes of the cheaper Lenovo Idea Tab Pro. I think you should immediately disable the Honor Spatial Audio option in the settings menu for the best performance though. It’s on by default and gives a solid impression of depth, but makes everything sound artificial, tinny, and a little hollow.
Still, these minor audio quibbles are easy to overlook considering the tablet's impressively slim and lightweight build. At just 5.79mm thick and coming in at 595g, it's thinner and lighter than even the iPad Air. Honor has managed to cram in a truly massive 12,450mAh silicon-carbon battery too, delivering incredible battery life. Seriously, this tablet can power through a full day of rigorous use and then some without breaking a sweat.
I was shocked when half a day editing Google Docs files in a café followed by two hours of 4K video viewing on the train, all at max brightness, ended with the battery barely below 80%. On top of that, the tablet holds charge between uses effortlessly - I often left it on standby stashed down the side of my bed after a night binge-watching Amazon Prime Video and picked it up a few days later to discover that it lost no charge at all in that time.
(Image credit: Future)If you’re the kind of person that likes to leave a tablet around the house to use as needed, you never have to worry about finding it out of electrical juice. Some of this is likely due to the rather aggressive AI Power Management System, which might be worth tweaking if you need certain apps to continually refresh in the background, but it’s hard to complain when the resulting battery performance is this strong.
So what stops the Honor MagicPad 3 from being a best-in-class product? Sure, it's a shame that the gorgeous screen isn't an OLED panel and that there's no fingerprint reader, but above all else it's down to the patchy update support.
When quizzed, Honor told us that it plans “at least one major Android version update” and just “two years of security patches”, which is a depressingly short timeframe. In my eyes, the lack of Android version updates isn’t a dealbreaker, as you’re only really missing out on software features, but the two years of security patches is. You generally should avoid using devices once that timeframe is up, so the tablet effectively has a looming expiration date out of the box.
It’s a shame, especially when you can easily find tablets under $200 / £150 with more years of security update support. The brand did at least note that it will “constantly evaluate” its plans and “deploy software upgrades accordingly” which hopefully means there’s scope for this to change in the future.
Honor MagicPad 3 review: price and availability(Image credit: Future)- £599 retail price
- Expect frequent discounts
- It’s available in the UK, but not the US or Australia
The Honor MagicPad 3 comes in at £599 (around $800) for a model with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which is a very fair price for what you get, especially in comparison to the $799 / £799 iPad Air 13-inch that starts with a pitiful 128GB of storage. Sadly, there's no Australian release.
Honor frequently runs promotions that slash that price, however, so expect it to be readily available for at least £100 less. In fact, it has already seen its price fall to £499 in the build up to release. Also be on the lookout for various free gifts, including the excellent Honor MagicPad3 Smart Touch Keyboard, which I tested alongside the tablet for this review, or Honor Magic Pencil 3 stylus. These promotions turn an already good deal into a great one.
The one thing to bear in mind here is that limited update plan. If you’re particularly concerned about getting the latest and greatest version of Android, or worry about using a device that’s no longer receiving security updates, then that otherwise showstopping price tag is a little less tempting.
- Value score: 4 / 5
Starting price
£599
Operating system
Android (MagicOS 9.0.1)
Chipset
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
Memory (RAM)
16GB
Storage
512GB
Display
13.3 inch 3200 x 2136 (3K) LCD
Cameras
13MP, 2MP rear / 9MP front
Battery
12,450mAh
Connectivity
USB-C 3.2, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Weight
595g
Dimensions
293.88mm x 201.38mm x 5.79mm
Honor MagicPad 3 review: Design(Image credit: Future)- iPad Air-beating slimness
- Surprisingly lightweight
- The back cover might be divisive
The Honor MagicPad 3 puts the 13-inch iPad Air to shame with a design that’s both thinner and lighter. It has a 13.3-inch screen with roughly 0.7cm bezels, flanked by a metallic body where you’ll find four large speaker grilles (that’s two along each short edge), a standard volume rocker and power button, a USB Type-C 3.2 port (with support for 66W fast charging) for topping up the battery or connecting an external display, and a small magnetised area where you can affix the compatible Honor Magic Pencil 3 for charging.
The only thing that I would add is a fingerprint reader, which is unfortunately absent. Luckily the face unlocking is quick and responsive and works well even in low light conditions, so it never feels like you’re really missing out on too much.
The back is relatively plain, aside from a camera module with a flash, a 13MP main sensor and a 2MP macro lens, and a row of small electronic contacts for the keyboard case. According to the Honor website, only one colour is available in the UK: a rather basic Grey.
I tested a White model, however, which is available in some other markets, and has an almost bumpy, textured back. It’s certainly a unique feeling, like having a third-party skin applied out of the box, which makes me think that it’s some kind of vinyl sticker.
(Image credit: Future)I'm in two minds about this. On one hand, I really appreciate the added grip that this material brings, making it far easier to hold the tablet one handed. It’s impressively resistant to fingerprints and, if it came down to it, would probably offer a fair amount of protection from scratches.
It also looks great from a distance, helping the Honor MagicPad 3 stand out in a sea of plain slabs. On the other hand, the strange feel initially made me think that the back of the tablet was constructed entirely from plastic; this somewhat dampened my excitement out of the box.
I tested the Honor MagicPad 3 with the Honor MagicPad3 Smart Touch Keyboard and was very impressed with its performance. The case attaches to the back of the tablet magnetically, with the top half folding down to create a very distinct looking stand that shows off that snazzy back design. The keys are stable with plenty of travel and are very satisfying to press. It also has a large and responsive touchpad, with pronounced mechanical clicks and minimal flex.
It’s a really excellent keyboard and a massive upgrade compared to the Bluetooth model for the Honor MagicPad 2. My only possible complaint is that it seems to only be offered in the US English layout, which took a little getting used to and seems odd given the lack of availability in that region.
- Design score: 4.5 / 5
- Not an OLED, unlike the MagicPad 2
- Still bright and vibrant however
- Impressive 165Hz refresh rate
The Honor MagicPad 3 has an impressive 3.2K (3200 x 2136) IPS LCD screen. With up to 1,000 nits of brightness it's perfect for indoor use and can hold its own outside on a sunny day.
A variety of media looks absolutely gorgeous on it with cheerful and vibrant colors and plenty of fine detail. At 13.3 inches, the tablet might as well be a portable TV and I love using it to catch up on everything from Amazon Prime Video shows to Netflix movies and YouTube videos.
Honor offers two interesting display features too: Super Dynamic Display and Vivid Display. Super Dynamic Display uses AI to ‘enhance HD video brightness and contrast’ while Vivid Display aims to ‘enhance video clarity and colors’ with the same technology. With both of these features enabled, videos look a tad brighter and slightly clearer but lose a little color accuracy.
The tablet’s display is IMAX Enhanced certified too, which is good news if you want to consume compatible content on services like Disney+ or Rakuten TV. Outside of video watching, the 165Hz refresh rate also makes browsing apps, system menus and websites feel especially smooth.
You should note that this isn't an OLED panel though. I don’t think that this is unreasonable given the tablet's cost, but it is significant when its predecessor, the Honor MagicPad 2, did have an OLED display at a similar price point, which had a significantly brighter screen that offered slightly better colors.
- Design score: 4/5
- Decent front camera
- Serviceable rear camera
- Abysmal macro lens
The Honor MagicPad 3 isn’t going to win any prizes for its camera setup, though that's the case for almost any tablet.
The 13MP front camera is crisp and clear enough for an impromptu video meeting, but not something that you're going to want to be taking your Instagram selfies with.
As for the rear, you're getting a 13MP main shooter that suffers from aggressive post processing that smudges over most of the finer details in almost any shot. It's fine for scanning documents or taking a quick snap of something right in front of you, but gets dicey if you're photographing from a distance or with the 2x digital zoom.
There's also a 2MP macro lens that takes images so blurry that it might as well not be there at all.
- Camera score: 2.5/5
- MagicOS might not be your cup of tea...
- But it’s easy to use, with lots of features
- The desktop mode needs work
The Honor MagicPad 3 runs the brand's MagicOS 9.0.1 operating system; a version of Android 15. It has minimal bloat, at least compared to alternatives like Xiaomi HyperOS, and offers a surprising number of genuinely useful features.
As a former iPhone 15 Plus user that now daily drives the Porsche Design Honor Magic 7 RAR, I think its interface is incredibly intuitive. Its overall design is obviously more than a little ‘inspired’ by Apple, which could upset the Android purists out there, but it's smooth, easy to use, and extremely responsive.
I might be a little biased here, as it's my current favorite mobile operating system, but I find that it delivers the perfect balance between the slick aesthetics of iOS and the freedom and customization of Android. There are loads of options to tweak, from app icon shapes and sizes to home screen and charging animations.
A handful of quirky extras give the operating system plenty of its own personality. One of my favorites is the ability to create a humanoid ‘3D Avatar’ for your live wallpaper. When you unlock the device, you're greeted with a short moving scene of the character going for a stroll through a park, chilling in a cafe, petting a fluffy cat, or a plethora of other possible situations.
Videos of new scenarios are automatically generated when the device is charging and, while undeniably a little unsettling at first, I've grown to love seeing what my little homunculus is up to every time I turn the tablet on.
(Image credit: Future)Of course, being 2025 the software of the Honor MagicPad 3 also has a suite of AI features including AI-powered widgets that do a surprisingly good job of recommending installed apps based on your usage habits, real-time AI subtitle generation, AI writing tools that help you polish or rephrase your text, and automatic on-device AI deepfake detection for video calls.
This is on top of the Magic Portal - effectively the brand’s take on Google's Circle to Search feature. As with most Android devices, Gemini assistant is also built in and can be summoned by holding the power button for a few seconds.
The only part of the software that I think needs work is the tablet’s desktop mode equivalent: Floating Window mode. It causes each to run in a little window on your screen that you can drag around like a PC desktop environment, but it’s unfortunately quite unresponsive at times.
Filling the screen with two side-by-side apps is awkward and as far as I can tell there’s no way to have a taskbar on screen at all times. It’s not completely unusable, as I still manage to get work done with some fiddling, but is nowhere near as slick or easy to use as the offerings from market leaders in this field like Samsung and Lenovo.
- Software score: 4 / 5
- Robust performance thanks to powerful specs
- Zero noticeable slowdown in general use
- More than enough for gaming
Powered by the 2023 flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, the Honor MagicPad 3 might not have the very latest chip but it’s certainly plenty powerful.
In general use, be that visiting your favorite websites or watching shows, you’re not going to notice any slowdown at all. Even when switching between multiple apps, the 16GB of RAM keeps everything cached and ready to go.
It supports Wi-Fi 7 for speedy downloads if you have a compatible router, plus Bluetooth 5.4. The 512GB of storage space is generous, especially at this price, so you’ll likely have room for all your favorite apps and plenty of spare space for downloaded videos. I keep multiple full series downloaded on the tablet at a time and haven’t come close to filling it up.
With specs like these, the Honor MagicPad 3 is also a surprisingly capable gaming device. Call of Duty Mobile runs flawlessly on the highest settings. More demanding games like Zenless Zone Zero impress too, with a rock solid 60 frames per second on high settings. With everything cranked up to the max, I found the very top middle portion of the tablet tends to get a little hot to the touch, but it thankfully never overheated or slowed down to a noticeable degree in my testing.
That said, if you intend to use the Honor MagicPad 3 for gaming I would highly recommend investing in a compatible Bluetooth controller as the large size of the tablet makes it very awkward to hold in your hands when you’re using touch controls.
- Performance score: 4.5 / 5
- 12,450mAh silicon-carbon battery
- Incredible battery life, beating all competition
- Features the Honor E2 power management chip
Truthfully, it’s difficult to fully test the Honor MagicPad 3’s battery life because it almost never runs out of charge. With a gigantic 12,450mAh silicon-carbon battery this thing is practically everlasting, easily powering through a whole week of on and off use without dipping below the 60% mark. We’re talking well above 20 hours of screen on time, absolutely decimating the battery performance of any other tablet that I have ever used.
It offers comfortably double the battery life of the latest iPad Air and is a dream for taking on long trips or flights. You can even use the tablet as an impromptu power bank in a pinch and still have more than enough left over for the rest of your day’s use. It’s incredible frankly, so serious props to Honor here.
In addition to its large size, the battery features Honor’s proprietary E2 power management chip. There’s also an AI power management system built into the OS. How much of a difference does all this tech actually make? It’s hard to say, but the results are impossible to argue with.
- Battery score: 5 / 5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Value
The Honor MagicPad 3 is incredible value - if you can overlook the patchy update plan.
4/5
Design
Thin, lightweight, and visually attractive. The unusual rear design might prove divisive though, and it lacks a fingerprint reader.
4.5/5
Display
A bright and colorful display that’s perfect for watching movies or TV. It’s 165Hz, though the fact it’s not OLED is a downgrade compared to the previous MagicPad.
4/5
Cameras
Your average tablet camera setup. It gets the job done, but you should just use your phone instead.
2.5/5
Software
MagicOS isn’t for everyone, but it’s easy to use and brimming with quirky charm.
4/5
Performance
Great performance across the board. This tablet is more than powerful enough for general use, and excels at gaming too.
4.5
Battery
Some of the best battery performance of any tablet, period.
5/5
Buy it if…You want a tablet with serious battery life
The battery life of the Honor MagicPad 3 is incredible. It offers more than enough juice for well over a week of use and means the tablet can even come in handy as a power bank for your phone in a pinch.
You crave good value
With the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage, you’ll struggle to find a better value tablet at this price point. It becomes an even better deal when you factor in the frequent discounts and free goodies too.
You want a tablet that really stands out
The super thin and stylish design of the Honor MagicPad 3 really stands out in a sea of grey slabs. Pick one up if you love the unique look.
You’re worried about long-term support
Unfortunately, Honor has only confirmed one planned Android upgrade and two years of security patches which is a huge disappointment. Unless this changes, you should avoid this tablet if you’re concerned by the lack of support.
Not keen on what the Honor MagicPad 3 brings to the table? Here are two compelling alternatives to consider:
Honor Magic Pad 3
Lenovo Idea Tab Pro
iPad Air 13-inch
Price
£599
$349.99 / £379.99
$799 / £799 / AU$1,299
Weight
595g
1.36lbs / 620g
617g
Size
293.88mm x 201.38mm x 5.79mm
189.1mm x 291.8mm x 6.9mm / 7.44″ x 11.49″ x 0.27”
280.6mm x 214.9mm x 6.1mm
Screen size
13.3 inches
12 inches
13 inches
Processor
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
Mediatek Dimensity 8300
M2
Speakers
8 stereo speakers
Quad JBL-tuned speakers
Stereo speakers
Connectivity
USB-C 3.2, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
USB-C, MicroSD card, WiFi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS
USB-C
Battery
12,450mAh
10,200mAh
9,705 mAh
Lenovo Idea Tab Pro
The Lenovo Idea Tab Pro is less powerful than the Honor Magic Pad 3 and a bit heavier, but it’s also compatible with a great keyboard and offers a better desktop mode so it’s a good alternative if you’re after a pure productivity device.
Read our full Lenovo Idea Tab Pro review
iPad Air 13-inch
The iPad Air 13-inch is slightly thicker and heavier than the Honor MagicPad 3, but offers significantly better long-term software support. It has worse battery life and is massively more expensive though, especially for that 512GB version.
Read our full iPad Air 13-inch review
How I tested the Honor MagicPad 3I tested the Honor MagicPad 3 over the course of multiple weeks in the build up to its announcement and release. It’s become my go-to tablet and has accompanied me on a number of trips.
It’s also seen plenty of use at home, where I’ve been using it for a mix of media consumption and gaming. I tested the tablet in its standard 16GB + 512GB configuration, though in a White colorway that is not currently available.
I used it alongside the compatible Honor MagicPad3 Smart Touch Keyboard which was supplied alongside the tablet. The tablet even replaced my usual work laptop on a handful of occasions, where I evaluated the keyboard’s performance and its overall potential as a productivity device.
First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
Ghost of Yotei is one of the best games I’ve played this year, with beauty, style, and visceral action running through its veins
I have caught myself reliving riding my horse across Ghost of Yotei’s landscape of 17th-century Japan almost every time I’ve put the game down since starting it.
From the simplest of jogs between locations, or the longest of horse rides across sweeping lands, through fields, and over rivers, there’s just something truly beautiful about it that has consumed me.
Review infoPlatform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5
Release date: October 2, 2025
And while the world of Ghost of Yotei is one of the best I’ve played in years, and one of the most spectacular things about the game, it’s only one of a number of highlights in the PS5 exclusive.
The worldbuilding and sense of place the lands offer is supported by an epic tale that twists and turns, an interesting protagonist who develops as the story goes, multi-faceted, immense, and bloody, moreish combat, and a smattering of enjoyable open-world and role-playing game (RPG) staples. Which, even though they can be repetitive sometimes, also bring much value and meat to the experience.
It wears the influence of its predecessor on its sleeve prominently, but Ghost of Yotei has been more than worth the wait.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)A tale for the agesSet a few hundred years after Ghost of Tsushima, you are Atsu an outlaw making a return to her homeland of Ezo with revenge on the mind. Be prepared to hear the phrase “The Yotei Six” an awful lot in the first half of the main story in particular, as that is who Atsu is chasing down: six masked-up baddies who inflicted great pain on her and her family when she was a child.
Complemented by intriguing flashbacks that give greater context to that original pain, the story of Atsu chasing after these six almost-mythical enemies is an epic one. It has twists and turns and is deeply cinematic and gripping, and Atsu and the change she experiences along the way make her a compelling protagonist. You can feel the anger and deliberation in her encounters, in her visceral combat actions; and you can see how her relentless pursuit of justice changes her outlook along the way, too.
And while the premise of hunting down the six masked big bads is similar to Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, a linear revenge tale, and checking off an assassination hitlist, this is not. There are more layers to the story and to each of the narratives around the enemies to get stuck into.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Experiencing the beauty of natureThat stylish way that the story is delivered is indicative of the lands that it takes place in, too - as well as how you explore it.
Firstly, the scenery and sense of place in the game’s landscapes and environments are wonderful. From expansive, sweeping fields of grasses and flowers bathed in sunshine, to the icy mountainsides of an arctic, wintry region. And from the spring-like, verdant, and lush fluvial landscapes either side of meandering waterways to the gorgeous and blinding oranges and golds of hundreds of trees in their autumn form, all four seasons are draped over the landscapes of Ghost of Yotei beautifully.
As well as offering sheer beauty, everything seems truly part of the environment; each location does seem purposefully placed, sprouting from the ground or perched on it intentionally.
There’s also a wider use of the landscape to create ‘landscape moments’ as I call them; using the wind for guidance is a sheer joy once again, throwing up thousands of flower petals as you bound across plains is a thrill, and there’s a few moments where your ride across the countryside or along winding tracks is accompanied by wonderful and haunting songs.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Mapping an adventureTaking the importance of the landscape and environment further is Atsu’s in-game map, the way objectives are presented, and also how exploration and discovery work.
In short, the map is outstanding. Its art style is gorgeous, and the way icons and your travel route appear on it like paintings is great. Additionally, cartographers’ maps can be bought and placed over areas on your own map to reveal locations in an incredibly satisfying way that brings the map to life as opposed to being a static resource. This is echoed by other locations on the map being slightly animated, rather than just quest markers on a static background.
The details are excellent here, too. For example, if it's raining in the world, you’ll see a pitter-patter of raindrops fall on your map. Teaming this map with your spyglass makes for satisfying exploration that nails the ‘see that over there, mark it, and go there’ incentive, which is key to a well-done RPG world.
Additionally, there isn’t a smattering of side quest markers on the map or a list of text in your menu - there’s a superb card system instead, which is stylish and artsy - and you can stumble across simple side encounters naturally through exploration. It’s a world that demands to be explored, and its slowly revealing open zones in the open world are filled with things to see and do, and are more densely filled than massive, open, and empty.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Put them to the swordHowever, it’s not just style and aesthetics and a stacked world; there’s plenty of substance elsewhere in Ghost of Yotei, and at the forefront of that is Atsu’s violent, bloody, and super-slick combat.
With access to five melee weapons when fully kitted out, Atsu can cut through hosts of enemies with ease and grace; it really can be like a dance, almost, and chaining together parries, strikes, weapon swaps, and dodges to seamlessly work between enemies and cut them down is almost poetic.
The violence and bloodshed are incredibly graphic - something that I’ve greatly enjoyed upping the ante on by playing in the game’s Miike mode - but also arty and make for extremely reactive visuals to this dance too.
At the core of the combat is, of course, the weapons and toolset open to Atsu. Yotei does away with the different stances to combat different enemies and weapon types, and instead gives you an arsenal of different weapons to use.
Each will work against anybody, but it pays to know your katana from your Kurasigama and who best to fight with each, for example - however, each weapon is excellent, dynamic, and exciting to use and master. I greatly enjoyed the process of acquiring these weapons through quests, too. Each expert you find for the weapons feels organic and feeds into Atsu's learning and developing skills to be best equipped to fulfill her revenge mission.
The bows in Yotei are once again satisfying to use, and while the rifle is an option, I barely used it - though finishing a stand off with a quick, hip fire shot of the pistol is dead cool. Complementing this are some ranged throwables you can use, such as firebombs to wreak havoc on groups of enemies, and quickfire kunai knives.
Armor always plays a part by offering perks that can be boons to different play styles. You can gain new sets to obtain with mysterious side quests or tasks, and they can be upgraded - but your main Ghost one is upgraded through the main story.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)Style *and* substanceThere’s plenty of opportunity to customize Atsu’s gear, too, and there’s clearly an emphasis on this. You can work to find resources for weapon and armor upgrades, and a whole raft of charms - themselves upgradeable through in-game tasks or actions - can give you edges in certain play styles. However, you can also enjoy a whole host of cosmetic upgrades to give Atsu the perfect look.
There are loads of skill trees and options to explore and acquire to enhance Atsu along your journey too. Each weapon has its own tree; there are some skills relating to Atsu’s survivor background (reducing fall damage, etc), and even some that relate to help you can sometimes get from a wolf companion.
You’ll unlock these abilities by bowing in front of altars. These can be found out in the wild on their own, or be tied to clearing camps of badmen. I appreciate the simplicity of this, but to mirror the location-specific skills of those who can teach Atsu skills, it could have added a further layer by tying certain abilities to certain altars or locations to give some geography-based nuance - i.e., certain skills can only be acquired at specific altars, for example.
Putting all of that to practical application is fantastic. Whether you’re absorbing the main quest line, or going off the beaten track to hunt down challenging or intriguing bounties, exploring myths and legends, or simply clearing out bandit camps to rid the land of baddies, utilizing Atsu’s wealth of combat approaches - either stealthily or head-on - is a joy.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)In an incredibly strong field, perhaps my favorite part of Ghost of Yotei that made me smile every time I did it was when dispatching a whole gang of goons while barely receiving a scratch. Changing weapons out seamlessly while knowing when to strike, when to parry, and when to go in for the kill is one of the things that makes Ghost of Yotei’s combat spectacular. I have to add that the map itself could have been my choice here, or indeed the landscapes and how they affect and frame the gameplay.
On the whole, I have found myself preferring head-on combat. There is a good balance between stealth and combat - but I prefer the stealth found in Assassin’s Creed Shadows. Charging in and beating goons of all types and sizes, and bosses, with Atsu’s beastly weapons is so moreish.
Either way, whatever you choose, there’s excellence and mileage in both approaches, I’ve found. Utilizing tall grass to sneak around camps and pick off guards with a bow or with distant assassinations with the Kurasigama - a personal favorite - is brilliant. However, nothing quite hits like taking out a few pesky ranged enemies before engaging in a standoff to dispatch a host of guards. Throw in Atsu’s Onryo's Howl skill - a banshee-like scream you can blast toward your enemies, causing them to cower in fear.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)A near-perfect cutAre there creases in all this bloody brilliance, though? Of course, but only a few that I found that impacted my enjoyment. While I’m always one to sink dozens of hours into an open world, checking activities off a list, I did feel a bit of fatigue when stumbling across a vast number of the same activities such as bamboo cuts, hot springs, and altars.
The number of which also impacted the sense of exploration and discovery that the world is generally so good at. Elsewhere, the conversation options you get don’t seem to make a huge impact on encounters or quests I’ve found, which is a shame, and there are some strange moves later in the story that reintroduce tutorial-like sections that affect pacing.
However, one thing that is a fierce double-edged sword for Yotei is the game that came before it, as it wears the influence of Ghost of Tsushima and all that made that game excellent proudly on its sleeve. As a result, in a similar way to Horizon Forbidden West, there’s a lot of iteration on established features and facets.
Golden birds and foxes are present again, breaking guards in combat with heavy attacks is key again, and acquiring charms from shrines up broken pathways are back, to name a couple of examples. This might disappoint some, but it also offers ‘more of the same’ of one of the most memorable and enjoyable games of the last five years.
This is simply a world worth committing dozens of hours to
Technically, however, Ghost of Yotei does a lot to make itself feel like the PS5 exclusive we’ve been waiting for. The Ray Tracing Pro mode available on the PS5 Pro is superb and has offered a fault-free and technically excellent experience for my entire 55+ hours, but it’s the DualSense integration that is a real highlight.
Those raindrops I mentioned earlier falling on your map? You can feel those on the controller, along with rain on Atsu in the world; the balance of your instrument’s music coming from the main speakers with that of the DualSense’s speaker is a delight, painting sumi-e with flicks across the touchpad is superb, and you can even blow in the microphone to help light your campfires.
If there was any other indication needed to show what I think of Ghost of Yotei, then it’s the fact that I have kept playing the game, long after finishing the story and almost all of the quests, and am committed to going for the platinum trophy.
Yes, those few slight gripes hold it back from true generational greatness, but I’m already planning my way mentally across the map, strategizing weapon swaps and attack combos in my mind, and this is simply a world worth committing dozens of hours to, and I'm going to drink it all up.
Should you play Ghost of Yotei?Play it if...You loved Ghost of Tsushima
It’s an obvious one, but this is a sequel done excellently, and if you’ve been waiting for the next instalment in the series, then this will not disappoint. It channels a lot of the features that made Tsushima a superb open-world action-adventure game, and iterates on a few key areas to augment it in places while offering another gripping story.
You want to play one of the most stylish film-like adventures on PS5
There’s style and chic draped over everything Ghost of Yotei does, and even in its ‘base’ style, this is an extraordinary cinematic experience. Throw in the Japanese film-inspired modes, Atsu’s narrative and character growth, and you have an immersive, film-like experience.
You’re after some blistering Samurai combat
With its wide range of weapons and host of cool moves and combos, the combat in Ghost of Yotei is truly excellent. Combine this with the attention to detail in graphics, Atsu’s movement, and the parrying and blocking mechanics, and you have all the ingredients for moreish, excellent, visceral combat.
A game’s world and setting are important to your gaming experience
If you’re always one to appreciate and look out for a wonderful game world to explore and just exist in, then Ghost of Yotei does not disappoint. Using the map to aid you in this never feels like a chore either, and it’s a joyous, detailed thing.
You bounced off the first game
For those that didn’t gel with Ghost of Tsushima, you’re likely to have the same broad experience here as, despite the change to combat and the robust story, this is a sequel that wears its predecessor on its sleeve proudly.
You tire of similar activities
If you are one who often tires of repeating open-world activities, then Ghost of Yotei may grate on you with its many hot springs, bamboo cuts, and altars to engage with, which, for the most part, are very similar within this game and to Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost of Yotei's accessibility features are a little lighter than some of its PS5 first-party contemporaries. There are no colorblind options, which is a shame, for example.
Elsewhere, you do have options for subtitle size and color, you can increase gameplay clues and visibility, and simplify control schemes for things like campfires and forging, and also get some assistance for combat, such as projectile indicators.
(Image credit: Sony/PlayStation/Sucker Punch)How I reviewed Ghost of YoteiTotalling more than 55 hours of testing, I reviewed Ghost of Yotei on a PS5 Pro teamed with a Samsung Q6F 55-inch 4K QLED TV and Samsung soundbar, and carried out some brief testing on a PS5 Slim combined with an Acer X32QFS gaming monitor and a Yamaha SR-C20A soundbar. On both machines, I used a standard DualSense Wireless controller, and I also spent many hours playing the game on my PlayStation Portal. When using a headset, I used a Drop + EPOS PC38X wired gaming headset combined with a Creative Sound BlasterX G6 on my PS5 Pro, and a SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 wireless gaming headset on the PS5 Slim.
I tested the game thoroughly in all its graphics modes and found its Ray Tracing Pro mode on PS5 Pro to be the best way to play on Sony’s premium console. I also played chunks of the game on several of the difficulty levels to explore and experience the different challenges in the combat, and tried out the different filmic modes too, with my favorite being hte Miike mode by far.
First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
I test audio kit for a living and these are among the best pound-for-pound powered stereo speakers I've heard
Ruark MR1 Mk3: Two minute review
From February 2017 to September 2025 is a fair while for an audio product to stay on the market – so it just goes to show how right Ruark got the predecessor to its new Ruark MR1 Mk3 and what a tough act it has to follow.
Happily, it’s more than up to the task. Slightly larger than the product it replaces and significantly better specified (the MR1 Mk3 can handle everything from aptX HD Bluetooth and vinyl records to 24bit/192kHz hi-res digital audio), this new Ruark is the perfect desktop system. It’s also got great credentials when it comes to TV audio (it’s so much better looking than your average soundbar and can connect via digital optical), and will happily support a fairly extensive system in a small- to medium-sized room.
The Ruark MR1 Mk3 sounds far larger than it looks, and has impressive low-frequency presence that’s complemented by great detail retrieval and an undeniable facility for entertainment. The Ruark can do ‘analysis’ for you as well as any desktop system around, but it doesn’t lose sight of the fact that music is to be enjoyed every bit as much as it is to be admired. Soundstaging is good, dynamic headroom is appreciable, and the frequency response from top to bottom is smoothly even. The MR1 Mk3 sounds admirably consistent no matter which of its inputs you’re using, too.
In short, the Ruark MR1 Mk3 has been worth the wait, and sits firmly in the best stereo speakers on the market. Which is not the same as saying I’d be happy to wait until 2033 or something for the Mk4…
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Price and release date- Released June 2025
- $579 / £399 / AU$899
The Ruark MR1 Mk3 is on sale now, and in the United States it's yours for $579. It goes for £399 in the United Kingdom and AU$899 in Australia.
To be fair to Ruark, that compares quite favourably to the $499 / £349 / AU$749 the MR1 Mk2 launched at back in early 2107, and it means the MR1 Mk3 is, all things considered, even more competitively priced than the model it replaces.
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Features- 25 watts per channel of Class D power
- Bluetooth 5.1 with aptX HD
- Moving magnet phono stage
Ruark has ditched the Class A/B amplification of the MR1 Mk3's predecessor in favour of a Class D alternative derived from its very well-received R410 integrated music system. Power is up from 20 watts per channel to 25, and the driver array (a 20mm silk dome tweeter and 85mm ‘NS+’ treated natural fibre mid/bass driver in each speaker, bolstered by downward-facing bass reflex ports) is good for a claimed frequency response of 50Hz to 22khz.
Input options have undergone an upgrade, too. The MR1 Mk3 uses Bluetooth 5.1 for wireless connectivity, and is compatible with the aptX HD codec. There’s a 3.5mm socket that’s a hybrid optical/analogue input – in digital mode it’s capable of dealing with file resolutions of up to 24bit/192kHz. A USB-C input can handle anything up to 24bit/96kHz. And there’s a moving magnet phono stage behind a pair of stereo RCA sockets, so a record player can easily be integrated into the Ruark system. A pre-out for a subwoofer completes a very agreeable line-up.
Features score: 5/5
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Sound quality- Impressive low-frequency presence
- Detailed and dynamic
- Great sonic consistency across every input
There’s a definite sensation of ‘the Ruark sound’ to the MR1 Mk3, which is great but hardly unexpected. What’s equally impressive, and perhaps less predictable, is just how consistent the Mk3 sounds no matter which of its inputs you’re using.
Obviously there’s an appreciable difference between the sound of Sad and Lonely by Secret Machines being streamed as a 320kbps file via Bluetooth to the same song delivered via the integrated phono stage. But the fundamental Ruark character never wavers: in every circumstance, the sound is bold and punchy, spacious and properly defined, and is loaded with detail both broad and fine. Everyone hopes their tunes will sound ‘musical’ and ‘entertaining’, but the MR1 Mk3 understands and delivers on this better than any price-comparable alternative.
There’s a touch of warmth to the system’s tonality, but this just allows the weighty and nicely varied low frequencies to swing even more naturalistically. Bass sounds are properly controlled, which means rhythmic expression is sure footed – the Ruark is capable of quite startling extension and low-end attack. The midrange is open and revealing, with plenty of detail concerning tone and timbre, especially of voices, revealed. At the top end, the Ruark gives substance to treble sounds just as readily as it gives shine – and here, just as with the rest of the frequency range, detail levels are impressively high.
There’s more than enough dynamic headroom available for the MR1 Mk3 to make the fluctuations in volume and intensity during a listen to Music Has the Right to Children by Boards of Canada obvious. And there’s just as much attention paid to the dynamic variations apparent in a voice or solo instrument, too.
Thanks to the downward-facing reflex ports, the Mk3 always has a fixed boundary the perfect distance away - so it’s not quite as uptight about positioning as some alternative designs. And when you get the positioning just right, stereo focus is enjoyable and the soundstage the system creates is large and confidently defined. There’s plenty of space between individual elements of a recording, but at the same time the Ruark is able to make sure they all relate to each other and all contribute to the singularity of ‘performance’.
Sound quality score: 5/5
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Design- 185 x 135 x 155mm (HxWxD)
- Choice of two finishes
- 2.2kg
Ruark is no stranger to a tidy and attractive bit of cabinet work, and for the MR1 Mk3 it’s done that thing it does, just on a slightly larger scale.
Each Mk3 cabinet is 185 x 135 x 155mm (HxWxD), which is up from the Mk2’s 175 x 130 x 140mm in every direction. It also means internal volume is increased to a useful two liters while the system is still a realistic desktop proposition.
The standard of build and finish is impeccable. Each cabinet is handcrafted, and is almost as appealing on a tactile level as it is on a visual. My review sample is in a real walnut veneer, but a charcoal lacquer alternative is available – both are supplied with fixed slate-grey cloth grilles.
Design score: 5/5
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Usability and setup- Operation via remote control or RotoDial
- 3m braided connecting cable
- Independent gain control for some inputs
There’s not a lot to get your head around when it comes to setting up the MR1 Mk3. The primary speaker – the one with all the inputs and amplification on board – needs to be plugged into the mains. It then needs to be connected to the secondary speaker using the 3m length of braided cable supplied in the box. And that’s about your lot: make any physical connections you might require, and you’re in business.
Control is available via a small and unremarkable remote control – it covers power on/off, volume up/down, and input selection. These functions are duplicated by the classic Ruark RotoDial that’s integrated into the top of the primary speaker and is just as pleasant to use here as it is in any of the company’s other products. And it makes the primary speaker, in fact, 202mm high.
Usability and setup score: 5/5
(Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: ValueIt’s difficult in the extreme to suggest the Ruark MR1 Mk3 doesn’t represent very decent value for money.
It’s compact enough to be a desktop system, it’s got sufficient sonic scale and presence to work as an alternative to a soundbar via its digital optical or Bluetooth inputs, and it’s ideal as a system for a smaller room. The standard of build and finish is hard to criticize. It looks, as well as sounds, good.
What more, really, are you expecting?
Value score: 5/5
Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: Should you buy it? Buy it if...You want a system that looks discreet but doesn’t sound it
‘Bigger than before’ doesn’t mean ‘big’, but the MR1 Mk3 sounds it nevertheless.
You don’t believe in soundbars
Connected to a TV via Bluetooth or digital optical, the Ruark will wipe the floor with the sound your television makes.
You want a hi-res desktop
Got a computer with a top-tier music streaming app installed or hi-res digital audio files in its memory? A connection to the MR1 Mk3’s USB-C socket is all you need…
You want Airplay, Chromecast and stuff like that
There’s no Wi-Fi here – Bluetooth is as much wireless connectivity as you get.
Some Bluetooth speakers can form stereo pairs, so something like a couple of JBL Charge 6 could do a job on your desktop, and you’d have a pair of portable speakers for when you’re out and about. The battery-only power scenario might not work for you, though, and there’s only USB-C as an input beyond Bluetooth.
Maybe the Q Acoustics M20 would be a better bet? It’s certainly a great-sounding system, and has sufficient physical, as well as wireless, inputs to be a complete system. It’s large when compared to the Ruark, though – certainly too big for anything but the very largest desktop – and is a little less impressive when it comes to the standard of finish too.
Ruark MR1 Mk3 review: How I tested- Connected to various devices
- Using every available input
- Lots of music and TV over a fair amount of time
I mostly listened to the MR1 Mk3 on my desktop, where I used an iPhone 14 Pro and a FiiO M15S as wireless sources along with an Apple MacBook Pro connected via USB-C.
I also used it on the end of my main system, where I was able to test out its phono stage using my Clearaudio Concept turntable. And I connected it to my Philips OLED using the TV’s optical output, where it functioned as a replacement for my Bose Smart Ultra soundbar.
I listened to plenty of music and quite a bit of TV content, and made sure to check out the Ruark’s hi-res audio credentials as well as its ability to amplify a turntable and handle a wireless stream.
- First reviewed September 2025
- Read more about how we test
Categories: Reviews
Sick and tired of ugly under-desk treadmills? With its wood grain finish, the Urevo Spacewalk E4W is both stylish and affordable
Urevo Spacewalk E4W: SpecificationsSpecifications
Component
Value
Dimensions
119cm x 48cm x 11cm
Price
$229.99 / £249.99 / around AU$500
Maximum User weight
265 lbs (120 kgs)
Deck
Double shock absorption
Top speed
6km/h
Wheels?
Yes
Controls
Remote, via app
Urevo Spacewalk E4W: One minute review(Image credit: Future)The Urevo SpaceWalk is an ideal home walking pad for people looking to get extra steps in during rainy days or for remote workers trying to bring an element of movement to their working day. It has a generously-sized tread belt with ample shock absorption, measuring 100cm x 38cm, which is similar to other market leaders.
The speed range is 0.5 to 6km per hour, which can be adjusted by either a remote control or by the Urevo app on your phone. The app itself contains a whole host of functionality, recording activity data, offering challenges to participate in and ‘World Tour’ videos to accompany your walks.
The walking pad is exceptionally quick to set up – very much a plug-and-play piece of apparatus with a reasonable 1.8m cable length which, given that the equipment is likely to be under a desk near a plug, will be suitable for most users. The walking pad has an LED display that shows the speed, distance, time, steps and calories, all that most users will need for walks. Estimating steps on the display is a useful inclusion and, I found, to be very accurate.
The walking pad weighs 18kg, making it quite a bit lighter than others I’ve tested, ideal for moving from room to room and up and down stairs, which I have done while switching between using it under my work desk and in front of the TV. The noise levels are very low considering its 2.25HP motor, and I had no complaints from my co-workers on Teams whilst I was using the device.
The main drawback of the device is its limited top speed, at only 6km per users are limited to not much more than a light jog – it’s sadly unsuitable for runners. It's at a slightly higher price point than the usual super-budget Amazon options, so users may want a device like the Mobvoi Home Treadmill SE that provides a dual purpose, but still a great buy.
Category
Comment
Score
Price
More expensive that other walking pads on the market, but likely worth it for most.
3/5
Design
Very easy to move from room to room. No handles or safety bar but this feels appropriate for the products’ top speed.
4/5
Features
Variety of speeds is good, more controllability on the app than the remote, app provided good activity tracking over time.
5/5
Performance
Buttons responsive, felt stable and provided a smooth walking experience.
5/5
Should I buy? (Image credit: Future)Buy if if...You are looking for a walking pad you won’t want to run on
No need for a running machine? No problem
You need a lightweight option
The Spacewalk E4W can be moved from room to room.
You need something quiet
Your colleagues won’t hear it: I took Teams calls while using it without issue.
Don't buy it if...You're looking for the cheapest walking pad
There are slightly cheaper options out there if your budget is tight.
You are looking for a dual-use walking pad
There's no running mode or incline, like most walkingpads, so fit users are unlikely to break much of a sweat.
Also considerMobvoi Home Treadmill SE
The best under-desk treadmill for joggers.
Read our full Mobvoi Home Treadmill SE review
JTX Movelight
The best portable under-desk treadmill.
Read our full JTX Movelight review
How I testedI tested the walking pad for two weeks, mostly walking on it for an hour every day. I typically used it at a pace of 3km per hour but jogged up to 6km per hour speed. I tried using it with and without shoes, but preferred wearing trainers because the surface got hot. I also tested both the remote control and the app-controlled functionality.
Categories: Reviews
I tested the world's most eco-friendly phone, and was surprised by this one small addition
Fairphone 6: Two-minute review
Fairphone has always delivered on its key promise of making the most eco-friendly smartphone it can, and over subsequent generations it’s also come on leaps and bounds at making a handset that’s has green credentials yet is also a solid Android phone. We’ve always given respectable reviews to handsets from the Dutch phone maker but that’s mostly for the eco-credos, and the quality of the devices has often left something to be desired.
That gets less true with each generation though and the Fairphone 6 shows another step towards the company understanding its true potential. Case in point, while this is still a chunky Android that has one foot in the rugged phone camp, it has a few features which make it stand out in the crowded smartphone market.
The successor to 2023’s Fairphone 5, the continuing key selling point for the new handset is it's a green phone (literally, depending on which model you buy, but I’m talking about its environmental credentials). The phone incredibly easy to repair yourself, so you don’t need to toss it away should something break. It’s made with loads of recycled materials, from production processes that support fair working conditions. There’s no e-waste in the box and even the making of the phone was done with renewable energy.
While many phone brands might mutter out a line or two about how one component of its phone was made from recycled wool during an announcement, Fairphone makes its environmental mission part of the sales pitch. And with more people each year letting their carbon footprint (or desired lack thereof) inform their purchasing decisions, it remains the best part of buying a Fairphone.
But there’s more; Fairphones have often been pretty hardy but the sixth-gen model literally has military-grade certification to ensure it’s protected. I like a phone that can look after itself and you don’t need to worry with the Fairphone 6; I didn’t even put it in a case.
Like past models it’s very easy to replace damaged parts yourself using a little Fairphone-branded screwdriver, but a new change for this generation is the same process can be used to add accessories to the device (albeit ones bought separately). I found it really easy and even fun unscrewing the back panel to add a finger loop, or card holder, or lanyard, and this also encouraged me to poke around inside the device and demystify the scary-sounding self-repair process.
My biggest surprise with the Fairphone 6 was its presence of a 3D time-of-flight sensor on the back, in lieu of a third sensor. These were popular on phones a few years ago but largely as a way of bulking up a specs list, and rarely did they actually contribute much. But on the Fairphone 6, the impact is noticeable as portrait photos have incredibly accurate background blur, getting blurrier with greater distance from the subject. That’s not something you see often on smartphones and it made the Fairphone one of my favorite phones for pictures of myself (if taken on the rear camera, of course).
That’s not to say that the Fairphone is one of the best camera phones, as pictures tended to be a little dull, lacking in vibrancy and color, and the macro mode worked poorly.
Beyond the areas I’ve discussed, it’s overall a pretty average mid-range phone: its chipset, screen quality, battery capacity and charging speed are all at or slightly below what you’d expect for the price. But the software is stock Android, which provides a nice clean interface and the addition of a handy slider adds some quick functionality when you need it.
Fairphone 6 review: price and availability(Image credit: Future)- Announced in June 2025, released shortly after
- Costs £499 (roughly $680, AU$990) but only on sale in Europe
- Pricier version available without Android OS
After being announced in June 2025, the Fairphone 6 was put on sale across July and August, only in Europe. That’s right, Fairphone doesn’t range the phone in the US or Australia… mostly.
The handset costs £499 (roughly $680, AU$990) so it’s a mid-ranged mobile in price. The accessories Fairphone sells and you can see in review images, like the lanyard or finger grip, all cost about £25 (about $34, AU$49). For context the Fairphone 5 was quite a bit pricier at £649 (roughly $800 / AU$1,250), and the price cut is welcome.
There’s another version of the smartphones that's ‘deGoogled’ and comes with the open-source /e/OS instead of Android as the default operating system. This costs $899 / £549 (at least AU$1,000 but there’s quite a gulf between those two prices). As you can see it is on sale in the US, although at a rather high price compared to the UK and also the European pricing.
I didn’t test this version of the phone so it hasn’t been factored into this review, but specs-wise it’s the same as the Android version of the phone.
Fairphone 6 review: specsHere's the spec sheet in full for the Fairphone 6:
Fairphone 6 specsDimensions:
156.5 x 73.3 x 9.6mm
Weight:
193g
Screen:
6.31-inch 20:9 FHD (1116 x 2484) 120Hz OLED
Chipset:
Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
RAM:
8GB
Storage:
256GB
OS:
Android 15
Primary camera:
50MP, f/1.6
Ultra-wide camera:
13MP f/2.2 116-degree
Front camera:
32MP, f/2.0
Audio:
Stereo speakers
Battery:
4,415mAh
Charging:
30W wired
Colors:
Green, white, black
Fairphone 6 review: design(Image credit: Future)- New slider for quick functions
- IP55 and MIL-STD-810H adds protection
- Easily repairable or modifable
As with past models, the Fairphone 6 is a pretty blocky handset, but it makes sense for reasons we’ll get to in a bit. It comes in white, green or black; my review unit was white but the accessories were green, hence the color clash, and I found the white model picked up marks and stains pretty easily.
The phone measures 156.5 x 73.3 x 9.6mm and weighs 193g, so it’s a little smaller than many other contemporary Androids but is pretty thick.
The bottom edge of the phone has the USB-C port but there’s no audio jack. On the left side there’s the volume rocker, which I struggled to readily reach, and replacing it on the right edge of the phone, just above the power button, is a slider.
The function of this slider can be picked from the Settings menu; you can use it to turn on Do Not Disturb, Flight Mode, Torch, Dark Mode, Battery Saver or to turn on Fairphone Moments, a stripped-back menu with quick links to the phone’s most useful functions (maps, messages etc). I personally switched it to torch, because I love it when a phone has a quick way to turn on the flashlight.
Housed in the power button is the phone’s fingerprint sensor, as the Fairphone 6 doesn’t have an under-display scanner. In testing, I found this reliable and quick to use.
The Fairphone 6 is one of the few phones that I don’t feel you need to buy a case for, as by default it feels like it’s clad in an armor of hard plastic. But there’s more; not only does it have IP55 certification against dust ingress and water, it has the military-grade MIL-STD-810H protection too. This means it’s passed tests designed by the US Department of Defense to check that it’s reliable in military situations, so it can withstand altitude, extreme temperatures, humidity, intense shocks and so on. You (hopefully) won’t need any of these protections, but it’s a useful little piece of mind so that you know the Fairphone is hardy.
The unique selling point of the Fairphone 6 is that it’s fully repairable; not by an expert or specialist but by you. If a part of your ecp-friendly phone is damaged you can easily buy a new one on Fairphone’s website and replace it with a screwdriver (the company’s video tutorials might help), saving you buying a whole new device if one component is damaged. This is that eco ethos in action.
It's also the case with accessories, as you can remove the phone’s back panel and replace it with a card holder, a finger loop or similar. The ability to be easily modded like this is perhaps the Fairphone 6’s most distinct upgrade over its predecessor and, frankly, is pretty fun to do too (Fairphone sent me each of the accessories along with the phone, though they’re not included in-box).
- Design score: 4 / 5
- 6.31-inchd display feels small compared to contemporaries
- New refresh rate at 120Hz beats predecessor
- Sometimes struggles in sunlight
Compared to the behemoth screens of some flagship Android phones, the Fairphone 6 might feel a bit small (or ‘compact’, which is the diplomatic word choice). The display measures 6.31 inches across, so it matches the iPhone 17 in this regard.
The resolution is 1116 x 2484, just a hair above FHD+, and it has a 120Hz refresh rate in a notable upgrade over the last-gen Fairphone. The max brightness is 1,400 nits which is fine, but not as bright as many rivals, and I wouldn’t have minded a bit of extra shine for use on sunny days.
Most of the time, though, the Fairphone 6 display works well, especially since it totes the same number of pixels as a much bigger display but crammed down into a smaller screen to increase the pixels-per-inch count.
- Display score: 3.5 / 5
- Comes with stock Android 15
- 7 years of updates
- Fairphone app gives extra insight into phone
Fairphone is one of the few remaining companies to use ‘true’ stock Android – not an Android fork, and not stock Android buried under so many customizations that it feels like a fork anyway.
In the case of the Fairphone 6 that means you’re looking at Android 15, and all the features that come with it: live location sharing, dodgy text warnings, screen time tracking and so on. The handset is due to get upgrades for the next seven years, which would take you up to Android 22 in the year 2033 (if that’s what Google decides to call it).
If you like a clean interface with no added bells and whistles, you’ll like the Fairphone 6’s software. You start free from bloatware and can build up your app library just how you like it.
Fairphone does have one addition: its own app is included on the device at start, and while you can remove it, there are some useful features. Firstly, it lets you find information about the device at a tap, instead of buried away in the Settings menu (although mine told me I had 0GB RAM and 0GB storage, perhaps an issue with a review unit. It lets you buy spare parts and accessories quickly too, providing video tutorials on how to add or replace parts.
But the most important is a phone health option, so you can see how much memory and storage you’ve used up, and also what the phone's temperature is, giving you a little insight into its operations. The benefit of this is for the device’s longevity, so you can keep it ticking longer.
- Software score: 4 / 5
- 50MP main and 13MP ultra-wide cameras, 32MP up front
- Pictures lack contrast and color, but are detailed
- Rear portraits look really good
Judging by a look at the specs list, Fairphone 6 isn’t being dragged into the camera- sensor pixel wars, dropping many from the past model. Its main camera is a 50MP f/1.6 snapper and it’s joined by a 13MP f/2.2 ultra-wide as well as a 3D time-of-flight sensor. Those specs are absolutely fine for a low-cost phone (except the TOF sensor, a relic of yesteryear, which nine times out of ten doesn’t contribute anything) but nothing to write home about.
Photos taken on the phone are… fine. Forgive the boring descriptor but it’s the most apt one. Snaps have lots of image quality but not much in the way of dynamic range, with a single cloud in the sky dooming the photo with a noticeable lack of color or vibrancy.
In well-lit scenarios things fared a little better, but only a little; the greens of a natural landscape blur into one and a little extra contrast would go a long way. Still, they’re fine-looking for sharing around, especially if you don’t mind going into the edit menu and sprucing them up a little.
Fairphone’s mobiles have rarely had much in the way of photo post-processing optimization, at least compared to competitors, and that’s the case again. It won’t impress anybody but this is a phone for saving the planet, not for capturing sparkly pictures flaunting all the air miles you’ve burned by going to a remote beach for your holiday.
(Image credit: Future)On the front there’s a 32MP f/2.0 camera for snapping selfies and I generally found it pretty fit for purpose, if still indicative of the rear cameras’ issues; snaps could be a little washed-out and colorless.
For a brief whip around the other specs: you can record video at 4K at 30fps or 1080p at 60fps, and down to 120fps at 1080p in slow-motion mode. Most of the other modes are ones you expect: Pro, panorama, time-lapse and night mode.
There are two modes I’ll flag. First is portrait, with the Fairphone 6 surprisingly touting one of the best iterations of this mode I’ve seen. While snaps weren’t exactly vibrant, the bokeh background blur was accurate and varied in intensity depending on the distance to the phone, which is something I rarely see; that could be the TOF sensor in effect.
The other mode is macro, which really didn’t work too well. Like on most phones without a dedicated macro lens it uses the ultra-wide one, resulting in a pixel-heavy pic, missing the depth of field that such pictures should have. In testing I always turned off macro mode and relied on the main camera for such shots instead.
- Camera score: 3.5 / 5
- Mid-range Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset
- Single 8GB/256GB model
- Bluetooth 5.4 or USB-C port for audio, no jack
As is the way with Fairphone’s mobiles, the Gen 6 doesn’t have a top-end chip, but it has enough power that you won’t find it too slow for everyday use. The chipset here is the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3, which we’ve also seen in the likes of the Nothing Phone 3(a) Pro and Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus.
This is a mid-range piece of kit, capable of handling gaming in a mostly fine fashion, though maybe not at the top graphics options if you don’t want stutters, and all everyday tasks.
When I put the phone through a Geekbench 6 benchmark test, it returned a multi-core average score of 3,430, which reflects the chipset; Snapdragon 600s often sit at around 2,000 points while 800s I’ve tested recently have gone to the mid 4,000s.
Paired with the chipset is 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, and there’s only one configuration available. While 8GB RAM is nothing to write home about, a spec that flags this as a mobile not designed for power-users, the storage is a solid amount that compensates for the lack of a microSD card slot.
It’s 2025 so of course there’s no 3.5mm audio jack for audio, Fairphone ditched that years ago when everyone else did. Instead you can listen to music using the Bluetooth 5.4 support or using a USB-C adaptor. The stereo speakers aren’t exactly impressive but that’s normal for a smartphone.
- Performance score: 3.5 / 5
- Relatively slender 4,415mAh battery
- Slow 30W charging
The Fairphone 6 has a 4,415mAh battery, one which the company estimates will keep you going for “almost two days” from 100% power. I wouldn’t go that far, and I’d put the lasting power at about a day, or a little bit longer if you’re not an intensive user.
That’s a fine battery life for a smartphone, even if 4,415mAh may seem anemic given that most contemporaries have pushed it to 6,000mAh. Fairphone’s own optimizations and software and spec choices often counter smaller-capacity batteries.
Of course, if your battery starts to diminish or go wrong, it’s one of the many parts of the phone you can swap out very easily.
Charging is done at 30W, which is again a little lower than rivals, and you’ll have to wait for well over an hour to get from empty to full. There’s no kind of reverse or wireless powering.
- Battery score: 3.5 / 5
What price would you put on a phone that looks after the planet?
Rhetoric aside, the Fairphone 6 isn't priced particularly competitively when you look at the specs, but what sets its apart is its lasting power.
Not only does its IP and military certification ensure it'll survive damage much better than other handsets on the market, but the fact you can replace ailing parts ensures that the mobile's lifespan will far outstrip anything else you might be considering.
After all, the average phone lasts for under three years, especially cheaper models. The Fairphone 6 will last you longer than multiple other models if you let it.
- Value score: 4.5 / 5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Value
The potential lasting power of this phone means its price seems like a bargain, when looking at the bigger picture.
4.5 / 5
Design
It's no looker, but it's well protected, easily modifiable and has a handy new slider.
4 / 5
Display
If you want a phone with a smaller screen, the Fairphone will fit you perfectly.
3.5 / 5
Software
The software is nice and clean, as Google intended, but without the extra features Android forks bring.
3.5 / 5
Camera
Other than the impressive portrait capabilities, the Fairphone 6 cameras are bang average.
3.5 / 5
Performance
The Snapdragon chip here is fine for everyday use for most people, but gamers will pine for more.
3.5 / 5
Battery
The battery is small and the charging slow, but optimizations ensure the actual battery life is okay.
3.5 / 5
Buy it if...You care about the planet
There's no use beating about the bush. If you want a smartphone that reflects your own climate principles, the Fairphone is the one and only to buy.
You want something a bit smaller
Compared to most modern-day beasts, the Fairphone 6 is the rare smaller Android phone (smaller, but not small).
You take lots of Portrait pictures
I've mentioned this numerous times through the review, but once more: the ToF sensor really adds something to Portrait-mode pics.
You want a powerful phone
The Snapdragon 700-family chipset is fine, but it's not going to provide the fierce power than an 800-series chip would.
You're not going to mod or repair your phone
Repairing or modding the Fairphone is easy, but if you feel worried about using a screwdriver to tweak your smartphone, you might not appreciate the benefits of the Fairphone 6's DIY repair potential. .
If you don't think this mobile is right for you, let's look at some similar-priced handsets. Just note, other than the first, these won't retain the Fairphone's green principles.
Fairphone 5
The previous-generation mobile is weaker in a few areas and doesn't come with the neat accessory integration, but being older, you can pick it up for a reduced price.
Read our full Fairphone 5 review
Nothing Phone 3a Pro
This slightly-cheaper rival looks even more alien than the Fairphone. Its specs are a little bit better across the board and it's much bigger.
Read our full Nothing Phone 3a Pro
Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus
This slightly-cheaper Android turns the specs up to 11, with a much higher-res rear camera, drastically-charger fasting and a bigger screen. However, as our reviewer points out, its software isn't great to use.
Read our full Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus review
Fairphone 6
Fairphone 5
Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro Plus
Nothing Phone 3a Pro
Starting price (at launch):
£499 (roughly $680, AU$990)
£649 (roughly $800 / AU$1,250)
$399 / £399 (roughly AU$800)
$459 / £449 / AU$849
Dimensions:
156.5 x 73.3 x 9.6mm
161.6 x 75.8 x 9.6mm
162.53 x 74.67 x 9.95mm
163.52 x 77.5 x 8.39mm
Weight:
193g
212g
210g
211g
OS (at launch):
Android 15
Android 13
Android 14, HyperOS
Android 15, NohtingOS 3.1
Screen Size:
6.31-inch
6.46-inch
6.67-inch
6.77-inch
Resolution:
1116 x 2484
2700 x 1224
2712 x 1220
1080 x 2392
CPU:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
Qualcomm QCM6490
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7s Gen 3
RAM:
8GB
8GB
8GB / 12GB
12GB
Storage (from):
256GB
256GB
256GB / 512GB
256GB
Battery:
4,115mAh
4,200mAh
5,110mAh
5,000mAh
Rear Cameras:
50MP main, 12MP ultra-wide
50MP main, 50MP ultra-wide
200MP main, 8MP ultra-wide
50MP main,. 50MP zoom, 8MP ultra-wide
Front camera:
32MP
50MP
20MP
50MP
How I tested the Fairphone 6(Image credit: Future)- Review test period = 2 weeks
- Testing included = Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
- Tools used = Geekbench 6, Geekbench ML, GFXBench, native Android stats
I tested the Fairphone 6 for just over two weeks to write this review, using it as my normal mobile in this time. As stated, I was sent the white version of the mobile along with all the extra accessories.
The testing process included a mix of experience and 'lab'-style, so I'd use the handset as my normal phone for some of the time but also conducted a battery of benchmarking tests as well. I also took the phone with me on holiday, hence the camera samples.
I didn't test the military-standard protection of the phone, due to not having a nearby warzone or extreme climate in which to do so. I'll have to take Fairphone's word for that.
As well as this mobile, I've tested the last few Fairphone mobiles, alongside plenty of other devices since I started reviewing for TechRadar in early 2019.
First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is a must-play for tactical RPG devotees – here’s my verdict on Square Enix’s revamped classic
When Final Fantasy Tactics was released in 1997, it was lauded as a masterful tactical role-playing game (RPG), mixing impressive visual effects with depth-filled combat and a stellar narrative. But now, this beloved title has been reborn, affording longtime fans as well as new players the chance to experience it all. Enter Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles – Square Enix’s remaster of a true classic.
Review infoPlatform reviewed: PS5
Available on: PS5, Nintendo Switch (physical and digital); Nintendo Switch 2, PS4, Xbox Series X and Series S, PC (digital only)
Release date: September 30, 2025
This expanded remaster brings plenty of shiny new stuff to the table. It’s fully voice-acted, has considerably upgraded visuals, and a fair few quality-of-life updates. All of these are available in the ‘Enhanced’ edition of the game, but you can also play through the original if you’d prefer, which uses the translation from War of the Lions – an updated version of the game which launched on the PlayStation Portable (PSP) back in 2007.
Anyway, I’ve played through the entirety of the Enhanced version of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and I’ve got plenty of thoughts – most of which are positive, fans will be delighted to hear! Let’s take a closer look at this remaster, then, and find out if it can do justice to a real fan favorite.
An adventure like no other(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)If you’re new to Final Fantasy Tactics, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the game’s premise. Ramza Beoulve is a highborn young man, who is thrust into a deeply political, brutal conflict – one that centers around two nobles vying for the throne of Ivalice.
Ramza – alongside his allies – will play a gigantic part in the war’s trajectory…though his actions will later be obscured in the history books. It is up to you, the player, to uncover the truth behind this conflict – and the importance of Ramza’s role within it.
You’ll control young Ramza and his allies across various battlefields, which use a tile configuration – something that fans of the Fire Emblem series, for example, will be well familiar with. You’ll have to level up your characters, recruit increasingly powerful units, and make use of the renowned job system – one of the best parts of the game, hands down.
You can switch between a number of jobs – spell casters like Black and White Mages, sword users like Squires and Knights, and a whole lot more. A key difference in the Enhanced version is that there’s a fully-fledged Job Tree, which makes it easy to understand how to unlock each class, and lets you track your progress in doing so.
Best bit(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)I had a huge amount of fun creating an army-crushing squad in The Ivalice Chronicles. Creating a monk, who could heal and hit-hard, while also using the Ninja’s dual wield skill for 2x the power, made for a truly devastating combination.
As had previously been the case, you earn job points in battle to increase a unit’s proficiency in a particular class, through which you can earn new abilities and passive skills. Mixing and matching skills from different jobs is great fun – and optimizing your skillset will be crucial if you want to make it through the main story, which is by no means a breeze…more on that later.
Some jobs do take ages to unlock – but it doesn’t always feel worth your time, given that some of the classes further along the tree have skills that seem a little situational. Still, you don’t have to make use of these jobs. One of my main units, for reference, was a monk – a melee fighter class you unlock pretty early. I just ensured that he had secondary skills from the Ninja class to keep him primed for late-game combat.
If your beloved monk unit dies in battle, for example, it may well be gone forever…devastating, I know. When a character faints, a display with three hearts will appear above it, and one heart will deplete for each turn a character remains unconscious. If you don’t revive it or complete the battle objective within this time, it will be gone forever.
New auto-save slots have made it easier to go back to before your unit dies – which is a very welcome inclusion. I used this a fair amount in my playthrough. After all, do you really want to spend hours on end re-training a new unit? Personally, I don’t have time for all that!
There’s one more thing I’d like to note about perma-death. In Fire Emblem titles, your units typically have a unique appearance and personality – something that can leave you feeling attached to them, and this causes deaths to feel that little bit more gutting.
In Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, though, a lot of characters have identical appearances and no personality beyond their brief vocal soundbites. This meant I wasn’t particularly attached or interested in my standard units – I often replaced them with special ones that play a more direct role in the plot, have unique costumes, and join your party as you progress through the story. By the way, Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (one of my favorite games, and one of the best RPGs of all time) is one of these…how cool is that?!
Not for the faint of heart(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)Speaking of special units, some of these are going to be extremely helpful – and sometimes almost feel necessary – to get through story battles. There’s one in particular who will join you late on, who is seriously powerful. I won’t spoil who it is for newcomers, but without them, I’d have been toast on a number of occasions.
Yes, I’ll be honest, I found The Ivalice Chronicles to be hard. At times, very hard. I’m an RPGs guy, and have finished some pretty punishing titles – yes, even Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. But the thing that caught me off guard in this game was its severe difficulty spikes.
Some of these, especially early on, forced me to better my understanding of the title’s impressively deep battle mechanics – stuff like zodiac compatibility, faith, and bravery elements require close attention.
Difficulty spikes later on, though, could feel pretty frustrating. I went from reconsidering my team’s build and strategy early on to reconsidering whether my sanity was still intact by the end. These spikes can make progression feel a little uneven, it has to be said, although there are ways to push through the most challenging encounters.
For instance, you can hop into random battles on the world map to grind up your levels and earn job points to get better healing skills, spells, and combat abilities. And these are entirely at your own pace – don’t fancy a random encounter? Just press flee and you can skip it. Need some EXP? Run around for a bit and prepare for battle. I love that you’re not forced into fights – something that can make some RPGs feel repetitive and relentless.
In addition, you can complete errands, which give you gil (the game’s currency) to spend on better armor, weapons, headgear, and accessories. They can also give you experience points and job points. These are entirely optional and are a useful way to earn experience for any backup units you want to use in the event of a character dying, for example.
Anyway, after you’ve been struggling in a fight and you’ve taken some time to train up, you’ll likely find a route to victory. And when you do, you’re going to feel very satisfied – I know I did. The endgame especially was pretty rough for me, but I got there in the end. It's worth noting that I played the whole game on Knight difficulty – the sort of ‘normal’ level. However, the Enhanced version adds an easy mode, Squire, and a hard mode, Tactician – that one’s for the show-offs.
A message more potent than ever, for a new generation(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles has a stellar narrative – one that plays to themes that are arguably even more timely now than they were almost 30 years ago.
The conflict I mentioned earlier takes place after a separate 50-year-long war, which has left much of the kingdom in economic turmoil. Distrust in the ruling class is at an all-time high, with the masses left to struggle in a ruined kingdom while nobles indulge in luxury. The world was, and remains, incredibly designed, with a new ‘state of the realm’ page that clarifies story details and can refresh your memory of character names, among other things.
State of the realm is one of many additions – most of which make for a much more refined experience. Personally, I love the revamped graphics – the game remains true to its roots, visually speaking. Battle animations are incredibly fluid, backdrops are beautifully composed, and colors really pop, injecting a ton of character into this complex world. The incredible score also adds so much texture to the world, and even random encounter tracks, like Apoplexy and Desert Land, had my head bopping mid-battle.
Functionally speaking, one of the best new features is fast-forward, which makes the pace of battle so much more palatable. A lot of movement and combat does feel pretty sluggish, so being able to speed through your enemy’s actions is most welcome. This also helps if you’re sitting through dialogue you’re already familiar with, and I made extensive use of it.
I already mentioned stuff like difficulty options, the job tree, and auto-save – and these all feel like considered, user-friendly inclusions – but despite that, there was some stuff I wasn’t loving about the Enhanced version.
(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)This might be controversial, but I think the voice acting is, at best, just OK. Some characters are well represented. Ben Starr – who was phenomenal as Verso in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 – does a good job with the cunning and crafty Dycedarg. The personalities of other characters, including Agrias, Cidolfus, and Ramza himself, are also communicated well – but the same can’t be said for others.
Some performances feel a little restrained, non-special characters occasionally have inconsistent accents or tones of voice, and some non-player characters (NPCs) have voices that don’t match their sprites whatsoever. I mean, am I really meant to believe this teenage-looking soldier sounds like a 50-year-old geezer from the east end of London?
Furthermore, I was frustrated by the game’s camera on numerous occasions. Sometimes, it would pan to a bizarre angle that prevented me from seeing the on-screen action. A new overhead tactical view did remedy this at times, but I would’ve liked some further improvements here. Otherwise, performance is fantastic on the PS5 version, no notes.
There's one more thing that didn’t bother me too much, but will be a concern for others. Content from War of the Lions is largely missing in this remaster. That means that its side content and drawn cutscenes have been mostly left out – something that will upset fans of the well-regarded PSP version, I’m sure.
Still, though, I have to say that I had a great time with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Yes, I have some minor gripes – severe difficulty spikes, a sometimes flawed camera, and imperfect voice acting, above all. But those things are certainly not enough to get in the way of an unforgettable adventure, packed with satisfyingly deep combat, a timely, well-written story, and a great score. The quality of life upgrades and enhanced visuals make this the ultimate way for new players to explore Ivalice, and if you’re a fan of tactical RPGs, this remains easy to recommend.
Should you play Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles?(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)Play it if...You want to revisit a 90s classic
If you’re a new player, or you were a fan of the original Final Fantasy Tactics, this expanded remaster is the perfect way to play it. With fast-forward, a tactical view, and graphical refinements, it’s a far more fluid and fast-paced adventure than ever before.
You want to sink your teeth into some deep lore
Ivalice is a kingdom that has long been marred by war and political disorder. Seeing how this climate influences the ideology of various actors from a range of factions is engrossing. The plot itself is densely layered, and the new ‘state of the realm’ menu provides an impressive level of context and information around Ivalice’s characters and conflicts.
You’re expecting an action RPG Final Fantasy experience
If you’re expecting the action-focused combat of more recent Final Fantasy titles – or even the active time battle system from others, The Ivalice Chronicles may catch you off guard. It’s a tactical RPG which shares a lot of similarities with games like Fire Emblem, so if you’re not into strategic tile-based titles, you may want to give this a miss.
You’re not digging the pixel style
The Ivalice Chronicles uses an Enhanced version of the pixel style used for the original PS1 title. But if you’re not really a fan of that, and want a full-blown 3D adventure more akin to Final Fantasy XVI, then again, you may be better off skipping this one.
There are a few useful accessibility settings in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. For instance, there’s a sound visualization option, which displays in-game sounds on the edges of the screen, as well as the choice to show speaker names during spoken exchanges.
There are also sound effect subtitles, volume sliders, multiple text languages (Japanese, English, German, and French), and both English and Japanese voice language options. Unfortunately, there is no colorblind mode or similar.
How I reviewed Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles:(Image credit: SQUARE ENIX)OK, so I spent more than 50 hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, battling through the entire main story, a healthy portion of side content, errands, and random encounters. I played the Enhanced version of the game in order to assess the remaster’s quality of life upgrades, graphical improvements, and voice acting.
I played the PS5 edition of the game, with my console connected up to the Sky Glass Gen 2 television and the Samsung HW-Q800D soundbar. When I was out and about, I’d also occasionally dip into the game via remote play on my Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, but this was pretty rare.
Personally, I’ve reviewed a variety of games here at TechRadar, including recent releases like Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army and Drag x Drive. I've also played a number of tactical RPGs, such as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, and a range of Final Fantasy titles.
First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
I watched all four episodes of Marvel Zombies on Disney+, and I wish it had more brains to go with its hyperviolent brawn
Spoilers follow for all four episodes of Marvel Zombies.
Marvel Studios has a patchy record when it comes to its animated projects. Sure, there have been hits like X-Men 97, but other productions – in the main – like Eyes of Wakanda and What If...? have flattered to deceive.
It's the latter that Marvel's latest animated show, Marvel Zombies, takes its cue from. A continuation of the story told in What If...? season 1 episode 5, titled 'What If... Zombies!?', the comic giant's first adult animated TV series is undeniably its most mature offering to date.
But, for all of its delightfully gory action and focus on the next generation of Marvel superheroes, it's weighed down by the same storytelling issues that have plagued many of the studio's other recent animated works.
The new avengersMarvel Zombies opens five years after What If...? season 1 episode 5's cliffhanger ending (Image credit: Marvel Television/Disney Plus)A four-part miniseries, Marvel Zombies is set five years after the initial zombie outbreak. A cataclysmic event caused by a virus that Dr Hank Pym brought back from a trip to the Quantum Realm in 'What If... Zombies!?', the planet Earth of this universe, one that sits adjacent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), has become a dystopia overrun by the undead.
Pockets of humanity remain, though, including a desperate groups of superpowered individuals who cling to survival against the odds. But, when a trio of heroes – Kamala Khan/Ms Marvel, Riri Williams/Ironheart, and Kate Bishop/Hawkeye – discover a key that could end the zombie scourge, the group embark on a dangerous, globetrotting journey to save their world.
It's highly satisfying to see the next generation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes take center stage
Marvel Zombies opening with the aforementioned triumvirate is intentional. Khan is arguably the protagonist of this story, with the optimistic and empathetic New Jersey-hailing hero being the center point that the plot is built around, as she reluctantly and then boldly leads the charge to end the zombie plague.
In Williams, Bishop and Khan, though, Marvel Zombies immediately sets out its stall to primarily focus on the new wave of superpowered beings who have begun to populate the MCU post-Avengers: Endgame.
Zombies doesn't solely rely on that intrepid trio, either. From Shang-Chi and members of the Thunderbolts* to Moon Knight and Blade – the latter pair are admittedly spliced together to form a new yet incredibly cool individual called Blade Knight – it's highly satisfying to see the next generation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes take center stage.
Marvel Zombies puts the next generation of Earth's Mightiest Heroes at the center of its narrative (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)That said, it's somewhat bittersweet that animated projects, such as What If...? and its zombie-based spin-off, mark the first time we've seen some of these popular heroes since their live-action MCU debuts – or, in Blade's case, who's only 'appeared' via an off-screen cameo in Eternals, at all.
An indictment of Marvel's scattergun approach post-Endgame that's seen the comic titan throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks with audiences, it's a great shame that many of Marvel Zombies' leading lights are only now getting another chance to shine, albeit via an animated Disney+ production.
It's surreal that Marvel Zombies is the first time Blade has actually appeared in a Marvel Studios project (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)Irksome though that is, I will admit it was really fun to see interactions between characters who are yet to cross paths in the MCU.
While all-too-brief to be emotionally impactful, the Khan-Bishop-Williams dynamic is incredibly likable, as is the broader team-up between Khan, Red Guardian, Yelena Belova, Blade Knight, Shang-Chi and the latter's bestie Katy that becomes the core collective for much of Marvel Zombies' run. I regularly revelled in seeing these individuals bounce off each other and re-demonstrate that whip-smart humor that Marvel projects are renowned for.
For all of the fun-filled rapport on display, though, Marvel Zombies was a bit too quippy and corny for my tastes on occasion. I wasn't expecting the Marvel Phase 6 TV series to be a wholly miserably affair. Nonetheless, seeing Red Guardian and Zombie Captain America duke it out in what I can only describe as a slapstick showdown, or listening to eye-roll inducing jokes from FBI agent Jimmy Woo, just didn't fit the mood or tone of the post-apocalyptic horror reality that Marvel Zombies takes place in.
The walking deadMarvel Zombies pays tribute to some great horror-fuelled episodes of television (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)Speaking of the hair-raising universe that Marvel Zombies exists in, Marvel doesn't hold back in making its first TV-MA project as gruesome as possible.
Marvel Zombies' first trailer teased its brutality and, while I had hoped for a bit more in the way of ultra-violence, it goes harder than any other Marvel Studios movie or TV show to date. I cannot stress this enough, but it's absolutely not family-friendly, nor is it for those who are squeamish or of the faint of heart.
Some of Marvel Zombies' best set-pieces and scenes add real cinematic flair to proceedings
If you can stomach its hyper-violent tendencies, though, Marvel Zombies will reward horror fans through its clear homages to some fan-favorite genre fare. Indeed, whether it's the dread-inducing 'Hardhome' episode of Game of Thrones, or scenes that reminded me of similar sequences in World War Z and Train to Busan, some of Marvel Zombies' best set-pieces and scenes add real cinematic flair to proceedings that occasionally conceal the mid-tier art style it retains from What If...?.
Parts of Marvel Zombies' story, as well as its action sequences, leave a lot to be desired (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)However, all the horror genre references in the world, nor positive things I've said about Marvel Zombies, can disguise my frustration with its wider narrative, though.
I'll preface my criticism by saying there's the skeleton of an engrossing story here. Indeed, its plot makes some interesting revisions to the world-building aspect of the MCU. The recycling of certain MCU technology to try and thwart the threat posed by the undead is put to good use, too.
Add in the previously discussed new-look Avengers team, the camaraderie that exists between them, and the prospect that none of them are immune from becoming the zombie horde's next victim, and I actually appreciate some of the creative and narrative swings that Marvel Zombies takes.
Spider-Man's appearance in Marvel Zombies is the main reason why it was turned into a TV show (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)Nevertheless, Marvel Zombies is hamstrung by irritating storytelling components.
Whether it's the rudimentary MacGuffin positioned as the answer to our heroes' prayers, the decision not to pick up the story immediately after the cliffhanger ending in 'What If... Zombies!?' or a spate of character deaths that are significantly lacking in the gut-punching and/or tear-jerking department, at times Marvel Zombies can feel as emotionless as the reanimated corpses that inhabit its world. That's before we even get onto my biggest gripe about a major narrative inconsistency that occurs in its final episode, which not only changes a key moment near the end of 'What If... Zombies!?', but is practically waved away without explanation.
Marvel Zombies is hamstrung by irritating storytelling components
Part of Marvel Zombies' plot-based problems might be the fact it's a glorified TV show. Originally, it was designed to be a two-hour movie but, due to the complexities of the rights surrounding Spider-Man – don't worry, the lead of 'What If... Zombies!?' plays a part of proceedings, albeit in a reduced role – that prohibits Marvel from using him in a feature film capacity without Sony's consent, Marvel Zombies was turned into a limited series.
As a Spidey fanboy, I'll always take any webslinger-based storytelling and action where I can. However, there's no denying that his ongoing inclusion in this What If...? spin-off upsets Zombies' narrative rhythm.
My verdictI really wanted to like Marvel Zombies more than I did. That doesn't mean it's another average or poor offering from Marvel – indeed, there's frightful fun to be had with its gratuitous violence, unexpected team-ups and universe-altering stakes. Based on its ending, there's clearly an appetite to continue its story, too.
Nonetheless, if X-Men 97 is the high bar with which we judge projects developed by Marvel Animation, Zombies is something of a let down. That might be overly critical of me to say, especially when I also consider Zombies to be a better and more enjoyable Marvel TV Original than What If...? and Eyes of Wakanda.
Given my high expectations and excitement for Marvel's first adult animated show, though, I can't mask my disappointment for Marvel Zombies as an overall package. If its creative team gets another bite at the cherry with another season, I'd love nothing more for them to cure Zombies' narrative ailments. For now, though, Marvel Zombies is another project from the comic giant that'll shuffle onto Disney+ and likely be forgotten about within a week or two.
Marvel Zombies is out now in full on Disney+.
Categories: Reviews
Laifen Wave SE Toothbrush review: Gentle, affordable, dual-action cleaning
Laifen Wave SE Toothbrush: One minute review
The Laifen Wave SE is the second electric toothbrush from the Chinese manufacturer. This Special Edition variant is a follow-up to the original Wave which looks – and is in most ways – very similar.
The standout difference in the SE over the Wave is that this offers what the company calls a more "cozy" brushing experience. How? It vibrates less. Yup, while the original Wave pushed out a brain buzzing 66,000 vibrations per minute, this variant is a far more gentle 26,000. There are also a few more color variants available in the SE, too.
So while this might make the best electric toothbrush list alongside sonic and traditionally oscillating models, this brush both oscillates and vibrates, carving its own niche in electric toothbrush options.
One other big shift in the SE is that this model has been certified by the American Dental Association. That makes this the first dual-action toothbrush to achieve this accolade, helping this unique offering stand out even more.
The battery life is another area this manages to perform very well in thanks to a 50-hour top-end, possibly due to its lower power. The brush can be charged to full in only three hours using a standard USB-C port, meaning you may only need to take one cable when travelling.
Most Laifen replacement heads will work with the SE, and you get two with the unit including travel cases for each. But you can also use Philips SonicCare heads, which is great if you need to pick one up in a physical shop, where you likely won't find Laifen anytime soon.
Laifen Wave SE review: Price and availability(Image credit: Future)- Priced at $90 in the US
- £90 in the UK
- AU$200 in Australia
The Laifen Wave SE follows up the original, which arrived earlier in 2025, and is priced at $89.99 in the US, £89.99 in the UK and AU$199.99 in Australia.
That price gets you the brush unit, two replacement heads with their own travel cases, and a USB-A to USB-C charger cable. You also get an impressive two-year warranty and a 30-days "no hassle" guarantee.
Usefully, depending on your region, you can buy via Amazon for a quick and secure delivery – which can be free for Prime members.
You can buy a set of three replacement heads in various designs and levels of stiffness, including Super Clean, Gum Care, or Ultra-Whitening. In all cases, the price is the same at US$15.99 / £15.99 / AU$14.99 for a set.
- Value score: 4.5 / 5
Component
Value
Battery life
50 days
Sonic vibrations
26,000 per minute
Charger
USB-C
Timer
Yes, two minute with 30-second haptics
Noise
55 dB
Charge time
3 hours
Laifen Wave SE review: Design(Image credit: Future)- Two colors
- IP68 waterproof
- Cushioned heads
At first glance you'd struggle to spot the difference between the Laifen Wave SE and the original model. That's because they're almost identical, only this version comes in two new colors: the Matte Yellow you see in these photos, plus a Meadow Green option.
In both cases, the outer is a soft matte PU coating that gives it a gentle feel but also adds plenty of grip, even when wet. At the top is a soft-to-touch power button topped by three LED lights to show which of the three settings you are using.
At the base is a cover which can be lifted to access the USB-C charging port. When closed, this creates a flat base so the brush can be stood up effectively. Up top is a metallic connector allowing you to swap heads with an easy slide on-and -off action. This is thanks to what the company calls an "advanced copper-free tufting process" which apparently prevents rust while keeping the heads in place.
The heads themselves are coated in soft food-grade TPE. The bristles themselves are ultra-fine to ensure they give the most accurate clean. Everything is IP68 waterproof which should mean you can give this a rinse under the tap without any worries.
- Design score: 4 / 5
- 50-day battery life
- Fast 3-hour charging
- USB-C port
Despite this offering both 60-degree oscillation movement and sonic vibrations at 26,000 per minute, this manages to deliver an impressive 50-day battery life, providing it's kept on the softer setting. Then, when it comes to charging, the brush reaches back up to full in less than three hours. Crucially, the USB-C connection means you can use any old charging cable – a great feature when traveling, as you could use your phone charger if needed.
The oscillations themselves are a big part of the appeal: oscillating brushes are slightly higher by dentists, as you can see in our rotating vs sonic toothbrush examination. The oscillation mimics the kind of up and down action your dentist may have told you to do.
The app offers setting variations so you can find the ideal brush setup for you, including adjusting the level of vibration intensity, oscillation range and oscillation speed. These are presets available, so you can set up three separate presets on the brush and jump between them depending on what you want that day.
Brush heads are available from Laifen, but if you're stuck out you can always pick up a Philips Sonicare head from a shop and that will also fit on the brush. It's nice to see it's not entirely proprietary.
(Image credit: Future)- Features score: 4 / 5
- Powerful top-end
- Long battery life
- Highly adjustable
This brush offers a quiet setting at just 55db and an impressive 50-day battery life. But that's on the gentle mode, which I found it to be far too weak. With the settings pumped up, I noticed the battery life did drop, and that noise jumped quite a bit louder. However, neither was to the point of being a problem and this will still get you more than a month of use – and the noise isn't annoyingly loud – it brings the toothbrush more in line with its high-power contemporaries. What you have here, essentially, is a toothbrush with a low-power option.
The power button won't allow you activate with a long hold or double-tap to change mode. So while you can have three preset modes, you'll need to dig out the app to change them, which is frustrating, and it reset after charging. I had to dig out the app to get back to how I like it. Not ideal.
The brush handle did a great job of absorbing vibrations while the head still delivered a powerful brush to your teeth. It strikes that perfect balance of being comfortable in the hand while giving your teeth a good, deep clean. Changing heads was easy, charging was fast and simple, cleaning was a doddle and the brush packed a soft, grippy outer that makes using this a pleasure.
- Performance score: 4/5
Category
Comment
Score
Value
A decent price for what you get
4.5/5
Design
Clean, easy to hold and effective
4/5
Features
That oscillation angle and battery performance
4/5
Performance
Great cleaning, top battery and excellent comfort. Some minor frustrations.
4/5
Laifen Wave SE: Should I buy?Buy it if...You want soft cleaning
The actions are dual so you will get a good clean, but you can reduce the power for a gentle clean to protect your gums if you need.
You don't want to think about charging
The 50-day battery life combined with three-hour charge time make the thought of battery life one you needn't often concern yourself with.
You want oscillating power
This brush oscillates for improved cleaning, at the price of a decent sonic brush.
Don't buy it if...You don't like oscillating heads
To be clear this moves a lot, up and down, so expect action even if on the gentle setting.
You don't want to buy heads online
At time of publishing you can only get replacement heads online for delivery, so if you like the option of picking yours up in-store, this might not suit you. There's always the Sonicare options though.
Also considerComponent
Oral-B iO Series 6
Colgate Hum Smart Rhythm
Battery life
20+ days
90 days
Movement
8,800 oscillations+ 20,000 pulsations per minute
30,000 vibrations per minutes
Charge time
12 hours
AAA batteries
Modes
Five
Two
Oral-B iO Series 6
An affordable way to get all the power of the iO Series with its pulsations and oscillations combination, to get the ultimate clean as well as that display for helpful feedback and mode selection.
Read our full Oral-B iO Series 6 review
Colgate Hum Smart Rhythmic
For a well-price sonic toothbrush, that offers replacement batteries as an option, this is a powerful pick with 30,000 vibrations per minute and two modes for decent brushing control.
Read our full Colgate Hum Smart Rhythmic review
How I testedI used the Laifen Wave SE multiple weeks in order to test the effectiveness of the brush itself, along with battery performance. I used this for travel, overnight, and in various bathrooms with multiple chargers.
My brushing was twice daily with its two-minute timer and haptic half-minute guidance vibrations used to get a full and fair brush. I was also testing other brushes from Oral-B, which allowed me to see the difference between features like extra modes, oscillations versus sonics, battery life, apps and more.
Categories: Reviews
Storm Proxies review
Established by a group of digital marketing experts, Storm Proxies has existed since 2016 and has grown to become a leading proxy service provider catering to individuals and small businesses. It currently runs a modest network of only 700,000+ IPs compared to some competitors that surpass 100 million. Those IPs are mainly concentrated in the United States and Europe, as opposed to the competitors that cover virtually every country in the world.
That said, where it lacks in the IP spread, it certainly makes up for it with the affordability of its proxies for basic activities. Unlike major competitors, Storm Proxies isn’t there to cover your every proxy requirement, marketing itself as a simple proxy provider and meeting expectations in this matter.
Plans and pricingStorm Proxies provides access to three IP categories: residential rotating proxies, private dedicated addresses, and backconnect rotating proxies, each with its own distinct pricing options.
The company charges a monthly fee for private dedicated datacenter IPs according to the number of proxies. For $10/month, you can get 5 private IPs with unlimited bandwidth at 1 Gbps speed. At $20/month, you can get 10 IPs; $40/month gets you 20 IPs, $60/month provides access to 30 IPs, $90/month is guaranteed 50 IPs, $160/month means 100 IPs, $320/month is 200 IPs, and for $640/month, you can get 400 data center proxies. In other words, the higher the number of IPs, the lower the cost per IP.
Where residential rotating proxies are concerned, you pay according to the number of ports, or ‘proxy gateway’ IPs, that change every 5 minutes. Hence, access to one residential IP port costs $19/month, 5 ports are charged $50/month, 10 ports are $90/month, 20 ports are $160/month, 50 ports are $300/month, 100 ports are $550/month, 200 ports cost $900/month, and 500 ports can be yours for $1,600/month.
For reverse rotating backconnect proxies, you pay according to the number of ‘threads’ or simultaneous connections from one device. The pricing starts at $39/month and includes unlimited bandwidth for up to 40 simultaneous connections. To get 80 connections, you’ll pay $59/month, and $97/month will get you 150 connections.
There’s no free trial, but the 24-hour money-back guarantee is supposed to give you a taste of what Storm Proxies has to offer.
FeaturesStorm Proxies focuses on proxy IPs and lacks complementary features you’ll find on other proxy providers, such as web scraping APIs. However, it performs its core function well. Let’s explore the features users can access on this platform.
Residential rotating proxiesResidential proxies are real IP addresses sourced from physical devices. The device owners agree to add their IP address to Storm Proxies’ network in exchange for a benefit, e.g., VPN usage. Storm Proxies pools these IPs and offers them to its users.
Storm Proxies offers a roughly 700,000-strong pool of rotating residential proxies. Rotating means your IP address changes frequently, switching to a new one randomly selected from the pool. Constant rotation makes it harder for websites to detect the proxies, providing better anonymity and security.
What are residential proxies used for? Web scraping is a good use case. Suppose you run a website showing users the best sports and concert ticket deals. This website requires frequent data scraping from ticket sites like StubHub and Ticketmaster. However, these sites dislike data scraping and institute geographical and IP restrictions to block it. Storm Proxies’ residential proxies help counter these blocks.
When you use a residential proxy to visit a website, the website thinks the traffic comes from a typical device. With IP rotation, the website thinks the traffic comes from different devices visiting the site as usual. Some ticket websites block traffic from entire countries, usually those they aren’t serving. But you can simply bypass this geo-restriction by choosing a US or EU proxy.
Storm Proxies' residential proxies have unlimited bandwidth, so you don't need to worry about the volume of data being scraped. It uses encryption to hide your actual IP address from websites. During our test, Storm Proxies’ IPs offered fast speeds and performance, with little slowdown compared to accessing sites normally. The drawback is this platform’s limited proxy pool, with servers concentrated in the US and EU and negligible in other regions.
Datacenter IPsDatacenter IPs are IP addresses tied to physical servers. These servers are sourced from secondary corporations, and Storm Proxies gives users easy access. Unlike residential proxies, which rotate every 3 to 5 minutes, datacenter IPs are static. You'll get one IP for a long time, but you can request up to two replacements monthly.
(Datacenter IPs are IP addresses tied to physical servers. These servers are sourced from secondary corporations, and Storm Proxies gives users easy access. Datacenter IPs offer rapid speed and performance. In this case, a physical server with a stable connection sits as an intermediary between you and the Internet. This is much better than relying on an end user’s PC or mobile phone (residential IP), which might have an unstable connection.
If you’re scraping massive data volumes, datacenter IPs are the best choice because of their better reliability and speed. The drawback is their limited reach, with Storm Proxies offering datacenter IPs only in the US (Cheyenne, Los Angeles, and New York City). If you need a datacenter IP in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and other continents, Storm Proxies can’t fulfill this need.
Backconnect rotating proxiesBackconnect proxies are a type of proxy server that dynamically routes traffic through a pool of rotating IPs. Storm Proxies lets you choose proxies that change every 3 minutes or 15 minutes. A 3-minute proxy is suitable for regular browsing or account creation, while 15-minute proxies are suitable for longer browsing sessions. You can also get a fresh IP address with every new HTTP request, enhancing your anonymity.
Storm Proxies gives you one or several "proxy gateway" IPs that you'll enter inside your proxy management software. With this connection set up, you'll receive a new proxy IP on every HTTP request, every 3 minutes or every 15 minutes (depending on what you choose). You don't need to manually change IPs in your proxy management software: everything works automatically on Storm Proxies' side.
The maximum number of backconnect proxy connections you can open depends on your proxy plan. Storm Proxies offers different plans ranging from 40 to 150 simultaneous connections. The lowest plan provides one IP address, and the highest includes 3 IP addresses for different computers. Users get unlimited bandwidth, so there’s no need to worry about your data scraping volumes.
Storm Proxies’ backconnect proxies were reliable during our test. We liked that the pools rotated automatically while we surfed the web seamlessly. We chose the option for a new IP address with every request, enabling us to bypass geo-restrictions more effectively, although we encountered a few request failures. The main drawback remains Storm Proxies’ limited 700,000-IP pool, unlike many competitors that give access to tens of millions of global IPs.
It’s worth noting some features that Storm Proxies lack. The first is a web scraping API, which many competitors provide. Web scraping is the most common use case for proxy servers, so many proxy providers offer APIs to assist users. This feature lets people kill two birds with one stone: getting reliable proxies and the APIs to leverage those proxies for data scraping.
Web scraping APIs let you automate massive data scraping tasks. You’ll choose the website you want to scrape from and select your data type, and the API fetches the data. The timing depends on the volume of data being scraped. APIs let you automate scraping tasks ahead of time. Unfortunately, Storm Proxies doesn’t provide this feature.
We don’t like that Storm Proxies doesn’t offer bandwidth-based pricing plans, which can be more economical for small users. If you need just a few GB of proxy bandwidth, it’ll be more cost-effective to pay for precisely that rather than subscribe to a monthly plan you won’t fully utilize. We also don’t like this platform’s limited geographical reach, with servers primarily in the US and EU. But if you’re looking for reliable proxies in these regions, Storm Proxies is an excellent choice.
Ease of useStorm Proxies offers a simple dashboard that we found easy to use. Setting up your proxies is as simple as it gets, helped by its limited features (there's not much to navigate). Creating an account requires your full name and email address. Then, you'll be asked to select a plan, although you can register without paying initially. After registration, you’ll be taken to the dashboard to access the proxies you paid for.
(Image credit: Storm Proxies)The user interface is simple, with all options at the top and the main dashboard below. From this menu, you can renew your plan, deploy new proxies, change credentials, and whitelist IPs. However, we noticed a user interface-related drawback: the lack of usage reports.
(Image credit: Storm Proxies)Most proxies we've tested provide extensive usage reports, letting users know how much bandwidth they've consumed over time. But Storm Proxies doesn’t have this feature, which we consider a disadvantage. On the bright side, Storm Proxies offer unlimited bandwidth, so you don’t need to monitor your usage rigorously.
Customer supportCustomer support is an area where Storm Proxies needs considerable improvement. It claims to offer "24/7 Premium Support, but this support is only available via email. There's no live chat or telephone option to communicate with support staff in real-time. You can wait up to 24 hours to get a response to a support email. Storm Proxies’ support system isn’t the best when you need solutions to urgent issues.
There's an official Knowledge Base with solutions to common user challenges, e.g., “How do I start using proxies?” You can consult this Knowledge Base after encountering any issue, then seek direct support if you don’t find a solution to it.
(Image credit: Storm Proxies)The competitionThe proxy server industry is very competitive, meaning we can give Storm Proxies an endless list of formidable competitors. We’d like to highlight Bright Data and Oxylabs as the main rivals.
Bright Data is a stellar proxy provider that offers residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies from its gargantuan network of 72 million+ IPs. It also offers sophisticated web scraping APIs, letting users kill two birds with one stone. Overall, we consider Bright Data a better proxy service than Storm Proxies, albeit a more expensive one.
Oxylabs has a massive pool of 175 million+ proxies, compared to Storm Proxies’ minuscule 700,000+. It provides residential, datacenter, ISP, and mobile proxies, plus web scraping APIs and pre-built datasets. Oxylabs is a more sophisticated proxy provider than Storm Proxies. However, unlike Storm Proxies, which offers unlimited bandwidth, its residential IPs are bandwidth-limited.
Final verdictOffering only residential and dedicated datacenter proxies, limited customer support, and a tiny number of accessible IPs compared to many competitors, Storm Proxies is far from being a very sophisticated proxy provider. Still, it’s one of the best budget proxy platforms in the industry. If you need a bit of data scraping from US and EU websites, then Storm Proxies is the way to go. This means it’s best suited for individual and small business users and not enterprises seeking a solution for massive data scraping tasks.
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Categories: Reviews
Bright Data review
Originally named Luminati Networks, Bright Data traces its beginnings back to 2014, when it was established as a division of a renowned VPN service called Hola. In 2017, it was sold separately from Hola and rebranded under its current name in 2021 to highlight its goal of helping users scrape data with its proxy services.
Today, Bright Data provides access to its 150 million-strong collection of proxy IPs, including to more than 20,000 enterprises. Alongside individual users, they rely on its residential, datacenter, and mobile proxies to circumvent geographical restrictions and scrape important information.
- Want to try Bright Data? Check out the website here
Due to offering different types of proxies and related services, Bright Data has several pricing options.
Users pay for residential proxies according to the bandwidth they consume. Bright Data offers three standard plans, currently at a 50% discount for the first three months: $499 monthly for 141 GB, $999 monthly for 332 GB, and $1,999 monthly for 798 GB. Alternatively, you can choose the pay-as-you-go option starting at $4 per GB. The drawback is that the pay-as-you-go plan is slightly more expensive in the long run ($4 per GB compared to $3.5 per GB on the standard 141 GB plan). If you need more than 1 TB, you can reach out to the company for customized pricing.
For datacenter proxies, users can pay according to the number of IP addresses they require. The standard plans are 10 IPS at $14 per month ($1.4 per IP), 100 IPs at $100 per month ($1 per IP), 500 IPs for $475 per month ($0.95 per IP), and 1,000 IPs at $900 per month ($0.9 per IP). As with residential proxies, if these plans don’t meet your needs, you can contact the company for tailored pricing above 1,000 IPs. Users can also pay for datacenter proxies according to bandwidth. The standard plans are $499 monthly for 1 TB, $999 monthly for 2 TB, and $1,999 monthly for 5 TB. The pay-as-you-go option with no monthly commitment costs $0.6 per GB.
Dedicated datacenter proxies are pricier.
If you need ISP proxies, Bright Data has four standard plans to offer you: $18/month for 10 IPs ($1.8 per IP), $145/month for 100 IPs ($1.45 per IP), $700/month for 500 IPs ($1.4 per IP), and $1,300/month for 1,000 IPs ($1.3 per IP). You can also pay for ISP proxies according to bandwidth. The standard plans are $499 monthly for 39 GB, $999 monthly for 88 GB, and $1,999 monthly for 190 GB. The pay-as-you-go option with no monthly commitment costs $15 per GB.
Dedicated ISP IPs are a bit more expensive but follow the same structure. Similarly to residential and datacenter plans, should you require over 1,000 IPs or 1 TB, you’ll need to check in with the Bright Data team directly.
Mobile proxies are priced similarly to residential proxies, $499/month for 71 GB, $999/month for 166 GB, and $1,999/month for 399 GB, with the possibility to get the pay-as-you-go, no commitment option at $8 per GB.
Bright Data offers sophisticated web access APIs with its Web Unlocker API pricing coming in three standard versions: Growth for $499 monthly ($1.3 per 1,000 results), Business for $999 monthly ($1.1 per 1,000 results), and Premium for $1,999 monthly ($1 per 1,000 results). The higher your plan, the greater the scraping requests available each month. If you don’t want a monthly commitment, you can choose the $1.5 per 1,000 results pay-as-you-go plan.
It also has a similarly priced Web Scraper API, at $499/month for 1K records under the Growth subscription, $999/month for 1K records included in the Business plan, and $1,999/month for 1K records as offered by the Premium pricing tier. These are currently available at a 25% discount. As expected, there’s a pay-as-you-go option at $1.5 per 1K records.
SERP API has the same pricing structure as the Web Scraper API, except that it’s currently available at a 50% discount for the first six months of use. The Browser API pricing follows much the same sentiment, costing $499/month for 71 GB, $999/month for 166 GB, and $1,999/month for 399 GB. The no-commitment option is charged $8 per GB.
Alternatively, you can run your scrapers as serverless functions at $500/month + compute time of $0.095/hr under the Growth plan, $1,000/month + $0.09/hr compute time as part of the Business option, and $2,000 + $0.085/hr compute time included in the Enterprise subscription.
Finally, Bright Data offers pre-built datasets, a unique feature that many proxy platforms don’t have. Starting at $250 per month for 100,000 records, these datasets allow businesses to access ready-made data instead of scraping it from scratch at higher costs. Available datasets include Amazon products, Yahoo Finance stock market data, Zillow real estate listings, LinkedIn profiles, and much, much more.
There’s no free trial available per se, but you do get $2 in credits when first signing up. Bright Data also offers a 7-day free trial for registered companies. This trial period is short, but it helps users test the features before committing to a monthly or pay-as-you-go plan.
FeaturesAccessing Bright Data’s features starts with registration. To sign up as a new user, you’ll need a work email address, but the platform also supports logging in with Google and GitHub accounts. You'll receive a verification email after signing up and creating a password.
Residential ProxiesBright Data offers proxy IP addresses sourced from physical devices worldwide. People agree to add their devices to the network for a benefit, such as a VPN subscription. Bright Data’s users can then choose one of the IPs to bypass geo-restrictions and scrape data.
This platform offers over 150 million ethically sourced residential proxies from 195 countries, with the most popular locations being Brazil, India, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, Russia, and China. Residential proxies rotate IP addresses, i.e., change with each browsing session.
(Image credit: Bright Data )During our test, the residential proxies had excellent speed and reliability. Both static and rotating proxies allowed us to surf the web seamlessly and bypass strict website geo-restrictions. You can manage all proxies from your user dashboard, deploying new ones or removing existing ones at will.
Bright Data gives you significant control over your proxies. You can choose proxies from specific cities, states, and countries. The robust IP network, especially in Europe and North America, makes it easier to bypass geo-restrictions. If an IP address can’t successfully bypass the restriction, Bright Data rotates different IP addresses until it succeeds.
ISP ProxiesISP proxies are static residential proxies sourced directly from Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Unlike residential IPs that rotate with each browsing session, a static ISP proxy is assigned only to you. You can keep this static IP for as long as your subscription lasts.
Bright Data offers a network of 1,300,000+ fully compliant static IPs, with the most popular locations being the U.S., U.K., Germany, Italy, and France. The U.S. has the highest number of static IPs - 1,173,705 - while all other countries have fewer than 15,000 each. This smaller number is expected because of the higher costs and difficulty of obtaining IP addresses directly from ISPs.
The static ISP proxies offered excellent speed and reliability during our test. Bright Data lets users manage static IPs directly from their Control Panel or an external API. The user-friendly Control Panel makes it easy to deploy and organize a large number of proxies.
ISP proxies are more reliable than typical residential proxies because they don’t change frequently. Using one IP address for a long period makes it easier to browse anonymously and break through geographical and IP website restrictions. Once you bypass a site’s restriction with a static IP, you can continue accessing the site with that IP. In contrast, rotating proxies mean you can bypass a site’s restriction today and struggle to bypass it tomorrow with a new IP address. Expectedly, Bright Data’s static IPs cost more than rotating IPs.
Datacenter ProxiesDatacenter proxies are sourced from secondary corporations rather than ISPs. A server (in a datacenter) with a unique IP acts as the intermediary between your device and a website you want to access. You can request a shared or dedicated datacenter IP: a dedicated IP is more reliable in circumventing site blockades.
(Image credit: Bright Data)Bright Data offers 770,000+ datacenter proxies in 98 countries, unlike residential proxies available in 195 countries. You can select your datacenter proxy by specific city or country. These proxies are fast because your browser request is sent directly from the proxy server to the target website, unlike residential proxies that can bounce through several devices before reaching the target site.
The drawback is that datacenter proxies are more vulnerable to detection because of their less diverse IP range. They are cost-effective but less efficient at bypassing geo-restrictions than residential and ISP proxies.
Mobile proxiesBright Data’s pool includes over 7 million mobile proxy IPs from 195 countries. These residential IPs are sourced from mobile devices across the globe, with India, the U.S., and Brazil having the largest share in Bright Data’s pool. You can use these IPs to surf the web from the eyes of real mobile users. You can choose IPs from 3G, 4G, or 5G networks.
During our test, Bright Data’s mobile proxies provided top-notch browsing speed. We tested IPs from different countries, and they worked reliably. Usually, mobile IPs are more expensive than residential IPs from PCs, but Bright Data charges the same amount for both.
Web Scraper APIWeb scraping is one of the most common use cases for proxy servers. Some businesses need to scrape massive amounts of data from a website, e.g., pricing data from retail sites. However, many websites discourage scraping by implementing geographical and IP restrictions. Proxy IPs let businesses bypass these restrictions and scrape their desired data.
(Image credit: Bright Data)As a first-rate platform, Bright Data doesn’t stop at providing proxy IP addresses for web scraping. It also provides APIs that let businesses automate data scraping. It has ready-made scraping APIs for websites like Facebook, Amazon, LinkedIn, Zillow, X, ChatGPT, and TikTok. Several websites, such as Facebook, have filed lawsuits to block these scraping APIs, but Bright Data has countersued and prevailed.
Suppose you run a price comparison site that helps people find the best e-commerce deals. You can use Bright Data’s APIs to automate data scraping from Amazon, Walmart, eBay, and other popular e-commerce sites. You’ll then clean the scraped data and display it on your price comparison website.
Bright Data's APIs can handle bulk scraping requests, convert raw HTML into structured data, and validate data automatically. Pricing depends on the number of API requests you make.
Dataset MarketplaceYou don’t always have to scrape data from scratch. Bright Data offers an alternative: ready-made datasets sourced from different websites. It provides pre-built datasets from many websites, like LinkedIn, Pinterest, Crunchbase, Amazon, and Redfin. You can also get categorical datasets, such as car prices, housing prices, crime rates, NBA players' stats, etc.
(Image credit: Bright Data)Pre-built datasets reduce headaches for businesses. Instead of scraping data from scratch and waiting a while to access it, you can access datasets already scraped by others. Pricing starts from $250 monthly for 100,000 records.
Ease of UseBright Data has an intuitive interface you’ll likely enjoy using. The left menu has all the features you need to access, and the right side is the main dashboard. Many features are neatly arranged across the dashboard to make them easy to find. With a white background and a few contrasting colors, Bright Data’s interface looks visually pleasing.
(Image credit: Bright Data)You can access this proxy software primarily from the desktop interface. There’s also a Google Chrome extension that lets you seamlessly change proxy locations. Bright Data's user-friendliness is unmatched by most rivals.
Customer SupportOne of Bright Data’s strengths is its top-notch support. You can contact its support team 24/7 and receive a response in less than 30 minutes. It offers support via live chat and email, but there’s no telephone support.
Bright Data also provides extensive documentation and user manuals to help users figure out solutions to their problems. The website’s Docs section contains detailed guides for all features and an API reference that helps users write effective data scraping commands.
We found Bright Data’s documentation easy to follow and helpful for our test. For instance, we followed the web scraping tutorial to harvest data from an external website.
The CompetitionThe proxy software market is very competitive. There’s no shortage of rivals to Bright Data, and the ones we’d like to highlight are Decodo (formerly Smartproxy), Oxylabs, and Webshare.
Decodo is an excellent proxy provider offering residential, ISP, and datacenter proxies. It's a cost-effective alternative with a large pool of 125 million+ IPs across 195 countries. However, Bright Data has a larger IP pool across the same number of countries and offers more features and customizability.
Oxylabs offers a slightly larger IP pool, with 175 million+ addresses compared to Bright Data’s 150 million+. Both platforms have similar offerings, but Bright Data provides some features not available in the other, such as a dataset marketplace and a web IDE. Bright Data also has a more responsive support team than Oxylabs, according to our experience when testing both.
Webshare is one of the best alternatives that go head-to-head with Bright Data. It’s a more affordable tool, which is crucial for small businesses. It offers effective APIs to scrape data en masse, just like Bright Data. However, Webshare has a much smaller pool of IP addresses: roughly 80 million compared to Bright Data’s 150 million.
Final VerdictBright Data is a comprehensive provider of proxy and proxy-related services. It offers not just tons of IP addresses covering the entire world, but also throws in quite a few extras for good measure. These include different kinds of web scraping APIs and even pre-built datasets. Thanks to these features, it’s well equipped to provide you with anything you need to bypass website restrictions and scrape any required data. There are a few drawbacks here and there, primarily its higher cost compared to the competition, but it might well be worth it, especially for high-volume needs.
We've also highlighted the best proxy and best VPN
Categories: Reviews
GoPro's Max 2 sets the bar for 8K quality, but the 360 camera is not without its flaws
GoPro Max 2: two-minute review
The GoPro Max 2 is GoPro's long-awaited return to the 360 camera arena, and it arrives with the rugged build quality and intuitive design philosophy that has made the brand synonymous with action cameras for over a decade.
It's a compact, square-bodied camera that takes clear design inspiration from its predecessor while incorporating lessons learned from rivals like the Insta360 X5 and DJI Osmo 360. The Max 2 is built tough – waterproof to 5m without additional housing and ready to handle the kind of punishment that extreme sports can dish out. What sets it apart from the competition is GoPro's decision to make the lenses fully user-replaceable without tools, a smart move given how vulnerable 360 camera lenses are to damage.
At $499.99 / £449.99 / AU$849.95, the Max 2 is priced between the DJI Osmo 360 and the premium Insta360 X5, offering a middle-ground option that should appeal to GoPro loyalists and newcomers alike.
The standout feature here is what GoPro calls “true 8K” recording; the Max 2 delivers genuine 8K capture with at least 3840 active pixels on each axis, and the results are undeniably sharp and vibrant in good lighting conditions.
(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)Design-wise, there's plenty to appreciate too: a bright 1.82-inch touchscreen, GoPro's famously simple two-button control scheme, built-in GPS, and compatibility with three separate mounting systems: the classic GoPro fingers, standard tripod threads, and the newer magnetic latch system. The camera feels reassuringly solid and well-balanced, whether in your hand or mounted on some other part of your body.
Video tops out at 8K 30fps in 360 mode, with 5.6K 60fps and 4K 100fps options for slow-motion work. The Max 2 also captures 29MP 360-degree stills and supports 10-bit color recording plus GP-Log flat profile for post-production color grading.
Performance is strong in daylight, delivering the punchy, colorful footage GoPro is known for, with minimal distortion, effective automatic stitching and selfie stick removal. However, the camera struggles more noticeably in low-light conditions compared to rivals that offer dedicated night modes, and thermal management can be an issue during extended recording sessions.
(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)The Max 2 pairs with GoPro's established Quik mobile app for quick editing and sharing, plus the updated GoPro Player desktop software for more comprehensive post-production work. Both offer solid 360 video editing tools, though at present neither quite matches the sophistication of Insta360's software suite.
Ultimately, while the Max 2 doesn't revolutionize the 360 camera market, it delivers exactly what I’d expect from GoPro. This is a well-built, user-friendly camera that produces excellent results in the right conditions, and it’s backed up by an ecosystem of accessories and editing tools that make the whole experience relatively painless. GoPro is well truly back in the 360 camera game.
- Look out for my in-depth GoPro Max 2 vs Insta360 X5 comparison, based on real tests, coming soon
Type:
360 camera
Waterproof depth:
5m / 16ft
Screen:
1.82-inch touchscreen
Storage:
microSD
Connectivity:
USB-C, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth
Dimensions:
64 x 69.7 x 48.7mm / 2.4 x 1.4 x 3.2 inches
Weight:
195g / 6.88oz
The Max 2 mounted on GoPro's selfie stick (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)GoPro Max 2: Price and availability- Launched worldwide on 23 September 2025
- Pre-orders shipping 30 September 2025
- Priced at $499.99 / £449.99 / AU$849.95
GoPro officially launched the Max 2 on September 23 2025, and it’s available to pre-order right away, with orders shipping from September 30.
It’s priced at $499.99 / £449.99 / AU$849.95 in a bundle that includes the camera and a single battery. At the time of writing I’ve not been informed of any bundles including accessories such as selfie sticks, microSD cards or extra batteries, but this section will be updated if that becomes the case.
This list price, which sits between the pricier Insta360 X5 and more affordable DJI Osmo 360, feels just about right to me. The Max 2 is a quality product and while being any cheaper would be a surprise, it’s clearly priced to compete with its closest rivals.
The GoPro Max 2 in the midst of its two main rivals, the DJI Osmo 360 and Insta360 X5 (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)- Price score: 4/5
- Waterproof to 5m / 16ft plus replaceable lenses
- Mountable via tripod, magnetic latch or mounting fingers
- 1.82-inch rear touchscreen
The GoPro Max 2 looks similar to the original Max, favoring a squat, square design over the narrower candybar shape used by some 360 cameras. Constructed from tough plastic, it’s pretty discreet and unassuming, with the bright blue flashes of the GoPro logo and “Max 2” the only deviation from all-business dark grey. It’s slightly smaller than its closest recent rivals, the Insta360 X5 and DJI Osmo 360, but not to what I’d consider a significant degree.
As you’d expect from a GoPro camera, the Max 2 feels rugged and ready for adventure. While there’s no specific IP rating, GoPro says it’s waterproof to a depth of 5m and able to operate in cold temperatures. While the waterproof depth isn’t quite as impressive as on some rival cameras, GoPro told me a dive housing accessory offering more robust underwater protection is currently in development.
(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)Crucially, GoPro has also made its lenses fully user-replaceable – and without the need for a tool, either, in a move that beats even the Insta360 X5’s lens replacement system. With 360 cameras’ lenses protruding so far out of the body, they’re highly vulnerable to damage, so making them simple (and relatively cheap) to swap out if something goes wrong is a great move from GoPro.
That being said, I did notice some condensation inside the lens when I went from indoors to outdoors, and it affected image quality (you can see it in the cycling sections of the videos embedded below). This could be fixed by removing the lens and wiping it with a microfiber cloth, then replacing it, but I found it an annoying issue to deal with. It’s not something I’ve encountered on other 360 cameras, and I suspect it might be due to the removeable lens design.
The pop-out mounting fingers make attaching the Max 2 to hundreds of existing mounts very simple (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)The Max 2 is small and lightweight enough for easy mounting on everything from helmets to bikes to selfie sticks, and GoPro has thoughtfully made it compatible with three mounting options. You have classic GoPro mounting fingers, a rock-solid way to fix the camera to a huge range of first- and third-party mounts, as well a standard tripod thread and the newer GoPro magnetic latch mount.
Controls are beautifully simple. There are two large rubber buttons – one for power and switching shooting modes, another for image capture – and a bright and sharp 1.82-inch touchscreen for everything else. The Max 2’s UI is extremely simple and easy to get to grips with, even for someone (like me) who doesn’t shoot on GoPro cameras particularly often, and I doubt anyone even slightly familiar with action camera menu screens will struggle to master it quickly.
- Design score: 5/5
- Editing via Quik and GoPro Player apps
- Built-in GPS
- 1,960mAh battery offers around an hour of 8K 30fps capture
With no built-in storage, footage and photos captured on the Max 2 are stored on microSD card, and can be quickly transferred wirelessly to a mobile device running the Quik app for editing and sharing.
I think Quik’s 360 video editor is pretty good, and I was able to swiftly reframe clips using manual keyframes or AI-assisted object tracking, plus tweak the image settings to achieve the look I wanted. Finished videos and photos can be saved to a phone’s camera roll, directly shared to social media or exported to other devices.
It’s also possible to edit on desktop, of course, and the updated GoPro Player app supports keyframe reframing but not, interestingly, AI-assisted tracking or image tweaking. GoPro says it’s getting a new denoise setting too, but this was greyed out and unavailable when I tested the app due to my M2-powered MacBook Air being not quite up to the task.
GoPro has informed me that both Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve will be getting plug-ins allowing users to directly import the Max 2’s 360 files. Premiere support is due to be live by the end of 2025, with Resolve to follow later on.
One thing the Max 2 has that its DJI and Insta360 rivals don’t is built-in GPS, enabling users to embed location data in their footage and photos. Most other cameras either require an optional module or tethering to a smartphone for geotagging, so the Max 2, like the original Max, offers an edge there.
The battery, microSD slot and USB-C port are all located inside a single well-sealed compartment (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)Despite the large vent on one side, the Max 2 does get warm during use. When I left it recording video, it turned itself off to avoid overheating with both 8K 30fps and 5.6K 30fps recording. With the 8K footage, it recorded just under 30 minutes of footage before shutting down; it lasted almost 58 minutes when recording 5.6K footage. This was indoors at room temperature, and I did find that setting it up outdoors on a chilly autumn day allowed it to record for longer, as would actual outdoor pursuits scenarios.
GoPro doesn’t specify battery life from the 1,960mAh battery, but I managed to get just over an hour of 8K 30fps footage recorded when leaving the camera running outdoors. I think this performance is quite good given the bit rate and resolution of the videos being recorded, but those planning a long day of 360 shooting might want to invest in one or two extra batteries.
The camera features six built-in microphones – more than either of its main rivals (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)The Max 2, like the original Max, features six separate built-in mics, but here they offer directional audio capture. Neither the DJI Osmo 360 or Insta360 X5 offer six mics, but despite this I wouldn't necessarily say the Max 2 outright beats its rivals here: audio sounds absolutely fine in good conditions, but when the wind picks up the built-in wind reduction tech can't do much to suppress the noise.
GoPro says the Max 2 can be used with Apple AirPods and other Bluetooth earbuds for wireless mic input, and this may help avoid the wind issue, but bringing out a dedicated DJI Mic-style wireless mic may be the best solution the company could offer further down the line.
- Performance score: 4/5
- Captures 10-bit 8K 30fps / 5.6K 60fps / 4K 100fps video
- 29MP 360 photos and 12MP single-lens photos
- Up to 300Mbps video bit rate with GoPro Labs
GoPro has been keen to point out that the Max 2 is the only 360 camera that records what it calls “true 8K” resolution 360 video. The company claims rivals like Insta360 and DJI are essentially fudging the numbers in order to claim 8K capture – either by counting unused or overlapped pixels, or by upscaling output to 8K from lower resolution sources – whereas the Max 2’s 360 output is truly 8K with at least 3840 active pixels on each axis for both sensors.
Video can be shot at up to 10-bit quality and in either a standard color profile or the flat GP-Log mode for post-shoot grading, and the maximum video bit rate is 120Mbps, or 300Mbps for users of GoPro Labs. For the purposes of this review, I stuck with 120Mbps. I did try out GP-Log, but GoPro has yet to release a LUT at the time of writing and I found grading the footage more of a slog than I'd like. Once the LUT is out things should get a lot easier there.
Video quality is generally very strong, whether recording in 8K (which is capped at 30fps) or 5.6K (which can go up to 60fps, offering users the potential to use 2x slow-motion; a 4K 100fps option is also available for those who want even more slow-motion potential). GoPro has established itself as delivering colors that look good straight out of the camera, as well as minimal distortion and flare.
Mostly that’s the case here, although I found that some of my 360 videos looked a touch overexposed and washed out in bright skies – likely as a result of having to set exposure for a full 360º view rather than in a single direction. User intervention, by setting the exposure manually, could improve things here, but in general the results are strong.
Still photos are similarly good-looking, and while I tweaked the below example slightly using the Quik app, it’s basically fresh out of the camera.
(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)At night, the Max 2 isn’t as impressive. Both the DJI Osmo 360 and Insta360 X5 have dedicated low light modes for 360 video, but with the Max 2 you’re left with the standard mode, and it’s noisy and smeary after dark. It’s possible that using GP-Log and some clever settings before editing in post could yield better results; I didn’t have time to delve into this, so I can’t say for sure – but what I can say is that both the Osmo 360 and X5 make capturing usable low light footage very easy, while the Max 2 doesn’t.
So, if low light footage is a priority for you, the Max 2 may not be the ideal 360 camera. If, however, you're capturing footage in daylight and want the very cleanest, sharpest 8K around, I think it's the best at doing it.
The camera includes a wide range of capture modes besides standard 360 videos and photos: time lapse modes, dedicated single-lens shooting modes and more. I've included a quick clip I captured using the Night Lapse mode in the sample video above.
- Image quality score: 5/5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Price
Cheaper than the Insta360 X5, slightly pricier than the DJI Osmo 360.
4/5
Design
Great mounting options, rugged build and easily replaced lenses. Just watch for the condensation.
5/5
Performance
Good apps and battery life, but can overheat.
4/5
Image quality
Beats the X5 and Osmo 360 in broad daylight, but can't match either in challenging after-dark conditions.
5/5
(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)Should I buy the GoPro Max 2?Buy it if...You're invested in the GoPro ecosystem
Got boxes of GoPro mounts and a subscription? The Max 2 slots right into the GoPro range, so if you're already a fan you'll be at home immediately.
You're a risk-taker
The Max 2 is small and rugged, making it ideal for extreme sports. Its lenses are also very easy to replace in the field – no tool required.
You like things simple
The Max 2's minimal controls, simple app and great out-of-the-camera image quality make it one of the easiest 360 cameras to use.
You shoot after dark or indoors
While it shines in broad daylight, the low light performance of the Max 2 just can't match that of its DJI and Insta360 rivals.
You want built-in storage
A small thing, but the Osmo 360's built-in storage means you don't need to fumble for microSD cards – with the Max 2, you do.
The X5’s rugged build, replaceable lenses, low-light performance, ease of use and battery life have made it our top pick ahead of the Max 2's arrival. Its weight and profile aren't as wearable as the Max 2, however, and I think the Max 2's daylight image quality is slightly better.
Read our full Insta360 X5 review
Akaso 360A cheap and cheerful alternative to the GoPro Max 2, Akaso's first 360 camera is surprisingly capable. Like the Max 2, it's designed with outdoor daytime use in mind, but its overall image quality level is several notches below.
Read our full Akaso 360 review
How I tested the DJI Osmo 360- Tested camera running v01.09.71 firmware for four days
- Camera mounted on invisible selfie stick, helmet, bike and chest harness
- Recorded videos day and night on foot and cycling
GoPro sent me a review sample of the Max 2 a week ahead of the launch date, and it was updated to run v01.09.71 firmware. This meant full launch features, as far as I'm aware, enabling me to test all the shooting modes and image quality – which I did by taking the camera out in the field mounted to various things (bike, head, helmet, chest, selfie stick).
I tested it in various lighting and weather conditions, editing the resulting videos and photos using both GoPro apps: the Quik mobile app and the GoPro Player desktop app (the latter on my M2 MacBook Air, which sadly wasn't powerful enough to make use of the app's Denoise feature).
- First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
The DJI Osmo Nano delivers all the pro features I actually need in an action camera, without the gimmicks
DJI Osmo Nano: two-minute review
The DJI Osmo Nano is the latest in the brand's line of action cameras. Rather than building on a predecessor it's a whole new concept in its own right, although it shares the same-sized 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor as the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, which landed at the end of 2024.
The range of best action cameras is more diverse today than it was even just a few years ago. The one-block shops of design like the GoPro Hero 13 Black are still popular, for sensible reasons like ruggedness and extended battery times, but modular designs like the Osmo Nano and the new Insta360 Go Ultra are becoming more common.
Why? We don't just want to hold our action cams or use a fiddly mount to attach them to our bike handlebars anymore. The content creation universe is continuing to grow, and so is the number and variety of places where we need our cameras to go.
In a nutshell, the Osmo Nano is a light, wearable action camera. You can wear it around your neck, on your head, on a hat or helmet, plonk it on your car, bike, or even attach it to your dog. It's remarkably small, and at 52g it's a gram lighter than its main competitor, the Insta360 Go Ultra, released a month before it.
The product is modular in design and built as a two-piece system, with a tiny, standalone camera unit that pairs with the Multifunctional Vision Dock underneath. The dock acts as a remote, screen, and charging station, with a small but bright 1.9-inch display to help you compose shots and adjust settings.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)These two parts join together via two clips and a strong magnetic system, and it's this magnet that also allows the camera to snap onto DJI's various accessories, for a wide range of hands-free, wearable mounting options.
Although the camera is a fully IPX8-rated unit that's waterproof down to 10m, the dock is only IPX4-rated for splash resistance, which limits its use in heavy rain or near a body of water – a totally rugged design this is not.
Inside the camera is a 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor, which captures a dynamic range of up to 13.5 stops according to DJI. I haven't done any calculations with my test images on this, but I did find great levels of detail and color in bright sky highlights as well as darker, shadowy areas like tunnels. I was genuinely impressed by the level of detail and tone the camera could capture, particularly for a sensor this small (in full-frame terms).
- Check out our DJI Osmo Nano vs Insta360 Go Ultra write-up to see how the small action cams compare
For me, DJI has always been a brand for what I'd call 'serious' creators, and that's something I'm pleased to see the brand has leaned into with the Osmo Nano. There aren't any 'fun' filters or gimmicks in the menus. Instead, the settings are pared back to sensible and helpful options; voice controls and gestures to start recording all work very well to make hands-free shooting that much easier.
A big draw for professionals is the color performance. I was surprised to discover that the Osmo Nano can record in 10-bit color with D-Log M and HLG profiles – a pro-level feature that gives you more leeway for color grading in post-production, if you want to edit manually rather than relying on the automatic outputs from the DJI Mimo app. In 10-bit, I found videos were punchy but still well-balanced.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Performance-wise, the Osmo Nano delivers exceptionally well in some areas but underwhelms in others. The promise of rapid file transfer holds up, with the 128GB version clocking transfer speeds of up to 600MB/s over a USB 3.1 connection. This is a huge time-saver.
Battery life, however, is a clear limitation. While DJI claims up to 90 minutes from the camera and 200 minutes with the dock, I found that shooting at 4K/60fps got me closer to just 60 minutes of continuous recording. On the upside, the dock's ability to fast-charge the camera to 80% in about 20 minutes means you can be back to shooting in no time.
The RockSteady 3.0 and HorizonBalancing stabilization features work well for walking or light activity, and even when I tried recording star jumps and high-intensity workouts, the footage was stable in sports mode. Audio quality is good all-round too, and two built-in microphones capture immersive stereo sound, with decent but not brilliant wind reduction. Another plus for more advanced creators is the ability to pair the Nano with two mics separately, and you won't need receivers if they're from DJI.
While the image quality is good for a camera this small, it’s still bound by the limitations of its form factor. The fixed 143-degree ultra-wide field of view is great for first-person shots, but obviously lacks the versatility of a more zoomed-in lens. And while DJI's SuperNight mode for low-light shooting is better than ever, it's limited to 30fps and 8-bit color.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)The Osmo Nano is pricing is really aggressive, coming in much cheaper than the Insta360 Go Ultra and the GoPro Hero 13 Black – and that's with built-in storage too, meaning you can start shooting straight out of the box.
It's not necessarily the most charming camera I've tested, but it's thoroughly dependable and sensible, and for that reason I found it growing on me, while the low price sweetens the deal. The DJI Mimo app is less intuitive than Insta360's, and AI edits are a little less exciting, but it's smart and stable, and puts a clear live feed with access to settings at your fingertips on your smartphone.
DJI isn't marketing the Osmo Nano for family users, and it lacks some of the fun features of the Insta360 lineup, plus Toddler Titan mode for capturing kids. While charging is fairly speedy it doesn't charge as quickly as its main competitor, the Insta360 Go Ultra, either, but the camera does last longer.
If you need a fully rugged and all-in-one device for more extreme sports or environments, the GoPro Hero 13 Black or the DJI Action 5 Pro might be a better choice. But this is a well-thought-out, truly wearable action camera for creators who want to experiment with unique perspectives, and need a B-camera for places their main camera can't go, for a B-cam price.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)DJI Osmo Nano: specsDJI Osmo Nano specsSensor
1/1.3-inch CMOS
Max Resolution
35MP (6880 x 5160) photos
4K, 60fps footage
Weight
Camera: 2.54oz / 53g Vision dock: 3.8oz / 72g
Dimensions
Camera: 57 x 29 x 28mm
Vision Dock: 59 x 42 x 22mm
ISO Range
100–25600
Lens
FOV: 143 degrees
Aperture: f/2.8
Focus: 0.35m to ∞
Operating Time
Camera: 90 mins*
Camera + Multifunctional Vision Dock: 200 mins*
Connectivity
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB-C 3.1
Storage
64GB/128GB built-in
microSD card, up to 1TB
Waterproofing
Camera: 33ft (10m)
Vision Dock: IPX4-Rated
- Launched worldwide on September 23 2025, except US
- Osmo Nano Standard Combo (64GB) costs £239 / AU$529
- Osmo Nano Standard Combo (128GB) costs £259 / AU$589
The DJI Osmo Nano was announced on August 23, 2025, and is now shipping from DJI’s online store and authorized retailers, including Amazon. It won't be available officially in the United States at launch. A DJI Spokesperson told TechRadar that "DJI remains dedicated to the US market and is optimizing our strategy to best serve our customers amidst evolving local conditions."
There are two standard combos to choose between, broken down by the internal storage capacity: the Osmo Nano Standard Combo at 64GB (£239 / AU$529) or 128GB (£259 / AU$589).
Each combo comes with the same content, including the Osmo Nano Camera, Multifunctional Vision Dock, Magnetic Hat Clip, Magnetic Lanyard, a protective case, USB-C cable (USB 3.1), and a Dual-Direction Magnetic Ball-Joint Adapter Mount. The protective case is more just a plastic sheath rather than substantial padded protection.
That price puts it way below the Insta360 Go Ultra Standard Combo ($449.99 / £369 / AU$759), which is more impressive given that you get built-in storage too. It's also less than the GoPro Hero 13 Black (now available for around $359.99 / £315).
- Price score 5/5
- Standalone camera is waterproof, dock is splashproof
- Magnetic base connects easily to mounts
- The camera weighs 1.83oz / 52g
The DJI Osmo Nano camera is oblong-shaped, about half as wide as it is long. It sits comfortably between your thumb and forefinger in either portrait or landscape mode, but I didn't find it as pocketable as the Insta360 Go Ultra because of its extra depth.
Without the dock, the Osmo is a light, wearable action camera at just 52g. Adding the dock, by way of two secure mounting clips and a magnetic, adds another 72g and turns the camera into a more complete action companion. It's small, but I found the combo top-heavy on uneven surfaces, making low-level shots without a mount more difficult.
There's just one built-in OLED HD touchscreen on the dock, rather than a screen at the front and back, or a flippable design like the Insta360 Go Ultra. This means you have to detach and remount the camera every time you want to go from shooting your environment to talking to the camera (if you want to see yourself, that is). Unlike the Go Ultra, which simply plops back into place with strong magnets, flipping the Osmo Nano around is a bit fiddly.
The design is gray and plastic, which is familiar territory for both DJI and action cams in general. The body is subtly textured though, meaning it's easy to grab onto with cold, wet or sweaty hands. Ruggedness is key for an action camera, but only the wearable part of the Osmo Nano is waterproof. The camera is IPX8-rated for submersion up to 10 metres underwater.
The dock is only splash, rain and likely sweat resistant, and I wouldn't fancy its chances in a heavy rain shower. This is a shame, because it limits potential usage and introduces a little caution to creativity when shooting. It's also a far cry from DJI's Action 5 Pro, which is verified down to 20m / 65ft.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)While the dock isn't waterproof, you can use the whole product in temperatures of -20C to 45C (-4F to 113F), so you're good for everything from winter sports to desert treks. A lens cover screws over the main lens, so if you damage or scratch it a replacement costs a fraction of buying a whole new unit.
The Osmo Nano has just two physical controls: there's a big red record button on the top of the camera and another on one side of the dock. These also act as power switches, and they require some force to push down so that you're not likely to press them accidentally. That's it, other than a small flap that opens up on the other side of the dock to reveal the USB 3.1 port for charging and transferring files, plus the microSD slot, which takes up to a 1TB card.
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Lauren Scott)I didn't find the DJI Osmo Nano as enjoyable or easy to navigate as other action cameras I've tested. You swipe up to access video settings, down for the main menu, and left to change the shooting mode. To toggle Pro Mode on or off, you tap the slider icon on the right side of the screen.
It's not rocket science, but at 1.96 inches the small screen means you need to be extra precise with your touch gestures to bring up menus and dial in settings. My partner – who has bigger hands and fingers than I – sometimes had to tap the screen a few times to activate settings.
The menus are mainly black and white with yellow accents, and I found this less eye-catching than the GoPro or Insta360 ecosystems, although that may be more a matter of personal preference. Some settings are also overlaid on the live picture and can be difficult to read. The camera doesn't have the same detailed tutorials and guides that you get when you start using the Insta360 Go Ultra, although I'm sure DJI fans will have no trouble finding their way around.
- Design score: 4/5
- Quick-edit videos on the DJI Osmo Mimo app
- Standalone camera charges 80% in about 20 mins
- In-built storage and takes microSD cards up to 2TB
The performance of the Osmo Nano is hard to pin down. In some areas I felt it delivered exceptionally well, but in others it was a bit underwhelming. The rapid file transfer ended up being surprisingly helpful, and in my tests with the 128GB version DJI's claim of up to 600 MB/s transfer speed over USB 3.1 holds up, and I found it a huge time-saver compared to sending lots of files wirelessly.
The camera's battery life is a limitation, though, particularly when shooting at higher resolutions like 4K/60fps. I got closer to 60 minutes of continuous recording here – rather than the 90 minutes that DJI claims at 1080p/24fps – which isn't bad for its size, but lags behind the multi-hour endurance of larger cameras like the Osmo Action 5 Pro. The dock can top up the battery on the go, and I was also impressed by its ability to charge to 80% in just 20 minutes, especially if you're as bad as I am at remembering to charge your gear before a shoot.
You then get up to 200 minutes of 1080p/24fps video from the dock, but in reality, I found this closer to two hours once the screen and Wi-Fi are on and you've powered the camera up and down a few times.
If you tend to record short clips throughout a longer day, it's nothing to worry about. If you're the type of shooter to record continuously, you may lament the fact that there aren't replaceable batteries to swap out when you run out of juice. I left the camera running for my battery tests during a particularly warm day, and although it felt hot to the touch during, it never overheated to the point of turning off.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)The Osmo Nano is equipped with DJI's RockSteady 3.0 stabilization and HorizonBalancing. It handles a fair amount of shake, but it's not on the same level as a dedicated gimbal like the Osmo Pocket series. In footage of fast-paced, high-impact activities like running on trails you'll still see some micro-jitters, but for walking shots it's pretty impressive.
Using different mounts will dictate how stable your results are. Using the pendant seemed to cause me more wobbles than handholding the camera, for example, but the head mount gave me super-smooth footage when running. It's worth noting that there are different levels of stabilization, with daily, sport, or anti-motion blur options. You can also turn off image stabilization to save battery, or if you're using a secondary DJI product to keep things stable.
The DJI Osmo Nano performs really well in remote shooting scenarios without a phone. The voice commands, like 'start recording', work almost instantaneously in a quiet environment, but require you to shout when it's loud (not a great look in a city center). I found that gestures worked well too, and I liked being able to pat the camera when it was powered off to start recording, or nod my head when it was mounted on my head. Much more subtle.
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)The Osmo Nano has two built-in microphones for stereo sound, and I found the audio straight out of the camera surprisingly immersive. It picks up sound from a variety of directions when you're shooting in a public place, but still hones in on your voice when you're speaking to the camera clearly.
Like all action cameras, the audio quality sounds muffled underwater, but the clarity returns more quickly than others I've tested when you pull the camera back out into fresh air. There are lower and stronger wind reduction modes, and both did a decent job of reducing disturbance when I captured some clips on a blustery countryside walk, without removing the noise entirely (see the clips below). My voice was clear and free from distortion, but it's not the perfect solution for clean audio; for that, you'll need a separate mic.
A major draw is the ability to connect the Osmo Nano directly to DJI's wireless microphones without needing a separate receiver. I haven't been able to try this yet, but I can see it being convenient for creators who want to capture high-quality audio, especially those already with DJI mics.
- Performance score: 4/5
- 1/1.3-inch sensor
- Video up to 4K/120fps and 35MP photos
- 10-bit D-Log M and HLG color profile options
The Osmo Nano has a 1/1.3-inch sensor, the same size as you'll find in the Osmo Action 5 Pro and just a fraction smaller than the one in the Insta360 Go Ultra. Video headlines include 4K at 60fps in 16:9 format, and 4K 120fps slow-mo footage, which expands to 1080p 240fps.
The specs are one thing, but the proof is in the pudding; or in this case, in the videos and shots you get from the camera. Overall, I think the image quality is good for an action camera of this size. As ever, it won’t completely replace a full-sized or full-frame camera, but that's not the expectation here. The fixed 143-degree ultra-wide field of view is perfect for first-person POV shots, and I could fit a whole wedding group in the frame (I don't have permission to include the sample shot in the review, sadly), but it's not easy to zoom in on the scene should you want to get closer in.
I tested the Osmo Nano in all weather and lighting scenarios. DJI touts the wide dynamic range of the Osmo Nano, but in direct sunshine I noticed some banding where the highlights had been clipped. You can see this in the video above, which was a test of the one-tap editing feature in the DJI Mimo app.
4K resolution is sharp and punchy, and even in 8-bit color mode the camera seems to capture vibrant blue skies and leafy greens, and handles quick changes in light (coming out of a dark tunnel, from indoors to outdoors) well; however, while I like a bit of lens flare, this is one area that could be handled better. It tended to keep my face exposed when I was talking to the camera, but this wasn't set up anywhere in the camera. If I were to generalize, I'd say footage comes out darker than Insta360's Go Ultra, possibly for greater leeway when editing, where the Insta option is designed for near-automatic use.
DJI's SuperNight mode does a decent job of reducing noise in low light, but it only works at up to 30fps and with 8-bit color, which might limit its utility for serious cinematographers. It’s the best night image quality in a wearable camera I’ve seen, but it’s still bound by the laws of physics – a smaller lens and sensor will always have certain limitations compared to a larger, more dedicated camera. There's some AI-smoothing being applied to reduce noise in low-light footage, but this is less obvious to the untrained eye, and less muddy than some night modes I've seen on earlier action cameras.
DJI's automatic horizon leveling (which can be calibrated) is pretty flawless, and the RockSteady image stabilization is most impressive in sports mode. To really test it out, I wore the camera on DJI's headband mount and recorded the first five minutes of a high-intensity workout. Throughout a gruelling round of burpies, star jumps and squats, the footage was stable and smooth (almost unnaturally so). Trail runs, dog walks, and cycle clips were all just as usable, but the handheld results are slightly more jittery than using a dedicated mount.
Photos from the camera have a medium-range megapixel count (the maximum resolution is 35MP and you can shoot in a 16:9 or 4:3 ratio), and as to their quality, I said the same thing about Insta360 Go Ultra's photo results: they're good enough to insert into videos, but I probably wouldn't use them for standalone social posts or prints as a creator. Consider them as an additive rather than a standalone feature, and you won't be disappointed.
Image 1 of 4(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Image 2 of 4(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Image 3 of 4(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Image 4 of 4(Image credit: Lauren Scott)Impressively, the Osmo Nano gives you the option of recording footage with a flat color profile (DJI's D-Log M setting), designed to preserve the maximum color and brightness info in the video file, especially in lights and darks.
While the footage out of the camera is desaturated in this mode, I found you had far more wiggle room to adjust the colors, contrast, and saturation to achieve a specific, cinematic look without losing any of the detail captured in the original scene. This is also going to benefit creators shooting a project with the Osmo Nano alongside other cameras who want their edited work to look consistent.
- Image quality score: 4/5
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Price
Much cheaper than the Insta360 Go Ultra, and that includes helpful built-in storage.
5/5
Design
Unexciting but functional, and it's a shame the dock is only splash-proof. The lens replacement adds ruggedness.
4/5
Performance & features
Fewer filters and modes than the Insta360 Go Ultra, but you get the option of manual controls. The DJI Osmo app makes quick, clever edits.
4/5
Image quality
In daylight, colors are vivid and dynamic range is good. Stabilization is excellent, and low light footage is fine. Slow-mo could be crisper.
4/5
Should I buy the DJI Osmo Nano?Buy it if...You want a camera that 'disappears'
The Osmo Nano is small enough to be worn on a pendant, hat, or headband, thanks to its small size and weight. The magnetic mount allows for quirky mounting solutions like lamp posts, cars, and even washing machines.
You already own DJI products
To boost the sound quality, you can connect the Nano directly to two DJI microphone transmitters without needing a receiver. If you've already got a DJI mic, gimbal or camera, sticking with the brand also means greater familiarity with the app.
You like a roomy LCD screen
At less than two inches, I found the Osmo Nano's LCD touchscreen a little small for composing shots and reviewing footage. You can use your phone for a larger live view, but this isn't always convenient.
You want a fully waterproof solution
The Nano's Vision Dock is only splashproof, and this made me uncomfortable while shooting in the rain or near water. If you're a real action lover, I'd recommend a camera with a more rugged build.
The Insta360 Go Ultra has a similar form factor, with a separate camera and action pod. The flip-up screen is more vlog-friendly and bigger at 2.5 inches, while the camera weighs the same as the Osmo Nano but is more square and shallow (which I found easier to mount). Pricing and image quality are similar, but it's a slightly more fun action camera that's great for the whole family.
Read my full Insta360 Go Ultra review
GoPro Hero 13 BlackThe GoPro Hero 13 Black is still the flagship of action cams and one I'd recommend for serious filmmakers. It's chunkier than the Osmo, but it also has magnetic mounting. GoPro also has the widest range of mount accessories to open up creative shooting opportunities, and it's possible to squeeze 1.5 hours of 5.3K video from the battery, for recording with fewer interruptions.
Read our full GoPro Hero 13 Black review
(Image credit: Lauren Scott)How I tested the DJI Osmo Nano- I tested the camera for two weeks pre-embargo
- I wore it on walks and runs, and mounted it for drives
- I recorded videos at all settings and in all modes
DJI sent me a full-production Osmo Nano for review around two weeks before its release date, and I used it at least once a day – often much more – during this period. I always like a camera to become a natural part of my workflow, rather than carrying out one intense period of testing, so that I uncover the nuances for a more informed and helpful review.
I tried all the camera's modes, used it with and without the dock, and mounted it on the magnetic pendant and headband. I mainly used the DJI Mimo app to edit footage right from my iPhone 15 Pro.
- First reviewed September 2025
Categories: Reviews
I tested the Baseus Security S2 – a camera powered by a solar panel that rotates to follow the sun – and it really works
Baseus Security S2 Outdoor Camera 4K: two-minute review
Founded around 15 years ago, Shenzen-based Baseus Security is one of a number of Chinese brands whose products are now available across the world. Under review here is a new model, the Baseus Security S2 - an outdoor camera with a twist (quite literally). It’s the follow up model to the 2024 Baseus S1 Pro which was billed as the world’s first 4K security camera with a sun-powered tracking system.
Like its predecessor, the S2 also features an innovative twisting solar panel above the main camera unit to maximize power from the sun. However, the big difference is that the video resolution of this latest model has been improved from 2K to 4K. Rather than 8GB of local storage, the S2 upgrade also features a MicroSD card slot capable of storing up to 256GB local storage.
(Image credit: Chris Price)That’s particularly useful in avoiding costly monthly cloud storage fees and reducing a potential cybersecurity risk (hackers have been known to access video footage from security cameras stored in the cloud). Unfortunately, however, the memory card isn’t provided as standard so you will have to buy it separately.
Designed to be installed on the outside of a property with an unhindered view of the sky, the S2 comes with a reasonably sturdy mount complete with wall plugs and screws. Once installed, a process that takes around 20-30 mins, it’s simply a case of downloading the iOS/Android app and adding the camera via the QR code on the side of the device.
Whereas some outdoor models are dual-band Wi-Fi compatible (some will even work on 4G/5G cellular networks), the S2 is only compatible with the 2.4GHz, not the 5GHz, band. That said, we didn’t have any issues connecting the camera at the end of the garden to the broadband repeater at the back of the house. With an IP67 waterproof rating, the Baseus Security S2 can, claims the manufacturer, be used in temperatures from -20 degrees centigrade to 50 degrees centigrade – though it never got above 25 degrees centigrade during my testing.
(Image credit: Chris Price)Once the app is installed, it’s simply a case of tailoring the camera’s settings to suit your setup. This includes naming the camera depending on where it’s located (eg backyard) and checking to see if it captures all the areas you need it to.
The field of view of the Baseus camera is 145° which should be wide enough for most applications. You can set up privacy zones to exclude certain areas (handy to prevent accidentally capturing your neighbour’s property) as well as activity zones to detect motion in certain parts of the frame.
(Image credit: Chris Price)Whereas many outdoor security cameras are overly sensitive capturing footage of passing cars, even swaying tree branches, this doesn’t seem to be an issue with the Baseus Security S2. Although it is possible to adjust sensitivity between 1 and 5 we found on the standard 3 setting the camera it didn’t trigger any false positives. Baseus claims the inclusion of radar detection in addition to standard PIR (passive infra-red) detection, reduces false alerts by 99% so you only get relevant notifications.
Best of all are the facial recognition settings which enable you to add the images and names of family members or house mates on the app. It will then detect when it sees these faces on the camera and send you an alert telling you who it has spotted. It’s a feature that is now available on other outdoor security cameras but you usually have to pay a monthly subscription fee for it. With the Baseus, you can even set up motion alerts if the camera spots a vehicle or a pet. Alternatively, these can be excluded if you want to reduce the number of notifications you receive.
Baseus Security S2 Outdoor Camera 4K: price and availability- How much does it cost? Baseus Security S2 £199, $US129, $AU129
- When is it available? Available since July 2025
- Where is it available? UK/US/AUS
Generally, outdoor security cameras and video doorbells are fairly cheap to buy. That’s because manufacturers can subsidize the price of them with monthly subscriptions, costing anywhere between £2.50 and £15 a month.
Not so the Baseus Security S2 outdoor camera. Rather than being stored in the cloud for a monthly fee, your footage is stored locally on a MicroSD card. And while you will have to buy a MicroSD card if haven’t got one already (I paid £10.99 for a 128GB Samsung EVO Select with SD adaptor), this is still a far cheaper option than being locked into an expensive subscription.
(Image credit: Chris Price)What’s more, the camera offers smart detection/facial recognition features as standard which are normally only available to premium users paying a subscription fee. Plus of course another bonus is the inclusion of solar panel.
That said, the Baseus Security S2 certainly isn’t the cheapest model on the block, particularly in the UK where prices are significantly more expensive than in the US and Australia. It’s also a lot more expensive than its predecessor, the Security S1, which you can currently get for £59 from Amazon. Like the S2, the S1 also features a rotating solar panel. However, the key differences are that it is only offers 2K resolution and 8GB of built-in storage rather than up to 256GB via a MicroSD card.
- Value score: 4/5
- Simple installation
- Flexible battery/solar power options
- Sleek design
Looking more like a Bluetooth speaker than a conventional security camera, the all-white Baseus Security S2 is long tubular design with an innovative rotating solar panel mounted on top. Screws and wall plugs are provided for mounting the bracket on the wall and the camera can be angled easily to obtain the optimum view.
I had worried that the long and narrow design might make the camera a little unstable when mounted on my wooden summer house, but actually this wasn’t a problem at all. Set up didn’t take too long either (less than half an hour), though obviously if you are mounting on a brick wall you will need to use a drill and wall plugs for installation, which will take longer.
(Image credit: Chris Price)Underneath the device is a USB-C socket for charging the camera up via the mains (a 7800mAh rechargeable battery is built in), as well as a slot for a MicroSD card. Up to 256GB is supported but we used a 128GB card for recording. There’s also a sync button for use during set up and a modest-sized speaker underneath.
On the front of the camera there are PIR and radar sensors for detecting movement more accurately, a small microphone for two-way audio and a powerful spotlight capable of illuminating the night at distances of up to 12 meters.
(Image credit: Chris Price)Next to the circular radar sensor is a similar shaped camera lens, giving the impression of two eyes on a face! Capable of recording in 4K and providing a 145° Horizontal field, the camera displays a flashing blue light on the front of the camera when recording footage. Finally, there’s the solar panel on top of the camera which auto tracks the sun moving 40° to the left or the right from the horizontal position depending on the sun’s location.
- Design score: 4.5/5
- Excellent 4K image quality
- Stable video connection
- Smart detection is still work in progress
Never having tested a Baseus security camera before I didn’t really know what to expect. However, I was more than pleasantly surprised. There are really two main issues with outdoor security cameras.
Firstly, images can sometimes be a little unstable because of the longer distances between the router and the camera. Secondly, when you do eventually get a stable image, the onboard sensors are usually so sensitive that they end up recording far too much, draining the battery and creating lots of false alerts.
(Image credit: Chris Price)Not so the Baseus. On both counts, performance was flawless. Despite it only being compatible with 2.4GHz and not the 5GHz Wi-Fi frequency I didn’t have any signal problems at all.
What’s more, it also triggered fewer false alerts than other cameras I’ve tested, in part because of the combination of PIR (passive infra-red) and radar technologies to detect movement. Images are superbly detailed during the day and the spotlight is excellent for illuminating the garden at night to ensure high quality footage in the dark.
(Image credit: Chris Price)That’s not to say everything was perfect. When testing the camera’s two-way audio talking to my wife in the garden, I didn’t think the speaker was the best. Also it’s fair to say that the smart detection/facial recognition system (billed as being in beta) is still a work in progress.
During testing I added images from my phone’s camera roll of family members and friends to see if it recognzsed them when it saw them on camera. Sometimes it did, especially when standing right next to the camera, but often it didn’t. One on occasion it even mistook me for my dog which was a little odd (we don’t look much alike).
Image 1 of 3(Image credit: Chris Price)Image 2 of 3(Image credit: Chris Price)Image 3 of 3(Image credit: Chris Price)Undoubtedly, what’s really good about the Baseus device is the rotating solar panel. While living in the UK and testing at the beginning of Autumn/Fall wasn’t ideal for testing, we had enough sun to get a pretty good idea of the panel’s performance. After a week of rainy days, power had dropped to 85% but just four days of sunshine was enough to bring it back up to 96%.
Considering I installed the camera practically under the eaves of a summer house and it only received around three hours of direct sunlight a day it really wasn’t bad at all. Usefully, a solar panel image appears on the display to show you when the camera is being powered by the sun and with the detection statistics option in the app you can see how much solar is contributing to the device’s overall power – a nice touch.
- Performance score: 4.5/5
Attribute
Notes
Score
Value
In the UK, the camera isn’t particularly cheap (although it works out cheaper in the US and Australia). However, the main bonus is you don’t have to pay an expensive monthly subscription so it does work out better in the long run.
4/5
Design
A white tubular design, the Baseus Security S2 is a pretty classy looking security camera. Best of is the solar panel above that rotates towards the sun to maximize power.
4.5/5
Performance
Picture quality is excellent and thanks to the inclusion of radar there are far fewer false alerts than with many cameras. However, facial recognition technology is still a work in progress.
4.5/5
Overall
An excellent outdoor security camera with an innovative rotating solar panel. Though it’s a little more expensive than some models, the lack of a monthly subscription fee means in the long term it’s much better value.
4.5/5
Buy it ifYou want to maximize power from the sun
A large rotating solar panel means that this outdoor camera is able to maximize power from the sun so you shouldn’t need to charge it very often especially if you live in sunny climes.
You want high quality images
Boasting 4K resolution, the Baseus device provides some of the sharpest images I’ve ever seen from an outdoor camera. Connectivity is very good too.
Don't buy it ifYou want to locate it in a shaded area
Of course you can still power the security camera from the mains via the USB-C socket if you are located in the shade. But where this device really comes into its own is with the solar panel.
You just want a cheap solution
Costing nearly £200 in the UK, there are simply much cheaper options out there. However, always bear in mind that you may need to pay a monthly subscription fee with some devices.
Baseus Security S2 Outdoor Camera 4K: also considerCamera
Baseus Security S2 4K
Reolink Altas PT Ultra
Eufy 4K S330 Security Camera
Ring Outdoor Cam Plus
Subscription price
None
From £3.49 a month
None
From £4.99 a month
Viewing angle
145 degrees horizontal
355-degree pan / 90-degree tilt camera view
360-degree view
140 degrees horizontal
Network connection
Wi-Fi (2.4GHz)
Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz)
Wi-Fi/4G
Wi-Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz)
Audio
Two-way audio
Two-way audio
Two-way audio
Two-way audio
Video
4K video resolution
4K video resolution
4K video resolution
2,560 x 1,440 (2K)
Power
Battery, solar
Battery, solar
Battery, solar
Mains, battery, solar
Hardware price
£199 (with built-in solar panel)
£229 (with solar panel)
£189 (with solar panel)
£69 (£99 with solar panel )
Reolink Altas PT Ultra
A very advanced home and business security solution boasting a large rechargeable battery and solar panel. Can record footage 12 hours a day for over a week with colour night vision facility.
Read our full Reolink Altas PT Ulta review
Eufy 4K S330 Security Camera
An extremely innovative battery and solar-powered camera, the Eufy can be used with the supplied 4G Sim card to capture recordings - ideal for those who live in areas with poor Wi-Fi/broadband.
Read our full Eufy 4K S330 Security Camera review
How I tested the Baseus Security S2 Outdoor Camera 4K:- I used the camera outdoors
- I installed it myself
- I tested the facial recognition technology with family and friends
To test any outdoor security camera you really need to use it regularly over a period of time to get used to its quirks and idiosyncrasies. I decided to use this camera for a period of two weeks in the back garden. It was placed on my summer house at a height of about 2.5 metres and connected to a wireless repeater in my kitchen around 13 metres away.
During this period, we experienced a range of weather conditions to challenge the IP-67 rating of the camera. This included heavy rain and cloud followed by a period of around 4 to 5 days of sunshine. It was during this sunny period that the solar power really came into its own, charging the battery back to nearly 100% despite regular daily alerts via the app.
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