Feed aggregator

The former West Virginia senator was a lifelong Democrat before deciding to register as an independent two years ago. He now wants to create similar pathways for other politicians in both parties.

(Image credit: Jeff Kowalsky)

• AMD's MI400 press release publishes exactly one performance figure
• 288 TFLOPS of hardware FP64 on the MI430X, a GPU it positions as its go-to for sovereign AI and HPC
• Unlike the MI455X, which it launched alongside, the MI430X will have researchers and sovereign AI clients waiting longer, with AMD targeting early 2027 for its first shipments

AMD has launched its latest Instinct MI400 series, unveiling two new chips which bring performance gains, larger, faster HBM4 memory, and a continued promise to support its open-source ROCm stack.

While both chips come with 432GB of HBM4 memory, they both have very different use cases: the MI455X is AMD's attempt to dominate AI data centers and run training and inference for frontier models, while the MI430 is positioned as a high-performance compute (HPC) alternative that offers superior precision thanks to it being tuned for superior FP64 performance at a hardware level.

Both GPUs are based on AMD's CNDA 5 architecture, but the MI430X offers FP64 performance that dwarfs both the MI455X and Nvidia's Rubin-based offerings.

Frontier AI demand comes first

The launch, which was effectively on paper, still showcased where AMD's focus lies: the Instinct MI455X. There is a simple reason for that: AI data centers prioritize faster FP4 and FP8 performance for most tasks, such as inference, and the MI455X delivers on that front.

AMD is simply responding to market demand by aiming to ship the MI455X first, even as it has sovereign AI buyers lining up, both directly and indirectly, including the U.S. Department of Energy, Oracle, and even the UK government, to name a few.

AMD stated that the MI455X delivers up to 34 times the token throughput of the MI355X at 18 times lower cost, showcasing a significant performance and efficiency upgrade. It is also arguably AMD's most heavily drummed-up release to date, even as it continues to play catch-up to Nvidia's market dominance in the AI data center space.

The MI455X ships with the recently announced Helios, AMD's first rack-scale AI system that launched alongside the new Instinct chips. One of these has 72 MI455X GPUs and 18 sixth-gen EPYC server CPUs, configured in a 1:6 ratio per compute node.

The MI430X, on the other hand, seems to be competing specifically to score buyers who require higher precision, such as science researchers or even government departments where correctness is required at the edges, and memory limitations apply even with the MI series accelerator's 432GB of HMB4 in play.

“The next generation of AI will span frontier AI, sovereign AI and scientific computing, and each requires infrastructure optimized for its unique demands," said Vamsi Boppana, SVP AI at AMD.

"The AMD Instinct MI400 Series extends our AI portfolio with purpose-built solutions optimized for the full spectrum of AI and HPC deployments, built on an open software foundation that gives customers the flexibility to innovate at every scale.”

AMD also has an important buyer for the MI455X in its Helios rack-scale form that will also grant it further exposure to it pre-IPO: Anthropic. The company has agreed to invest $5 billion in the AI giant, with the latter agreeing to deploy 2 GW of AMD's MI450 accelerators, even though its AI head wasn't exactly enthused recently by a perceived drop in performance on Claude Code in early 2026.

Sometimes it feels like there's no escaping subscriptions. I seem to pay a monthly fee for the tools in my digital arsenal. I find myself nostalgic for the days of one-off charges with the occasional upgrade fee for some new refinements to a service.

Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, they've all jumped on the subscription bandwagon. But just how many more can we afford? To be honest, I don’t think any of us are happy about this software evolution. I know I’m not.

I decided to take action (for the good of my wallet, if nothing else).

Thankfully, there are alternatives. Take Gimp, for instance, a free, open source image editing program, constantly maintained by a community of enthusiastic and knowledgeable programmers. It can do most of what Photoshop does, so why not give it a go and save yourself a bundle?

There is however a problem with jumping ship, which can be pretty major: sure, you can do a lot of clever image alterations with Gimp, but its interface looks nothing like Photoshop.

And after years of using a particular tool, you’ve got used to its quirks and have built up a ton of muscle memory. If you're anything like me, you can probably use Photoshop with your eye closed by now. I can't imagine the hassle of having to learn new functions, dialogue boxes, and keyboard shortcuts just to do the exact same thing again?

But I've found a solution to this.

Enter PhotoGimp

(Image credit: Future)

The beauty of open source software, is that it can be highly customizable, and what better way to entice creators into the wonderful world of free software than to make said software look and behave like the one they’re used to.

This is what PhotoGimp is all about.

Applying that skin is simple enough. First, you need to have installed GIMP, which you can get by clicking here. It works across Windows PCs, Macs and Linux systems.

Once that’s done, launch GIMP so the proper preferences folder is created, then head on over to PhotoGimp by clicking here. Grab that patch, which also works on either of those three platforms.

Or, just ignore that website altogether. Despite being a legitimate website, I encountered a glitch once or twice where my browser warned me that I was suddenly heading towards a ‘Deceptive Website’, or that my ‘File Download is Ready’.

I found a workaround by just using the direct GitHub link I acquired for you here. I travel the dangerous virtual roads, so you don’t have to.

Follow the instructions

(Image credit: Future)

Now, getting Adobe's creative apps installed on your machine is a piece of cake. The process for PhotoGimp is a little more...rough around the edges.

The instructions are clear, but they’re out of date: the folder PhotoGimp downloads to your computer is labelled “3.0”, but the latest version of Gimp has a folder labelled “3.2”. The fix is simple: get rid of the old folder, and rename the new one “3.2”… but as of this writing, the instructions won’t tell you that.

Still, now you know.

This is really the only tricky part of the installation process. Assuming all this moving around of files happened without a hitch, the next time you launch Gimp, you’ll be graced with a very Photoshop-like interface.

Turning Gimp into Photoshop

(Image credit: Future)

Now I don’t know about you, but a familiar interface - and keyboard shortcuts that work on muscle memory at this point - does wonders to my enjoyment of a different software package.

That isn’t to say everything’s in the same place as you’re used to it on the more expensive and established platform. But it’s similar enough to make the transition so much easier; the layers menu are in the right place, all the tools you need are stacked in a sidebar to the left, the Inspector’s top right, it all feels very familiar.

Now even with the Photoshop-style patch, Gimp still is a different tool. Some functions will be different. Others will be missing altogether, But in my own experience, I found that the vast majority of what many consider to be a standard set of features, are present and easy to use - especially when it all looks quite similar to what you are used to.

Put simply, if you were at all pondering about the possibility of stepping away from Photoshop, then PhotoGimp will make the process so much easier.

Honor Magic V6 review: Two-minute review

Chinese phone giant Honor has been on a bit of a roll recently. In 2026, it’s already given us the exceptional Honor MagicPad 4 and the compelling Honor Magic 8 Pro flagship, not to mention the impressive (albeit slightly pricey) Honor 600 Pro. Its latest foldable, the Honor Magic V6, keeps up this formidable streak and is easily worthy of being considered one of the best foldable phones today.

The big draw here is the Magic V6's market-leading durability. I’ve taken plenty of foldables for a spin, from the clamshell Motorola Razr Plus to the tablet-style Oppo Find N5, but I’ve always maintained that I would never actually buy one. Why? Because these devices are often simply too fragile. I’m pretty clumsy with my phones and regularly use (and I must admit, sometimes drop) them in the shower or bath, and there’s no way that I’m going to splash out on a premium foldable only to see it turned into a damp paperweight.

The Honor Magic V6 is the first foldable I’ve tested that truly bucks that trend.

(Image credit: Future)

In its review documentation, Honor recommended not to baby the phone — I was encouraged to take it out and about without a case, use it in the rain, and so on. I’ve been doing exactly that and, after multiple months of use, it still looks brand new. With its IP68 and IP69 ratings, it offers the highest level of water protection that I can find on the market right now, comparable to most regular high-end flagships.

Its fold is smooth, quiet, and, after being unfolded multiple times a day for weeks, is still as good as new. Honor says that the inner screen is layered with tough UTG flexible glass and has an SGS Imperceptible Crease Certification, and it really shows. The fold is near-invisible head-on, and only really shows if you hold the phone at very specific angles. This is the first foldable I’ve used where you can truly forget that it’s even there.

All of this is underpinned by a premium design that’s impressively slim. The folded phone is about as thick as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, so it feels great in the hands. Unfolded, it becomes just 4.00mm — the same incredible slimness that we loved with the previous Honor Magic V5. On that note, it’s a shame that Honor hasn’t really changed the design that much for this new iteration, though.

The look is practically identical and, on a more serious note, the V5 often ran hot, and that’s still an issue this time around. It’s especially apparent when you’re putting the top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC through its paces, so be prepared for some thermal throttling if you’re spending hours in the most demanding games.

Despite these minor shortcomings, the Magic V6 is a winner and another impressive showing for Honor. I’m eager to see what the company has planned next.

Honor Magic V6 review: Price and availability

• Priced at £1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700)
• Already discounted by £500 thanks to a voucher
• Available in the UK and Australia, but not the US

The Honor Magic V6 is priced at £1,999.99 (AU$2,999), which is a pretty hefty sum, but roughly in line with competing devices like the $2,099.99 / £1,899 / AU$2,999 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

Honor gains a major edge when you consider that the V6 offers 512GB of storage as standard (the Z Fold 8 Ultra starts at just 256GB) and factor in the brand’s frequent promotions and freebies.

At the time of writing, for example, the phone is already £500 off on the official Honor website thanks to a voucher, and comes bundled with your choice of an Honor Pad 10 tablet, projector, or AI voice recorder in addition to some earbuds — you can’t really argue with the value there.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Specs

Here's a look at the Honor Magic V6's spec sheet:

Dimensions

156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded)

Weight

219g

Screen

Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED

Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED

Chipset

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

RAM

16GB

Storage

512GB

OS

Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

Rear cameras

50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom)

Front camera

20MP wide, 20MP wide

Audio

Stereo speakers with Honor Sound

Battery

6,660mAh lithium polymer

Charging

80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge

Colors

Red, Gold, White, Black

Honor Magic V6 review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Very similar to the V5
• Smoother, more premium hinge
• Still a large camera bump

The design of the Honor Magic V6 is practically identical to that of the V5. It is incredibly thin when unfolded, coming in at just 4.1mm, with a durable aluminium chassis. The back material depends on your choice of colorway, with the Red version using vegan leather and the Gold, Black, and White featuring a smooth fibre composite.

Whether you’re using it folded or unfolded, this is a very good-looking phone that feels great in the hands. I took it with me to Los Angeles on two business trips during my testing, and multiple people complimented the device completely unprompted and were eager to learn more about it — something that I can’t say has happened with any other mobile I’ve used.

Like most Chinese flagships, the rear of the phone features a large octagonal camera bump which isn't going to be to everyone’s taste. I do quite like how it looks, though, and appreciate the subtle tactile texture on the ring around it. The bump is also a bit smaller than that of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, which means that it’s less likely to rest under your fingers and get covered in smudges.

Although the aesthetic hasn’t changed, there have been some big improvements compared to the Honor Magic V5 when it comes to the hinge. It’s much quieter and smoother this time around, helping the phone feel more premium and sturdy. When opened, the phone’s inner display looks totally flat, and the crease is totally invisible in most situations. It only shows up at specific angles and when the screen is displaying lighter colors like grey or white.

Honor keeps things refreshingly simple when it comes to buttons with the Magic V6. There’s a small volume rocker and a power button on the right-hand side, and that’s your lot. They’re well placed for one-handed operation and feel pleasantly clicky. My only real gripe is the fingerprint reader built into the power button, which sometimes feels unresponsive and requires a few attempts to successfully unlock.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Display

(Image credit: Future)

• Both screens are bright and attractive
• Crease is barely visible
• Comes with pre-applied screen protectors

Both of the displays found on the Honor Magic V6 are excellent. The 6.52-inch OLED outer screen has a 2420 x 1080 resolution, with a fantastic 2,000 nits peak brightness (or up to an absurd 6,000 nits with HDR) that ensures that it stays visible in even the harshest lighting conditions. It uses Honor’s Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield coating, which is decently scratch-resistant and has managed to keep the screen pristine throughout my testing.

It certainly helps that the outer screen also comes fitted with a screen protector out of the box, though I opted to remove it early on as it picked up a lot of marks very quickly. (The inner display also comes with a screen protector, though be warned that this is an integral part of the display that should not be removed by the user. It thankfully seems much more durable than the outer one). Despite the rectangular candy-bar shape of the folded phone, the outer screen uses rounded corners, presumably to give it symmetry with the inner one.

That inner display is a 7.5-inch foldable OLED panel, surrounded by impressively thin plastic bezels. It’s almost as bright as the external one, with a 1,300-nit peak brightness (or up to 5,000 nits with HDR). It’s decently high resolution at 2352 x 2172 and doesn’t look noticeably less sharp than the external one in use, so you can transition between them seamlessly. Honor also deserves some credit for just how closely calibrated both of the displays are: they’re practically identical in terms of color and together just feel like a natural extension of the same panel.

Both the inner and outer screens feature an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, too (avoiding a jarring transition between different refresh rates when switching between the two), which is fantastic for smoothly scrolling apps and social media websites.

Lastly, you absolutely don’t need to worry about an ugly crease spoiling your view with the Honor Magic V6. There is still a fold that you can feel if you really examine it with your fingers, but it’s practically invisible in regular use unless you hold your phone at specific side-on angles or look very closely on a totally blank screen.

I’ve been folding and unfolding the phone constantly throughout my testing, and it hasn’t become more visible either, which is a great sign for long-term durability.

• Display score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Cameras

(Image credit: Future)

• Good camera setup
• Not quite as strong as the Magic 8 Pro
• Plenty of software features

The cameras of the Honor Magic V6 aren’t quite as strong as those of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, but they’re still very capable compared to the rest of the wider foldable category. The rear camera offers a three-lens setup, with a 50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, and 64MP telephoto lens.

Photos are bright and poppy by default, which is great for capturing the mood of summer days, and they offer a good level of detail — even when dealing with busy scenes and foliage. The main sensor offers 3x optical zoom, which works fantastically, alongside a much less consistent 100x digital zoom. This setup performs well in low-light conditions and those with challenging lighting setups, like concerts with bright strobe effects.

There are plenty of software features to try out on the Magic V6, including AI-powered color filters and different photo watermarks. The ability to display the photo that you’re taking on the front screen is also brilliant for group settings.

Both the front and inner display have the same 20MP wide sensor, which does a good job with selfies, even if the results are a little overprocessed. The Honor Magic V6 also has strong video shooting capabilities and can capture 4K video at 60fps.

As good as it all is, though, I do think the results are overall less impressive than the images I’ve taken with the Honor Magic 8 Pro and its 200MP main lens.

• Cameras score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Camera samplesDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodHonor Magic V6 review: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

• Flagship chip
• Can run hot
• Good RAM and storage

The Honor Magic V6 is powered by the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the same chip found in the Honor Magic 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, and other high–end smartphones. With this SoC, it should come as no surprise that the performance of the Honor Magic V6 is incredibly strong across the board.

In daily use, you’re not going to notice any hitches or slowdown when navigating system menus, browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox, and social media apps. It’s paired with 16GB of RAM, which is more than enough for serious multitasking. I normally rely on my phone for productivity tasks like note-taking, transcribing, and document editing while I’m out on business trips, and my flow was never broken by sudden reloads when flicking between multiple apps — even ones that I hadn’t opened for some time.

Gaming performance is also excellent. It almost goes without saying that casual titles like Plants vs Zombies 3 or Warhammer Combat Cards - 40K (two games I must admit I’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of time playing recently) are totally flawless. More demanding titles, like my go-to Zenless Zone Zero, will run beautifully at the maximum settings preset as well.

The Honor Magic V6 does have a problem with temperatures, though. Extended gaming sessions will cause the phone to heat up quite a bit, leading to eventual slowdown. I also found that it struggled massively during the recent UK heatwave, feeling red hot in my pocket and struggling to run even Google Maps smoothly in direct sunlight. Given the phone’s thinness, I think it’s reasonable that it runs hot at times — but if you want a dedicated gaming device, you would be better off looking outside the foldable market.

Only one configuration of the Honor Magic V6 is available, offering 512GB of storage out of the box. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no 1TB model for proper power users, but this 512GB capacity will be more than sufficient for the vast majority of buyers. I still have almost 300GB of free space after multiple months of use.

The stereo speakers of the Honor Magic V6 are decent, but hardly going to blow your socks off. There’s more bass than you might expect given the phone’s slight profile, and they can get fairly loud. Just make sure that you run to the ‘Sound quality and effects’ menu in the settings app and disable the various effects that are, for some reason, enabled by default. They just make everything sound washed out.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Software

(Image credit: Future)

• Transitions between screens seamlessly
• MagicOS 10 is still a winner
• Sleek, iOS-inspired design language

I’m a big fan of MagicOS 10, Honor’s Android 16-based operating system. The design is certainly Apple-inspired, but as an ex-iPhone user, I find it both visually appealing and easy to use. It has a liquid-glass-like aesthetic, with sleek, semi-transparent menus and rounded buttons.

You get all the visual flair of using an iPhone, but with all the additional customization options that you would expect from the Android ecosystem. New icon packs, themes, and a range of pre-set options can be selected from the in-built themes app. You can even disable the transparency effects throughout the OS if you want something that looks a bit more like traditional Android.

Smart features, like an AI tool to recommend images that would be well-suited for your lock screen and AI-powered widgets that use context to suggest the app that you’re most likely to want to use, make daily operation smooth.

Other AI software elements include the ability to generate or rephrase text and a surprisingly good translation feature. They’re not all winners though. The AI Settings Agent (which allows you to type or speak sentences like ‘Turn off Bluetooth’ in order to change key settings) is laughably useless, while the so-called AI Memories App is literally just a screenshot tool with the word AI slapped on it.

But compared to other foldables that I have used, the Honor Magic V6 is by far the smoothest when transitioning between the two displays on the software front. You will get the odd moment where things freeze up, or apps fail to resize properly, but the vast majority of the time it works exactly as you would expect. I soon found that being able to seamlessly access the larger screen made it much easier to compose apps in Gmail, or edit documents in Google Drive.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Battery

(Image credit: Future)

• 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell
• Best in class battery life
• Easily lasts for more than a day

The battery life of the Honor Magic V6 is superb. The 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell offers more than enough juice for a full day of use, even if you play graphically demanding games or stream video content. I use my phone constantly throughout the day and regularly go to bed with about 25% of juice left. With light use, you could easily stretch multiple days out of a single charge, particularly if you enable one of the power-saving modes.

6,660mAh is the largest battery capacity you will find across the entire foldable category, and it shows in real-world use. The Honor Magic V6 can comfortably outlast both the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 (we’re yet to test it against the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra), as well as traditional flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Honor devices are already known for their serious battery chops, but cramming this much battery life into a device so thin and light is extremely impressive.

• Battery score: 5 / 5

Should you buy the Honor Magic V6?Honor Magic V6 scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Value

The Honor Magic V6 isn’t cheap, but it does offer significantly better value than key competitors.

4/5

Design

A sleek, stylish, and durable design with a smooth hinge. It’s great, but draws heavily on the winning formula of the Honor Magic V5.

4.5/5

Display

The Honor Magic V6 offers two great screens which feel like a natural extension of each other.

4/5

Software

Honor MagicOS 10 is a capable and attractive operating system that’s well optimized for foldables.

4/5

Camera

A compelling camera setup, only lagging slightly behind regular flagships.

4/5

Performance

Extremely fast and ready for gaming, but prone to overheating during extended play sessions.

4/5

Battery

The Honor Magic V6 excels with leading battery life in the foldable category

5/5

Buy it if...

You want a foldable with serious battery chops
The Honor Magic V6 offers the best battery life in the entire foldable category. It’s the one to choose if you need serious battery performance.

You want a great-looking phone
The Honor Magic V6 doesn’t stray too far from the design of the Honor Magic V5, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s still a fantastic-looking phone.

You need a durable foldable
The Honor Magic V6 is incredibly durable for a foldable phone. It has some of the best water resistance on the market, and feels sturdy enough to last for years.

Don't buy it if...

You are a hardcore gamer
The Honor Magic V6 has the technical specs for high-level gaming, but it often runs hot under heavy load, which does hamper performance. Consider a conventional flagship or a dedicated gaming phone if you want to play the latest and greatest titles for hours at a time.

Honor Magic V6 review: Also consider

Not so keen on the Honor Magic V6? Here are two alternatives to weigh up, one folding and one not.

Honor Magic 8 Pro
The Honor Magic 8 Pro is a fantastic alternative if you want a conventional flagship with similar specs in a non-folding format. It’s cheaper, but features a larger battery, better cameras, better cameras and faster charging among other upgrades.

Read our full Honor Magic 8 Pro review

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
The Google Pixel 10 Fold also offers a strong level of water resistance and durability. It’s the alternative to go for if you would prefer something running a more vanilla version of Android.

Read our full Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review

Honor Magic V6

Honor Magic 8 Pro

Google Pixel 10 Fold

Starting price

£1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700)

£1099.99

$1,799 / £1,749 / AU $2,699

Dimensions

156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded)

161.15 x 8.4 x 75mm

155.2 x 150.4 x 5.2 mm

Weight

219g

219g

258g

Screen

Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED

Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED

6.7-inch 1256 x 2808 OLED, 120Hz

Inner: 6.4-inch OLED

Outer: 8-inch OLED

Chipset

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Google Tensor G5

RAM

16GB

12GB

16GB

Storage

512GB

512GB

256GB / 512GB / 1TB

OS

Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

MagicOS 10, based on Android 16

Android 16

Rear cameras

50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom)

50MP main + 50MP ultra-wide + 200MP telephoto (3.7x zom)

48MP, f/1.7, 0.5-inch sensor

Front camera

20MP wide, 20MP wide

50MP

10MP

Audio

Stereo speakers with Honor Sound

Stereo speakers with Honor Surround Subwoofer

Stereo with spatial audio

Battery

6,660mAh lithium polymer

7,100mAh (tested), 6270mAh (EU)

Up to 30 hours

Charging

80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge

120W wired, 80W wireless

39W wired charging, 15W wireless

Colors

Red, Gold, White, Black

Sunrise Gold, Sky Cyan, Black

Moonstone, Jade

How I tested the Honor Magic V6

• Tested for multiple months
• Used as a daily driver
• Compared to flagship devices

I tested the Honor Magic V6 over a period of multiple months, using it as my daily driver. I relied on it for a wide range of tasks, from listening to music and browsing social media on my commute to watching my favorite series on a plane and trying out the latest game releases.

Throughout my time with the phone, I frequently compared its performance to other flagship devices, including those from Honor and its major competitors.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed July 2026

China’s latest ChatGPT rival, Kimi, is now available for download on the Apple App Store, so I downloaded it on my iPhone, intending to test it against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. I had the prompts ready; I had the comparison planned. Then Kimi presented me with a very modern problem that I wasn’t expecting: too many people were already trying to talk to it.

This is not just app-launch inconvenience. It captures one of the biggest problems in AI right now: being clever is one thing, but the best models are only useful if companies have enough servers and GPUs to allow people to actually use them.

In our recent Kimi review we said: "Kimi delivers impressive performance for coding, document analysis, and multi-step agentic tasks, especially considering its price point." Kimi may be positioned as a serious open-weight rival to US models, but if the first ordinary-user experience is that they're stuck queuing at the door, how useful is it really?

What is Kimi?

(Image credit: Moonshot AI)

Do you remember back in 2025, when DeepSeek-R1 was released and the internet went wild for Chinese AI models? It was a game-changing moment, because it immediately became obvious that we weren’t beholden to the Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic for AI. China could create AI models too — and, it turned out, they were a lot cheaper to run, and almost as good.

While DeepSeek was arguably the first Chinese AI model to really break through into the mainstream, Kimi is the latest. Its story is slightly different, because it’s a giant open-weight model that’s not just cheap and technically impressive, but directly useful for coding, spreadsheets, knowledge work, and long-context tasks with agent-style workflows.

Open weight means the finished AI model is available for others to download and run, rather than only being accessible through the company’s own app or website. That is not the same as being fully open source, of course. Open source would imply a much more complete release of the code, training process, data details and license freedoms needed to understand, rebuild and modify the model from the ground up.

The data squeeze

I’d love to be able to open my phone, try a serious Chinese AI model, and get something genuinely competitive in minutes. But without the capacity to serve the millions of people who pile onto a hyped new AI model, raw intelligence only gets you so far.

That is why Kimi’s error message matters, and it points to the issue currently reshaping the entire AI industry. In the past week alone, Reuters reported that Nvidia is discussing huge financing guarantees to help OpenAI lease a proposed 10-gigawatt data center in Ohio, while other tech giants are racing to secure more data-center capacity of their own.

In other words, the next stage of the AI race may not be decided purely by benchmark scores or clever demos. It may be decided by power, servers, GPUs and the ability to keep a popular model online when millions of people suddenly want to use it.

Kimi may be impressive, but my first experience with it wasn’t about intelligence; it was about access. In 2026, the AI race is no longer just about who can build the best model. It’s about who can keep the thing online when everyone wants to use it.

Honor Magic V6 review: Two-minute review

Chinese phone giant Honor has been on a bit of a roll recently. In 2026, it’s already given us the exceptional Honor MagicPad 4 and the compelling Honor Magic 8 Pro flagship, not to mention the impressive (albeit slightly pricey) Honor 600 Pro. Its latest foldable, the Honor Magic V6, keeps up this formidable streak and is easily worthy of being considered one of the best foldable phones today.

The big draw here is the Magic V6's market-leading durability. I’ve taken plenty of foldables for a spin, from the clamshell Motorola Razr Plus to the tablet-style Oppo Find N5, but I’ve always maintained that I would never actually buy one. Why? Because these devices are often simply too fragile. I’m pretty clumsy with my phones and regularly use (and I must admit, sometimes drop) them in the shower or bath, and there’s no way that I’m going to splash out on a premium foldable only to see it turned into a damp paperweight.

The Honor Magic V6 is the first foldable I’ve tested that truly bucks that trend.

(Image credit: Future)

In its review documentation, Honor recommended not to baby the phone — I was encouraged to take it out and about without a case, use it in the rain, and so on. I’ve been doing exactly that and, after multiple months of use, it still looks brand new. With its IP68 and IP69 ratings, it offers the highest level of water protection that I can find on the market right now, comparable to most regular high-end flagships.

Its fold is smooth, quiet, and, after being unfolded multiple times a day for weeks, is still as good as new. Honor says that the inner screen is layered with tough UTG flexible glass and has an SGS Imperceptible Crease Certification, and it really shows. The fold is near-invisible head-on, and only really shows if you hold the phone at very specific angles. This is the first foldable I’ve used where you can truly forget that it’s even there.

All of this is underpinned by a premium design that’s impressively slim. The folded phone is about as thick as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, so it feels great in the hands. Unfolded, it becomes just 4.00mm — the same incredible slimness that we loved with the previous Honor Magic V5. On that note, it’s a shame that Honor hasn’t really changed the design that much for this new iteration, though.

The look is practically identical and, on a more serious note, the V5 often ran hot, and that’s still an issue this time around. It’s especially apparent when you’re putting the top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC through its paces, so be prepared for some thermal throttling if you’re spending hours in the most demanding games.

Despite these minor shortcomings, the Magic V6 is a winner and another impressive showing for Honor. I’m eager to see what the company has planned next.

Honor Magic V6 review: Price and availability

• Priced at £1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700)
• Already discounted by £500 thanks to a voucher
• Available in the UK and Australia, but not the US

The Honor Magic V6 is priced at £1,999.99 (AU$2,999), which is a pretty hefty sum, but roughly in line with competing devices like the $2,099.99 / £1,899 / AU$2,999 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

Honor gains a major edge when you consider that the V6 offers 512GB of storage as standard (the Z Fold 8 Ultra starts at just 256GB) and factor in the brand’s frequent promotions and freebies.

At the time of writing, for example, the phone is already £500 off on the official Honor website thanks to a voucher, and comes bundled with your choice of an Honor Pad 10 tablet, projector, or AI voice recorder in addition to some earbuds — you can’t really argue with the value there.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Specs

Here's a look at the Honor Magic V6's spec sheet:

Dimensions

156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded)

Weight

219g

Screen

Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED

Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED

Chipset

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

RAM

16GB

Storage

512GB

OS

Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

Rear cameras

50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom)

Front camera

20MP wide, 20MP wide

Audio

Stereo speakers with Honor Sound

Battery

6,660mAh lithium polymer

Charging

80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge

Colors

Red, Gold, White, Black

Honor Magic V6 review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Very similar to the V5
• Smoother, more premium hinge
• Still a large camera bump

The design of the Honor Magic V6 is practically identical to that of the V5. It is incredibly thin when unfolded, coming in at just 4.1mm, with a durable aluminium chassis. The back material depends on your choice of colorway, with the Red version using vegan leather and the Gold, Black, and White featuring a smooth fibre composite.

Whether you’re using it folded or unfolded, this is a very good-looking phone that feels great in the hands. I took it with me to Los Angeles on two business trips during my testing, and multiple people complimented the device completely unprompted and were eager to learn more about it — something that I can’t say has happened with any other mobile I’ve used.

Like most Chinese flagships, the rear of the phone features a large octagonal camera bump which isn't going to be to everyone’s taste. I do quite like how it looks, though, and appreciate the subtle tactile texture on the ring around it. The bump is also a bit smaller than that of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, which means that it’s less likely to rest under your fingers and get covered in smudges.

Although the aesthetic hasn’t changed, there have been some big improvements compared to the Honor Magic V5 when it comes to the hinge. It’s much quieter and smoother this time around, helping the phone feel more premium and sturdy. When opened, the phone’s inner display looks totally flat, and the crease is totally invisible in most situations. It only shows up at specific angles and when the screen is displaying lighter colors like grey or white.

Honor keeps things refreshingly simple when it comes to buttons with the Magic V6. There’s a small volume rocker and a power button on the right-hand side, and that’s your lot. They’re well placed for one-handed operation and feel pleasantly clicky. My only real gripe is the fingerprint reader built into the power button, which sometimes feels unresponsive and requires a few attempts to successfully unlock.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Display

(Image credit: Future)

• Both screens are bright and attractive
• Crease is barely visible
• Comes with pre-applied screen protectors

Both of the displays found on the Honor Magic V6 are excellent. The 6.52-inch OLED outer screen has a 2420 x 1080 resolution, with a fantastic 2,000 nits peak brightness (or up to an absurd 6,000 nits with HDR) that ensures that it stays visible in even the harshest lighting conditions. It uses Honor’s Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield coating, which is decently scratch-resistant and has managed to keep the screen pristine throughout my testing.

It certainly helps that the outer screen also comes fitted with a screen protector out of the box, though I opted to remove it early on as it picked up a lot of marks very quickly. (The inner display also comes with a screen protector, though be warned that this is an integral part of the display that should not be removed by the user. It thankfully seems much more durable than the outer one). Despite the rectangular candy-bar shape of the folded phone, the outer screen uses rounded corners, presumably to give it symmetry with the inner one.

That inner display is a 7.5-inch foldable OLED panel, surrounded by impressively thin plastic bezels. It’s almost as bright as the external one, with a 1,300-nit peak brightness (or up to 5,000 nits with HDR). It’s decently high resolution at 2352 x 2172 and doesn’t look noticeably less sharp than the external one in use, so you can transition between them seamlessly. Honor also deserves some credit for just how closely calibrated both of the displays are: they’re practically identical in terms of color and together just feel like a natural extension of the same panel.

Both the inner and outer screens feature an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, too (avoiding a jarring transition between different refresh rates when switching between the two), which is fantastic for smoothly scrolling apps and social media websites.

Lastly, you absolutely don’t need to worry about an ugly crease spoiling your view with the Honor Magic V6. There is still a fold that you can feel if you really examine it with your fingers, but it’s practically invisible in regular use unless you hold your phone at specific side-on angles or look very closely on a totally blank screen.

I’ve been folding and unfolding the phone constantly throughout my testing, and it hasn’t become more visible either, which is a great sign for long-term durability.

• Display score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Cameras

(Image credit: Future)

• Good camera setup
• Not quite as strong as the Magic 8 Pro
• Plenty of software features

The cameras of the Honor Magic V6 aren’t quite as strong as those of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, but they’re still very capable compared to the rest of the wider foldable category. The rear camera offers a three-lens setup, with a 50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, and 64MP telephoto lens.

Photos are bright and poppy by default, which is great for capturing the mood of summer days, and they offer a good level of detail — even when dealing with busy scenes and foliage. The main sensor offers 3x optical zoom, which works fantastically, alongside a much less consistent 100x digital zoom. This setup performs well in low-light conditions and those with challenging lighting setups, like concerts with bright strobe effects.

There are plenty of software features to try out on the Magic V6, including AI-powered color filters and different photo watermarks. The ability to display the photo that you’re taking on the front screen is also brilliant for group settings.

Both the front and inner display have the same 20MP wide sensor, which does a good job with selfies, even if the results are a little overprocessed. The Honor Magic V6 also has strong video shooting capabilities and can capture 4K video at 60fps.

As good as it all is, though, I do think the results are overall less impressive than the images I’ve taken with the Honor Magic 8 Pro and its 200MP main lens.

• Cameras score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Camera samplesDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodDashiell WoodHonor Magic V6 review: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

• Flagship chip
• Can run hot
• Good RAM and storage

The Honor Magic V6 is powered by the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the same chip found in the Honor Magic 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, and other high–end smartphones. With this SoC, it should come as no surprise that the performance of the Honor Magic V6 is incredibly strong across the board.

In daily use, you’re not going to notice any hitches or slowdown when navigating system menus, browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox, and social media apps. It’s paired with 16GB of RAM, which is more than enough for serious multitasking. I normally rely on my phone for productivity tasks like note-taking, transcribing, and document editing while I’m out on business trips, and my flow was never broken by sudden reloads when flicking between multiple apps — even ones that I hadn’t opened for some time.

Gaming performance is also excellent. It almost goes without saying that casual titles like Plants vs Zombies 3 or Warhammer Combat Cards - 40K (two games I must admit I’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of time playing recently) are totally flawless. More demanding titles, like my go-to Zenless Zone Zero, will run beautifully at the maximum settings preset as well.

The Honor Magic V6 does have a problem with temperatures, though. Extended gaming sessions will cause the phone to heat up quite a bit, leading to eventual slowdown. I also found that it struggled massively during the recent UK heatwave, feeling red hot in my pocket and struggling to run even Google Maps smoothly in direct sunlight. Given the phone’s thinness, I think it’s reasonable that it runs hot at times — but if you want a dedicated gaming device, you would be better off looking outside the foldable market.

Only one configuration of the Honor Magic V6 is available, offering 512GB of storage out of the box. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no 1TB model for proper power users, but this 512GB capacity will be more than sufficient for the vast majority of buyers. I still have almost 300GB of free space after multiple months of use.

The stereo speakers of the Honor Magic V6 are decent, but hardly going to blow your socks off. There’s more bass than you might expect given the phone’s slight profile, and they can get fairly loud. Just make sure that you run to the ‘Sound quality and effects’ menu in the settings app and disable the various effects that are, for some reason, enabled by default. They just make everything sound washed out.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Software

(Image credit: Future)

• Transitions between screens seamlessly
• MagicOS 10 is still a winner
• Sleek, iOS-inspired design language

I’m a big fan of MagicOS 10, Honor’s Android 16-based operating system. The design is certainly Apple-inspired, but as an ex-iPhone user, I find it both visually appealing and easy to use. It has a liquid-glass-like aesthetic, with sleek, semi-transparent menus and rounded buttons.

You get all the visual flair of using an iPhone, but with all the additional customization options that you would expect from the Android ecosystem. New icon packs, themes, and a range of pre-set options can be selected from the in-built themes app. You can even disable the transparency effects throughout the OS if you want something that looks a bit more like traditional Android.

Smart features, like an AI tool to recommend images that would be well-suited for your lock screen and AI-powered widgets that use context to suggest the app that you’re most likely to want to use, make daily operation smooth.

Other AI software elements include the ability to generate or rephrase text and a surprisingly good translation feature. They’re not all winners though. The AI Settings Agent (which allows you to type or speak sentences like ‘Turn off Bluetooth’ in order to change key settings) is laughably useless, while the so-called AI Memories App is literally just a screenshot tool with the word AI slapped on it.

But compared to other foldables that I have used, the Honor Magic V6 is by far the smoothest when transitioning between the two displays on the software front. You will get the odd moment where things freeze up, or apps fail to resize properly, but the vast majority of the time it works exactly as you would expect. I soon found that being able to seamlessly access the larger screen made it much easier to compose apps in Gmail, or edit documents in Google Drive.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Honor Magic V6 review: Battery

(Image credit: Future)

• 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell
• Best in class battery life
• Easily lasts for more than a day

The battery life of the Honor Magic V6 is superb. The 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell offers more than enough juice for a full day of use, even if you play graphically demanding games or stream video content. I use my phone constantly throughout the day and regularly go to bed with about 25% of juice left. With light use, you could easily stretch multiple days out of a single charge, particularly if you enable one of the power-saving modes.

6,660mAh is the largest battery capacity you will find across the entire foldable category, and it shows in real-world use. The Honor Magic V6 can comfortably outlast both the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 (we’re yet to test it against the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra), as well as traditional flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Honor devices are already known for their serious battery chops, but cramming this much battery life into a device so thin and light is extremely impressive.

• Battery score: 5 / 5

Should you buy the Honor Magic V6?Honor Magic V6 scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Value

The Honor Magic V6 isn’t cheap, but it does offer significantly better value than key competitors.

4/5

Design

A sleek, stylish, and durable design with a smooth hinge. It’s great, but draws heavily on the winning formula of the Honor Magic V5.

4.5/5

Display

The Honor Magic V6 offers two great screens which feel like a natural extension of each other.

4/5

Software

Honor MagicOS 10 is a capable and attractive operating system that’s well optimized for foldables.

4/5

Camera

A compelling camera setup, only lagging slightly behind regular flagships.

4/5

Performance

Extremely fast and ready for gaming, but prone to overheating during extended play sessions.

4/5

Battery

The Honor Magic V6 excels with leading battery life in the foldable category

5/5

Buy it if...

You want a foldable with serious battery chops
The Honor Magic V6 offers the best battery life in the entire foldable category. It’s the one to choose if you need serious battery performance.

You want a great-looking phone
The Honor Magic V6 doesn’t stray too far from the design of the Honor Magic V5, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s still a fantastic-looking phone.

You need a durable foldable
The Honor Magic V6 is incredibly durable for a foldable phone. It has some of the best water resistance on the market, and feels sturdy enough to last for years.

Don't buy it if...

You are a hardcore gamer
The Honor Magic V6 has the technical specs for high-level gaming, but it often runs hot under heavy load, which does hamper performance. Consider a conventional flagship or a dedicated gaming phone if you want to play the latest and greatest titles for hours at a time.

Honor Magic V6 review: Also consider

Not so keen on the Honor Magic V6? Here are two alternatives to weigh up, one folding and one not.

Honor Magic 8 Pro
The Honor Magic 8 Pro is a fantastic alternative if you want a conventional flagship with similar specs in a non-folding format. It’s cheaper, but features a larger battery, better cameras, better cameras and faster charging among other upgrades.

Read our full Honor Magic 8 Pro review

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold
The Google Pixel 10 Fold also offers a strong level of water resistance and durability. It’s the alternative to go for if you would prefer something running a more vanilla version of Android.

Read our full Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review

Honor Magic V6

Honor Magic 8 Pro

Google Pixel 10 Fold

Starting price

£1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700)

£1099.99

$1,799 / £1,749 / AU $2,699

Dimensions

156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded)

161.15 x 8.4 x 75mm

155.2 x 150.4 x 5.2 mm

Weight

219g

219g

258g

Screen

Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED

Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED

6.7-inch 1256 x 2808 OLED, 120Hz

Inner: 6.4-inch OLED

Outer: 8-inch OLED

Chipset

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

Google Tensor G5

RAM

16GB

12GB

16GB

Storage

512GB

512GB

256GB / 512GB / 1TB

OS

Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

MagicOS 10, based on Android 16

Android 16

Rear cameras

50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom)

50MP main + 50MP ultra-wide + 200MP telephoto (3.7x zom)

48MP, f/1.7, 0.5-inch sensor

Front camera

20MP wide, 20MP wide

50MP

10MP

Audio

Stereo speakers with Honor Sound

Stereo speakers with Honor Surround Subwoofer

Stereo with spatial audio

Battery

6,660mAh lithium polymer

7,100mAh (tested), 6270mAh (EU)

Up to 30 hours

Charging

80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge

120W wired, 80W wireless

39W wired charging, 15W wireless

Colors

Red, Gold, White, Black

Sunrise Gold, Sky Cyan, Black

Moonstone, Jade

How I tested the Honor Magic V6

• Tested for multiple months
• Used as a daily driver
• Compared to flagship devices

I tested the Honor Magic V6 over a period of multiple months, using it as my daily driver. I relied on it for a wide range of tasks, from listening to music and browsing social media on my commute to watching my favorite series on a plane and trying out the latest game releases.

Throughout my time with the phone, I frequently compared its performance to other flagship devices, including those from Honor and its major competitors.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed July 2026

Players may not be able to sign in, find games or launch apps, and might be disconnected while logged in.

• Ukraine converts long-range kamikaze drones into reusable missile-launching platforms
• Liutyi now carries four missiles instead of sacrificing itself during attacks
• Germany funds 500 additional Liutyi drones through a $100 million defense package

Ukraine's state defense conglomerate Ukroboronprom has unveiled a reusable version of its An-196 Liutyi drone at the Farnborough International Airshow.

According to a report from Ukrainian outlet Oboronka the new configuration carries four compact air-to-surface missiles beneath its wings.

Until now, the Liutyi has flown only as a single-use weapon, striking a location once before being destroyed on impact.

A Kamikaze airframe rebuilt to fly home

The standard Liutyi is a propeller-driven, satellite-guided drone with a claimed operational range of nearly 2,000 km per mission today. It carries a 50-to-75 kg warhead and relies on inertial navigation corrected by satellite signals for improved overall strike precision.

Ukraine has used the standard version to strike oil refineries as far as 1,700 km inside Russia, near the Urals region.

Liutyi drones have also struck the Izhevsk military plant deep inside Russia's Udmurtia region, roughly 1,400 km from the border.

Germany is financing 500 additional Liutyi drones at a cost of roughly $100 million, signaling continued Western interest in the program.

Each Liutyi airframe reportedly costs around $200,000 to build, a comparatively low price for a long-range strike platform of its kind.

The reusable variant carries four small missiles reported to have a maximum range of 200 km and speeds above 500 km/h, which is apparently achieved through a small jet engine mounted inside the missile's own fuselage.

No further technical details about either the airframe or the missiles have been disclosed so far.

A commercial statement for foreign buyers

Displaying an armed, reusable Liutyi there functions as a clear commercial statement almost as much as a purely military signal.

Ukraine has displayed naval drones, interceptor drones and strike systems at major international defense exhibitions throughout 2026

A drone combat-tested through hundreds of deep strikes on Russian territory offers foreign buyers a rare, already-proven track record overall.

The reusable Liutyi may also compete with Ukraine's own FP-1 drone, which reportedly offers comparable performance at a lower cost, and in design, the new missiles resemble Anduril's Barracuda-250, an American cruise missile with an 18 kg warhead and 370-plus km range.

Ukraine relied heavily on the Bayraktar TB2 for years before Russian air defenses eventually pushed the drone from contested skies.

The shift could allow the Liutyi to fill the niche once occupied by the Bayraktar TB2, a symbol of Ukraine's early resistance.

Whether the new missiles and airframe hold up under real combat conditions remains to be seen.

Via Defense Express

This has to be the fastest filmmaking hack I've ever found. And all it took was a relatively cheap gimbal, a wireless mic, and an iPhone. Seriously. No editing tricks, no ultra-expensive gear. I've managed to create a kit that targets the two biggest giveaways of amateur filming: shaky cams and poor audio.

So, for one month and counting, I've been filming everything from product close-ups to run-and-gun vlogs on my iPhone 17 Pro Max. I paired with the DJI Osmo Mobile 8 gimbal and the DJI Mic Mini.

And it's completely changed how that footage looks and sounds. The results are so good, I'm never going back. If you're videographer or creator at any level, I recommend checking out this setup.

Why the Osmo Mobile 8 makes iPhone footage look intentional

(Image credit: Future)

The Osmo Mobile 8 is one of DJI's smartphone gimbals, and the headline upgrade over its predecessor is 360-degree pan rotation. That means you can track a subject through a full 360-degree spin without hitting a mechanical dead-end mid-take. It seems incremental on paper, but eliminating that rotational hard stop saves you from constantly having to pause and reset your framing during walk-and-talk shots.

For iOS shooters, the real highlight is direct Apple DockKit integration. It hands subject tracking over to Apple's own framework and works across more than 200 iOS apps rather than being locked to DJI's Mimo app. Point the camera at yourself, tap to lock on, and the gimbal keeps you centered while you move around a room.

The magnetic phone clamp holds the iPhone 17 Pro Max securely despite its size, and the built-in tripod and extendable rod mean I've stopped carrying a separate stick for low, sweeping shots or basic selfie-stick framing.

The multifunctional module clips to the top of the gimbal and acts as the setup's central hub, handling three jobs at once: fill light, tracking sensor, wireless mic receiver. It can be mounted facing forward or reversed, depending on whether you're filming someone else or yourself.

The Mic Mini keeps a low profile

(Image credit: Future)

The DJI Mic Mini is a tiny wireless microphone system: the transmitter weighs about as much as a couple of paperclips and clips or magnet-mounts to a shirt collar without pulling the fabric down.

It records 24-bit, 48kHz audio that punches well above its size class, and its two-level noise cancellation does a solid job of cutting background hum without making voices sound processed.

Setting it up is genuinely simple. The Mic Mini transmitter pairs directly with the multifunctional module on the Osmo Mobile 8 through OsmoAudio, so there's no separate receiver dongle hanging off your phone. Audio and video are captured together, in sync, from a single rig.

Battery life is rated at roughly 11.5 hours on the transmitter, and the charging case extends that to about 48 hours total, so it's rarely the component that runs out first in my experience.

Why they're better together, and still useful apart

Clipped onto the gimbal, the pair works as one cohesive system: the Mic Mini feeds audio straight into the recording alongside DockKit-tracked video, and small indicator lights on the module confirm the mic is connected without needing to check an app. That's the setup I use for anything scripted, since it means one rig, one battery to monitor, and zero trailing cables.

But the Mic Mini doesn't need the gimbal to be useful. Its separate mobile receiver plugs into the iPhone's USB-C port directly, so I can use it for a sit-down interview or a desk-based talking-head video with the gimbal left at home.

It also pairs over Bluetooth straight to a phone, though that route caps out at a lower sample rate than the wired or OsmoAudio connection, so I only reach for it when convenience matters more than audio fidelity.

Real-world friction and useful tips

The Osmo Mobile 8 relies heavily on the DJI Mimo app to unlock its full feature set, and there's a learning curve before the gimbal feels natural rather than fiddly. It's also bulkier than a pocket-sized alternative like DJI's Osmo Pocket line, so it's not something you toss in a jacket pocket on the way out the door.

That said, setup friction on the iPhone 17 Pro Max is minimal, as its USB-C port means charging and wired audio just work without requiring adapters.

A couple of practical tricks worth knowing: the gimbal features a hidden "Keep Composition" behavior. If you manually nudge a tracked subject off-center—say into the left third of the frame—it remembers that offset and holds that composition on future tracking shots rather than forcing the subject back to center.

And if you ever need to unpair the gimbal from a phone without navigating Bluetooth menus, holding the shutter button, switch button, and trigger simultaneously for two seconds forces a hard reset of the connection.

A month in, this is the fastest upgrade I've made to my footage — faster than any editing trick. Fix the shake and the audio at the source, and the clip just looks like it came from a real camera.

Take your video shooting to a new level

DJI Osmo Mobile 8

The DJI Osmo Mobile 8 brings a genuinely useful upgrade to smartphone stabilization, headlined by a pan axis that now spins a full 360 degrees, giving sweeping panoramic shots and unbroken tracking motion that older Osmo models couldn't manage. Setup is effortless thanks to a magnetic phone clamp paired with a built-in sensor that automatically detects the phone and balances the gimbal, and tracking has been upgraded too: the new ActiveTrack system follows human or pet subjects automatically, keeping them in frame even with zooming and gimbal movement after they've left the shot.

Read our DJI Osmo Mobile 8 review.

DJI Mic Mini (2TX + 1RX) and Charging Case

The DJI Mic Mini packs a lot of pro capability into a tiny footprint, built for creators who want great audio without carrying extra gear. The transmitter weighs just 10 grams, offering a lighter and more discreet wearing experience than the DJI Mic 2, with both magnetic and clip-on styles so it won't weigh down a collar or flip outward on thin fabric. Battery life is a standout: the transmitter and receiver run for roughly 11.5 and 10.5 hours respectively, and a fully charged charging case adds about 3.6 more charges for a total of 48 hours of use — ideal for long interviews, travel, or all-day shoots.

Read our DJI Mic Mini review.

Now that AI vendors have us hooked and using generative and agentic tools, pricing models are shifting. Subscriptions are no longer loss-making models designed to attract experimental customers, because they now need to serve a much more important purpose – make back money.

How this might look is still largely being figured out, but already we're seeing major software vendors ditch per-seat pricing in favor of token consumption or outcomes.

What this is likely to mean for corporate and enterprise customers is that AI is about to become a whole lot more expensive – but it's not all bad news because these companies also have the opportunity to gain more control over certain spends.

Step forward the AI PC, which is increasingly capable of running small models locally and handling basic and even some mid-level generative tasks without ever needing to spend a cent in the cloud. A few months ago, my social media was even filled with consumers and knowledge workers grabbing Mac minis to run Openclaw's AI agent locally.

A brief overview of how the consumption-based model could look

Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk's President for Products, Engineering and AI, explained the reason behind the shift we're seeing in pricing models – traditional metrics are becoming less relevant and new metrics are emerging. "We believe software value should align directly with customer success, not headcount," he told me in an interview.

Upadhyay also criticized per-seat models for charging customers for raw AI, whether their problem gets solved or not. But a shift to outcome-based pricing relies on the vendor and customer agreeing "on the exact result that triggers payment."

On the surface, it looks like this could be a variable that might differ on a vendor-by-vendor basis, but thinking about it more deeply, customers would ultimately be able to determine their own meaningful outcome, meaning that they only ever pay for success and never pay for failures.

Gartner Research Director Ranjit Atwal even implied that AI PCs could follow a similar trajectory: "The real question isn’t about definitions—it’s about how PCs deliver AI outcomes." Analyst projections have AI PCs (equipped with NPUs) accounting for 95% of the market by 2029.

Distinguishing the needs of local processing vs. cloud compute

With this emerging hybrid split of use cases in mind, it would mean enterprises can pay a one-time set price for an AI PC and workers will have unlimited access to on-device processing for tasks like summarization, transcription, image background removal and more.

It leaves cloud – the more unpredictable expense – only for the tasks that require extra compute, such as huge enterprise applications that handle centralized data, or running the latest and most powerful models.

I set out to determine what exactly makes an AI PC and how analysts expect this shift to impact the relevant markets, but Omdia’s research director for PC and tablet research Ishan Dutt warned me that we're still living through this transition, so quite how the end looks is yet to be determined.

For example, Dutt explained that so-called 'AI-ready' PCs just 18 months ago would've had sub-10 TOPS NPUs. But then came along Microsoft's own classification of Copilot+ PCs with around 40 TOPS. Just recently at CES 2025, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm all showed 50+ TOPS NPUs, and we're already seeing hints of 75+ TOPS.

Market intelligence firms like Omdia would typically classify an AI PC as one possessing a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), "designed for running AI workloads locally alongside the CPU/GPU," Dutt told me, but this is clearly a new category whose ceiling is still being pushed by chipmakers, and whose baseline is still being written.

Other, more traditional metrics are also relevant in the world of local processing, with Omdia implying that 16GB or memory is barely sufficient these days. Anything more than lightweight tasks is more likely to benefit from 32GB+.

"In practice, 'AI-capability' is really a function of three hardware considerations (NPU TOPS, RAM, and increasingly GPU for generative/creative workloads), not a single number," Dutt told me in an exclusive interview. "I’d expect the bar to keep moving as agentic, always-on background AI workloads become the reference use case rather than chat-style assistants."

AI PC demand vs. the effects of the device refresh cycle

Having determined the parameters that broadly define an AI PC, I wanted to understand whether enterprises are actually kitting staff out with them today. I've read many a study about the increasing unpredictability of cloud-based AI pricing, and data even shows that AI PC shipments are rising. But is this indicative of a shift away from cloud-exclusive processing, or is it just that more PCs now classify as AI PCs anyway, and generic refresh cycles are impacting these numbers with false positives?

"NPUs are now the baseline across new Intel, AMD and Qualcomm platforms," Dutt said, before reminding that me that Macs have had NPUs since the 2020 move to Apple silicon, which came around two years before ChatGPT went public.

Omdia's market analysis projects that the AI PC (equipped with an NPU) market share among all PCs will reach 77.5% by 2030, compared with 17.3% in 2024. Analysts also note that the Windows 10 end of life concentrated a large number of upgrades over the past year or two, bringing AI PC market share up considerably.

Gartner's Atwal is more optimistic that organizations will focus more on PCs that "play a strategic role in AI workflows and business outcomes," indicating there will be at least some thought into buying higher-end devices.

Dutt explained that "clearer outlining of how hardware upgrades unlock future on-device AI functionality" could further impact the cadence of refresh cycles, while Atwal sees the greatest success coming from OEMs who can help "alleviate the token crisis" by connecting cloud to edge.

AI PCs have a pricing problem of their own

"Consumption-based cloud AI pricing does create a genuine total cost of ownership argument for shifting inference workloads on-device," Dutt agreed, however the PC market has its own challenges that are also leasing to pricing instability.

While it may seem like we've been living through a chip shortage for half a decade, we've actually been in two – and this second one is probably much worse.

The earlier 2020-2022 shortage was a "pandemic-driven demand/logistics mismatch," which normalized pretty quickly. This second shortage is a "deliberate capacity reallocation as memory makers are shifting DRAM/NAND wafer capacity toward HBM and high-capacity DDR5," Dutt told me. In other words, the problem we're looking to solve (AI-driving pricing instability) is being driven by itself (enterprise AI consumption). A Catch-22, if you like.

With Apple recently doing the unthinkable and raising prices across most Mac models, or cutting entry-level models altogether, Omdia sets out the challenges that lay ahead: 60% of channel partners expect to experience either delays (53%) or outright cancellations (7%) of their customers’ hardware refresh plans.

Already, 70% of channel partners are expecting major shortages across some (11%) or most (59%) of their PC hardware products.

Through 2026-2027, Gartner is preparing for reduced sales, but 2028 could mark an inflection point where memory prices drop and agentic AI matures, pushing forward a new replacement cycle.

The future is hybrid

Returning to my original theory that many organizational AI workloads will shift to local processing amid an evolving cloud subscription landscape, it's increasingly clear that a rise in AI PC shipments doesn't necessarily correlate with genuine customer demand.

While shifting some processing to run locally has huge merits when looking at the cloud compute market in isolation, the PC market's own challenges complicate strategies further. The answer will likely involve a hybrid approach to both sides, but how that hybrid and split will look will vary case-by-case.

But more crucially, cloud processing isn't set to go anywhere, and it will continue to complement local workloads with the type of power and performance that few organizations could ever afford to acquire. Upadhyay reminded me that cloud compute's benefits span "centralizing multi-channel customer data, real-time ticket routing, unified reporting, and seamless API integrations across hundreds of tools."

South Asia's leaders have long boasted about their demographic dividend. But the region's young people are turning it into a political reckoning.

(Image credit: Sajjad Hussain)

NBCUniversal and YouTube are also broadening their collaboration in the US and beyond.

If someone tells you a song is important to them, you should listen to it carefully. Because afterwards, you'll know them better. If they share a song with you, treat it with the kind of care and respect you'd give to a treasured photo or keepsake. It's a window into their very private world. And it is all we really have, in the end.

I knew the songs that were truly important to my mom: Eric Clapton (well, Derek and the Dominos) and Layla; Cream's Strange Brew; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Sanibel (which I can never ever listen to without crying, ever again); Hendrix's Are You Experienced?; Jethro Tull's Aqualung and so many more that were on heavy rotation in the car, whenever she'd drive me to ballet class as a child.

And I knew the musicians she respected: Janis Joplin, Prince ("He's a better musician than anyone gives him credit for, Becky"), The Hollies, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Bowie, Rod Stewart, The Police, Genesis, Springsteen, The Eagles, Fela Kuti (my parents actually met in Nigeria, but that's another story)… it's a long list.

What I didn't know was that my mom had since learned to love Sam Fender, Lewis Capaldi, The Weeknd, Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran. I only know this because she'd bought their CDs from thrift stores. I even now know a couple of the volunteers from said thrift stores. They worked out who I was from my name, when I went to donate a few things (it's so hard to let anything go when someone dies) and they asked after her.

It turns out that they used to put certain CDs aside, ready for when she came in. And apparently she always bought whatever they recommended — my mom was a kind, giving and inquisitive person.

FutureFuture

I also didn't know my mom had an extra cupboard stuffed solely with CDs. The entire back catalogs of The Beatles, Jackson Browne and Jethro Tull weren't a surprise, but Wu-Tang Clan's 1993 epic Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) was likely a thrift store revelation — I can even see she paid £2 for it — and I love that for her.

I should explain: my mom and I were very close. We also lost my beautiful younger sister in 2021 after an illness (not helped by that whole pandemic thing) which made us cling to each other even more. But I lived and worked in London; she lived a three-hour drive away. Distance is annoying.

You may have guessed that my mom has passed. And you may also have guessed that it was sudden, so I never got the chance to say goodbye. I never got to do it the way you always imagine you'll be able to at the end; to hug her, hold her hand, thank her for being my awesome mom and hear whatever she might want to tell me.

If you're reading this and thinking, 'Me too', I urge you to sit with your person's music for a while. And this is especially pertinent if it's music they kept in their car.

FutureFutureTangled up in blue

Behold! The car my mom part-exchanged her bigger, sportier Mazda for in 2013. I coated her off for getting an "old lady car" with its "toaster engine" and begged her to reconsider, but the deal was done.

And now that this vehicle has sadly come to me, I made a curious revelation: the CD player I've always known to be in this car wasn't there when she bought it. She must have had it fitted later. How do I know? I found the original central dash column in the spare wardrobe. And she clearly loved this (then) new souped up player, because every available compartment, door and nook in this car is stuffed full of CD books — those ones where you do away with the case for space and fit the holographic discs into the little plastic sleeves.

(Image credit: Future)

I love that she did this as a gift to herself and didn't tell anyone. When I first stuck the key in the ignition, Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View was playing. We went to see them in the early noughties, at the House of Blues in Florida. I cried for a full hour at the wheel, still in the parking lot. I needed it. Actually, it felt good.

(Image credit: Future)

Also in the car was Santana (we saw Carlos et al at the Hammersmith Apollo in 2016), Bon Jovi ('95, Wembley), Bruce Springsteen (Ricoh Arena, Coventry, also 2016) and several CDs I'd burned for her between 2002 and 2005. I always tried to write in a circular fashion with my black Sharpie when I created these discs, to echo the grooves of a record. There's a whole extra feature to be written about the lost art of burning a CD for someone you love, I think.

(Image credit: Future)Oye Como Va

It wasn't just acts we'd seen live taking up the limited space in her car, of course. My mom kept a lot of Bob Dylan around; Blood on the Tracks was clearly the last thing she'd been spinning before switching the disc out for a bit of Hootie — and Traveling Wilburys' Vol. 1 was just below that, in the little cubby hole above the CD player.

In the time since I lost my mom, I've driven this car a lot. I have often driven it at night, when I couldn't sleep. On the road, I belted out the songs I burned for her back when that was a thing you did for people you loved. It was my grief therapy. I shared playlists with her friends and we talked about gigs they'd been to with her. They say it helped them too.

If I couldn't make a decision about what she'd want me to do about things, I put one of her tracks on in the car and found the answer. And it was invariably, "Don't worry about it. Live your life and be free, Becky. I love you".

I hope she knows I love her too. I miss her. And I definitely approve of her taste in music.

(Image credit: Future)

Music has always been a non-negotiable in my life. I see now that it was a non-negotiable in my mom's life too. She just showed it quietly and in different ways, because she was a mom to two daughters and that took it out of her.

I truly believe humans need music. We need real music with real lyrics, that actual people had to write down or they couldn't rest. We need the chord progressions that had to get out of their heads and onto a tape. And we need the meaning these tracks take on years down the line — their association with the lives and loves of people close to us.

Old, scratched, starting to struggle; those compact discs are like my mom's little Madza — becoming harder to run. To be honest, I know the feeling. Parts of the car are held together with gaffer tape (aren't we all?). At its last service, the intake of breath over the teeth and slow shake of the mechanic's head seemed a little graver than before.

(Image credit: Future)

But I will never sell that car, or the collection of CDs within it. Not that I'd get much for either, anyway.

I have named the car Hidders, short for Hidalgo, after our gypsy heritage. To me it will always be priceless. And somehow, owning the music my mom casually kept in her ever-evolving life gig on wheels has brought me closer to her.

Now that I've listened to every CD that was squirrelled away in Hidders when I got it, I've started taking my sister's old collection of discs in there too, whenever I need to chat with her. Oh yes, we carefully kept her stacks of Erykah Badu, Lauren Hill, Prince, Maxwell, Sinéad O'Connor, D'Angelo, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beck, Madonna, Black Eyed Peas and more too.

And don't tell me you never talk to people who may or may not physically be there in the car? You should try it, it's great.

Love you, mom and Jo. See you both down the road.

My day usually starts with a scan around major retailers, specialist sites, and deals aggregators to get a snapshot of the best tech offers that are available - and then I share the very best with you. Results can be mixed, depending on the time of year and whether there’s a major sale on, but there’s been one consistent theme lately: the deals on most PC components are atrocious.

If you’re a regular in this space, then you’re probably already well aware of the situation with RAM and storage prices over the past few months. It’s got to the point where I’ve all but given up on finding any good deals in this space, especially when there are no signs that it's improving.

Where did all the deals go?

There’s no clearer evidence of just how dire the situation is with this Samsung SSD ‘deal’ that’s currently live on Amazon. This Samsung 870 EVO is advertised as a whopping 62% off. But that’s from the current list price of, um, $1,039.99. With that price cut, it’s now down to $399.99. Almost $400 for a 2TB SATA SSD? One that has been as low as $79.99 in the past? And this counts as a deal?

That’s just a snapshot of how bleak it is shopping for PC gaming components in 2026. Worst of all, there doesn’t seem to be any positive news on the horizon. You have SSD controller manufacturers saying that “the retail SSD market has almost disappeared”, RAM prices have increased by at least 400% in some regions, and now one chip maker says its production costs are set to increase by 10% next year - so CPUs are potentially next up for price hikes.

It puts into perspective just how lucky I was when I chose to upgrade my PC towards the end of 2025. There were rumblings of price increases and stock shortages in those few months towards the end of the year, but it hadn’t reached the disastrous depths we find ourselves in now for wannabe PC builders.

Here's the price history for the Samsung 870 EVO SSD at Amazon in the USFuture / KeepaAnd this is how the price of a 32GB kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 (CL36) RAM has changed over 12 months.Future / Keepa

I did have to wait a few months for my RAM to arrive, after the manufacturer I was about to buy RAM from completely shut down, but the cost didn’t make up nearly 50% of my entire budget like it would in today’s prices.

And my PC is very much a mid-range device with a Ryzen 9600x, a 9060XT, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB NVMe SSD, which is about all I wanted given I mostly use it for work. I do like to play the occasional game on PC that I can’t get on the PS5, or if there’s one I would prefer to play on that platform, or when prices make the PC version a more sensible choice. Those specs cover my needs nicely at a reasonable budget.

Calculating what the spend would be these days for the same spec is a terrifying exercise. It’s over £1,600 now, when I was comfortably under £1,000 at the end of last year.

What does the future hold?

With everything pointing to similar or increasing prices for a long time ahead, anyone looking for a PC upgrade has no choice but to put up with these prices for the foreseeable future. Yes, there will be a chance for some savings during Black Friday in November, but we are still looking at a significant markup compared to the savings of old.

In fact, and I usually wouldn't recommend this, but with the way component prices are lately, I'd actually lean more towards buying a pre-built PC if you're shopping around now. Sure, these companies are still suffering from the same price increases, but you can actually find some good value rigs.

(Image credit: Future / iBuyPower / Edited by Gemini)

Most recently, for example, the Presidents' Day and 4th of July sales at iBuyPower had some strong discounts on high-end gaming PC, with extra savings of up to $350 available on PCs with a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, an RX 9070 XT, and 32GB of RAM.

That would be my advice based on the poor quality of deals that are available on many PC components. Yes, there are still a few genuinely good offers out there that I've seen on the likes of CPUs and GPUs, but storage and RAM are certainly beyond saving right now — and I'd move quickly if there's anything good on the former, as those deals may be disappearing before long as well.

Cloudflare is set to make a major change to huge portions of the internet after standing between websites and automated traffic in a bid to protect publishers and hosters. Soon, the company will divide AI-related traffic into one of three categories – search, agent or training – in a bid to give customers more control over just how much automated traffic they’re prepared to let in.

From September 15 2026, new Cloudflare customers and new sites created by existing customers will block agent and training crawlers by default on pages that display ads, arguing that publishers need human visitors to see those ads to generate revenue - with customers able to also change these settings at any time through their dashboard.

But huge challenges stand between now and such a system being rolled out effectively, because many major crawlers like Googlebot are defined as multipurpose and don’t exactly fit into one of those three categories. In the worst case scenario, this could prevent any automated traffic from reaching a site, even if some categories are permitted.

Cloudflare vs. Google: A battle in which publishers could be the actual losers

Worryingly, Googlebot specifically plays a key role in discovering and updating pages in Google Search, and preventing its access could have major implications on content indexing.

Pages that reject Googlebot on the basis that publishers wanted to block at least one of those three categories could gradually lose search visibility, leading to major commercial implications.

Despite the clear disadvantages of blocking automated traffic, many assert that blocking crawlers helps to protect their intellectual property, reduces web hosting infrastructure demands caused by unpredictable traffic spikes, and gives owners more control over how and where their information is used.

Varn Search Marketing Search & Innovation Director Andy Mollison describes the situation as a “high-stakes staring contest” between Cloudflare and Google, but more importantly, one in which publishers are actually the ones who pull the short straw.

I spoke with Mollison to understand how publishers and businesses should move forward to strike the right balance between protecting their content and remaining visible online.

• Andy, when I came across this email, the first thing that came to my mind is that maybe Google wants it to happen to teach a (very harsh) lesson to those who block AI bots. A bit of a "Squid Game" moment but for websites?

Cloudflare and Google are currently having a high-stakes staring contest. On paper this looks like a mismatch. And in reality, it doesn’t look like it will work out for Cloudflare.

There is a simple reason Google isn’t going to blink first; the only losers from this will be Cloudflare’s customers. Mainly, publishers.

People will still be using Google, blissfully unaware a significant portion of the web is no longer included in search results. Cloudflare customers that rely on ad revenue, on the other hand will see their traffic drop off a cliff.

The goal is potentially admirable; allowing publishers to protect content from being stolen by AI, but by setting the default to ‘block all AI bots’ publishers that aren’t following every move Cloudflare makes closely will be the ones who pay the price.

• What is the worst case scenario for publishers, B2B businesses, consumer brands and ultimately consumers?

The worst case scenario is every website with ads currently using Cloudflare will be completely blocked from Google search.

This obviously poses a problem for publishers in terms of the organic traffic loss. The knock on effect is then decreased ad revenue. Similarly for B2B businesses and consumer brands, this lack of search visibility will harm their bottom lines.

Consumers may not initially notice, but eventually they might question why results from publishers stop appearing.

• Cloudflare, in its Content Independence Day, explained the logic behind the decision while still giving content publishers sovereignty over their decisions. Why is Cloudflare taking this stance?

It is the answer to why most businesses do most things, but the simple answer is money.

Cloudflare’s CEO declared last month that for the first time in the internet’s history, machines now generate more web traffic than people. AI crawlers are a big reason why. They take up a lot of crawl budget on servers, and therefore Cloudflare needs more resources to handle this increased traffic.

Cost is probably the primary reason, but a secondary aspect is autonomy. Cloudflare wants to give content publishers the ability to decide what level of indexation their content receives, depending on the intention of the AI robot.

For example, you could block your content from being put into an AI's training model, but still keep it available for when someone performs a 'search' in an AI platform.

This gives publishers better choice on where their content is used in AI platforms, on a page by page basis.

• You mentioned mixed messages from Google? What are they and why are these so difficult to decipher?

A little bit technical here, but bear with me. Cloudflare has been quite persistent with trying to recommend an llms.txt website file, which could in theory be used to dictate which parts of your website are open to AI crawlers. And more importantly, which parts are not.

Google's stance has been to state that an llms.txt file is not something they recommend in their Developer Fundamentals guidance. However, they have also created pages in their Agentic Browsing documentation about how to set up an llms.txt file.

So the confusion comes in Google stating they don't use llms.txt files, yet still creating documentation for using it.

There feels like there is a misalignment between Google's developers, which in itself then becomes difficult for website owners to know which stance to take. Either Google can crawl without use of the file, or they need it. It can’t be both.

• Why would brands, publishers and anyone that owns a website want to block AI traffic?

A significant portion of searches now ends without a click. For publishers this means they are seeing their traffic dramatically slashed as a result. This then has a knock on impact on advert revenue and affiliate deals. Therefore they might want to avoid their content showing up in the AI overview, in theory, hoping users would have to come to their website to read the stories.

The likelihood however is probably that consumers simply would continue to use AI search, and their information would come from other sources instead. This means blocking an AI crawler is potentially even more harmful.

• Other than Cloudflare, are other players (Akamai? Amazon?) expected to follow the same path and block AI agents by default?

Not at the moment, other providers have kept very quiet about the situation as a whole. It feels like Cloudflare is using AI search as an opportunity to make noise and stand out from the crowd. Whether it works in their favour, we'll have to wait and see.

Platforms like Squarespace offer small businesses and website professionals a vast and valuable website-building resource. But more choice isn't always better.

We've all sat in a restaurant, stomach rumbling as we browse an endless menu. Everything sounds great, but it's hard to know what is really good. So, we look for reviews, we ask a friend, and try to catch a glimpse of what others have ordered.

The same can be said for building websites. You aren't short of tools and apps, but knowing which ones are worthwhile can be tricky. Reviews and download numbers can be misleading.

This is the problem SquareLocator aims to fix. Offering a curated list of the best tools within Squarespace's ecosystem. I caught up with Miles Noble from SquareLocator to get his thoughts on why curation is now more important than ever.

First, tell us a little about SquareLocator. What is it? How did the idea come about? How does it work?

The same thing kept happening.

I've been building websites for over 20 years, and for the last decade or so my agency has specialised in Squarespace. Across hundreds of client builds, the same thing kept happening: a client would need something Squarespace didn't do out of the box, and I'd spend an evening trawling a dozen different creator websites trying to remember who made the good version of that plugin.

The Squarespace community is full of brilliant independent creators, but they're scattered across the internet with no central place to find them. SquareLocator is my attempt to fix that. It's a curated directory of the plugins, templates, and tools I'd actually recommend, organised so you can filter by what you need, whether that's industry, style, or a specific bit of functionality.

Squarespace is already known for offering a more closed ecosystem than competitors such as WordPress, so why does it need a third-party marketplace?

The closed ecosystem is exactly why. WordPress has an official plugin repository with over 60,000 options. Squarespace deliberately doesn't, which keeps the platform stable and secure, and that matters more than ever nowadays.

It's also why I moved my agency to Squarespace in the first place. Over the years, I've built sites on WordPress, on Textpattern, and completely from scratch, and too much of that time went on maintenance rather than design: plugin conflicts, security patches, sites breaking after updates, and clients too nervous to touch their own website in case something broke.

With Squarespace, I hand a site over, and I don't need to worry. It's secure, it's stable, and it frees me up to spend my time being creative instead of wrestling with security plugins, server maintenance, and major updates.

But it does mean the moment you want something beyond the standard toolkit, you're on your own. And in my experience, almost everyone reaches that point sooner or later.

Of the hundreds of Squarespace sites I've built, I can barely think of one that didn't include some custom code or third-party functionality. A website isn't just a functional tool. People respond to websites emotionally, the same way they respond to advertising, and standing out usually means going beyond a template's defaults. The creators making the plugins, tools, and templates that help web designers build truly unique websites deserve to be findable.

Why is curation so important right now? What does curation offer that a more general search doesn't?

Curation is really just someone taking responsibility for the recommendation.

Search is getting noisier, not clearer. AI-generated content has flooded the results, and a Google or AI search will happily show a website selling plugins that no longer work ahead of the creators making fantastic tools that are relevant and actively maintained.

Curation is really just someone taking responsibility for the recommendation. I've personally bought and used products from most of the creators featured on SquareLocator, often on paying client projects. SquareLocator is curated, which is very different from a search algorithm ranking whoever wrote the best SEO copy. It's human-led, so users only ever see up-to-date plugins and hand-picked templates.

Where does SquareLocator draw the line on what gets included and what doesn't? What's the criterion that an application has to meet to become 'trusted'?

A product needs to do at least one of three things: solve a genuine problem, do something nobody else does, or do a common thing exceptionally well. Copycat products and slightly-worse versions of something that already exists don't make it in, even if they're perfectly competent.

The other thing I look at is the creator behind the product. Do they maintain their plugins when Squarespace pushes updates? Do they answer support emails? A plugin that works today but breaks silently in six months is worse than no plugin at all, so track record matters as much as the product itself.

As the Squarespace ecosystem continues to evolve and grow, how do you plan on keeping SquareLocator relevant and stopping it from becoming the problem you are trying to solve?

I'd rather have 30 products people can trust than 3,000 they have to wade through, because at that point I've just rebuilt the problem with extra steps.

As a web designer, I keep up to date with the latest releases from Squarespace on a daily basis, so if Squarespace builds a feature natively that a creator plugin was originally made to solve, that plugin comes off SquareLocator because it's no longer relevant.

I test template designs before listing them, and desktop-only designs don't belong in a mobile-first world. The same goes for upskilling: outdated training courses made for older versions of the platform, like Squarespace 7.0, are removed immediately rather than left up to catch search traffic.

I'd rather have 30 products people can trust than 3,000 they have to wade through, because at that point I've just rebuilt the problem with extra steps.

Directories often struggle with monetisation; the moment they accept payment for placement, trust in the directory diminishes. How do you plan on keeping SquareLocator financially viable whilst remaining unbiased?

Nobody pays to be listed. The moment a placement can be bought, every recommendation on the site becomes worthless, because the user can no longer tell the difference.

Some products use affiliate links, which I disclose, but inclusion is decided first, and commission is whatever it happens to be. I've turned down products with generous affiliate terms because they weren't good enough, and SquareLocator features products that pay nothing at all to be listed. The entire value of the site is that the recommendations are real.

What advice would you offer Squarespace users when it comes to finding the best, most trustworthy tools for their websites?

A few practical checks before you buy anything:

1. Look for a live demo, not just screenshots. If a creator won't show you the plugin running on a real Squarespace site, ask yourself why.
2. Check when it was last updated, because Squarespace changes regularly and an unmaintained plugin will eventually break.
3. Read the support terms before you need them; the good creators offer proper support windows and clear installation guides.
4. And check what happens on mobile, since plenty of plugins demo beautifully on desktop and fall apart on a phone.

One more thing: resist the urge to install everything! Every plugin adds code to your site. Three well-chosen tools will serve you better than fifteen overlapping ones slowing your pages down.

What advice would you offer developers who are creating great tools but are struggling to get them noticed?

Developers love clever names, but 'Mega Menu for Squarespace' will be found by the person who needs it, and 'NavFlow Pro' won't.

Solve a problem people are actually searching for, and name your product after that problem. Developers love clever names, but "Mega Menu for Squarespace" will be found by the person who needs it, and "NavFlow Pro" won't.

Show the product working. A live demo converts better than any sales copy, and a short video of the installation process removes the biggest fear a non-technical buyer has, which is that they'll break their own website.

The creators who've built real followings in this space are the ones whose plugins still work after every Squarespace update, and word of that spreads. And finally, talk to the agencies and designers building Squarespace sites every day. One agency that trusts your work will put it in front of more clients than months of social media posts.

Production company A24 has become a staple among horror fans. You've no doubt seen at least one movie of theirs, with huge directors like Ari Aster, Alex Garland, and Denis Villeneuve all having movies in their impressive catalog.

As a huge fan of A24 horror movies in particular, I was keen to track down all the ones that are currently streaming so I could give my verdict on them, and whether I think they're worth seeking out in 2026.

Ranking this list was no easy task, even though I did know what my number one choice was going to be pretty quickly.

Please note that this only includes A24 movies you can watch on the best streaming services or the best free streaming services (at the time of writing), so this is not a definitive list of them all.

This is a hotly debated topic, so I would be keen to know which A24 horror movie is your favorite and why. Let me know in the comments when you're done reading mine.

A24 horror movies ranked: 31 - 2531. The Front Room

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), NOWTV (UK)

The Front Room has the potential to be something greater than it is, but I was left feeling very disappointed by the end result. It's the feature film debut for Max and Sam Eggers, but they haven't quite managed to follow in their brother Robert's footsteps here.

In this movie, Brandy plays a heavily pregnant woman who struggles when her overbearing mother-in-law moves in. It takes a terrifying turn when she realizes that she is a threat to her baby, but unfortunately, the movie didn't stick the landing for me due to silly gross-out scares and poorly written characters.

30. Y2K

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), NOWTV (UK), Netflix (Australia)

Even Rachel Zegler can't save Y2K, which is definitely one of A24's worst movies. I really liked the plot because it follows machines rising up against humanity during a New Year's Eve party, but it's all over the place and isn't executed well.

From humor that doesn't land to constant tonal shifts, Y2K has been widely panned by critics and audiences alike. There's also some jarring celebrity cameos that didn't really work, and so Y2K is very far down on my list for many reasons.

29. False Positive

Where to stream: Hulu (US), NOWTV (UK)

False Positive was a disappointment for me, mostly due to the frustrating pacing issues throughout the film. It seems to drag before barreling towards a chaotic ending, which could have been fleshed out a lot better. Pierce Brosnan's star power was wasted here.

The plot is also predictable as we follow a couple, Lucy and Adrian, who have been trying to conceive. When they meet a fertility doctor, they think their prayers have been answered, but when Lucy falls pregnant, she begins to uncover some dark secrets about the doctor. Honestly, you can easily predict the ending, meaning this was a huge miss for me.

28. Opus

Where to stream: HBO Max (US, UK), Netflix (Australia)

Many considered Opus to be a misfire for A24, but I didn't hate it as much as some people did. It's still not super high on my list, but I certainly hated it less than the three above.

Opus follows a journalist who travels to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. But when she gets there, dangerous things start happening. I loved John Malkovich in this movie, and I also loved how uncomfortable it was in examining obsessive fan culture.

27. Death of a Unicorn

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Prime Video (UK), Hoopla (Australia)

I really wanted to like Death of a Unicorn more than I did. Much like the critics' consensus for this, I'm very on the fence when it comes to this A24 movie. The cast is undoubtedly fantastic as we follow characters played by Jenna Ortega, Paul Rudd, Will Poulter, and Richard E. Grant.

The movie centers around a father and daughter who accidentally hit and kill a unicorn while en route to find a billionaire's house, who seeks to exploit the creature's miraculous regenerative properties. Unfortunately for them, there are other unicorns out there, and they want revenge. It's a silly creature feature, really, but that's all part of the charm.

26. Beau Is Afraid

Where to stream: Channel 4 (UK), Prime Video (Australia)

Beau is Afraid is a lengthy, surreal movie by Ari Aster, and as a result, it's also very divisive. Joaquin Phoenix stars as the titular character, a paranoid and very anxious man who must travel to his mother's funeral, resulting in a surreal journey of self-discovery.

It really does feel like a 3-hour anxiety attack, and Phoenix always delivers. While Beau Is Afraid didn't quite do enough to rank higher for me, I did like a lot about it, even if it did get a bit too surreal for me at times. But that's simply a preference thing and not a comment on the quality of the filmmaking.

25. Under the Skin

Where to stream: Netflix (US), StudioCanal Presents (UK), SBS on Demand (Australia)

Under the Skin has a loyal fanbase, and on the surface, it sounds great. But one could argue the movie feels too pretentious at times, and you'll have to be prepared for it to be very slow without much of a conventional plot, too.

Aside from that, it's a solid effort. Scarlett Johansson plays an extraterrestrial disguised as a young woman. We follow her as she drives around Scotland and seduces lonely men. It's very different from Johansson's other work, and she delivers a great performance here, as do the other cast members, many of whom had no acting experience before this.

A24 horror movies ranked: 24 - 1924. Men

Where to stream: YouTube TV (US), Stan (Australia)

Most people I speak to about Men seem to hate it, but come on, it's not that bad. I'm happy to have it in my top 25 because it's a perfectly fine horror movie, if you're willing to look past a narrative that is often described as pretentious and full of abstract symbolism.

The movie stars Jessie Buckley as Harper, a recently widowed woman who travels to a small village for a solo trip to heal. Whilst there, she meets an array of men, all played by Rory Kinnear, who gives utterly terrifying performances throughout. It does go off the rails, but hey, it's very entertaining.

23. Enemy

Where to stream: Prime Video (US), ITVX (UK), Stan (Australia)

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a dual role in Enemy, as we follow history professor Adam Bell, who discovers he has a doppelganger named Anthony Claire. But when they meet, they end up destabilizing each other's lives and relationships.

I really like Denis Villeneuve's work and thought he did a great job of depicting the creepiness of the story, which features a lot of surreal and disturbing imagery. It's not a perfect movie, but I liked it, even though I'm terrified of spiders and had to see them a lot in this movie.

22. The Blackcoat's Daughter

Where to stream: Prime Video (US only)

Before Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins brought us The Blackcoat's Daughter. If you prefer lingering, psychological dread over jump scares as I do, then I think you'll be freaked out by this movie. But there is certainly an absence of any real scares, placing this more in the thriller category in my opinion.

With some great performances from Kiernan Shipka, Emma Roberts, and Lucy Boynton, we follow dual storylines about two girls who are left alone at their prep school, Bramford, over winter break when their parents mysteriously fail to pick them up, and a troubled young woman on the road who, for unknown reasons, is determined to get to Bramford as fast as she can. It is a very bleak movie, so brace yourself.

21. MaXXXine

Where to stream: The Roku Channel (US), Netflix (UK), Paramount+ (Australia)

Unfortunately, the third movie in Ti West's X series is also the weakest. Considering just how great Pearl was in particular, it was a tough act to follow.

Mia Goth returns as Maxine Minx, this time in 1985 Los Angeles, where we see her auditioning for the lead in a new horror film. She's hoping to get her big break, but soon finds herself being targeted by a mysterious killer. Once again, Goth is incredible and steals the show, but the movie does lack suspense and has a reveal that I thought was way too obvious. Still, it's a fun conclusion to a great horror trilogy.

20. Life After Beth

Where to stream: Netflix (US), MGM+ (UK)

People are way too mean about Life After Beth, so I'm here to defend it. I'm content with it being at the bottom of my top 20, because I acknowledge it is a very silly movie, but I kinda love it anyway.

I love anything Aubrey Plaza is in, honestly, and she delivers such a fun and unhinged performance here. She plays a woman who died and came back as a zombie, and her boyfriend Zach is trying to come to terms with this. Despite how morbid it sounds, it's a great horror comedy, and it's one I revisit a lot.

19. High Life

Sci-fi and horror go together beautifully, and High Life always reminds me just how much space terrifies me. The story focuses on a group of criminals who are serving death sentences, so they are sent on a mission to extract energy from a black hole. They are disposable and treated like experiments by a scientist, in typical creepy sci-fi fashion.

Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche are fantastic in this movie, as a criminal and a scientist respectively. It is a very tense and atmospheric horror, and ventures into body horror too.

Where to stream: Tubi (US, UK)

A24 horror movies ranked: 18 - 1318. Bodies Bodies Bodies

Where to stream: Hulu (US), Prime Video (UK)

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a great and incredibly dark satire. It's paced really well, keeps you on the edge of your seat, and has a lot of important social commentary to say. The characters are insufferable, but that's the point.

The movie is about a group of wealthy young adults who gather at a remote mansion. But when they decide to play a murder-in-the-dark party game during a blackout, real bodies start turning up, and chaos ensues.

17. The Hole in the Ground

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), MGM+ (UK), Prime Video (Australia)

Why are sinkholes so scary? The Hole in the Ground does nothing to combat this fear, as we hone in on a mother who starts to become worried about her son's disturbing behavior.

There's a huge focus on parental anxiety here, and a strong performance by Seána Kerslake really elevates this movie. I love a good folklore-inspired movie, and The Hole in the Ground provides a tense and atmospheric watch.

16. Tusk

Where to stream: Prime Video (UK)

I like my horror bleak and bizarre, which is why I'm always happy to go to bat for the unfairly panned Tusk. Kevin Smith has certainly created something memorable here; whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you.

We follow Justin Long's Wallace Bryton, an obnoxious podcaster who travels to Canada to interview an eccentric retired sailor, played by Michael Parks. Little does he know, he has some disturbing plans for Wallace. Cue the body horror and plenty of uncomfortable scenes.

15. Heretic

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Prime Video (Australia)

This Hugh Grant-led horror movie is very dialogue-heavy, but it is so well crafted, and his performance is excellent too. I would love to see Grant do more horror movies after watching this, because it's a nice change from his usual roles.

Heretic sees Grant's chilling character, Mr Reed, luring two missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), into his home. Whilst there, he begins to challenge their religious beliefs in increasingly sinister ways.

14. It Comes at Night

Where to stream: Stan (Australia only)

It Comes at Night is a great exploration of paranoia, fear, and morals, as we follow people who are hiding in a forest as the Earth is taken over by a highly contagious disease.

There's so much dread here, and two families are forced to share the same claustrophobic space, resulting in growing tension and nail-biting scenes. You're not quite sure where it's going to go next, and that's the beauty of it.

13. The Monster

Where to stream: The Roku Channel (US), Prime Video (UK, Australia)

Creature features can be notoriously hit and miss, but thankfully The Monster is the former. It blends excellent practical creature design with a devastating story about family, adding that all important human touch.

The Monster explores the relationship between a troubled mother and her adolescent daughter, who is tired of dealing with her and wants to go and live with her father permanently. But on their way to his house, they find themselves stranded at night on a country road with a malicious creature hunting them.

A24 horror movies ranked: 12 - 512. Bring Her Back

Where to stream: HBO Max (US)

Sally Hawkins gives a truly frightening performance in Bring Her Back, where she plays a disturbed foster mother. Watching her quickly flip from sweet to psychotic had me visibly tense, and this might just be my favorite ever performance of hers.

The movie is about two siblings who find themselves orphaned and placed in the middle of an occult ritual at the hands of their new foster mother, who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

11. The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Mubi (UK), Stan (Australia)

I will watch anything Yorgos Lanthimos makes. At this point, I'm convinced he can do no wrong, and that's why The Killing of a Sacred Deer is so high on my list. It's certainly one of my favorite movies of his.

The movie follows a surgeon who takes an awkward teenage boy, Martin, under his wing. But things get worse for him and his family when they find out that Martin has a sinister agenda. It's as good as it sounds, and there's a stellar cast led by Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman and Barry Keoghan.

10. Green Room

Where to stream: Xumo Play (US), Prime Video (Australia), MGM+ (UK)

Green Room leads my top 10 (it's getting very exciting now), with standout performances from Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, alongside Patrick Stewart's portrayal of a methodical neo-Nazi leader.

This is a very vicious horror movie as we watch a punk band who find themselves attacked by neo-Nazi skinheads after witnessing a murder. This is the kind of movie that sticks with you for a long time.

9. Midsommar

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Prime Video (UK, Australia)

Despite being set mostly in the daytime, Midsommar is still terrifying. That's just one of the reasons I love it so much, but there's plenty to praise when it comes to this Ari Aster movie.

Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren and Will Poulter lead the cast as a group of friends traveling to a nine-day midsummer festival at a commune in rural Sweden. What follows is a deeply unsettling folk horror that tackles themes like grief and trauma.

8. In Fabric

Where to stream: The Roku Channel (US only)

In Fabric certainly is absurd, but its uniqueness is why it ranks so highly on my list. The villain of the movie is a haunted red dress, and we watch as it torments various owners. I told you it was unique.

The sound design here is excellent, as is the overall retro aesthetic. There's also some dark humor here, and it offers a lot for horror fans, including a razor-sharp critique of consumerism. Oh, and the legendary Gwendoline Christie stars in this too, making it one hell of a movie.

7. Hereditary

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Prime Video (UK)

I own a t-shirt that says "nominate Toni Collette you cowards" on the front, and I continue to stand by that message. Her performance in Hereditary is mind-blowingly good, so it's hardly a surprise it's so far up on my list.

As the title suggests, family is at the center of this movie, which explores themes like grief, madness, and maternal despair. Collette's character Annie uncovers disturbing secrets about her recently deceased mother, and terrible things start happening.

6. X

Where to stream: Prime Video (Australia only)

X is a super stylish slasher movie which perfectly replicates iconic 70s movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It follows a group of people who rent a guesthouse on a rural Texas farm to shoot an independent pornographic movie.

But they soon find themselves threatened by the homicidal couple who own the guesthouse, fueled by repressed desire and jealousy over their lost youth. All the characters are really well fleshed out, and there are some gory set pieces too.

A24 horror movies ranked: 5 - 15. The Lighthouse

Where to stream: HBO Max (US), Binge (Australia only)

The Lighthouse is my second favorite Eggers movie. I quickly fell in love with the moody black-and-white cinematography and the excellent performances from both Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. As someone who grew up on the coast, I love maritime-focused stories, which is likely why I was so drawn to this.

The story is about two men losing their sanity during a four-week shift at an isolated New England lighthouse, and it's simple but very effective.

4. The Witch

Where to stream: Netflix (US)

In at number four is my personal favorite Eggers movie, The Witch. Not only was it a stunning debut for both Eggers and leading star Anya Taylor-Joy, but it's also widely regarded as his best movie, though many of his works have performed well with the critics.

I loved The Witch's historical accuracy, and the fact that it's a slow burn with a very worthy payoff at the end. It's easy to become immersed in this world, haunted by creepy sound design and a lingering threat. It's fantastic.

3. Lamb

Where to stream: The Roku Channel (US), Mubi (UK)

Another folk horror I adore is Lamb. It's about a couple who adopt a mysterious human-sheep hybrid as their own. They name her Ada, and she essentially becomes a daughter to them.

This surreal concept is perfectly balanced against an isolated backdrop, with the two lead characters living in rural Iceland. Noomi Rapace delivers an emotional performance here, as a grieving mother finding solace in a new child.

2. Saint Maud

Where to stream: Prime Video (US), StudioCanal Presents (UK)

In my opinion, Morfydd Clark's role in Saint Maud is her best ever. She stars as a religious private carer who becomes fixated with saving the soul of her patient.

Saint Maud is a character-driven psychological horror, as we get a look into the minds of both Maud and her patient, a hedonistic dancer named Amanda (Jennifer Ehle). It builds to one of the most disturbing endings I've ever seen, and that's why I love it so much. It continues to be impactful no matter how much I watch it.

1. I Saw the TV Glow

Where to stream: Netflix (UK, Australia)

I Saw the TV Glow is undoubtedly my favorite A24 movie purely based on how much it emotionally destroyed me. It's a powerful story about identity and how our lives can be shaped through the media we consume.

Two isolated teenagers in the 90s bond over a TV show called The Pink Opaque, to which they both feel deeply connected. The movie features striking visuals and a neon palette, and references to popular teen show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There's also some jarring scenes that earn its horror status. It's hard to fully articulate what I Saw the TV Glow means to me, but I consider it to be a very special movie.

With only three more episodes to go, X-Men 97 season 2 is fast approaching the finish line — and there are a few big story threads that the Marvel TV show needs to wrap before it takes another extended break from our screens.

How will Professor X establishing X-Corp affect the current world order? What impact will Gambit's resurrection as one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen have on this season's plot? And where is the Disney+ TV series setting up things to come for season 3? I can't say for sure — but, what I do know is when season 2 episode 7 will air on Disney+, one of the best streaming services. So, scroll on for more details!

What time can I watch X-Men 97 season 2 episode 7?

Sitting patiently for the X-Men 97's next chapter to come out like... (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

Episode 7 of X-Men 97's sophomore season will make its Disney+ debut on Wednesday, July 29. That's its global launch date, too, so viewers in North and South America won't be able to watch it on the evening of July 28.

Unless the Marvel Phase 6 project's release time is suddenly changed, the entry titled 'Strange Land, Savage Heart' will drop at the same time that its six forebears have:

• US — 12am PT / 3am ET
• Canada — 12am PT / 3am ET
• UK — 8am BST
• India — 12:30pm IST
• Singapore — 3pm SGT
• Australia — 5pm AEST
• New Zealand — 7pm NZST

X-Men 97 season 2 full release schedule

X-Men 97 season 2 is powering up for its third act (Image credit: Marvel Animation/Disney+)

As I mentioned earlier, there aren't many installments left of the X-Men animated show's current season. Indeed, there are only two more to enjoy after this week's episode before the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) adjacent program goes off-air once more.

Like the launch time section above, as long as Marvel doesn't make a last-minute adjustment to this season's release schedule, we already know when its final pair of chapters will come out:

• Season 2 episode 1 — out now
• Season 2 episode 2 — out now
• Season 2 episode 3 — out now
• Season 2 episode 4 — out now
• Season 2 episode 5 — out now
• Season 2 episode 6 — out now
• Season 2 episode 7 — July 29
• Season 2 episode 8 — August 5
• Season 2 episode 9 — August 12

As the world's fastest and most glamorous sport, Formula 1 has long attracted fans of all ages around the globe - and in recent years, the success of Netflix's Drive to Survive series has helped this grow even further.

With CEO Stefano Domenicali recently stating his hope for over a billion Formula 1 fans within the next few years, the need for a resolute technology stack to handle all of the data for these fans is more important than ever.

The organization has been working with Salesforce for some time now to do just that, and at the recent Salesforce World Tour London 2026 event, I sat down with key Formula 1 tech minds to find out more.

Augmenting and speeding forward

Having first started working together in 2019, the 2026 season marks the next level of Formula 1's partnership with Salesforce, Claire Sparks, its Head of Tech Initiatives, says, bringing in, “a maturity, a shift, a re-energization of the work we do to together…really challenging one other to do things differently, to think differently, to deliver new things.”

2026 is a key year for Formula 1 in more ways than one, as the biggest shake-up in rules and regulations for several seasons has meant major changes up and down the grid.

To help explain the changes, Formula 1 developed Tech Director, a new application built on AgentForce to take complex technical rules and distil them down for fans of all levels of expertise.

This service also looks to provide a single location for fans to get the information they need, so there is no need to switch between different apps, building customer loyalty with real-time, accurate data in a sport where change happens fast.

Matt Kemp, Head of Customer Data Operations at Formula 1, notes that when looking to improve and upgrade its tech stack, the organization has the view of "how does technology disrupt technology".

“We use the technology to augment our teams, to improve the way we’re thinking about how we engage with our fans, and really take it to the next level," he notes.

(Image credit: Salesforce)

In particular, Kemp highlights how Salesforce's Data360 platform has brought together all of the company's tools in one platform, massively reducing complexity, especially when working alongside its other data partner, AWS.

Sparks agrees, saying that this move away from individual solutions towards a platform-based landscape has shifted how Formula 1 thinks about technology as a whole, moving from previously wanting a point solution for everything, towards now wanting a platform-layer of technology that can bring cross-functional tools across the business.

“The strategic shift with Salesforce has also meant that we’ve had a mental model shift on how we approach technology, our choices, our evaluation, our view of it, and how we talk about it in the business," she says.

"We’re now joining the dots in all of our solutions and all of our functions within the business to really start to see this technology in a much more powerful way."

Maximum engagement

So what does this partnership look like in action for Formula 1 fans? Quite simply, Kemp and Sparks say, it should mean that fans get quicker access to more accurate data, and a much smoother all-round user experience.

Kemp notes that a million data points are being generated each minute of a Formula 1 race, which can now be made customer-ready within three seconds.

Push notifications are a common way that Formula 1 delivers these updates to its fans, but previously, some of these alerts had been taking up to 20 minutes to deliver due to the sheer scale of the fandom. However Kemp notes that Salesforce was able to develop a new push notification system which can push millions of notifications in a minute

"In a sport where every millisecond can make a difference, that’s massive for us to engage with our fans on that sort of speed," Sparks adds.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Overall, working seamlessly is the key for Formula 1, especially when it comes to making the fan user experience a more engaging and enriching experience.

"Ultimately sport is about connection," Sparks says, outlining the ongoing challenge for Formula 1 of bringing in new fans, with a roadmap of moving from, “a sort of fairly clinical personalization, to focusing on how do we really connect on an emotional level with our fans."

As Kemp adds, “when you stop thinking of customization as a one-way traffic, and start to think of it as a conversational piece, that will really open up the doors and tap into emotions/find out what a fan wants as opposed to what we think they want."

In such a data-driven sport, the goal will always be getting the most out of every bit of information, whether it's the teams and drivers searching for marginal gains to push performance, or the Formula 1 organization looking for a way to better communicate with its fans thanks to Salesforce's suite of tools and services.

As Kemp puts it, “we want to manage it all together - that sounds really hard, and really complex, because it is today, but with the agentic layer on top of that, and all of these tools…all of a sudden it becomes a reality."

You may not have heard of the Armour Home Group, but you have almost certainly heard of its three hi-fi brands: Q Acoustics, QED, and Goldring. Q Acoustics is one of the masters of great-value value speakers, QED is one of the best-known cable makers, and Goldring is a 120-year-old turntable specialist.

And you may not have heard of its new Managing Director, Charlie Henderson, but you will absolutely have heard of the audio brands he's helped to lead, including Cambridge Audio, Naim, and Jabra.

I've met Henderson before in his roles at Cambridge and Naim, and I was fascinated by how the email I received announcing his appointment promised to focus on expanding the brands "beyond the hi-fi" sector.

I wondered if that meant moving into more 'mainstream' parts of the audio world, and I wasn't sure how that would really work with a brand like QED, so I wanted to find out more — but it turned out that Henderson had something completely different in mind.

He wanted to talk about how the brands can support the return of public listening rooms, how they can engage with the new wave of people getting into hi-fi — and how the hi-fi world can get its "mojo" back.

TechRadar: You said in your introduction at the company that "My goal is to elevate these brands beyond the hi-fi sector and into the broader music community", referring to Q Acoustics, QED, and Goldring. So what do you have in mind?

Charlie Henderson: I have felt for a long time that the hi-fi industry has lost some of its mojo. If we go back to the '50s, '60s, '70s — kind of the essence of British hi-fi in particular — lots of those company founders were either part of rock bands, or they were gigging, or they were visiting live venues, and that's why they got into this industry. So a real love of music was always there.

I think we've seen maybe over the last 10 years or so that it's gone a bit stale. And I think in all the roles I've had in this industry, I've been really keen to make sure that we reboot it. So we talk about our mission as a business, which is to move beyond the hi-fi bubble and become part of music culture — almost as though that's revolutionary, but it's not; it's just going back to what hi-fi was. It was always part of music culture.

But if we think about going around Vienna High End or the Bristol Hi-Fi Show or any of these kinds of events, it's usually less about the music and it's mostly about the equipment and the technology. I think that's a shame. It's not why I'm in this industry; it's not why all the people I tend to find that I'm working with are in this industry.

So that is our mission, and the way we do it is by just being authentic about why we're really here.

TR: It's funny, of all the big tech shows, IFA is the one that has started doing what you're saying, and trying to be a cultural hub as well as a tech show. But really audio is such a kind of tangential part of IFA compared to these music shows that you're talking about.

CH: I remember chatting to a [very respected] hi-fi journalist at the Munich show a couple of years ago, and he just hung out with us. This was in my Cambridge [Audio] days, he just kind of just hung out because he was like, 'Man, at least someone's playing some proper music.'

You walk around the halls and it's Kate Bush and Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and all of the usual stuff. Great artists, they're still important musical acts and incredible — but decades have moved on and there's different artists today, you know? People like Fred Again and Ren are my two favorites at the moment, because I think they're British artists who are defining the real musical culture right now. And I haven't heard any Fred Again or Ren at an audio show.

I probably would hear it at IFA, and I think it's because IFA represents companies who understand that they are part of consumer culture. I think the hi-fi industry maybe sometimes thinks that consumer culture is a dirty word. I couldn't disagree more. Knowing who your customer is and what appeals to them and being part of their world, that's our responsibility as manufacturers ultimately.

TR: So what do you see music culture as being in 2026? We're in the middle of one of the most interesting times of audio I can think of, where the new audience who grew up on streaming are coming in and going, ‘I want to move beyond this.’ And that is partly behind the vinyl revival with young people really wanting to actively get into that side — but it's also leading us in the direction of every device having streaming built in or being ‘active’. There are these two arguably separate paths, so where can you ‘meet’ music culture as a company?

CH: There's a little bit of convenience going on here. Active is clearly a future direction for our industry, fueled by convenience and simplicity. I've spent a long time in my career involved in separates hi-fi, and that has a place, but I think even companies who have been focused on that over the last few decades realize that active is the direction of travel. I think that's down to people just wanting a simpler life.

But then there's the ironic flip side of that. We talk about the vinyl revival and analog renaissance and all these things, [including] CDs. I'm using one of my old Motorola phones for my phone because I don't always want to be connected on a smartphone.

But one of my favorite cartoons is [the one that asks] ‘What got you into vinyl? Was it the inconvenience or the expense?’ You know that one? I think the ritual [of playing and choosing vinyl] is really important.

Just for a second, I'm going to kind of dive off into part of how we'll execute our mission. You know, moving into being more a part of music culture isn't just about understanding the music side of it, it's actually how people experience music. I think as an industry, the hi-fi industry has long lamented the question: how do we get people to come in and listen to what music should sound like?

I don't believe [getting people to come to us] is the right answer. Go to where people are listening to music and show them how it could sound. There is a bar culture called the kissa bar culture that came out of Tokyo over the last 20 or so years. It manifests itself in these listening rooms, and you see them at Studio 180 in London, for example. Spotify has just announced its own version of one of these listening rooms as well. That's where music culture is for me.

There was a great article I was reading the other day where it's basically saying listening rooms like that are the new nightclubs. I thought that was super interesting because it's a place where people just assemble, share a passion of music. They might be sipping nice teas or drinking great whiskey or maybe just chatting, you know? It's a place to socialize.

We're seeing this resurgence of gaming, and I mean board gaming. I think that's beautiful, because it's people coming together and escaping the distractions of modern-day technology. It's definitely a younger audience who are doing that because they are sick to the high teeth of everything being online, everything being intangible and losing that connection with friends.

You're seeing it also manifesting in things like running clubs appearing and becoming a huge thing for people in their teens and 20s and early 30s, just craving for human connection.

And I think that is part of music culture. It's human connection. It's why gig tickets are going through the roof again — Glastonbury's selling out faster than ever.

And people really spend more on music, on a hi-fi system or an audio system. They're quite happy with their [premium] Apple Bluetooth products, they're already spending that money. They're dropping £1,000 on Glastonbury tickets and spending all this money on Taylor Swift to get the eight different versions of an album that she releases. They're obsessed by music, but they don't know who to talk to because no one's talking to them.

Q Acoustics make everything from budget bookshelf speakers to big premium floorstanders (Image credit: Future)

TR: This might tie back to what your plan is to get out there and interact with people, but the immediate problem that occurs to me with having more of these spaces — and about these spaces becoming more popular even though there's appetite for them — is the general collapse in the ‘third-place’ concept. Places you can go that are not work and that are not home and that are also sustainable businesses. A lot of these places are struggling. Board game cafes have done all right, but you've got maybe one or two per city. They're not like how pubs and bars have been absolutely everywhere in the past. So do you see yourselves opening some of these venues, or supporting them directly in other ways?

CH: I think the pub reference is interesting because we've seen a decline in pubs. We know how many pubs are shutting every week, and nightclubs. I think it's just a different way of people getting together. I'm not surprised that there's only one or two [board game cafes] in a town, because there's probably only ever been one or two nightclubs in a town. Clearly not the same number of people going through [board game cafes as nightclubs], but it's just a place where people can get together.

But just because they're not doing it publicly, doesn't mean they're not doing it at home, you know? We know that vinyl and turntable sales continue to increase year over year over year because people are creating their own environments at home.

In terms of how we execute it, it's by working through our relationships that we have as a team — and that I bring to the business as well in terms of relationships in the music industry and venues within the music industry — and saying ‘how do we support you creating your own listening bar environments’ or being able to [develop] kissa bar culture.

And doing that globally, importantly, as well. We might be based in the UK and proudly British hi-fi brands, but we're a global business, so how do we get a venue in Tokyo, the home of all of this culture? We've had some really good conversations in Vienna just last week about being able to do this in places in Australia, and opportunities in places like New York and across Europe. Spain, Italy and France are way ahead of the UK when it comes to this listening bar culture already.

And then obviously in the UK, our approach will be to support those venues either by equipping them with the right kind of technology to be able to deliver it, or helping people to open them. There's a difference between pop-up events, which are fun for the industry, and actually supporting these venues to be successful in what they're trying to do.

There's an ethical story here. Sometimes people say, ‘So what is it you do as a business? You're making stuff?’ I'm like: no, it's bigger than that. We make products for sure, but they transform people's lives.

It sounds very floaty and you know, almost ephemeral, but it's true: music changes how people feel, so we have a responsibility to make that available to people wherever they want to be. That's kind of our cultural thing, and we'll do that by making sure that the great kit that we make is in the places they want to go to — the two come together.

The outcome is that people realize that [our brands are] actually part of music culture, and therefore we are the people who are signposting who they could listen to great music through, and that's the business upside of it.

TR: So when you talk to these places about what support they need from you, what are they saying?

CH: Support financially. Equipment. There are some which have been really successful with very advanced audio systems, but most locations can't manage that.

We are proudly in the accessible end of the spectrum as a company, particularly around the Q Acoustics range. It's high-quality equipment, but it doesn't cost the Earth, so we can help some of these smaller venues perhaps be part of this movement; we can loan equipment to them, or work with them on [cost]. I think that's probably the practical thing that we'd be able to do.

TR: You’re talking about getting closer to music culture and being a music-listening brand, not a technical brand, if you think of it in those terms. Do you think that's something that separates you from the Chinese hi-fi brands that are exploding in popularity? A lot of them feel quite led by technical people who are able to create pretty incredible products for low prices, but the pitch feels based on technical specs.

CH: I think these brands aren’t that different to traditional hi-fi companies. You know, I've worked in a number of brands where it’s an engineering-led culture — and there's a bit of a transformation that we'll do at Armour Home; there's a degree of engineering-led culture [there].

What has been fun is seeing everything from the engineering teams, but also that our designers saying, ‘Hang on, we could be bolder and braver and less safe and actually be really exciting.’

So I'm already seeing renders for products that will come out in the next 12 to 18 months where I'm like, ‘Yeah, OK, now we're talking’. These are products that really speak to having a sense of style and presence, and really selective decisions around the colors, materials and finishes that we use, and being much closer to interior design. Pantone colors of the year and these similar cultural cues that matter [to people] — just being cool and relevant, that alone is more than maybe the Chinese brands are able to do because they're not attuned to it in quite the same way.

There is a distinction, though. It isn't just British tastes that matter; it's understanding the global tastes as well. So working with our global distributors as well to really get a sense of what is current right now in China or in Australia or in the US, and bringing that as a bit of a mix. Otherwise we fall into the trap I think British hi-fi brands have done in the past where they think everything starts and stops at the English Channel.

Goldring's GR3 was a triumphant return to making spinners (Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)

TR: Right now, Goldring is really a turntable accessories company that happens to make one turntable [the Goldring GR3]. So, is your plan to expand its reach by offering more turntable models, or are you thinking more about expanding the kind of accessories it makes into phono stages or something else that's not in the range at the moment?

CH: One of my observations when joining the Armour Home Group is that we focus a lot around the Q Acoustics business. And then we have two other businesses within it, which are Goldring and QED. I think that focus is a miss, [and] that's a shame, because we have 120 years this year of history with Goldring. It is one of two of the oldest audio brands in existence, and it has been there at all the defining moments over a century.

Then we have QED, which is 53 years old this year, and it was the brand that started the whole cable revolution from bell wire to proper audio hi-fi grade cables. Something called the Genesis report, which was written by the guys at QED, is still the bible that everyone else has followed ever since.

Q Acoustics has been the new kid on the block a little bit. It's 20 years old this year, so I kind of joke with people in the business that it's not a teenager anymore, we're a grown-up… but we have 120 years of Goldring.

So in the context of your question, Goldring is a beautiful thing for us to have in the family because it allows us to talk about 120 years of history, and iconic decks like the G99 or GL75 with Lenco that were built over the decades. But it's also bang up to date, because vinyl culture is hot.

So we have to do a couple of things. One is to celebrate the past and then also bring things bang up to date in the future. I've had some extraordinary conversations with some of the people I've met in this business, but one of them in particular is a guy called David Giffin.

He's been in the business for 40 years, his father was in the business for 41 years before that, and he was sharing with me this extraordinary scrapbook of all of the sort of cuttings over decades of this business.

That is extraordinary in itself, but he's now the person that people come to from all of the forums going, ‘This is the guy who can rebuild whatever cartridges from around the world’. He's showing me pictures of some Japanese cartridges, like super-esoteric cartridges made out of marble, that he's been tasked with repairing.

So this extraordinary level of skill sits in our Goldring team, and we don't talk about that nearly enough; it's extraordinary. How do we make that manifest itself in the consumer world? We let people know that we have some of the best cartridges, certainly for consistency of performance, that money can buy. We've got everything from entry level right up to Ethos at the top level

You can come to us for turntables too. We have GR3 as a turntable at the moment, and without giving any secrets away, of course we're looking at what more we can do more around that.

But I need to make sure that [a new] turntable is something truly iconic that celebrates 120 years of Goldring, that reminds everybody that this was the brand that started it all, and can sit proudly in a kissa bar environment, celebrated on this plinth, almost like they're shrines. Something that's truly special.

And then at the same time, [should] tie our brands together, so I can use QED technology in the development of that turntable, and I can also make sure we've got Q Acoustic speakers that do service to a turntable with 120 years' worth of history. That’s where some of these new flagship projects that we're working on are really exciting, because the material choices alone are bold.

I talk a lot internally about the thread between the brands. They're not disparate brands. We're incredibly fortunate to have three brands that bring everything together from the source through the connectivity through to the output, and we need to do more of that.

TR: So we should probably expect a cohesive, very premium, very celebratory set of stuff to come from this thinking?

CH: This is where I get kicked under the table by my PR handlers. You should expect a much more bold and confident view as to what we bring to market because I believe we've earned that over many, many, many, many decades.

TR: Are you considering doing something like special edition versions of Q Acoustics speakers that are Goldring-branded or designed? Q Acoustics' design language tends to have friendly, rounded corners, and rounded edges. I look at the GR3 and I see this stark, hard-edged cuboid block. Do you want a set of Q Acoustics speakers that are equally hard-edged and glossy-finished, [and] maybe have the Goldring logo on?

CH: I think it could be that way, or it could be the other way around. You could see a Goldring turntable that leans more into the home-friendly design, or I could see everything elevating to a new design approach as well, sure.

What I can be clearer about is that I think it's important that there are technology linkages where possible across the three brands, and design cues where appropriate across all three as well, without betraying the core design fundamentals of each brand. It's a balancing act.

Q Acoustics has made plenty of premium-looking products previously (Image credit: Future)

TR: The biggest missing pieces of your portfolio are the amp and streamer. Is that something you think about expanding into, or do you think the future is more in the combined active speaker route in the Q Acoustics range?

CH: There are two parts to that. We have our core business, and we have our distribution business in the UK, and it’s important to mention that our distribution business is really interesting.

We've got Xgimi at one end in terms of cutting-edge projector technology; we’re just rolling that out with retailers across the UK, and we literally can't keep up with demand.

Almost at the other extreme we've got Grado. Cool as hell, legit New York vibes, super interesting, iconic design. And then in the middle we've got Burson Audio, a head-fi and amp brand.

But there is the missing link [in our brands], which is amplification and streaming. Active speakers definitely support that, clearly, but we have a very successful passive speaker range, and I need to work out how to tackle that. Is that through partnerships? Is that through collaboration with existing manufacturers in the industry, those who are on the same mission as us of understanding that music culture is really important for the industry? Or do we treat it as a distribution opportunity for us in the UK? And I don't have the answer yet, but I know it's important.

TR: QED is surely the hardest brand here to expand beyond the core hi-fi community, unless you take a bit of a left turn. So what is your thinking there? Would you keep QED as a nice ‘glue’ option to connect everything together, or is there some future for QED that goes beyond what it does now?

CH: I would start by saying it’s about re-remembering that QED is the brand that started it all, and helping that awareness grow. There are other brands out there who've established a strong position in the premium and luxury cable sector, but they're all essentially going back to the Genesis report.

We are working on redefining the ranges, I'll put it that way, so you'll see some news coming out of QED fairly soon anyway.

I think connectivity is a question in itself. Cables were the original connection, but now wireless is a connection, and so I'm certainly pondering in my idle moments about whether QED should be in that wireless area. Because it's the modern day glue, and it's interesting you ask the question because it's definitely in my mind.

TR: You alluded to this earlier, but it's the old business study question of asking ‘What do we actually sell? Is it cables or is it connections? And if it's connections, then should we think about something medium than cables in the future?’ Is that the kind of question you're exploring for QED?

CH: Absolutely. And I’m only four weeks in, which is why I'm not giving you clear answers, but I can see that there is a clear consumer understanding among those who know us today that we are the connection. But there are consumers today who don't even know us, they're not being signposted well enough because of the music culture topic we've gone into as to how they listen to music — so they might recognize QED as being the connection, but they're only used to wireless connectivity. And so what do we do with that?

TR: I'm sure you are not going to have anything specific to say on this subject when it comes to products, but it's very relevant to this topic: have you seen the Pro-ject Wireless Box E? They've made this little box that connects directly to the speaker posts on the back of your passive speakers, it plugs into power, and it makes them wireless using the WiiM platform.

CH: I think that's actually quite exciting for our category. A theory I have is that a lot of people are starting to inherit hi-fi, so family members might be getting to an age or passing on, sadly, and people are discovering turntables in the loft. ‘What do I do with this?’

That's interesting for me as well, which is getting people on a journey. One of the companies I worked at was world-famous for understanding the importance of being there at the beginning of someone's journey and being with them for life. It’s a separates company, and it's the upgrade journey that people went on that's really important to me. It's one of the things that I'm talking to the marketing teams about, within the group. It's about making it easier to understand where you start and where you could go.

QED is a perfect example actually, where it's a bit of a maze and really hard to navigate, so making sure that, just from a packaging and a communications point of view, people know where they are on that journey. Are they at the beginning? Are they at our ‘good’, our ‘better’ or our ‘best’ — so they can work out where they could step up through their audio life.

I don't think we have done that enough in our ranges. It's the same with our 3000 series to our 5000 series range, and then up to our Concept portfolio, in Q Acoustics. It's making it really clear about what this [product] does at this level, what you can expect at this [higher] level and what you can expect at this [highest] level. This idea that it's always a little itch that's not quite scratched; it could always get better.

Q Acoustics makes some smaller speakers, but not quite desktop-sized (Image credit: Future / Simon Lucas)

TR: One of the entry points that I think we're seeing a lot of at the moment is desktop speakers. You guys have compact speakers, bookshelf speakers that are pretty small — but in particular, there's this kind of breakout sector right now that’s one step down in size from there. Quite often wireless or active, but designed for people who are getting into the audiophile stage via their desktop. Based on what you were just saying, are you guys exploring more of these opportunities where there is some breakout sector where you can say ‘OK, this is where we can get people on board in our journey’?

CH: I'm gonna half answer that. We have three different bookshelves in our 3000 series and the same in the 5000 series, and those are to meet the needs of three different kinds of bookshelf customer. Some of them are international, like the 3030c, because they’re the bigger of the lot and the US buyers like a larger volume for the cabinet.

The 3010 and 5010 are our small footprint version. They are used in home offices a lot, but I think there are new audiences coming through. There's gaming, and there are younger consumers who might be in flat shares or whatever that need something smaller. So yes, we are watching that part of the industry very closely.

TR: We’ve talked a lot about music, and that's kind of clearly where your focus is as far as building a new identity and the opportunities. But Q Acoustics has such a successful history in the home theater space; it was one of the earliest pioneers of soundbars and soundbases, but left that area really right as it was exploding — though exploding with entries from the likes of LG and Samsung. At the moment, there's no a product in that area; is that something you could see the brand getting back into, or do you want to focus on that music side?

CH: So there is a crossover. Being part of music culture doesn't mean it's exclusive to other elements of it, and I think home entertainment and AV is still very much part of that culture of entertainment. And it is important to us strategically; we still have products in the range that allow us to satisfy a lot of those needs. We have a range of subwoofers from entry through to high performance.

In terms of the soundbar category, it’s quite a scary category. It's very hard to compete with free, and the TV manufacturers will offer a soundbar as free, or give a retailer the latitude to offer it for free to close a TV sale.

I've been actively involved in some products in that space in the past, and I've seen how successful they can be if they are designed really well.

I'm dancing around an answer to say: no plans at the moment. It is a category that I look at with curiosity, but I'm not sure if it's the absolute priority yet. Surround sound, yes — but soundbar, I'm not sure yet.

Q Acoustics' M3 soundbar was a huge early hit in the soundbar market

TR: In surround sound, what we’re seeing there is, again, a lot of people who are ready to step up, in the same way as we talked about people in hi-fi wanting to move up in the journey. One of the key trends happening in home theater right now is the move to wireless surround systems. Do you think that is a route you can see Q Acoustics going down? It's a complicated technical thing to deal with, but I feel like it's something that any company in the space right now needs to reckon with.

CH: So we've definitely got the capabilities to develop solutions in that space. An area we haven't talked about is install, and I think there is a bigger opportunity actually about making install an option for homeowners. We have a branch of products that we call ‘easy install’ — the name says it all, you know, super easy for the average DIYer through to electricians to install. I see that there's probably a future for much more there, in terms of in-ceiling speakers and maybe some satellite speakers to create this environment.

There's a whole tangent we could go down about whether Atmos has gained momentum. I think for me, it's still a ‘watch and see’.

But I think the idea of in-ceiling or in-wall speakers and satellite speakers, and maybe some floorstanders or bookshelves as an option, and them all working together, that's interesting — and I think wireless within that environment is really interesting. And by ‘interesting’ that means ‘yes, I'm considering that’.

The ‘easy install’ stuff is super interesting though for us, because we've all been in this industry a long time. We've seen that installation systems are seen as complex and scary and difficult and expensive. You need a server-mounted system and you need specialisms and you need lots of complexity and disruption to your home… it isn't like that anymore. I've been really blown away.

My wife doesn't know this yet, but I'm going to switch stuff out in our house, because I've suddenly realized how easy it is. Q Acoustics has a thing called the E300a, which is essentially a built-in amplifier and streaming modules in a down-lighter-like size. Wire it up to a couple of in-ceiling speakers, you've got a system ready to go. It couldn't be easier. Voice controlled, so you can say ‘Alexa play BBC 6 Music’ or whatever.

I don't think people realize they can do this yet generally, and that they can do it themselves on a weekend, or they can get their local electrician to come and pop it in, because it's easy. And we're trying to support the electrician channel to do more of that. Maybe that's more interesting than the soundbars on their own.

Let's get nerdyish for a second. HDMI ARC I think is really, really important. Thank God for it, because I think particularly if you're earlier on in your [hi-fi] journey, you have to make some compromises, but you can enjoy hi-fi quality sound through an HDMI ARC interface and it'll still be part of a pseudo AV system.

Sure, it's compromised because you're not going to get the bells and whistles coming from all around — Titanic isn't going to sound quite the same — but it's going to sound beautiful when you listen to music. In that kind of relationship between ‘is it music’ or ‘is it audiovisual’, I think it’s entertainment as a whole, and finding the best of both worlds. HDMI ARC has been a savior.

TR: There's also the element where, if people go to [the] Reddit home theater community for their advice on whether to buy a soundbar, or which is the right soundbar, what they will get is a lot of people saying that they should actually get a stereo setup. There are people who say this will always be better than any soundbar, and you guys do have that option in your active speakers.

CH: That's what I mean; you can get the best of both worlds. That stereo presence though is always going to be better; that’s the point, isn't it, because you're not compromised by [having] the bar in the middle.

TR: So finally, what is the holistic brand proposition you want to offer from Armour Home? If you're addressing what you want all of your brands to do at once, and you’ve got this idea of how you can integrate with the community, what do you want people to think about Q Acoustics and QED and Goldring in combination?

CH: I want people to see that there is a relationship between all three brands that takes us from the origins of the audio experience right up to the modern day. That there is some confidence in those brands, that we understand the legacy that they bring, and that Q Acoustics kind of brings that freshness to it as well.

That we can bring those technologies together more, so there's more integration there and the design and feel about them having a relationship closer together as well. So rather than Armor Home as a parent company being a collection of brands, Armor Home is the home of source through to the output.

And that we've got a vibe as well, that we're not passive, forgive the pun, in this industry — that we recognize that it's about the hairs on your arms. It isn't just about the engineering.

It's just about having a shared passion and experience and being visible to everybody in the places that they enjoy being. This idea of ‘we'll come to you, you don't need to come to us because we are the same as you’.