TechRadar Reviews

Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: 30-second review

Unboxing the Alogic Edge 5K, and the scale of this monitor is immediately apparent. At 941mm wide, it’s significantly larger than the 27-inch 4K monitors I am used to, and the full metal chassis, Space Grey matte finish, and ultra-thin 8mm panel give it a premium look that looks great alongside my Laptop.

The Space Grey of my MacBook Pro M1 Max is matched closely by the monitor, so if pure aesthetics are important to you, then this monitor is Mac-centric and spot on.

Initial setup is out of the box is easy enough with screws from the base bolting into the stand, then the monitor clicks into place, the power adapter plugs in, and a single USB-C cable connects to the laptop, with the monitor's display, data, and 90W charging all running through that single cable. For my MacBook Pro, the power delivery of 90W also delivers the charge, so no need to bring the Mac's power adapter to the office.

Taking a look at the rear of the monitor, there's a protruding bar that runs for the entire length of the back of the monitor and houses the electronics, speakers, and ports. While it’s great to have the built-in Dock, there are no USB-A ports, which isn’t a bad thing, so I had to connect my keyboard and mouse through adapters; the network plugged straight in, along with a couple of other accessories.

That single connection gives you full access to the display quality that this monitor is able to deliver with full 5K resolution and 100Hz refresh rate; switching to HDMI maintains image quality, but with some resolution and refresh rates are dropped due to the older technology.

One issue that was apparent from the outset was the slightly off-colours. Delving into the menu soon showed that the display preset was set to Warm, which adds a noticeable yellow cast to whites. Switching to Standard made a dramatic difference, and as ever from there, running the Datacolor Spyder X2 calibration brought the display into a much more accurate state.

After calibration, colours were rich and natural with a close match to the MacBook Pro, although a little brighter at 50% brightness than the Mac. The Spyder analysis confirmed a measured gamma of 2.4 against the 2.2 standard target, meaning the display runs slightly darker in the shadow and midtone regions than the standard specifies, worth understanding for critical photographic work, as you may lose shadow detail, although the shift isn’t enough to be an issue for general use.

At 40 inches, imperfections become notable; however, as long as gaming isn’t your intent for the monitor, the 100Hz refresh rate is ideal for office work, photography and video editing. Scrolling through long documents, Lightroom catalogues, or Premiere Pro timelines is smoother than the 60Hz panels I normally use.

Another notable difference to many of the monitors that I look at in the mid-range is the anti-glare matte finish, which handles studio reflections well. This is common for premium monitors and really highlights the intended use and quality that is on offer with this display. That said, highlights will still be present from bright windows, depending on how you position the monitor, but nothing that interferes with working, and for creative applications, that matte surface just gives a more accurate visual of the image compared with using a glossy panel. For the price, it's sure to be featured in our best 5K monitors collection.

Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From approximately $1259 / £1259
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Directly from Alogic official store

The Alogic Edge 5K is available direct from Alogic in the US for $1529.99 and in the UK for £1259.99.

The display comes in Silver or Space Grey, and includes a DisplayPort cable, a USB-C cable, a power adapter, and a two-year warranty.

It's also available from other retailers, although availability is spotty right now - for example, it's listed but out of stock at Amazon at the time of review.

• Value: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: Specs

Panel: 40-inch IPS
Resolution: 5120 x 2160 (5K2K)
Refresh rate: 60Hz / 100 Hz
Brightness: 400 nits
Contrast ratio: 1200:1 (typical)
Colour gamut: 100% sRGB / 99% DCI-P3 / 94% AdobeRGB
Pixel density: 139 PPI
Aspect ratio: 21:9
Viewing angle: 178° H / 178° V
Connectivity: USB-C (90W PD + data + display), HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, USB-C downstream x2
Audio: 3W x 2 built-in speakers
Stand adjustment: Height 151–275mm from desk, tilt, VESA 100 x 100 mm compatible.
Dimensions with stand: 941 x 245 x 570mm
Panel depth: 41mm
Finish: Space Grey (also available in Silver)
In the box: DisplayPort cable, USB-C cable, power adapter

Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: Design

The Alogic Edge 5K has been designed to be a perfect partner to the Mac computers, with two colour options that match the range and style perfectly. In this review, I’ve taken a look at the 40-inch 5120 x 2160 5K2K resolution screen and coupled it with the MacBook Pro M1 Max and a MinisForum MS-02 to test cross-platform compatibility.

The monitor option supplied is the Space Grey aluminium finish, with an ultra-thin 8mm panel profile, and matte surface. Out of the box, it all looks very Mac and premium, including the solid base that offers plenty of flexibility over the positioning. Looking over the monitor and the build quality throughout, the full metal assembly feels distinctly premium, all feeling solidly in line with the pricing.

Setting up is straightforward and the all-metal stand is solid, although with this size of desk, to avoid any wobble, positioning it on a good, solid desk is essential. Through the test, I found that a 40-inch width amplifies movement far more than a smaller display, and initially, on a cheaper desk, some wobble was notable.

However, this stopped as soon as the monitor was moved to a solid surface. The overall size of the monitor is 941x41x419mm, and with the stand, this comes to 941x245x694mm with the stand at max height.

There are several aspects aside from the design of the stand that stood out; the first is the flat base, which has been designed so that larger docks or other accessories can easily sit on top. This may seem like a small design feature, but for a creative studio where space often runs at a premium, any small design features like this are worth noting.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The stand also offers plenty of adjustment with a height that moves from 151mm to 275mm desk-to-monitor, which covers most working positions, especially if you work at a standing desk.

If I were to comment on anything, a little more travel at the lower end would be welcome for shorter users or lower chair positions, but for most setups, the range is fine. It’s also good to see that there’s a VESA 100x100mm on the back for arm mounting, though the monitor's aesthetics and size work best positioned directly on the desk.

The rear protruding bar houses the dock ports, speaker unit, and electronics, which keeps the front of the monitor clean and minimal. In practice, with keyboard, mouse, and network plugged into the rear ports, with an adapter for some, a single cable could then be used to connect to the laptop, leaving the desk tidy of cables.

The all-USB-C rear port selection should suit most modern setups, but will need adapters for older USB-A peripherals such as my Keyboard and mouse. It was also notable that there wasn’t an HDMI cable in the box, given that the port is present and directly relevant for Windows users.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: Features

The 5K2K resolution of this 40-inch 21:9 aspect ratio monitor is the headline feature and at this price makes it extremely appealing for creative users, especially when you start to delve into the specifications and the colour accuracy, gamut and resolution.

Screen sharpness is also well above your usual office monitor at 139 PPI, which just highlights that at this size, screen text will still be crisp, and UI elements are sharp, unlike looking at Mac or Windows OS on a TV. That PPI and resolution in the wider 21:9 aspect ratio make it perfectly suited for creative use, with plenty of real-world space for applications to run side by side.

Where this wider space really comes into its own is when running a video timeline alongside a reference panel, spreading a Lightroom catalogue across the full width, or keeping two to three application windows open, such as Word, browser, and Music.

Personally, the most unexpected benefit of using a 21:9 monitor was apparent when I started editing some anamorphic footage shot on the Canon EOS R5 C with Sirui Venus anamorphic lenses. Essentially, once the footage was de-squeezed, I was able to use the native aspect ratio, which filled the panel edge-to-edge, eliminating the letterbox effect that makes anamorphic content feel cramped on a standard 16:9 display. If you’re a video editor working regularly in anamorphic formats, this alone makes this monitor a great option.

One or two of the more quirky features of the monitor at the PiP (Picture-in-Picture) and PbP (Picture-by-Picture) options that can be run alongside the standard, extended, and mirrored display modes. PiP proved more useful in practice once I adjusted the size. This sets your laptop screen in a window on the main display.

There are thankfully some adjustments to the size and position, and I set this to 40% scale and positioned it in the bottom-right corner of the monitor, which left the majority of the 5K panel free for documents and applications. The PBP I found less useful, but it may have its uses.

To access these features and all image options, you can use the OSD display menu, which is accessed using the small joypad on the back of the monitor. The OSD configuration takes some working out initially, but once set up, it is a genuinely well-thought-out system and was one of the fastest that I have used when running through the display analysis test to change settings.

The 100Hz refresh rate is decent at this screen size and perfect for office and creative work; the only time that you may require an uplift in the speed is if you want to play action-packed games. However, for normal use, scrolling through long documents or a Premiere Pro timeline while at 60Hz when connected via HDMI, things can seem a little slow, but through the USB-C at 100Hz, everything seems smooth enough. For creative and admin use, this refresh rate is ideal.

The built-in USB-C dock is handy and does help to keep the desk tidy with one cable delivering display, data, and up to 90W power. This all worked well on both Mac and Windows during testing, and for studios or home offices, connecting everything in the morning with one cable just saves time and makes things easy. There’s also far less to remember as you’re rushing out of the house.

Another major feature for me is the anti-glare matte finish to the display, which, for Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Final Cut Pro, the matte surface gives a better and more accurate idea of the image compared with an overly glossy panel. It is also considerably easier on the eye during long editing sessions, and for document work in Word or general Office applications, the difference in comfort over a full day was noticeable.

One of the other features that I was interested in was the built-in 3W x 2 speakers; however, these are a weak point of the design. The volume is lower than the monitor's size suggests, and the audio lacks the depth and richness the speaker grille suggests should be output. Compared directly with the MacBook Pro's built-in speakers, there’s just no point in using the Edge 5K speakers. If you’re buying this monitor with the intention of removing external speakers from your desk, don’t budget for a separate speaker or audio monitor to use with this display.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

• Features: 4 / 5

Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: PerformanceBenchmark scores

Colour gamut: 100% sRGB / 89% AdobeRGB / 97% P3
Measured gamma: 2.4 (target 2.2 — display runs slightly dark in midtones and shadows)
White point at 50% brightness: ~6600K (slightly cool of D65 6500K standard)
Best contrast ratio: 1430:1 at 50% brightness
Colour accuracy average Delta-E: 1.60
Colour accuracy max Delta-E: 4.89
Colour uniformity max DeltaE at 100% brightness: 4.5 (bottom-right corner)
Luminance uniformity max variance at 100%: 10% (bottom-centre)
Spyder overall rating: 4.0/5.0

After unboxing and plugging in the monitor, the first thing that I noticed was the overly warm look to the display. Delving into the OSD, I noted that the preset was set to Warm and changing this to Standard instantly removed the overly yellow cast that was making whites immediately look unnatural, which is an issue for creative work but also made Microsoft Office applications look odd.

While the standard preset looked OK, it was obvious the monitor still needed calibration. I did this from the outset as colour and tone didn’t look great, and running the Datacolor Spyder X2 calibration was able to bring the display into a much more accurate state, and after calibration, the colours were much more closely aligned with the MacBook Pro .

I then ran the Spyder X2 analysis, and the report confirmed an average Delta-E colour accuracy of 1.60, which is excellent for a non-factory-calibrated display at this price. The 100% sRGB and 97% P3 coverage are pretty standard, and for video work, content creation, and enthusiast photography, they should suffice.

Opening files from the Canon EOS R5 C and Hasselblad X2D II 100C in Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, the 5K resolution made an immediate difference to viewing, as the detail within the images was far better defined than when compared with my standard 4K display. What’s more, with the wider panel, it meant that images were being viewed closer to their native resolution before reaching the edge of the screen. When it came to the colour and tone, after calibration, the images looked bright, rich, and highly detailed.

One issue that was highlighted with the display analysis was the 89% AdobeRGB figure, and this is where professional photographers will pay attention. That value is a usable result for drafting, client review, and editing, but careful calibration and checks will need to be in place for colour-critical output, particularly anything destined for print.

A dedicated Adobe RGB display remains the more accurate tool. Final images should always be checked on a properly calibrated, wide-gamut monitor before going to output. For in-house video teams and content creators working with P3 and sRGB delivery, the limitation is less relevant.

The measured gamma of 2.4 against the 2.2 standard that was input into the OSD means that the display runs slightly darker in the shadow and mid-tone regions than the standard specifies, which may mean shadow detail is not rendered as accurately as intended for photographic work.

In practice, at 50% brightness, the shadows looked deep, and the contrast, measured at 1430:1 at that setting, looks great, but you will need to calibrate printers to ensure that you are seeing all the shadow detail that is viewable on the display. For general photography and video use, the gamma figure is not a problem; for critical shadow work, it is something to watch for.

Colour uniformity is good at the 50% working brightness, and from the working position at the centre of the display, the panel looks even and consistent. However, as a point of note, there is some luminance variation visible when viewing a plain white screen across the full width, which is an angle-of-view effect rather than a panel uniformity problem. Keeping image editing work within the central portion of the screen avoids it entirely.

Through the test, I used the Edge 5K on both Mac and Windows and the performance was consistent. On the MacBook Pro M1 Max via USB-C, full 5K resolution, 100Hz, 90W charging, and dock functionality all worked without any configuration. On the Minisforum MS-02 Windows mini PC, the same connection delivered the same results, colour profiles, dock recognition, and display output all worked well.

By the end of the test, I was impressed with the overall quality, and while there are some small issues that those using the monitor for colour-critical work may encounter, for the most part, it stood up to the quality tests well. As a monitor, it has clearly been designed with Macs in mind, and the use and integration have been well thought through. Likewise, for most Windows machines, it also works exceptionally well, but it is worth confirming your machine's USB-C video output capability before assuming the full 5K and 100Hz will be available.

• Performance: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor: Final verdict

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The Alogic Edge 5K with its 40-inch ultrawide design gives you a completely different way of working and a great option if you are looking to upgrade from a dual-monitor desk setup.

The 5K resolution, premium Mac-esque design, single-cable connection, and colour accuracy, once calibrated, help to give you a solid quality display for creative and office use. When it comes to its place in the field, it sits between the Apple Studio Display and the mid-range 4K ultrawide market, as its price reflects.

There are limitations and things that creative professionals should take note of, such as the 89% AdobeRGB coverage, as read through the display analysis. This means professional photographers should be aware that some colours may show a slight shift and watch shadow detail carefully.

There is also the issue with the built-in speakers, which are weak, and I would definitely recommend dedicated monitor speakers over the monitors' offerings. For home office professionals, content creators, video editors working to P3, and enthusiast photographers, these small points shouldn’t be an issue. As a display for all things creative for the price, there’s a great deal on offer here.

Should I buy the Alogic Edge 5K 40-inch ultrawide monitor?

Value

Good value for money for a 5K, 100Hz, USB-C dock, and 90W PD all within this stylish monitor.

4

Design

Premium metal construction that reflects Apple's computer product lines, finished in Space Grey

4.5

Features

Single-cable USB-C workflow, PiP/PbP support, 100Hz, anti-glare matte finish, and built-in dock.

4

Performance

Excellent calibrated colour accuracy and decent contrast, slightly lower 89% AdobeRGB and a measured gamma of 2.4

4

Overall

A well-made, Mac-friendly ultrawide monitor that's a perfect fit for home office users, content creators, and enthusiast photographers.

4

Buy it if...

You want to replace two monitors with one.

The 40-inch 21:9 panel gives you enough space to run three applications comfortably side by side, and PiP adds a second input source on top of that. For home office users or if you want an alternative to a dual-monitor setup, the Edge 5K is an impressive single-display solution.

You shoot and edit anamorphic video.

The native 21:9 aspect ratio fills the panel edge-to-edge with anamorphic footage, eliminating the letterbox effect of a standard 16:9 display. For anyone who regularly edits anamorphic content, this alone is a reason to go ultrawide.

Don't buy it if...

Colour-critical photography

At 89% AdobeRGB, the Edge 5K is an excellent drafting and client review monitor, but for final print preparation, a dedicated wide-gamut display may be a better idea.

You want to remove external speakers.

The built-in 3W x 2 speakers lack the volume and depth the monitor's size suggests should be possible.

For more picks, see our guide to the best business monitors we've tested.

Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: two minute review

The ATH-ADX7000 are Audio-Technica's flagship open-back headphones, with a lightweight design that's strong but just 270g. They deliver exceptional low-end power and a wide, precise sound stage, with a confidence and clarity no matter what kind of music you throw at them. They're astonishingly expensive, but if you can afford a pair you'll be very pleased with your purchase. Some of the best wired headphones around then? Oh, emphatically.

The key features here include Audio-Technica's new HXDT driver design, which is a large 58mm diaphragm with concentric alignment of the baffle plate, magnet and voice coil. The voice coil is located in the middle of the housing for what Audio-Technica says is "the purest motion and sound possible".

These are very high impedance headphones — 490 ohms — and that means you'll need an appropriately powerful amp to drive them. But get that right and they'll reward you no end.

(Image credit: Future)Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: price and release date

• $3,499 / £3,000 / AU$4,999
• Launched October 2025

The Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 headphones were announced in October 2025 and went on sale that same month with a price tag of $3,499 / £3,000 / AU$4,999.

That pricing means these are very much in audiophile territory; this is a flagship set of serious headphones made for people who want the very best of everything and can afford to pay for it.

Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: specs

Type

Open air dynamic

Driver diameter

58mm

Frequency range

5 to 50,000 Hz

Sensitivity

100 dB/mW

Impedance

490 ohms

Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: features

• New 58mm HDXT driver with aligned circular components
• 490 ohm high impedance voice coil
• 1/4-inch stereo and 4-pin XLRM cables, both 3m

The Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 headphones feature HDXT drivers, which are precision-molded to deliver a perfectly round diaphragm. The main driver is 58mm with aligned circular driver components (the baffle plate, magnet, voice coil and diaphragm) for what Audio-Technica says is a more accurate, dynamic and detailed sonic performance. It's teamed with a 490-ohm high-impedance voice coil that promises fast transients and defined low end.

The ATX-ADX7000s come with two detachable nylon-wound 3m (9.8') cables, one balanced with a 4-pin XLRM connector (but not a 4.4mm balanced connector; the expectation is that you'll be using a desktop or hi-fi amp here) and one with an unbalanced 6.3mm (1/4") gold-plated stereo plug. Both cables connect to the headphones with gold-tipped A2DC connectors.

• Features score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future)Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: sound quality

• Exceptional clarity and precision
• Superbly punchy bass without losing detail
• Excellent in all kinds of genres

With a frequency response of 5Hz to 50kHz, the ATH-ADX7000 have a very impressive low end and airy highs, delivering a neutral overall sound with a little bit of warmth. Irrespective of genre or format I didn't need to reach for an EQ on any of my vinyl, CDs or files; even fairly cluttered, complex sounds like Mojo from Mike Patton's Peeping Tom project, which drops massive squelching sub-bass in the chorus with distorted guitars on top and which has defeated many headphones, didn't stress the Audio-Technicas at all.

These are very high-impedance headphones and on the Mac my SSL2 interface struggled to drive them; while it happily drives most demanding headphones it wasn't strong enough for these, and it felt like I was getting six out of ten when I needed eight or nine. Swapping it for my iFi Zen 2 DAC improved things dramatically, not just because of the extra power but because the ATH-ADX7000s could really breathe. What was already entertaining became an absolute hoot.

I laughed out loud when the bass dropped in SOPHIE's Reasons Why, and Beastie Boys' Root Down moved so much air it felt like I'd strapped big speakers to my head. Little Simz' Point and Kill was beautifully detailed, its snaking bassline, intertwining vocals and bursts of brass perfectly positioned. Radiohead's Reckoner had incredible presence, the Audio-Technicas giving the layered vocals great separation as guitars chimed in the left channel and the ride cymbal splashed in the right. Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks was the best I've ever heard it, every part of John Paul Jones' bass distinct from John Bonham's thunderous drums and Jimmy Page's slide guitar.

Bass was something of a recurring theme in my testing because the ATH-ADX7000 headphones deliver it so well, whether it's the thumb-slaps and slides in The Blue Nile's Tinseltown in the Rain; the arpeggiated synth in Robyn's Dopamine; the dubstep thump in BLACKPINK's Go; Adam Clayton's grinding bass in U2's Vertigo; or Tony Levin's percussive, metronomic bass pulse and melodic walks in the live version of Peter Gabriel's Digging in the Dirt. Listening to and feeling Horace Pace's glorious Precision bass in The Specials' Ghost Town was close to a religious experience.

• Sound quality score: 5/5

(Image credit: Future)Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: design

• Exceptionally lightweight honeycomb grille
• Choice of velvet and alcantara ear cups
• Lightweight but strong magnesium frame
• Functional rather than flashy

The Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 headphones are very visibly open-back thanks to a handmade honeycomb-punched aluminum grille that looks as if it's barely there when you're looking straight at it — although it is very strong and does also block unwanted side ventilation.

The large ear pads come with a choice of velvet and Alcantara cushions that promise to subtly alter the sound — velvet for "well-balanced" audio and Alcantara for more warmth — and the headphones use a lightweight magnesium frame with a wide, open headband. I found the headphones to be exceptionally comfortable even during long listening sessions. And unlike on-ear designs they stayed put when I was at my desk working in front of a big display.

Each pair of ATH-ADX7000 is laser-etched with its serial number and comes in a hard aluminium carrying case.

• Design score: 5/5

(Image credit: Future)Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: value

• Undeniably expensive
• Exceptionally good bass
• Wonderfully comfortable

These are the best over-ear headphones I've ever tested, delivering the incredible clarity and realism of open-back headphones with the kind of low-end punch you'd normally need closed-backs for. Their light weight, wide headband and comfortable ear cups make them a real pleasure to wear for long listening sessions, and the sound they produce means that every listening session will become a long one.

Unfortunately they're also very expensive: $3,499 / £3,000 / AU$4,999 is twice what you'd pay for a Grado Signature pair, about three times the price of the equivalent Sennheisers and about seven times more than I've ever been able to spend on a pair of headphones. That price tag means they're simply out of reach for many of us.

For many musical products the difference between budget and mid-range models is much more dramatic than the difference between high end and super high end – so for example a $1,000 guitar will be much better than a $250 one, but as you move up the price range the differences start to become much more subtle. I think that's the case here. If you can easily afford these headphones you'll love them, but many headphones costing half as much are hardly horrific.

• Value score: 4/5

Should I buy the ATH-ADX7000?

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

New driver design for exceptional clarity and responsiveness

4.5/5

Sound quality

Super clarity and jaw-dropping low end. Exceptional in all kinds of genres.

5/5

Design

Functional rather than flashy: solidly made and super lightweight

4.5/5

Value

Incredible headphones, but incredibly expensive

4/5

Buy them if…

You can afford nice things
There's no escaping that price tag. But these are headphones that'll make you want to cancel all your plans so you can listen longer.

You're all about that bass
The ATH-ADX7000 deliver huge bass but they don't exaggerate the low end or unbalance the overall performance; the power comes in a velvet glove.

You've got the power
In a sector where 300 ohms is considered very high impedance these are even higher at 490 ohms.View Deal

Don’t buy them if…

You're on a budget
Other open-backs are a fraction of the cost and will still be very entertaining, even if you need to give their bass a bit of a boost.

You prefer on-ears
I like the enclosed feeling these headphones deliver, but you may prefer the on-ear positioning from the likes of Grado.

You're flying coach
Open-backs and shared public spaces don't mix. These headphones don't so much leak audio as broadcast it.View Deal

Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 review: also consider

The Sennheiser HD 800's revoiced, more bassy successor the HD 800 S is among the very best wired headphones, and retails for roughly one-third of the price of the Audio-Technicas. And while the fit wasn't right for me, when I reviewed the Grado Signature S750 open-backs I really loved their sound quality and clarity. Our current favorite among the best high-end headphones, the Meze Audio 105 Silva, are even cheaper while delivering a superb sonic experience.

How I tested the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 headphones

• Tested for two weeks
• Used with stereo amp, audio interface and headphone DAC/amp
• Vinyl, CD, streaming, and hi-res audio files

I tested the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 for two weeks across a range of sources and genres: vinyl records via an Audio-Technica turntable and an Onkyo A-910 stereo amplifier; CDs with the same amp and a Marantz CD6007 CD player; and streaming, lossless and hi-res audio on a Mac mini via an SSL2 audio interface and an iFi Zen 2 DAC.

I've detailed some of the music I used in the main review but I tested across a range of artists and genres including acoustic and hyperpop, electronica and EDM, classic rock, alternative rock and chart pop.

• First reviewed: April 2026
• Read more about how we test

Lomography Lomo MC-A: two-minute review

New additions to the ranks of the best film cameras are a lot more common in 2026 than they were a few years ago, with offerings arriving from the likes of Kodak, Rollei and Pentax.

Into this increasingly competitive market steps the Lomography Lomo MC-A. With a sleek metal chassis, this compact film camera looks and feels like a premium product. It puts a reassuring amount of weight in your hands, and a welcome degree of control at your fingertips. This is no simple point-and-shoot — the Lomo MC-A is something much more sophisticated.

Let’s run through the basics. The Lomography Lomo MC-A is a compact analog camera that takes 35mm film. It sports a 32mm Minitar-II lens with a five-element construction and a maximum aperture of f/2.8, and offers control of key settings like aperture (running up to f/16) and shutter speed (1/500 sec to bulb). It can read DX coding, meaning it can automatically detect a loaded film’s ISO speed, and it also has a flash, an exposure compensation dial, and a multiple-exposure mode.

Also key to its appeal is the autofocus — something of a rarity on analog compacts. The Lomo MC-A uses a zone-based focusing system, with focal distance settings for 0.4m, 0.8m, 1.5m, 3m and infinity. You can select your zone manually, or make use of the LiDAR-based autofocus system, which will analyse the scene and judge the correct zone to use.

While it's not going to give you anywhere near the level of responsiveness and accuracy of the autofocus systems in new digital mirrorless cameras, this system still makes the MC-A a much more photographically versatile camera than a simple fixed-focus point-and-shoot, allowing you to home in on a specific subject in the frame for dynamic imagery.

(Image credit: Future | Jon Stapley)

In a world where cheap film cameras are not hard to come by, the $549 / £499 / AU$799 Lomo MC-A might sound like a bit of an ask. But it has the potential to give you much better images than a point-and-shoot like the $99 Kodak Snapic A1, or than the $60 point-and-shoot from the 1990s you found at a garage sale.

Of course, the flip-side of this is that it makes the camera a little trickier to get to grips with. With the ability to focus comes the ability to mis-focus; and with the ability to control exposure comes the potential for misjudging it.

However, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time with the Lomography MC-A, and in my opinion it’s the best new film camera you can buy. It’s more versatile than the cheap point-and-shoots, and provides better value for money than the overpriced half-frame Pentax 17.

It’s not without its quirks and issues, which we'll get into, but it consistently delivers great-looking imagery on beautiful 35mm film — and can you ask for much more than that? In my view, this is now the benchmark for new film cameras to meet.

(Image credit: Future | Jon Stapley)Lomography Lomo MC-A: price and availability

As mentioned, the Lomography MC-A is priced at $549 / £499 / AU$799. That puts it about on a par with the Pentax 17, and given that it’s a better-made camera offering full-frame quality rather than half-frame, I think it offers better value for money.

You also get plenty in the box in addition to the camera itself: a glass UV filter, a lens cap, a protective fabric wrap, a leather hand strap, colored gel flash filters, a CR2 battery rechargeable via USB-C, a Splitzer lens attachment (for creating split-effect multiple exposures), a book of inspirational images, and a sticker sheet.

Lomography Lomo MC-A: design

• Sturdy metal build feels hefty and premium
• Viewfinder is a little cramped
• Top LCD is neat, but practically not that useful

Your first reaction to picking up the Lomo MC-A will likely be to marvel at its heft. It's not a heavy camera in the grand scheme of things — you can use it one-handed without issue — but at 332g its metal-based build is substantially weightier than most modern point-and-shoots (which tend to be nothing but plastic). While I wouldn't risk dropping it, the MC-A feels reasonably tough, and I don't worry about it when it's in my bag — the supplied fabric wrap is also a help here.

Film-loading is simple — once the roll is secured in place, you simply make sure the leader is sitting with the perforations aligned to the teeth, and then close the back and you’re ready to go. The first time you load it, you might be a little dubious as to whether the film has actually taken, but the camera will warn you if it hasn't — and you can triple-check by winding on one frame and checking whether the rewind crank on the camera's base rotates as you do so.

The top LCD screen provides a counter of how many shots you’ve spent, as well as flash setting, focus setting and battery level. When you half-depress the shutter button the screen switches to displaying exposure information, though you’ll likely rarely see this, since when you half-depress the shutter button you’re almost certainly looking through the viewfinder.

Future | Jon StapleyFuture | Jon StapleyFuture | Jon StapleyFuture | Jon StapleyFuture | Jon StapleyFuture | Jon Stapley

The optical viewfinder does the job, but personally I find it quite small and cramped. A bigger viewfinder — maybe even one big enough for a readout of exposure information — would go a long way towards making composition feel more comfortable. There are two in-viewfinder LEDs, a blue one to let you know focus is locked, and an orange one to warn you if you’re getting a slow shutter speed that will likely cause image blur.

I find these lights a bit distracting and oblique, especially when the real-estate of the viewfinder is so small to begin with. A bigger viewfinder with room to display the exposure information displayed on the top LCD screen would have made much more sense to me.

(Image credit: Future | Jon Stapley)

Winding on film is done manually, via the delightfully retro-felling mechanical lever that springs back with a satisfying snap. The lever itself has quite a lot of travel, and you want to make sure you pull it all the way to the end with every frame – some users have reported a little bleed between frames, likely caused by the lever not being quite cranked far enough and the camera allowing the exposure anyway. In all my time with the MC-A, this only happened to me once, but it's worth being aware of.

Control of exposure is achieved via the dials on the top plate and the tiny aperture ring around the lens, which pops out from the front very slightly when the camera is activated. Settings can be dialed in manually or set to automated program mode, and in most situations, the camera will judge well enough that you can use the latter.

The tiny lens comes with an absolutely darling little lens cap. This is, I am embarrassed to report, incredibly easy to accidentally leave on — and the Lomo MC-A lacks a handy feature like the Pentax 17's ability to detect when the cap is on and refuse to capture an image until it's removed. If you're going to be taking the camera in and out of your pocket all day to capture little moments, I'd consider using the supplied clear UV filter as a lens protector instead. Just... trust me.

Overall though, the Lomo MC-A is a nicely designed object. Its premium metal build puts a reassuring weight in your hands, and the satisfying snap of the wind-on lever never gets old.

Lomography Lomo MC-A: performance

• Autofocus works well once you're used to it
• Lens is nicely sharp, though has a vignette
• Exposure metering is solid

Ultimately, the image is the important thing, and I really liked a lot of the images I got back from the Lomo MC-A. The 5-zone autofocus system allows for the creation of much more dynamic and varied images than are possible with a fixed-focus compact.

You have to maintain some distance, as the camera isn’t one for close-focusing; the minimum claimed distance is 0.4m, but I would give it even more latitude than that. In general, it will probably take running a roll to get used to the ins and outs of the autofocus. Your first scans will likely have a fair few blurry misfires, until you get in the habit of slowing down, taking a breath, and waiting for that blue LED to turn solid before firing the shutter.

Once you get the hang of it though, you can capture images with a sharp main subject and a nicely defocused background, and even moving subjects as long as they're not too speedy. A striding pedestrian is perfectly possible to capture in a sharp image, but a speeding bike is a bit more of an ask.

Images offer a good level of detail. The 32mm lens allows you to fit plenty in the frame, without being so wide that the perspective becomes distorted and non-naturalistic, and its quality is sufficient to hold up to a bit of cropping if you want to hone in on your subject in editing.

There is a pronounced vignette to the lens, noticeable when you capture an image with a lot of empty space, like a big blue sky. It can also flare a little when shot into direct light, producing pronounced optical effects. I don’t mind these quirks, personally — I think they rather add to the low-fi feel. But if you’re looking for optical flawlessness, it ain’t here.

If I'm adding to my wishlist for the next MC-A, or future accessories for this one, a teleconverter for the lens could be an interesting way to expand its versatility.

Kodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak Gold 200 (images like this are where you really notice the vignette)FutureKodak Gold 200FutureKodak ColorPlus 200Future | Jon StapleyKodak ColorPlus 200Future | Jon StapleyKodak ColorPlus 200 (there's some pronounced flare from the direct light here)Future | Jon StapleyKodak ColorPlus 200Future | Jon StapleyKodak ColorPlus 200Future | Jon StapleyLomography 400Future | Jon StapleyLomography 400Future | Jon StapleyLomography 400Future | Jon Stapley

Realistically, you probably won't want to manually dial in your aperture and shutter speed for every single shot — and the good news here is that the Lomo MC-A's auto exposure modes generally do a commendable job.

I shot the majority of my test images using Aperture Priority mode – setting the aperture myself, and letting the camera handle shutter speeds. Exposures came back mostly well-balanced; I did notice a mild bias towards overexposure, particularly when the sun was out in full force, so you may want to consider dialing back half a stop using the exposure compensation dial if you think an image might run the risk of heavy glare.

Naturally, the look of your images is going to be predominantly dictated by the film you load. On my recent outings with the Lomo MC-A, I ran through some Kodak Gold 200, Kodak ColorPlus 200 and Lomography's own Lomo 400, the results of which you can see on this page.

I had the shots professionally developed, with scans at a resolution of 3130 x 2075, producing file sizes of around 5-7MB. I think the MC-A's lens is sharp enough that you could scan at higher resolutions than this.

Should I buy the Lomography Lomo MC-A?

(Image credit: Future | Jon Stapley)Buy it if...

You want a new film compact
Avoiding the potential minefield of the used market, this is a camera you can be sure is going to work.

You want control over your images
A zone-based focusing system and a range of aperture and shutter speed settings provide photographic flexibility.

You like a proper retro feel
Everything from the vignetting lens to the delightful mechanical wind-on lever makes this camera a delightful throwback with real retro charm.

Don't buy it if...

You’re on a tight budget
There are much cheaper ways to get hold of a camera that shoots film, whether you go for a new compact or try the second-hand market.

You want a flexible zoom lens
The 32mm prime locks you into a particular perspective – no bad thing in my opinion, but some may prefer a versatile zoom.

How I tested the Lomography Lomo MC-A

(Image credit: Future | Jon Stapley)

• I received a loan unit of the Lomography MC-A for testing, though I've since purchased one for myself.
• I’ve run a total of five rolls of 35mm color film through the camera over about three months.
• I’ve shot in variable light conditions and have taken the camera to a number of locations, mostly around London.

I’ve now rattled through five rolls of film with the Lomography MC-A, making for a total of around 180 frames. I’ve tried my hand at street photography with it to test the autofocus system, have shot landscape-style images from landmarks like London’s Primrose Hill, and have used both the auto and manual focusing and exposure modes. I’ve made it my main driver for several days out, as well as taking it on dedicated photo walks.

First reviewed March 2026

Take a look at The Handmaid's Tale Series Graph (episodes ranked by fan rating), and you'll see a near-impossible feat: back-to-back 9.0 and 5.7 ratings for the final two episodes of season 6. Translated, that's a Game of Thrones scale of reaction to the show's final-ever episode.

Given that the season 6 finale was an outright setup for new Hulu and Disney+ sequel series The Testaments, things didn't look too rosy. Thankfully, the reality is completely different — and I genuinely think The Testaments is as good as season 1 of The Handmaid's Tale.

For starters, the spinoff has nailed the art of reintroducing us to somewhere we already know (the totalitarian regime that is Gilead) and making it feel fresh. There are still secrets buried beneath the surface that we're none the wiser about, and a simple anti-regime stunt from Mayday isn't going to get any answers this time.

Then there's the casting. We already knew that Ann Dowd is absolutely blistering as the impenetrable Aunt Lydia, but newbies Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday mould the show into their own creation. We're looking at a major star on the rise after One Battle After Another with Infiniti, people.

If that's not enough to win you over to The Testaments, its main downside (feeling like it's just getting going) gives way to its biggest positive... surprises galore.

The Testaments is the journey to revolution that The Handmaid's Tale season 6 wanted to be

Some 15 years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, a lot has changed in the Republic of Gilead. Aunt Lydia has rescued herself from imprisonment by being handpicked to oversee the laws and uniforms governing Gilead's women in the form of a new school.

Here, students are separated into four colors: Pinks for elementary age, Plums for young tweens who haven't come of age, Greens for those who have and are eligible for marriage, and the so-called 'Pearl Girls,' who have recently transferred in from the outside.

Where Margaret Atwood's book follows Aunt Lydia's perspective, Hulu's version homes in on devout Plum Agnes (Infiniti), who completely believes in the regime and what it's trying to achieve. She hates her stepmother, however, with her Commander father also constantly absent from the home.

One day, Aunt Lydia assigns her a Pearl Girl called Daisy (Halliday), prompting Agnes' friends to think she's done something wrong. Neither trusts the other, and while Daisy arrives with Gilead with secrets, Agnes begins to see the light.

It stands to reason that a school inside a totalitarian regime creates instant intrigue, but it's the ensemble performances that elevate it. Main cast aside, our Aunts and Plums have been picked to perfection, straddling the line between deranged and oblivious as, for the first time, men begin to feel the bulk of capital punishment.

Aunt Lydia could make or break what happens in The Testaments season 2 — which I'm convinced is coming

The golden trio. (Image credit: Disney+)

Ann Dowd remains the class act that we've known she is for years, and I'm overjoyed that Aunt Lydia is the character that both Atwood and Hulu chose to continue. Season 6 saw her allegiance to Gilead finally falter, but this time around, I don't trust her.

Why? When we meet her again in The Testaments, her faith in Gilead appears to be completely restored. However, she clearly knows more than she's letting on, and that makes her completely opaque when it comes to potentially betraying the regime further down the line.

It's a slippery business, and Aunt Lydia could either help or hugely hinder Agnes and Daisy on their upcoming journey. Obviously, there are no spoilers here, but the entire season of The Testaments feels like a starter for the main course still to come, and I'm convinced season 2 already has to be being developed.

Wishing for more of a fictitious dictatorship while living through politically perilous times feels bizarre at best, but I'm hoping for as many instalments of The Testaments as I can handle.

In the meantime, what we already have is a heady and moreish binge dressed up in a coloured uniform. The soundtrack is bonkers yet effective, and you can never let your guard down — particularly when it comes to plot details fans have been theorizing might come true. Frankly, I'd stream it over The Handmaid's Tale itself any day of the week.

It's obvious that we're getting them for more reasons than I've listed, and if The Handmaid's Tale spinoff continues to live up to the level of brilliance we see across these 10 episodes, totalitarian TV will never have been better.

LG Gram Book: Two-minute review

(Image credit: Future)

Sometimes, even the best laptops can be a bit... boring. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, though; forgo some of the fancy features and the over-designed chassis, and you'll often find yourself with a solid, minimal-frills laptop that comes with a sensible asking price.

That's the case with the new LG Gram Book. It's a new entry to LG's iconic Gram laptop series, but designed to fill a hitherto non-existent position within the Gram ecosystem: a midrange laptop.

See, the LG Gram series makes for some pretty decent laptops, but they're also rather expensive, typically sitting comfortably above the $1,000 / £1,000 / AU$1,500 mark. For that high price, you're getting a premium-feeling laptop that LG has tried as hard as possible to keep at the 1kg weight point - hence the name. But what if LG stopped worrying so much about the weight, and just focused on making a good midrange laptop?

(Image credit: Future)

Enter the Gram Book. It weighs in at 1.65kg, which arguably means LG should've tried to find a different name for it, but to be fair, I do own some actual paper books that are heavier than this. Rather than going for ultra-premium hardware, this laptop sits more in the budget-to-midrange space, with a 1080p display and 13th-gen Intel Core i5 processor.

It's not much to look at, but I actually think that's fine: this isn't a laptop for people who care too much about appearances. It feels quite sturdily built despite an outer casing made of matte plastic, and features a full-scale keyboard with a numpad.

Unfortunately, the price-to-performance ratio simply isn't there; this laptop is fundamentally underpowered and offers seriously lackluster battery life for the asking price.

The Gram Book is clearly aimed at office workers and students who need a straightforward laptop for work or studying, and I had hoped it might qualify for a position on our ranking of the best student laptops. In some areas, it does deliver in that regard. There are a few nice additions here, which I'll get to further down in this review, but for the most part, it's just a deeply unexciting laptop.

LG Gram Book: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? Starts at $799 / £699 / AU$1,199
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia

With a price tag of $799 / £699 / AU$1,199, the LG Gram Book isn't exactly what I'd call a budget laptop. In fact, considering the specs on offer, I'd argue it's a little overpriced; you could spend a similar amount on one of Acer's excellent Aspire laptops and get slightly more bang for your buck.

It's certainly not terribly expensive, especially since the LG Gram line has historically come with some uncomfortably steep asking prices. It's just unfortunate that you could definitely do better without needing to pony up more cash. There's currently only one configuration of the Gram Book available, listed below.

Outside of Windows laptops, the obvious competitor here is the new MacBook Neo. While it doesn't offer the same amount of oomph as the mainstream MacBook Air and Pro models with M-series chips, Apple's first 'budget MacBook' is indisputibly a better choice. It offers better performance, a full metal chassis, and a nicer display - and it's actually a bit cheaper than the Gram Book, costing just $599 / £599 / AU$899.

• Price score: 2/5

LG Gram Book: Specs

LG Gram Book

CPU

Intel Core i5-1334U

GPU

Intel UHD Graphics

RAM

16GB DDR4

Display

15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, 60Hz

Storage

512GB

Ports

2x USB-C 3.2 Type-C, 1x USB 3.2 Type-A, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3,5mm combi audio jack

Wireless

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2

Weight

1.65kg / 3.64lbs

Dimension

36.0 x 23.8 x 1.94cm / 14.2 x 9.4 x 0.76 inches

LG Gram Book: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Display is merely okay
• Lots of ports
• Touchpad feels a bit cheap

At first glance, the LG Gram Book isn't much to look at. The outer chassis is plain gray, with a subtle Gram logo emblazoned on the lid. Opening it up, you're met with the same no-nonsense color scheme - bar the retro red power button, which is immediately reminiscent of the infamous red 'laptop nipple' navigation nub found on Lenovo's ThinkPad series.

I actually quite like it. It's befitting the design ethos of this laptop, not trying to draw your attention with fancy aesthetic design choices or LED keyboard backlighting. The Gram Book looks like a laptop belonging to the type of person who shows up, gets the job done quickly and efficiently, and goes home.

On the topic of the keyboard, it's fine but unspectacular; there's not quite as much travel as I'd like, and the keys feel a little spongy on firm presses. This is a full-layout laptop keyboard, featuring a numpad and function key row, but I will admit that it never felt cramped to type on in my testing; if anything, I'd say the key size and spacing are good.

(Image credit: Future)

Sadly, I can't say anything nice about the touchpad, which feels cheap and plasticky, with far too much flex in the chassis when I pressed down firmly. Clicks are muted and responsive, which is something, but this is definitely a case where I'd recommend connecting a mouse. For the asking price, it smacks of bargain basement hardware.

Speaking of connections: the Gram Book has plenty of physical ports, which is always nice to see. We've got two USB-A and two USB-C ports (sadly, the latter don't support Thunderbolt 4) along with an HDMI port and a headphone jack. The only thing missing here is an SD or microSD card reader, but this isn't really a laptop for photo/videography specialists, so it's an understandable omission. Wireless connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2, which again, is perfectly acceptable if not on the cutting edge.

The display is a bog-standard 1080p 60Hz IPS panel, which performed reasonably well in brightly-lit environments but isn't particularly impressive. The webcam is also a fairly pedestrian 720p camera, although it does include a physical privacy shutter - something I personally think should be mandatory on laptops.

• Design score: 3/5

LG Gram Book: Performance

• Decent but hardly exciting performance
• Handles everyday tasks fine
• Not for gaming

I won't beat around the bush here: the Intel Core i5-1334U chip powering the LG Gram Book isn't exactly brimming with power. You can expect to get reasonably good everyday performance from this laptop, but it's not going to be running triple-A games or resource-intensive creative software anytime soon. Even lightweight titles like Civilization VI struggled a bit.

Frankly, the benchmark results don't paint a very impressive picture, with absolutely feeble graphical performance and decidedly average scores in productivity and AI tests. But synthetic benchmarks don't always tell the full story.

LG Gram Book review: Benchmarks

Here's how the LG Gram Book performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Night Raid: 11,566; Fire Strike: 2,883; Time Spy: 1,179; Steel Nomad: 776
Cinebench 2024: Multi-core: 446; Single-core: 101
Geekbench 6.4: Multicore: 4,745; Single-core: 1,354
Geekbench AI: Single Precision Score: 1,288; Half Precision Score: 516; Quantized Score: 2,383
PCMark 10: 5,156
Crossmark: Overall: 1,471; Productivity: 1,533; Creativity: 1,385; Responsiveness: 1,555
Sid Meier's Civilization VI: (1080p, Medium, No Upscaling): 19fps; (1800p, Highest, No Upscaling): 12fps
Borderlands 3: (1080p, Highest, No Upscaling): 8fps
Rise of the Tomb Raider: (1080p, Highest, No Upscaling): 13fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider: (1080p, Highest, No Upscaling): 11fps
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 6 hours, 59 minutes

In real-world testing, I actually found the Gram Book to be quite responsive, having no difficulty opening numerous Chrome tabs or watching a YouTube video while working in another window. Considering that most of my work involves typing, emailing, and surfing the web, it was a sufficient replacement for my usual workhorse - the 2019 model of the venerable HP Spectre x360, which is starting to show its age a little. Then again, it's not exactly flattering to compare this laptop to a device from six years ago.

If you want to do anything more demanding than that, though, the cracks start to show. I was able to use GIMP 2.0 to do some light image editing without things getting too sluggish, but that's about the extent of this laptop's creative prowess. The Gram Book's rendering and video editing capabilities simply aren't up to snuff, and while I was able to play Stardew Valley just fine, attempting to run modern titles with 3D graphics felt like a fool's errand.

(Image credit: Future)

Interestingly, the LG Gram Book also has a dedicated Copilot button, and is marketed with support for Microsoft's handy AI assistant as a key selling point. I found this a little strange initially, as the Intel Core i5 chip doesn't actually have a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for handling local AI tasks - something that Microsoft has previously mandated for laptops to receive the new 'Copilot+ PC' designation.

However, it seems that LG has decided to go ahead with including a Copilot button regardless, which is great for power users who want to make the most of AI in Windows - though it's important to note here that the Gram Book is not a true Copilot+ system, meaning that you don't get access to a handful of specific features that do require an NPU, such as the controversial Recall functionality. It also means it's unable to process AI tasks locally - instead, you'll need to be connected to the internet, with all the associated risks to privacy that using cloud-based AI tools entail.

Still, the Copilot button works mostly as advertised, letting you summon Microsoft's chatbot at the press of a button. It was even able to helpfully explain the difference between using Copilot with and without an NPU for me - but don't worry, I made sure to double-check its information.

(Image credit: Future)

• Performance score: 3/5

LG Gram Book: Battery

I'm going to keep this section short: the battery life on the LG Gram Book is unimpressive, perhaps even bordering on dismal. In our video playback test, with the laptop set to the power-efficiency preset in Windows, volume at zero, and brightness at 50%, the Gram Book didn't even make it past the seven-hour mark. In practical testing during my regular workday, it perished before I reached six hours of continuous use.

Considering how much this laptop costs, it's frankly disappointing that it couldn't even survive through a full eight-hour workday without needing to be plugged in. Crank up the brightness, turn on the speakers, or start running multiple programs at once, and you'll get even less time between charges.

It doesn't even charge particularly fast, since the USB-C ports used for charging don't support Thunderbolt 4's improved power delivery capabilities. In my tests, it took about two hours to charge to full (from 5% battery) while not in use.

• Battery score: 2/5

Should you buy the LG Gram Book?

Notes

Rating

Value

It's cheaper than the mainline Gram models, but you can get better performance for your money elsewhere.

2/5

Design

While the stripped-back retro aesthetic will be appealing for some, the keyboard and trackpad feel a bit cheap and the display is underwhelming.

3/5

Performance

Decently responsive for everyday productivity workloads, but don't expect it to do anything more than that.

2.5/5

Battery

For the asking price, the LG Gram Book's battery life is abysmal.

2/5

Total

I appreciate what LG was trying to achieve with the Gram Book, but it needs to be a lot cheaper to justify its unimpressive build quality and performance.

2.375/5

Buy it if...

You like a retro-styled laptop
With its mostly-monochromatic design and bright red power button, the LG Gram Book evokes a certain era of vintage computer hardware.

You want something simple
As far as everyday office work goes, the Gram Book can hold its own - but for anything more demanding that that, you'll be better served elsewhere.

Don't buy it if...

You’re on a tight budget
The price isn't totally outrageous, but for the specs you get, it's a bit too much to recommend to anyone looking to get maximum bang for their buck.

You want great performance
The Gram Book's overall performance is underwhelming, and the battery life is pretty bad.

Also Consider

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch (2025)
The Surface product line is finally good now! Yes, Microsoft's signature laptop has a new lease of life, delivering a fantastic ultrabook experience in the same price ballpark as the LG Gram Book.

Read our full Surface Laptop 13-inch (2025) review

Apple MacBook Neo
In a bizarre twist of fate, there's now an Apple MacBook that somehow costs less than LG's attempt at a budget Gram laptop. Yep, the new MacBook Neo is a banger, outperforming the Gram Book in power, looks, and battery life.

Read our full MacBook Neo review

LG Gram Book

Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch (2025)

Apple MacBook Neo

Starting Price

$799 / £699 / AU$1,199

From $999.99 / £1,049.99 / AU$1,899

$599 / £599 / AU$899

CPU

Up to Intel Core Ultra 7 256V

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite

Apple A18 Pro (6-core)

GPU

Intel Arc 140V integrated graphics

Qualcomm Adreno GPU

5-core integrated GPU

RAM

16GB DDR5

Up to 32GB LPDDR5x

8GB unified memory

Storage

Up to 1TB SSD

Up to 1TB SSD

Up to 512GB SSD

Display

16-inch WQXGA+ (2880 x 1800) AMOLED 120Hz touchscreen

13.8-inch 2304 x 1536, 3:2 120Hz HDR touchscreen

13-inch 2408 x 1506 Liquid Retina IPS display

Ports

2x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C, 1x USB-A 3.2, 1x 3.5mm combi audio jack, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x microSD card reader

2x USB 4 Type C, 1x USB Type A Gen 3.1, 1x 3.5mm combo jack, 1x Surface connect port, 1x microSD card reader

USB 3 (USB-C) port, USB 2 (USB-C) port, 3.5mm audio jack

Wireless

Wi-Fi 7 / Bluetooth 5.4

WiFi 7 / Bluetooth 5.4

Wi-Fi 6E / Bluetooth 6

Weight

3.73lbs / 1.69kg

2.96lbs / 1.34kg

2.7lbs / 1.23kg

Dimensions

14 x 9.9 x 0.5 inches / 35.5 x 25.1 x 1.37mcm

11.85 x 8.67 x 0.69 inches / 30.1 x 22.0 x 1.75cm

0.50 x 11.71 x 8.12 inches / 1.27 x 29.75 x 20.64cm

How I tested the LG Gram Book

• Replaced my regular laptop with LG Gram Book for two weeks
• Used the laptop both for day-to-day work and personal projects
• Ran our usual selection of benchmarking software

For this review, I took the usual steps: in addition to our standard testing routine, the LG Gram Book replaced my daily driver for work and personal projects, so I could better get a feel for its performance in real-world settings. This is mostly low-level tasks like writing in Google Docs and doing research online, with a bit of image editing via GIMP 2.0 sprinkled in there. I also used it outside in my yard to see how well the screen performed in bright sunlight.

Each software test in our benchmarking selection is run three times and averaged to avoid outlier results. I tested the laptop while it was plugged in and set to Windows 11's performance power preset (with the exception of the battery life test, naturally, which uses the best efficiency preset).

Read more about how we test

First reviewed April 2025

JBL Live 780NC: Two-minute review

I was not expecting to be as impressed by the JBL Live 780NC as I ended up being. Even out of the box, it looked like another good but not great $200-range pair of headphones that excel in certain areas but end up making compromises elsewhere. But really the only compromises are the lack of a charging cable and the fact you can’t remove the ear pads.

But dig a little deeper and the JBL Live 780NC start to shine. The feature set rivals that of the best wireless headphones out there like the Sony WH-1000XM6. Sure, most wireless headphones now come with active noise cancellation and an ambient mode, but many don’t come with Auracast, as powerful of an EQ (and personalized EQ), or Dolby Atmos and Hi-Res support. At least, not at this price.

I’ll throw in the obligatory these-aren’t-perfect counterpoints — and there are a few. The bass can sometimes get a little out of control to the point where I usually had the bass cut through the EQ when listening. And the Dolby Atmos feature is a bit underwhelming for music, not to mention that only a handful of streaming services provide Dolby Atmos content. Still, the JBL Live 780NC get high marks from me. And if you give them a chance, you’ll probably feel the same.

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)JBL Live 780NC: Price and release date

• Priced $249.95 (about £190 / AU$360, but currently launched in US only)
• Launch date March 12, 2026

With a March 2026 launch date in the US, the JBL Live 780NC are the newest addition to JBL’s lineup of over-ear headphones, having landed alongside their 680NC on-ear counterparts. And despite being among the more expensive of JBL’s offerings (only out priced by the JBL Tour One M3 Smart Tx and the JBL Quantum One), they’re firmly in the mid-tier price range for over-ear wireless cans in general, coming in at $249.95 (about £190 / AU$360). They’re also available in five colors: black, green, blue, white, and champagne.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, the JBL Live 780NC are only available in the US. However, considering their predecessor, the 2023-issue JBL Live 770NC, can be purchased in the UK and Australia, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before these headphones will become available in those regions as well.

JBL Live 780NC: Specs

Drivers

40mm drivers

Active noise cancellation

Adaptive

Battery life

Up to 50 hours with ANC On, 80 without

Weight

260g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 6.0

Frequency range

10Hz - 40kHz

Waterproofing

N/A

Other features

Multipoint connectivity, App Support, Adaptive Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Mode, Hi-Res, Spatial Audio, Fast Charging, Auracast, Voice Assistant

JBL Live 780NC: FeaturesFuture / James HollandFuture / James HollandFuture / James HollandFuture / James Holland

• Multipoint and Auracast available
• Personalizable EQ according to what you can hear
• Deep EQ manipulation

The JBL Live 780NC may be as feature-filled as any other pair of headphones on the market. Not only do they come with multipoint connectivity, but allow for use with Auracast where you can connect multiple headphones to one source, as well as Bluetooth with LE Audio (something Apple doesn’t currently support). They even do that thing where they stop playing when you take them off your head.

The active noise cancellation and Ambient (sometimes referred to as transparency) mode are fairly deep. You can set levels of both using a slider, as well as turn on an adaptive mode for the ANC. TalkThru, basically an ambient mode hyperaware of human voices, is also an option here. And they work pretty well too.

The ANC was able to completely block out ambient noise with music playing at 50%, while the ambient mode was able to still allow me to fully understand a conversation on TV while listening to music at 60%.

Of course, while you can cycle through the types of “Ambient Sound Control” as JBL calls it with a press of a button on the headphones, the real fine tuning happens in the JBL headphone app. The app has a number of additional features and ways of customizing your experience.

For instance, Personi-fi 3.0 is a cool feature that tests how well you can hear a series of frequencies on both ears and then adjusts the EQ to offset any hearing loss you have. I also appreciated that I could toggle it on and off after going through the process.

Speaking of EQ, there are six presets available through the included Equalizer function with the ability to add more. More importantly, however, is the fact that I can create a completely custom EQ with a seemingly infinite amount of points (I stopped at 17) where you can boost or cut up to 6 dB.

Spatial sound gets its own set of three presets – Movie, Music, and Game – though there isn’t any more control other than selecting between them. There’s also a left / right balance, and a Low Volume Dynamic EQ setting so that audio still sounds present even when turned down.

I also appreciate the number of settings for better sounding calls, even allowing you to hear your own voice if you want.

Lastly, it also comes with a relax mode that allows you to play any combination of up to five relaxing sounds from one to sixty minutes (selectable along a slider). It’s a nice if slightly gimmicky feature.

• Features score: 5/5

JBL Live 780NC: Design

• No charging cable included
• Comfortable, (if slightly tight) fit
• Plenty of on-unit controls

When unboxing the JBL Live 780NC, a couple things popped out to me. I was a little disheartened to see that JBL didn’t include a charging cable, though not too much, since it uses USB-C and anyone with a modern smartphone can use the same cable to charge these headphones. More appreciated was the inclusion of a carrying pouch, albeit a fairly thin one, as well as the USB-C to aux cable for more analog listening.

Mostly though, I liked the fact that the JBL Live 780NC, while not reinventing the wheel, don’t look like every other pair of over-ear wireless headphones out there. Not only do they come in the five different colors mentioned above (my test unit is black), but the earcups have a rounded almost-retro-but-not-quite shape to them that with oversize earpads give it an accessible yet slightly elevated look.

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)

The earpads might not be removable but they are plush as is the headband, while the rest of the Live 780NC are a combination of durable plastic and sturdy metal – most notably the hinge. JBL doesn’t give an exact measurements, but each earcup looks to have an adjustment range of about an inch and a half giving these headphones the flexibility to fit on just about any head. Plus, the earcups can swivel flat as well as fold, which make them easier to carry.

The headphones sit tight on the head without too much pressure for a secure and comfortable fit. And if you try these on and find them too tight, adjusting the ear cups will alleviate the pressure. At 260 grams, they’re not light. But I didn’t find them fatiguing to wear for long listening sessions. Though they’re not really meant for active wear, I even tried them on while going for a run and found them comfortable the entire time.

I also like the fact that cloth covering the 40mm drivers has a sizable “L” and “R” etched into them to indicate sides. I’ve experienced more than one pair of headphones that hide the left and right indicators in some forgotten crevice, making me spend a few extra seconds figuring out the proper headphone orientation (first world problems).

Typically, many wireless headphones have all the controls on one side. That’s not the case with the JBL Live 780NC. The right side does have more on it, containing the power / bluetooth slider and ANC / AmbientAware button along with the USB-C port. You can also tap the outside of the ear cup for various additional controls like play / pause, mic mute, call answer, and voice assistant cycling. The left side is a little more minimal but does have the all important volume controls.

• Design score: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)JBL Live 780NC: Sound

• Really impressive sound, except for overly pronounced bass
• Spatial audio is a treat, if a bit underwhelming
• Ridiculously long battery life

Having spent quite some time testing the JBL Live 780NC, listening to all sorts of genres through Apple Music with Dolby Atmos and lossless on (and therefore able to listen to music in Hi-Res and with spatial audio on), I’ve come away quite impressed.

The sound quality here is better than I was expecting it to be considering the more mid-range price tag. Regardless of what I listened to, the mids and high end came through very clearly.

The mids have a good amount of body so rock and more mid-forward music retains its edge, while the high end has the kind of clarity to keep sounds like cymbals coming through with a crispness they deserve.

The one place that the audio quality lines up more closely with my experience of headphones in this price range is the bass. For instance, I’ve never listened to U2 and thought there was too much bass.

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)

That is until I tested these headphones and put on Until The End of the World in an effort to find some kind of rock in Dolby Atmos. I also tested with some hip hop, like Duckwrth and J. Cole, where that big bass worked better, but as soon as I turned on the bass boost EQ preset, it completely overwhelmed the rest of the audio. If you’re a bass head and welcome hearing damage, you might like that.

I did appreciate the ability to play Dolby Atmos through these headphones, though the availability of this content is limited to only a handful of streaming services. Yet, the spatial audio effect is more limited than it is with a physical atmos system. On the bright side, it is more impactful when watching shows or movies (or gaming), giving content a more three dimensional experience.

Still, everything does have more clarity to it with more separation between aural elements like instruments and backing vocals. Part of that is listening in Hi-Res lossless audio but some of it is also the Dolby Atmos since it allows for a bigger sense of space in the soundstage. It is a virtual approximation since these headphones rock just one 40mm driver per side. That said, this is still incredible audio for $250.

Using the headphones for calls is almost as impressive. As the wearer, I was able to hear calls clearly. And due to the dual beamforming mics — there are four mics total — coupled with an AI-trained algorithm, the caller on the other end could hear me just as clearly, stating that they wouldn’t have even known I was speaking through the 780NC if I hadn’t told them.

What probably blows me away the most — at least in terms of how far headphones have come in a few years — is the ridiculously long battery life. A five minute fast charge garners four hours use. And though it takes two hours to fully charge from empty, once charged, the JBL Live 780NC can last up to 80 hours, 50 if you’re always using ANC. I’ve charged these headphones once since I got them and that’s only because they arrived with a 50% battery life out of the box.

• Performance: 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)JBL Live 780NC: Value

• JBL Live 780NC sound better than their price
• Similar features in other headphones cost more
• Only a few headphones come with better battery life

Aesthetically and design-wise, the JBL Live 780NC look like the mid-tier headphones that they are. But, the amount of features on hand as well as the superb sound quality (as long as you’re okay with a big low end) and impressive battery life feel like they belong in a more expensive pair.

If we look at other wireless headphones out there, the Sony WH-1000XM6 are one of the first ones to pop up on any best of list. While their ANC is probably the best out there (along with Bose’s top options), they also go for a much heftier $449 / £399 / AU$699. They also have a more limited battery life, lasting 30 hours with ANC on. And they’re a bit more limited when it comes to other features. They would get a little bit of a pass regarding the limited features since they’ve been out since 2024, but the prices haven’t really come down much since their release. You might find them at around $400, but not really any less than that outside of a sales event.

You can find some headphones with better battery life like the Cambridge Audio Melomania P100, which provide up to 100 hours of battery life. But those are more expensive, at $299 / £249 (AU$510 approx.), and don’t offer spatial audio support. On top of that, the ANC is not as good on the Cambridge as it is on the JBL.

• Value: 4.5/5

Should I buy the JBL Live 780NC?Beyerdynamic Aventho 300 scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Just about every feature from ANC to personalized EQ and spatial audio are on hand here.

5/5

Design

The JBL Live 780NC have a comfortable fit and are available in a number of colors. I do wish they came with a charging cable.

4.5/5

Performance

The spatial audio might be too subtle and the bass too big, but make no mistake – these headphones sound very good. Plus, the battery life is amazing.

4.5/5

Value

These headphones punch above their weight when it comes to features, battery life, and sound quality.

4.5/5

Buy them if…

You want great sounding headphones
The sound quality here is very impressive considering the price point. There’s a clarity and separation that I don’t expect to hear in headphones at this price point.

You want all the features
From multipoint connectivity and Auracast to spatial audio, ANC, and more, the amount of features here seem almost limitless.

Don’t buy them if…

You don’t want big bass
As good as these headphones sound, the sound signature is not quite neutral thanks to that big bass. If you’re expecting audiophile-type sound, you’re going to have to fiddle quite a bit with the EQ.

You’re expecting spatial audio to be transformative
The spatial audio is a nice addition to these headphones and does improve the sound in intangible ways, but it’s not a game changer. If you’re expecting it to change your listening experience, you’ll be disappointed.

JBL Live 780NC: Also consider

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100
You might have to pay a little more for the Cambridge Audio Melomania P100, but its hundred hours of battery life have yet to be beaten. Plus, they sound pretty darn good. ANC is good but not great here though, and it doesn’t come with any spatial audio support.
Read our full Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review

Beyerdynamic Aventho 100
The Beyerdynamic Aventho 100 are just a little cheaper while still providing a good looking (and feeling) pair of headphones that travel well and come with an almost as impressive battery life. They’re more limited in features though, and don’t wow in the audio department (they do still sound good).
Read our full Beyerdynamic Aventho 100 review

(Image credit: Future / James Holland)How I tested the JBL Live 780NC

• Tested over a two-week period
• Tested with different music as well as video streaming and gaming
• Tested the various features

I spent two weeks using the JBL Live 780NC as my daily headphones. While using them, I listened to all sorts of genres from electronic and hip hop to rock and acoustic music to compare the frequency range and soundstage. I also tested them with streaming video, video games, and used the various settings such as ANC, transparency mode, EQ, and multipoint.

I’ve spent the last few years reviewing audio equipment and have spent even longer using my critical ear as a listener and musician to understand what does and doesn’t sound good.

• First reviewed in April 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro: Two-minute review

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro is a laptop in the ultrabook class, featuring a sublime design that keeps bulk to a minimum.

I was immediately struck by the svelteness of the unit. The clean lines and rounded corners only add to its minimalist chic, as does the steely grey colorway.

It looks and feels every bit as premium as any of our current best laptops. All materials are smooth to the touch, while the metal base is solid. The metal lid isn’t quite as stable as those on some other laptops I've tested, but it’s perfectly sufficient for normal use, and the hinge operates very well.

The price you pay for such solidity, though, is that the Galaxy Book6 Pro isn’t exactly light. I tested the 16-inch model, so I wasn’t expecting a featherweight unit, but it’s worth mentioning all the same. At least its thin profile makes it more portable than it otherwise would be.

The Book6 Pro's all-round performance is excellent. It can handle all kinds of tasks without missing a beat, and I was also amazed by its gaming performance, despite the lack of dedicated GPU. It was able to run AAA titles at respectable graphical settings in perfectly playable states.

(Image credit: Future)

Note that you can feel some heat on the keyboard, with fan noise apparent, even when the laptop is under moderate stress. Thankfully, the noise is relatively hushed, and not likely to cause much disruption.

However, it was the 16-inch 3K AMOLED display of my review unit that really caught the eye. It’s as bright, sharp, and rich as you could wish for, while touchscreen functionality is also great. Unlike the majority of laptops screens, the rounded corners of the frame here add to the display's appeal, while the super-thin bezel ensures that none of the copious real estate goes to waste.

The keys on the Galaxy Book6 Pro are a little heavier than you might expect, which can lead to presses failing to register, at least in my experience. The layout is also a little cramped — and it’s a shame that on a laptop of this size, Samsung has chosen to omit a number pad and most navigation keys.

I have fewer complaints about the touchpad, though. Its large size and incredibly smooth surface make navigation a cinch. Also, it mostly avoids encroaching on wrist space when typing; only on a few brief occasions did I accidentally trigger cursor movement.

Battery life is adequate, if not spectacular. It lasted 14 hours in our movie playback test, which is under an hour of that achieved by the Asus Zenbook S 16 and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4), but an hour more than the Dell 16 Plus.

The Galaxy Book6 Pro is certainly a costly proposition, but when you consider all that it offers, its value becomes more apparent. It’s similarly priced to the aforementioned Zenbook, a close rival in many ways, and more expensive than the Dell 16 Plus. Nevertheless, it's difficult for either of these alternatives to surpass the sheer quality and glorious display of Samsung's super-slender machine.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Specs

Base spec

Review spec

Price

$1,899.99 / £1,699 (about AU$2,740)

$2,199.99 / £2,199 (about AU$3,170)

CPU

Intel Core Ultra 7 356H (up to 4.7GHz, 16 cores)

Intel Core Ultra X7 358H (up to 4.8GHz, 16 cores

GPU

Intel Arc Graphics (integrated)

Intel Arc Graphics (integrated)

RAM

16GB LPDDR5x

32GB LPDDR5x

Storage

US: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
UK: 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD

1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD

Display

16-inch 2,880 x 1,800 (WQXGA+), Dynamic AMOLED 2X, Anti-Reflective, touchscreen

16-inch 2,880 x 1,800 (WQXGA+), Dynamic AMOLED 2X, Anti-Reflective, touchscreen

Ports and Connectivity

2 x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4), 1 x USB-A 3.2, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x 3.5mm combo audio; Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4

2 x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4), 1x USB-A 3.2, 1 x HDMI 2.1, 1 x 3.5mm combo audio; Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4

Battery

78Wh

78Wh

Dimensions

14.1 x 9.8 x 0.5 inches (357 x 248 x 12mm)

14.1 x 9.8 x 0.5 inches (357 x 248 x 12mm)

Weight

3.51lbs / 1.59kg

3.51lbs / 1.59kg

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Price & availability

(Image credit: Future)

• Starts from $1,899.99 / £1,699
• Available now
• Expensive, but in line with some others

Pricing for the Galaxy Book6 Pro starts from $1,899.99 / £1,699 (about AU$2,740; pricing and availability for Australia is TBC at the time of writing), with the models available now. It can be configured with 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB of storage. There are two Intel Core Ultra CPUs to choose from, the 7 356H and the X7 358H — the latter of which is reserved for the top-tier model. A variant with the Ultra 5 325 is coming soon.

The Galaxy Book6 Pro is an expensive laptop, then — although this isn’t too surprising, given its design and spec. The base model is similarly in price to the Asus Zenbook S 16, which also features a 3K OLED display, but 24GB instead of 16GB of RAM.

However, if you're in the market for a large laptop that still offers plenty of quality for less, there’s the Dell 16 Plus. The base model is significantly cheaper than the Galaxy Book6 Pro’s, but it still arrives with an Intel Core Ultra 7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Its resolution is lower, but only slightly.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Design

(Image credit: Future)

• Incredibly thin
• Solid metal enclosure
• Quite heavy

In line with many of Samsung’s mobile devices, the Galaxy Book6 Pro is a sleek, premium-looking machine. The dark grey colorway is also very fetching and somehow adds more interest than your typical monochromatic designs.

Every contour is completely flat, while the corners, which are more rounded than most, give the design a softer appearance. Even the underside of the laptop is free of the fuss , with just four discreet rubber feet in each corner.

What's more, the Galaxy Book6 Pro's build quality is exceptional. The all-metal chassis is supremely strong, and while the lid isn’t as stable as some other models when open, it stays put under normal usage. The hinge for it is satisfyingly smooth, too. The bezel around the display is incredibly thin, which is always great to see, but the lack of a physical privacy shutter for the webcam, not so much.

The keys are more solidly planted than those of other laptop keyboards, and they also feature backlighting — which, in my opinion, is pretty much an essential feature.

Best of all, though, is just how thin the Galaxy Book6 Pro is. It’s reminiscent of the MacBook Air M1, since it thins out towards the front end. Given my review unit was the 16-inch model, I wasn’t too surprised by its weighty feel, but this does somewhat negate the utility of that slender form when it comes to portability. Still, it certainly makes it easier to slide in and out of a bag.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

• Surprisingly capable graphical performance
• Superb display
• Keys are a little heavy

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro benchmarks

3DMark: Night Raid: 46,524; Fire Strike: 13,987; Steel Nomad: 1,413; Solar Bay: 28,816; Solar Bay Unlimited: 29,056; Solar Bay Extreme: 4,270; Solar Bay Extreme Unlimited: 4,300
Geekbench 6.5: Multicore: 16,837; Single-core: 2,880
Cinebench R23: Multi Core: 16,250; Cinebench R24: Single Core: 121; Multi Core: 995
Crossmark: Overall: 2,125; Productivity: 1,906; Creativity: 2,567; Responsiveness: 1,670
Passmark Overall: 9,831.3; CPU: 36,603.9; 2D Graphics: 889.8; 3D Graphics: 9,241.2; Memory: 4,155.5; Disk: 43,906.2
BlackMagicDisk: Read: 4,369MB/s; Write: 3,371MB/s
HandBrake 4K to 1080p: 85fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1080p, Medium: 76fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1800p, Ultra: 22fps
Battery Life (TechRadar movie test): 14 hours and 52 seconds

The general performance of the Galaxy Book6 Pro is very good. It handles basic browsing and productivity tasks, as well as 4K streaming, with ease.

What surprised was just how well it handled games. Despite lacking a dedicated GPU, it managed to run Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ray Tracing: Ultra preset selected, without succumbing to disruptive slowdowns or stuttering. Intel’s XeSS Super Resolution 2.0 (in Auto mode) and Frame Generation were both enabled during my sessions.

Of course, the Galaxy Book6 Pro isn’t going to dethrone the best gaming laptops, and the keyboard layout can feel a little cramped when in the typical WSAD position; but it’s impressive, nonetheless.

Some heat was noticeable all over the keyboard during such intensive tasks, no doubt a corollary of that ultra-thin design — but, thankfully, the temperatures remained well within comfortable bounds. Some fan noise did become apparent, even under moderate workloads, but I didn’t find this too disturbing.

(Image credit: Future)

The AMOLED display is every bit as sumptuous as you'd expect it to be. The 3K resolution is satisfyingly crisp, while colors are vibrant and the contrast expectedly deep. The touchscreen functions well, too, responding quickly and accurately to my finger inputs.

I was also fond of the bezel's rounded corners, which soften the frame and make on-screen content appear neater somehow. It’s a small touch that I wish more laptop displays featured; the best MacBooks have it, but only in the top corners, not the bottom as well.

The keys are nicely damped, but still display relatively shallow travel. However, they’re heavier than others, which resulted in some of my presses failing to register, requiring more force than I’m accustomed to producing. This may be an adjustment you’ll need to make as well, if you’re someone with a light touch.

While the layout is comfortably spaced for typing, it’s a shame there’s no number pad and only a few navigation keys (Insert/ Prt Sc and Delete) on the Galaxy Book6 Pro, given the 16-inch real estate of my unit.

The touchpad on the 16-inch model of the Book6 Pro is large, which is great for navigation. Despite this, there's also enough room on the sides for resting your wrists while you type. There were times when the cursor moved as a result of my palms coming into contact with the pad, but this wasn’t frequent or long-lasting enough to cause a problem.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Battery life

(Image credit: Future)

• Middling longevity
• Quick to charge

The Galaxy Book6 Pro offers an average battery life. When I ran a movie on a continuous loop, it lasted 14 hours. This is well below Samsung's claimed figure of up to 30 hours. However, it's only an hour less than what the Asus Zenbook S 16 and the Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4) managed.

However, it lasted over an hour more than the Dell 16 Plus. It's also quick to charge, taking about two hours to go from empty to full.

• Battery life: 3.5 / 5

Should I buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro?

Notes

Rating

Value

Super expensive, although the base model isn’t too bad for an ultrabook.

3.5 / 5

Design

It’s hard to find fault with the build quality and materials here. It’s exceptionally thin, but quite heavy.

4.5 / 5

Performance

The Galaxy Book6 Pro performs well, even on graphical tasks, while that huge OLED touchscreen display is truly stunning. The keys are a little heavy, though, and the layout of them is compromised.

4.5 / 5

Battery life

Decent, but nothing to write home about. Longevity is somewhere in the middle compared to its rivals.

3.5 / 5

Total

If your pockets are deep enough, you’re unlikely to be disappointed with how this laptop looks and performs.

4.5 / 5

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro if…

You want a glorious display
The AMOLED technology really shines here, while the 3K resolution is super sharp – both of which are all the more apparent on the 16-inch model.

You want great all-round performance
The Galaxy Book6 Pro excels in action — even its graphical performance is respectable, considering it doesn’t have a dedicated GPU.

Don't buy it if…

You want to save money
The Galaxy Book6 Pro is certainly expensive, and although there are alternatives that are similarly priced, there are also those that are considerably cheaper.

You want to travel light
The 16-inch model of the Galaxy Book6 Pro is fairly heavy, which makes carrying it around a little laborious, despite that thin form.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro review: Also consider

Asus Zenbook S 16
The Zenbook S 16 is a superbly designed ultrabook, and shares many traits with the Galaxy Book6 Pro. It, too, is a superb piece of design, made using state-of-the-art Ceraluminum, while its 3K OLED display is about as stunning as the Samsung’s. The base model is similarly priced to the Galaxy Book6 Pro, but the Zenbook comes with 24GB of RAM as opposed to 16GB. What’s more, it features more ports, despite being about as thin as the Galaxy Book6 Pro.

Read our full Asus Zenbook S 16 review.

Dell 16 Plus
The Dell 16 Plus is another ultrabook, but it has a starting price well below that of the Galaxy Book6 Pro. It doesn’t skimp on features, though, with plenty of power for everyday performance, plus a sharp 120Hz display — although its resolution isn’t as sharp as the Galaxy Book6 Pro’s, nor does it have touchscreen functionality. Still, considering what you get for the relatively low price, it’s a good-value proposition.

Read our full Dell 16 Plus review.

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro

(Image credit: Future)

• Tested for several days
• Ran our series of benchmarks
• Plentiful laptop reviewing experience

I tested the Galaxy Book6 Pro for several days. I used it for all kinds of tasks, from general browsing and light productivity to 4K streaming and AAA gaming. I also ran our series of benchmark tests, designed to assess every aspect of a laptop’s performance.

I have plenty of experience reviewing computing devices of all kinds. I’ve tested numerous laptops, from budget offerings to top-tier gaming machines. I’ve also reviewed desktops, Chromebooks, and tablets.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read more about how we test

Oakcastle MP300: Two-minute review

Okay, I’ll fess up: this Oakcastle MP300 review wasn’t meant to take a month. I thought this super-cheap MP3 player would be a quick in-and-out style of review where I’d listen to a few tunes and take it on a trip, but it ended up being a really useful addition to my audio set-up. Good for it, not so good for my deadlines.

This is the kind of budget music player that a serious music fan would probably ignore — does anyone other than wallet-friendly Chinese brands make this kind of tech? Apparently yes, they do actually, but if I can humbly request that we stop that train of thought right now: this isn’t any bargain bin buy.

Oakcastle is a sub-brand of Majority, a brand audio fans emphatically know about. So before we get into any of its pros and cons, you’ve got an immediate benefit over most budget MP3 players online: you know this one is from a known and trusted audio specialist, with a reputation to uphold — and uphold that standing, the MP300 does.

I’m not going to pretend that this is the best MP3 player for everyone: it has limited file support, feels quite cheap in the hand, and only offers a fraction of the features that a pricier option would have.

But its simplicity is the point: this is a lovely little digital detox machine that doesn’t make you pay for fancy extras you might not need. It’s no distraction machine that’ll suck you into a WhatsApp wormhole when you’re just trying to put on a song, and its playlists aren’t so algorithmic that you’re only hearing the same eight songs on repeat.

The MP300 became my month-long go-to because I plugged it into my bookshelf speakers via aux, and just left it there. Any time I wanted music, I could easily open up my library and start playing my songs. And I do mean my songs — no music streaming here, this is a device for people who own their own music, but don’t need to hear it played in lossless.

There are other benefits that bespoke MP3 players bring over using smartphones for music, and the Oakcastle being so cheap means you can enjoy it without breaking the bank. Seniors will love it for its simplicity, and it’s something children can use to enjoy tunes without priming them for future technology addiction.

You can use a device like this at night, to put on some soothing Elgar, without a notification or two waylaying your relaxing doze. MP3 players are also nice little running devices, freeing you from your smartphone when you strap on your trainers, though something like the super-small Majority MP3 with its nifty clip might be better for that.

As I say, it’s not for everyone: if you don’t need a standalone music playing device, or conversely you want one that’s advanced and full of features, this isn’t for you — you'll need to look to pricier options from Astell & Kern or FiiO. But there’s got to be a sweet spot between those camps who appreciate it. I certainly like the MP300 a lot.

Oakcastle MP300 review: Price and release date

(Image credit: Future)

• Released in February 2026
• Listed for £31.95 (about $40, AU$60)
• On sale in UK, maybe Aus, probably not US

The Oakcastle MP300 was released on February 18, 2026, alongside the same-priced MP250 model which has a sports clip and simplified controls.

Online, the MP300 is officially listed at £31.95 (about $40, AU$60), though during testing I generally saw it for a few pounds less. Not by a huge amount — you wouldn’t buy a pint with the difference, even outside London — but enough to suggest that this thing is rarely at RRP.

Oakcastle, like Majority, generally doesn’t sell its products in the US, so don’t expect availability there. Some of the brand’s gadgets sell in Australia, but at the time of writing, the MP300 wasn’t available.

Oakcastle MP300 review: Specs

Battery life

50 hours

Weight

53g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5mm, USB-C

Waterproofing

NA

Storage

64GB

Expandable?

Up to 128GB

Oakcastle MP300 review: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• 50-hour battery life
• Custom, simple user interface
• 64GB storage, up to 128GB more via microSD

The Oakcastle MP300 runs on a simple operating system, which feels like a glorified media library. You can see what’s currently playing, browse your general music library, make playlists and set up Bluetooth connections.

It does offer a stopwatch and calendar (with no way of inputting dates), but the point of this thing is clearly music. Navigating with the buttons isn’t especially fast, and unfortunately there’s no music search option (that I could find).

You get a battery life that, according to Majority, hits 50 hours on a single charge. That seems to match up with what I found — it’s definitely long enough that you don’t need to worry about charging frequently.

The MP300 has 64GB of built-in storage, which is plenty if you use MP3. My library was in WAV and didn’t fit onto the thing to begin with, so I had to convert them to fit. The expandable storage gets you up to 128GB extra, and you can be sure I made the most of it.

Moving my library over to the Oakcastle was easy: I plugged it into a computer and dragged and dropped the files into its folder. It wasn't the perfect conversion: lots of album artwork didn't get pulled through, and on the device, songs are all labelled as .mp3. But overall, it was pretty simple and worked fine.

• Features score: 3.5/5

Oakcastle MP300 review: DesignFutureFutureFuture

• Nine buttons plus screen
• Lightweight, but somewhat cheap feeling
• No IP rating

I almost thought the Oakcastle MP300 was a feature phone when I first saw it: it has a similar design, with buttons below a screen and ports on the bottom. But it’s much lighter than a phone, at 53g — there’s a good chance your earbuds case tips the scales more than that.

The MP300 is also smaller, at 50 x 101 x 9.5mm, so I could put it in my pocket without it feeling like a second smartphone. On the bottom there’s a USB-C port for charging and data connection, as well as a 3.5mm jack. The right side has a microSD card slot, which is a nice addition.

Despite being compact, the Oakcastle still feels a little hollow — it gives a little when you squeeze it, making it feel a little fragile and cheap. Saying that, the textured plastic back makes it feel a little more premium than some of the bargain-basement MP3 players you might find on line.

Accusations of ‘cheap’ become more well-founded when you move over to the buttons though. They’re not as sensitive or responsive as you’d hope, which slowed down my navigation of the player and constantly reminded me of the lack of money spent.

If you’re a pool-music-listener, I should warn you that there’s no official IP rating — try to avoid getting it wet or dusty.

• Design score: 3.5/5

Oakcastle MP300 review: Sound quality

(Image credit: Future)

• Supports MP3, FLAC, WAV
• No on-board equalizer
• No higher-res Bluetooth codec support

The MP300 supports three file types: MP3, FLAC and WAV. Naturally your sound quality will vary depending on which you pick; I tested all three for scientific purposes, but for general use, I had to use MP3 simply to fit all my music on the speaker.

There’s no equalizer on-board, so you’d better like your music how it comes — or, more accurately, your headphones how they come. At least you can use a wired connection to hear, not just via Bluetooth 5.0 (only your basic 'vanilla' SBC streaming is supported, as far as I can tell), although I appreciated having the option to go wireless.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t an MP3 player you’re buying if sound quality is your biggest concern. There are options that cost a lot more which offer extra onboard DACs to level up the audio, streaming over wi-fi and hi-res Bluetooth codec support. So the fact that sound from this thing is pretty basic is part and parcel of the MP300.

There is a built-in speaker here, but it’s quiet and doesn’t exactly sound amazing. For me, it was sometimes a simple reminder that I’d forgotten to connect to a speaker, rather than a serious way of enjoying tunes.

• Sound quality: 3/5

Oakcastle MP300 review: Value

(Image credit: Future)

• It's really cheap
• Worth buying over dubious alternatives

Of course the Oakcastle MP300 is good value; you’re paying pennies to get an on-the-go music device.

Sure, it doesn’t have many feature of flashy alternatives, but it has storage capabilities and a headphone jack: what more do you need? Thanks to this latter, it’s probably better than your smartphone for music playing, let’s be honest.

Given that Oakcastle is a trusted brand, I’d feel safer giving this company my money, rather than any of the even-cheaper alternatives you’ll find online.

• Value: 5/5

Should I buy the Oakcastle MP300?

(Image credit: Future)Oakcastle MP300 score card

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

It's light in terms of features, but the battery life is solid.

3.5/5

Design

While it feels a little cheap, it's light and slender enough to make up for it.

3.5/5

Sound quality

You're getting the basic sound with little ability to change it. Even hi-res streaming is out of bounds.

3/5

Value

It's arguably the cheapest MP3 player you should consider buying.

5/5

Buy it if…

You need something cheap and cheerful
If you need something, anything, to play your collection of MP3s (perhaps left over from an iPod Touch?) then this is a solid, budget option.

You need expandable storage
The microSD card slot is a neat addition at this level, so you can get extra space but chop and change it around if needs be.View Deal

Don’t buy it if…

You want control over your sound
The lack of an equalizer is one way in which the MP300 compares poorly to your smartphone.

You want high-res output
There's no 4.4mm, no Bluetooth Codec support and barely enough space for high-res audio files.

Oakcastle MP300 review: Also consider

Oakcastle MP300

Majority MP3

FiiO JM21

Battery life

50 hours

34 hours

12 hours

Weight

53g

33g

156g

Connectivity

Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5mm, USB-C

Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5mm, USB-C

Bluetooth 5.0, 3.5mm, 4.4mm, USB-C

Waterproofing

NA

NA

IPX5

Storage

64GB

16GB

32GB

Expandable

128GB

128GB

2TB

Majority MP3
This equally-budget option does things a little different: it offers less storage space but comes in a smaller body and has a sports clip, making it a handy on-the-go companion.
Read our full Majority MP3 review

Fiio JM21
If you want a 'proper' digital audio player, this entry-level Fiio option may cost more than the Oakcastle, but it's still cheap in the grand scheme of things. It lets you listen in a variety of high-res formats and lets you control your audio to a much greater extent.
Read our full Fiio JM21 review

How I tested the Oakcastle MP300

• Tested for a month
• Tested on various speakers and headphones via aux and BlueTooth

I used the Oakcastle MP300 for a full month before writing this review. I started the testing by loading it up with my music library, first in WAV and then in MP3. This collection includes a large range of genres, with roughly 3,000 tracks in all.

Through the month, I used the MP300 alongside a range of devices. I connected them to the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro and Edifier M90 via Bluetooth, and via aux I used the Edifiers, my Sony headphones and my Line 6 guitar amplifier.

I've been reviewing audio tech for TechRadar for years, including several other budget MP3 players and plenty of other Majority gadgets.

• First reviewed in March 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

H2O Audio Tri Run: Two-minute review

The H2O Audio Tri Run are bone conduction headphones designed for runners and cyclists who want to listen to music while staying aware of their surroundings. They undercut rivals on price and strip everything back to the essentials. No app, no frills, just good enough audio and a straightforward experience.

They’re not for swimming, despite their IPX8 waterproof rating. H2O Audio already makes a range of multi-sport devices, including the H2O Audio Tri 2 Pro Multi-Sport. But the Tri Run rely solely on Bluetooth with no onboard storage, so there’s no point taking them to the pool because the water will block the signal. What that waterproofing means is you don’t need to worry about sweat, rain or cleaning them with water.

Bone conduction transmits sound through your cheekbones, bypassing your ear canal. (To find out more, we have a handy how bone conduction works guide.)

They’re cheap, reliable and mostly comfortable. Sound is acceptable for the form factor, the fit is secure, and they’re genuinely easy to use. But battery life is just fine, the neckband design won’t suit everyone, and competition is fierce in this space. Let’s get into it.

(Image credit: Future)

The Tri Run have a neckband design with the bone-conduction transducers sitting against your cheeks, between your ear's tragus and your high cheekbone. It’s a style you’ll either get on with or you won’t.

I’m not entirely sure I get on with them. I can never quite put my finger on what it is with a design like this. It’s not uncomfortable exactly, but I’m always aware of the transducers sitting against my face in a way that I’m not with other styles of bud. I have a lot of hair, which may not help with the fit of the ear hooks, and during colder testing sessions, a high-collared jacket displaced them more than once.

There’s a small rubber accessory in the box that can be used to tighten the fit for smaller heads, but that didn’t resolve things for me. It may just be that I’ve tested too many comfortable wireless buds recently and I've been spoiled by them. Either way, it’s worth flagging because comfort here is highly subjective, and if you haven’t tried neckband-style buds before, don’t assume they’ll feel comfortable.

The band itself is light at 14g, flexible and sturdy, with a matte rubberized finish. Controls sit on the right side, with three physical buttons for power/playback, and volume up and down.

The buttons are easy to use on the move. I always tend to prefer a physical press to touch controls when I’m running, so there’s no ambiguity about whether it’s registered. The middle button, which handles power and play/pause, is responsive.

The volume buttons occasionally took a moment or two to register, but there’s a helpful audio tone when you hit max volume, which I liked — although you may reach that much sooner than you’d expect.

There’s no app here or companion software, so there’s nothing to tweak or change. Just turn them on and they pair seamlessly. Then every time you switch them on, they tell you whether your battery is high or low.

(Image credit: Future)

The audio is far from the level of quality you’d get from the best headphones, the best earbuds or even the best open earbuds. These are affordable bone-conduction headphones and they sound it. But I think how much that matters depends almost entirely on what you like to listen to.

Tracks with presence in the highs and mids come through well here. I found poppy, energetic tracks, such as New Constellations’ Hot Blooded sounded bouncy and enjoyable. There’s clarity in the upper ranges, vocals sit forward in the mix and there’s enough going on to make a run feel good. Podcast lovers are also well-served with clear, undistorted voices at most volume levels.

Bass-heavy music is a different story. Something like Hanumankind’s Big Dawgs, which is a staple on my workout playlist, simply doesn’t hit. There’s no low-end weight, so if you like listening to bassy tracks, you’ll notice the absence.

The volume is adequate in most quieter conditions. Running on my own down an off-road path, I could hear everything I needed to, but I could hear just as well running through the city first thing in the morning too.

Things were different in windy and noisy environments — I struggled to push the volume high enough, but that’s par for the course with most open designs.

Also, at high volumes you might notice a mild vibrating sensation in your cheeks or jaw. That’s a known side effect of bone conduction. It never reached the point of discomfort for me with the Tri Run, but it’s worth knowing about.

H2O Audio quotes six hours of battery life, and in testing I got almost exactly that. That said, six hours is on the lower end for bone-conduction headphones. The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, for example, offer a huge 12 hours of battery, double what you get here. Granted, we’d consider them a high-end option, but with weaker audio and fewer features, I might have expected battery life to stay stronger.

It’s a similar story with open earbud rivals, like the Shokz OpenFit 2+, which offer 11 hours. That said, the Tri Run do offer an hour more than some other budget bone conduction headphones, such as the Jabees 7Seven, which only offer five hours.

(Image credit: Future)

Overall, there’s nothing wrong with the H2O Audio Tri Run. They fit securely, they’re easy to use, they’re waterproof, and they deliver acceptable sound for the form factor.

For a certain kind of runner or cyclist, someone who wants cheap, reliable, no-fuss awareness of their surroundings and mainly listens to poop and podcasts, they’ll get the job done without complaint.

But for everyone else, the value proposition is shakier than the price tag suggests. You won’t have to spend much more to get noticeably better performance, which we’ll get to below. The open earbud market in particular has expanded rapidly enough that there are now strong alternatives at similar prices.

If the neckband style suits you and simplicity is genuinely what you’re after, the H2O Audio Tri Run make sense. Otherwise, it’s worth shopping around — if you can get the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 on sale for this kind of price, we'd recommend those. And if you'll switch from neckband bone-conduction buds to wireless open earbuds, the Huawei FreeArc are an excellent option at around the same price.

H2O Audio Tri Run review: Specifications

Drivers

Bone conduction

Active noise cancellation

No

Battery life

Up to 6 hours

Weight

14g

Connectivity

Bluetooth

Frequency range

Not specified

Waterproofing

IPX8

H2O Audio Tri Run review: Price and release date

(Image credit: Future)

• How much does it cost? $99.99 / £76 / AU$145
• When did it first come out? Released in February 2026
• Where can you get it? Available globally

At $99.99 / £76 / AU$145, the Tri Run headphones sit at the more affordable end of the bone conduction market. That price makes sense when you think about the trade-off here. You’re paying for situational awareness rather than audio quality, and that’s a reasonable exchange if open-ear listening is a priority for you.

That said, affordable here is relative. The Shokz OpenRun Pro 2, our top pick for running in our best workout headphones guide, costs $179.95 / £169.00 / AU$319.00, which is a lot more. But it also offers significantly better performance.

And if you want some excellent bone conduction headphones that can handle swimming too from this same brand, the H2O Audio Tri 2 Pro Multi-Sport, our top pick in our best bone conduction headphones guide, comes in at £152 / $199.99 / AU$289.

There are also other budget bone conduction headphones on the market now too. Like the Jabees 7Seven bone conduction headphones for swimming and running, which are significantly cheaper at $59.99 / £47.99 / AU$99. They’re not perfect or topping any of our guides, but for the price, they’re terrific.

It’s also worth mentioning here that if open listening is your priority, there are now so many excellent buds to choose from as well. Yes, they’re a bit different to what the Tri Run headphones offer. But, for example, the Huawei FreeArc open buds are only £99.99 (roughly $130, AU$200). Yes that’s a little more, but you’re getting a great fit and much better sound quality.

So yes, the Tri Run might be cheaper than some rivals, but with no standout features they’re not automatically good value. It makes sense if you’re on a tight budget or simplicity is genuinely your priority. Otherwise, spending a little more gets you more.

H2O Audio Tri Run: Scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Bone conduction, IPX8 and physical buttons are welcome. But there's almost nothing else, and battery life isn't great.

2.5 / 5

Performance

Clear and enjoyable for pop and podcasts, lacking in low-end and struggles to compete in noisy environments.

3.5 / 5

Design

Light, secure and waterproof with simple controls that work well on the move. Comfort will be subjective.

4.5 / 5

Value

They’re affordable but not exactly a bargain. Some rivals offer a far better experience for a small increase in price.

3.5 / 5

Should I buy the H2O Audio Tri Run?

(Image credit: Future)Buy them if...

You like to keep things simple
No app, no touch gestures, no features. You turn them on and they work. If that’s all you want, they deliver.

You know you like the neckband design
If you’ve tried this style before and you’re a convert, they’re a reliable and affordable choice.

You’re on a budget
At $99.99 / £76 / AU$145, they’re an affordable bone-conduction option, and you’re getting a solid and dependable package here.

Don't buy them if...

You could spare more
You don’t have to spend much more to get a boost in performance. If your budget has flexibility, shop around.

You want the best sound from an open design
There are other open-ear headphones at a similar or high price that offer more low-end presence and overall audio quality.

You like an app and extra features
There’s nothing beyond the basics here. No EQ, no customization and no companion app. If that matters to you, look elsewhere.

H2O Audio Tri Run: Also consider

Huawei FreeArc

If you're not wedded to the neckband-style but still want to hear your surroundings, check out these open buds from Huawei. Sound is excellent for the form factor, they're comfortable and they're only $20/£20 more than the Tri Run.

Read our full Huawei FreeArc review

H2O Audio Tri 2 Pro Multi-Sport

The H2O Audio Tri 2 Pro Multi-Sport are much more expensive, but they have a strong battery life, complete waterproofing, and onboard storage as well as a special Playlist+ feature that untethers you from your phone during a run or swim.

Read our full H2O Audio Tri 2 Pro Multi-Sport review

How I tested the H2O Audio Tri Run

(Image credit: Future)

• Tested for two weeks
• Used with an iPhone 16 Pro
• Ran with them in all sorts of environments

I tested the H2O Audio Tri Run over two weeks, taking them out running across a range of environments. Busy streets, a canal path and open countryside. I also kept wearing them after runs, grabbing a coffee and working in a cafe, to get a sense of how versatile they are beyond their stated purpose.

I paired them with an iPhone 16 Pro, using Spotify for music during runs and YouTube for video content. Testing took place in typical UK weather conditions (think wind, sun, rain all within the space of a day) and I made a point of trying them with different layers and necklines. From a light spring fitted running jacket to a high collared running coat, as I know this can make a real different to the way neckband-style headphones fit.

I’ve been reviewing consumer tech for more than 15 years now with a particular interest in how we use technology beyond the marketing claims. What fits into your life, what you’ll still reach for long after the novelty has worn off, and what’s reliable and comfortable enough to become a genuine daily staple.

• First reviewed March 2026
• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Before I detail what makes narrative adventure game Life is Strange: Reunion quite so egregious, I think it’s important to clarify that I love this series and my issues with the latest instalment are not the result of pure malice, but rather come from a desire to return to the dizzying heights of Life is Strange and its excellent sequel Life is Strange 2.

Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Release date: March 26, 2026

The franchise may now be helmed by a new studio, Deck Nine, (the studio behind the somewhat underwhelming spinoff Life Is Strange: Before the Storm) rather than original creators Don’t Nod (who have since put out the sublime spiritual successor Lost Records: Bloom & Rage) but the team showed incredible promise with its 2021 entry Life Is Strange: True Colors.

It wasn’t perfect, but it still delivered a well-written, emotional tale with a cast of decently memorable characters and a perfectly realized, beautiful setting.

Given how this standalone story was received, I simply don’t understand why Deck Nine wanted to bring back Max Caulfield (the protagonist of the first game) for 2024’s disastrous Double Exposure, let alone double down by adding her childhood friend (and let’s be honest, practically canon love interest), Chloe Price, to this new entry as well.

Have your cake

(Image credit: Square Enix)

If there’s one word to describe Reunion, it’s "cowardly". This is nothing short of an embarrassing attempt to make amends with fans after Double Exposure, executed so sloppily that it even managed to annoy me as someone that didn’t appreciate the direction that game went in the slightest. The problem is a heavy reliance on retconning, with basically every event in that game’s latter half being completely undone in minutes.

Reunion starts by asking you to recap some of your choices from Double Exposure, who you chose to date, for example, in addition to some key decisions from Life is Strange 1, like whether you saved Arcadia Bay or Chloe. What does any of this change, exactly? Practically nothing, as it’s quickly revealed that you broke up with your chosen love interest off-screen in the handful of months between entries, and the destructive world-altering events of the last game’s finale have all been forgotten thanks to a convenient widespread case of what the characters dub “storm amnesia”.

You may recall that friend-turned-antagonist Safi Llewellyn-Fayyad closed out Double Exposure by vowing to travel the country, creating a team of super-powered individuals like some kind of hipster avengers, but all of this is quickly hand-waved away by the simple explanation that she gave up and came home after a few weeks.

None of your decisions from the first game matter either, as it turns out that both possible timelines have merged into one thanks to the supernatural events of the previous entry. Not only is Chloe alive and well, but the whole town of Arcadia Bay and all of its residents are completely intact.

It completely undermines the gravity of one of the most memorable decisions in not just the series but all of gaming, and the entire reason why many (including me) fell in love with these titles in the first place. I do understand that many fans will likely be pleased by the idea of everyone getting a happy ending — but it’s cheap and, being frank, not the kind of choice a studio should make for a story that it didn’t even originally create.

Tinderbox

(Image credit: Square Enix)

I could forgive much of this if Reunion still had a decent mystery at its core, which sadly isn’t the case. The main thrust is that Max’s beloved Caledon University is about to go up in smoke thanks to some kind of arson attack, and it's up to her to use her timey-wimey powers to travel back in time to fix it.

Of course, her double exposure power from the last game has been completely forgotten, replaced with rewind a la Life is Strange 1. The ability, which lets her rewind time for a short duration, seems like it would be quite useful for sleuthing, but it’s hardly used and ultimately feels like an afterthought.

There are multiple moments where it could come in handy, too, like one agonizing sequence that has you distracting a series of characters in order to sneakily inspect the contents of the folders they’re carrying. There is literally nothing stopping Max from simply grabbing the folders (which are all just lying on tables) and taking a look before rewinding a few minutes. In fact, she literally does what I’m describing later on to get her hands on someone’s bag, so I can only assume that the studio either didn’t consider the possibility in that instance or just wanted to pad the runtime.

I’m leaning towards the latter as padding is a theme elsewhere too; the mystery progresses at a painfully slow pace right up until Max walks into a room and has the story’s most important events literally explained to her (and by extension the player) in a magical sequence of moving images.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

There’s no joy in exploration either, as environments are lifeless and sterile with ugly lighting that conveys no sense of atmosphere at all — a far cry from the lovely, painterly look of the first two games or even the warm, cozy appearance of True Colors.

Most are ported directly from Double Exposure, so they already feel quite stale, and that’s before you even consider that they’ve been massively cut down this time around. The university's quad, for instance, now has no accessible buildings adjacent to it (explained as the result of storm damage, though little is visible as that would require changing the models a lot), which really hampers your ability to explore.

World-building is a major problem in general. Nothing about the story feels genuine, with awkward interactions that verge on almost Lynchian at times. Nobody ever really discusses anything beyond that which is immediately relevant to Max’s understanding of the main mystery which, combined with the dire facial animation and some worryingly unfinished looking moments where the camera fades to black or pans away in order to avoid having to show what would be some rather complex scenes, gives the impression of a world populated by malfunctioning animatronics rather than real people.

Missing persons

(Image credit: Square Enix)

Deck Nine clearly wants to distance itself from Double Exposure, though given how many of that game’s major characters still appear here, the handful of absences are painfully obvious. Noteworthy undergraduate student Diamond Washington is completely missing in action, as is Max’s friend and fellow educator, Gwen Hunter.

Having been hounded out of her university job thanks to a misunderstanding in the previous game, not bringing Hunter back in an entry so slavishly devoted to creating the perfect “happy ending” is a massive missed opportunity, and especially stings given the real-world parallels with transgender women being bullied out of academia.

Then there’s Chloe. I can’t pretend that part of me wasn’t glad when she burst through Max’s door on the hunt for answers about the strange visions she’s been having, quickly sinking into her former (girl)friend’s embrace. It’s like she never left, and therein lies the rub. Still a punk rock rebel with a “stick it to the man” attitude at the age of nearly 30, this doesn’t come across like an authentic adult Chloe but rather an insincere facsimile of her child self.

Are we really expected to believe that her traumatic past and years out on the open road have barely changed her after more than a decade?

Contrast this with the way that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage engages with the idea of aging to great effect, particularly with its presentation of Nora, a similarly cool character as a teenager and many players’ primary love interest in that game. It’s uncomfortable when the adult Nora arrives and turns out to be something of a facile conformist, but this entirely believable evolution forces you to re-evaluate your relationship with her and shines a new light on both your past and future interactions.

(Image credit: Square Enix)

I’m not arguing that Chloe should have come back unrecognizable by any means, but a scrap of development to gesture to an existence outside of this series’ plot would have gone a very long way to make her more believable.

The segments where you actually get to play as Chloe are underwhelming in the grand scheme of things, too. Her ability to backtalk, first introduced in Before the Storm, has been stripped down massively. Originally a way of outsmarting opponents with witty comebacks by carefully considering whatever they had just said, it now involves selecting the right option using information that was invariably shown to you immediately beforehand.

The mechanic’s treatment is honestly emblematic of this entire affair: a shallow imitation of things taken wholesale from much better games. If your entire enjoyment of a new Life is Strange game boils down to seeing your favorite characters unconvincingly thrown around like action figures, then you’re going to be right at home here. For those of us who fell in love with the games for their narratives, I’m hoping that whatever the studio has planned next represents the new beginning this series now so desperately needs.

Should I play Life is Strange: Reunion?Play it if...

You're simply desperate to see Chloe again
If your one wish is to see Chloe Price show up in a game again, with no regard to how it affects the story of other entries, then Life is Strange: Reunion is probably good enough for you.

Don't play it if...

You're expecting a decent mystery
The mystery at the heart of Life is Strange: Reunion is poorly paced and sloppy. There are many better mysteries to discover in the rest of the series or other narrative adventure games.

You're after a true sequel
This doesn't feel like a true sequel to any of the other Life is Strange games, thanks to a huge amount of awkward retconning. Describing it as more like fan fiction would be an insult to AO3 authors.

You need high production values
This is by far the worst-looking game in the franchise, with many scenes spoiled by cheap animations and awkward dialogue.

Accessibility features

Life is Strange: Reunion has an admirably expansive suite of accessibility options.

This includes a range of pre-sets for low vision, low motor, low audio, or low sensory profiles, plus a huge number of individual settings. Key options include the ability to enable longer decision times for important choices (though there are quite a few of those in the game), highlight key objects and items that can be interacted with in the world, and even skip gameplay sequences if desired.

Subtitles are featured throughout the game and can be altered to your liking in the UI menu. There are multiple font styles, text size options, and the ability to enable a subtitle background to make them easier to read.

The game also offers a range of toggleable trigger warning screens, which can alert you to death, blood, suicide, violence, intense effects, drug use, sex, and high brightness scenes. A separate warning for loud sounds can also be enabled.

How I reviewed Life is Strange: Reunion

I completed Life is Strange: Reunion in roughly 12 hours on my PC, which is a 5070 Ti-powered model from retailer Scan. It has a compact Corsair 2000d RGB Airflow case, Asus ROG Strix B860-I motherboard, Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor, a 2TB WD Black SN770 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance RAM, and an Asus Nvidia 5070 Ti graphics card.

This allowed me to play the game smoothly on its highest graphics preset at 1080p, though it still didn't look too great. I played using my usual Razer DeathAdder V4 Pro mouse and Cherry XTRFY K5V2 keyboard, plus Logitech desktop speakers for audio.

First reviewed March 2026

Zwift Ride with KICKR CORE: One minute review

The Zwift Ride with KICKR CORE is a complete cycling setup comprising a Zwift Ride smart frame and a Wahoo KICKR CORE trainer. The combined unit is an easy-to-set-up solution for indoor training that doesn't require mounting a traditional outdoor bike. It's a single tine at the front instead of a bike's usual fork and a rear wheel, designed to lock straight into the KICKR turbo trainer. Assembly is as simple as opening a few boxes, securing a few bolts in place, finding a place to locate it, and you're away.

Offering integrated handlebar controllers, a console-like gaming experience, and a system that is compact and quiet, the Zwift ride is a great piece of kit, especially given the price. As for build quality, the chassis is made of heavy-duty powder-coated steel, which is solid and dependable, albeit a little utilitarian.

What sets the KICKR CORE apart from much of the competition is the single-sprocket Zwift Cog that enables virtual shifting. Instead of physically moving a chain across gears, the trainer uses a sophisticated algorithm to deliver resistance via the built-in electromagnetic system. This is capable of simulating the feel of 24 distinct gears and is a big win for users wanting a maintenance-free experience.

Versatility is a standout feature of the Zwift setup, as the frame is engineered to fit riders ranging from 5 ft to 6 ft 6 in with just a single tool. This makes it a perfect indoor bike for sharing between family members, something that I’ve enjoyed these past few weeks.

My first Zwift Ride experience has been a very positive one, and I’ve loved how easy it has been to use. Its design is solid but lacking finesse, its feature set is reasonable but nothing flashy, and its performance is fantastic for the price, compared to ultra-premium rivals like Peloton.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Zwift Ride with KICKR CORE: Specifications

Component

Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE

Price

$1,299.99 USD / £1,099 UK

Dimensions

135.89 x 58.42 cm / 53.5 x 23 in

Weight

35 kg / 78 lbs

Saddle Height Min-Max

59.9–86.5 cm / 23.58–34.06 in

Rider Fit Range

152.4–198.12 cm / 5 ft – 6 ft 6 in

Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Price and availability

• $1,299.99 USD / £1,099 GBP / $2,299.95 AUD
• A mid-range product with excellent build quality
• Cheaper than high-end alternatives

The Zwift Ride with KICKR CORE 2 bundle is one of the best-value smart bikes on the market. The bundle package is typically priced at $1,299 USD / £1,099 GBP / $2,299.95 AUD, although it's often found on sale for around $999 / £899 (rarely discounted in Australia) during seasonal events. It's not cheap, but it's in the bracket of affordable for anyone wanting to take their indoor cycling seriously.

The product bridges the huge gap between a budget wheel-on trainer and premium dedicated smart bikes like the Tacx NEO Bike Plus. As a result, Zwift is looking to tap into that mid-range market with a semi-affordable trainer that's always ready to go.

Value score 4.5/5

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Design

• Utilitarian design with solid materials
• Adjustable seatpost and handlebars
• Silent flywheel for a great user experience

The bundle consists of two elements: the Zwift Ride smart frame and the Wahoo KICKR CORE 2 with Zwift Cog. I appreciate that's quite the mouthful, and it could be confusing, but in essence, the Zwift Ride is the frame, while the KICKR CORE is the resistance trainer. Let's take a look at each in turn.

The Zwift Ride is the physical bike structure that you sit on. It stays in one location and is optionally attached to the trainer. The main chassis is constructed from heavy-duty powder-coated steel, which guarantees durability and longevity, but one of the best details of the bike's design is in its adjustability. With the ability to adjust the seatpost and handlebar system using a "sizing-by-letter" system, quick changes can be made and multiple riders accommodated.

At the front is a unique single-leg design with a wide rubber-padded base. Don't be fooled, though. It might look deceptively slim, but in reality, it provides a solid base to prevent rocking during sprints. The aluminum drop handlebars house built-in Bluetooth buttons for virtual shifting, steering, and navigating Zwift menus. Finally, central to the handlebars is a phone tray with a silicone mat and an optional tablet holder. These are essential for engagement with the Zwift app while riding.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)

The Wahoo KICKR CORE trainer, on the other hand, is the engine that provides the resistance and communicates with the Zwift app. Sitting at the back of the frame, the unit contains a direct-drive unit containing a 5.4 kg (12 lb) electromagnetic flywheel and a single-sprocket cog that allows the bike to work without mechanical shifting. The whole setup is incredibly silent and removes the need for mechanically complex derailleurs. The Core is also sold separately in case you want to connect an actual bike.

All in, it took around an hour to put it together with every part working seamlessly out of the box. The design is notably utilitarian compared to aluminum or carbon-composite alternatives, and the lack of tilting mechanisms to simulate further climbing is a reminder of its price point.

When both the frame and trainer are combined, the total weight is about 35 kg (78 lbs). While this weight makes it cumbersome to move, it does help keep the unit "planted", which is an essential quality during high-intensity rides.

Design Score: 4/5

Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Features

• Console-like gaming experience
• Fast and quiet virtual shifting
• Automatic spindown calibration

From a features point of view, the Zwift is designed with simplicity in mind. This begins with the handlebar integration that serves up a console-like experience where you can control the Zwift interface without having to reach for a keyboard, mouse, or phone. This includes menu navigation and selecting routes as well as in-game actions such as deploying power-ups and moving your avatar to find a draft.

Rather than a physical derailleur, the Zwift hardware uses software-based virtual shifting that is faster and quieter than a mechanical drivetrain. The virtual nature of it makes it possible to choose between Shimano or SRAM logic, or even a sequential 24-gear progression. It also allows for shifting gears when you're not pedaling, which, although not realistic, is ideal if you happen to find yourself stationary while in the middle of a steep climb.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)

One of the most user-friendly technical features is the automatic spindown calibration, which measures the internal drag of the device so that the power numbers you see in Zwift are accurate and not skewed by things like belt tension or room temperature.

Unlike older trainers that required a manual spindown test every few weeks to ensure power accuracy, the KICKR CORE calibrates itself automatically while you coast. In line with Zwift's focus on convenience, firmware updates happen automatically over WiFi, so the trainer is always up to date.

Features Score: 4/5

Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Performance

• Smooth, quiet, and dependable
• Accessible and easy-to-use controls
• Lacking high-end features such as frame tilting

After moving successfully through the incredibly straightforward process of building the bike, I was ready to jump on. It was actually my son who jumped on first, but as he had helped me build the thing, I thought it only fair to let him have a ride. He and I were impressed by how smoothly the unit operates with a super-quiet flywheel and drivetrain. This performance continued throughout my subsequent rides with no deviation in quality.

At the heart of the KICKR CORE is the Zwift Cog with virtual shifting. This again performs excellently with almost instant gear shifts, and there's no crunch or lag often felt on bikes when shifting under heavy load on a climb. This software-led approach means you can focus on your ride without concern that you’re going to bend the derailleur.

The gear shifting can be easily customized to mimic different gear ratios. I cycled through the sequential, SRAM, and Shimano options and tested each one to make sure they accurately performed to their advertised capabilities. The sequential option is pretty straightforward with a simple shifting through gears one at a time. The other two are a little more complex, but Zwift's ability to replicate their feel is expertly implemented.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)

The physical ride is only half the story, though. The Zwift app is as integral a part of the overall riding experience as the physical build. This app is operated through the handlebar controls, which enable users to move through menus and engage fully with the virtual riding experience. As with any new device, the Zwift’s button placement and associated actions took a little getting used to, but it wasn’t long before it became second nature.

My overall experience of the app was a little less positive, unfortunately. I loaded it onto my phone and was immediately forced to view it in landscape mode. This wasn’t too much of a problem until I realised that the mounting pad at the front of the bike is portrait only. My phone was therefore balanced a little precariously to account for that. Making use of the dedicated holder with a tablet would overcome this, but not everyone has access to these.

I also found that the app drained my phone’s battery to a degree that I wouldn’t have expected. Maybe it’s a result of the 3D graphics or the expectation that you keep your device permanently plugged in. Either way, I think Zwift could make significant improvements to the app to enhance the overall user experience.

Performance score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Scorecard

Category

Comment

Score

Value

A mid-range smart bike that delivers great performance at a semi-affordable price.

4.5/5

Design

A utilitarian bike that lacks the finesse of higher-end alternatives.

4/5

Features

A limited set of features, but what it does have is well implemented.

4/5

Performance

A smooth riding experience that lacks a number of high-end features. The app is also a little buggy at times.

4/5

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Zwift Ride and KICKR CORE: Should I buy?Buy it if...

You want a clean, well-built indoor exercise bike

The Zwift Ride with KICKR CORE is a grease-free, always-ready setup for cycling enthusiasts.

You need a solution that works with multiple users

Thanks for a sizing-by-letter system and single-tool adjustment; it's incredibly easy to swap for different heights.

Don't buy it if...

You don't want to be locked into Zwift

Virtual shifting through the Zwift Cog only works within the Zwift app.

You want a highly customizable ride feel

The trainer provides resistance, but nothing about the bike adjusts to mimic the feeling of going up or down a hill.

Also consider

Peloton

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Garmin Tacx Neo Bike Plus

An ultra-premium indoor trainer designed for elite cyclists, prioritizing realistic ride simulation including gear shifts and surface textures.

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How I tested

I performed a full unboxing and kit construction, enabling me to make informed comments on how users might experience the setup process. I downloaded and utilized the Zwift app, partaking in dozens of rides which made use of the full spectrum of features on the bike. I also asked other members of my family to test it. This enabled me to check the fit across multiple users and take on board other people’s perspectives and experiences.

First reviewed: February 2026

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: two-minute review

If you’re in the market for a sterling autonomous plug-and-play robot lawn mower with a wider cutting tract than most, the new Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000 comes wholeheartedly recommended. Available in three different battery capacities, this particular model is designed for large, complex lawns with shaded areas, lumpy terrain and very steep gradients, though it is equally at home on even the most standardised of suburban and rural lawns. However, it would most definitely be considered overkill if used on a small-to-medium urban lawn.

Like its highly-regarded stablemate, the LUBA 2, the new LUBA 3 AWD 3000 requires no boundary wires and no degree in IT to set it up – simply install its charging base, log on to the Mammotion app and it will map the boundaries of your lawn automatically or, if you prefer, manually by steering the robot around your lawn’s permitter like an RC car.

A big upgrade from its stablemate, this new model is now equipped with an impressive Tri-Fusion navigation system combining LiDAR, netRTK positioning over WiFi or 4G, plus AI camera vision to map, mow and avoid obstacles with impressive accuracy — day or night.

Performance is where the LUBA 3 AWD 3000 really impresses. Using its all-wheel drive system and full suspension, this beast can handle slopes with inclines of up to 80% and traverse uneven terrain, roots and edges with impressive confidence. Dual 165W cutting motors and AI-adjusted power, meanwhile, allow it to deal effectively with thick or damp grass, while intelligent route planning minimizes missed patches.

The result is an impressively neat and perfectly striped finish to the lawn that may leave your jaw on the floor. What’s more, because it is equipped with a much wider cutting deck (40cm) than the vast majority of the competition, the beautiful lawn stripes it creates are much more akin to that of a conventional mower.

(Image credit: Future)

Granted, the LUBA 3 is very much in the premium-price band, but then you are getting marine-grade build quality, reliable navigation, excellent obstacle avoidance and consistent cutting performance for your hard earned.

I gave this model’s forebear, the LUBA 2, a full five stars on TechRadar in 2024, mostly because it was head and shoulders above anything else around at the time while being extremely efficient and super reliable. But that was then. Today we have a lot more competition with a veritable slew of extremely efficient wire-free robot mowers from the likes of Segway, Anthbot, Roborock, Ego, Eufy, Terramow and Worx, and that makes it even more difficult to justify a full five-star rating.

Nevertheless, if the earlier LUBA 2 — which I have been using for the past 18 months – is anything to go by, you can safely expect this new model to continue providing a fuss-free autonomous grass cutting service with almost zero babysitting for many years hence.

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: price & availability

• How much does it cost? £2,399 / $2,399
• When is it available? Available in most regions now
• Where can you get it? Pre-order in UK; available USA and rest of the world, bar Australia

The Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD series sits firmly in the premium segment of the robot mower market, with UK pricing typically between £2,099 to £2,899 ($2,399 to $3,299) depending on lawn capacity. While this positions it well above entry-level robotic mowers, the price reflects its incredible build quality, advanced navigation system, all-wheel-drive traction and ability to scale steep hills, making it particularly appealing for large, complex garden layouts and even large fields.

Compared with more affordable models, the LUBA 3’s value depends largely on lawn size and complexity. Budget alternatives for smaller lawns like the perimeter wire-free Segway Navimow i2 and Worx Landroid Vision Cloud cost under £700 while Mammotion’s equally-competent LUBA Mini 2 AWD 1000 (which boasts many of its larger sibling’s features, including the ability to climb slopes of up to 80%) also retails at a much more affordable £1,399.

Ultimately, I think that the LUBA 3 AWD 3000 I’m reviewing here is decent value for owners of large, uneven or multi-zone lawns who can fully exploit its advanced autonomy. For smaller gardens, however, many cheaper robot mowers deliver perfectly adequate performance, meaning buyers should carefully consider whether the LUBA 3’s premium technology is truly necessary.

Value score: 4 / 5

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: specs

Max lawn size

3000㎡

Navigation

360 LiDAR + NetRTK + Dual-Camera AI Vision

Cutting deck width

40cm (two 6-blade cutting discs)

Cutting height adjustment

25-70mm, motorised

Drivetrain

All-wheel drive

Maximum climbing ability

80% (38.6˚)

Maximum zones

30 zones

Drop-and-mow function

Yes

Obstacle avoidance

360° LiDAR, NetRTK, and dual-camera 1080P AI vision

Connectivity

Wi-fi, Bluetooth & 4G (3 years free data)

Security

GPS tracking + 4G

Noise

70dB

Waterproof

IPX6

Rain sensor

Yes

Mow time per charge

175 mins

Charging time

120 mins

Weight

19kgs

Dimensions

690 x 533 x 279mm

Product code

LUBA 3 AWD 3000

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: design

• Three-way navigation
• Wider-than-average cutting deck
• Impeccable fit and finish

Most of the mowbots I review are clad in flimsy shells that bend dramatically as you pick them up. By stark contrast, the F1-inspired LUBA 3 AWD 3000’s beautifully polished white plastic cowling feels inches thick and akin to the hull of a premium speed boat. But it doesn’t stop there because the exposed metal work, too, screams Formula One levels of build quality with high-spec machining and expert fit and finish with zero tolerance between the various components.

In short, every inch of this lawn beast is built to the very highest standards. Hence, this level of build quality doesn’t come cheap and nor does it lack in weight – at a hefty 19kgs, it’s a good job you will only likely need to lift it once to remove it from the box and pop it on its charging plinth.

(Image credit: Future)

The LUBA 3 (as I shall call it from now on) is available in three battery-capacity variants for lawn sizes of 1,500㎡, 3,000㎡ for the variant we’re reviewing here, and 5,000㎡. It arrives almost fully assembled in a huge, expertly packed box. In fact, the only thing the user needs to do is remove some protective pieces on the robot — including the cutting deck protector underneath – and screw on the sensor-equipped bumper. Then it’s a case of mounting the charging base on a flat edge of the lawn that’s within range of an outdoor electricity supply. This model comes with a 5m charging cable, which is sadly about half the length of the one that came with the LUBA 2. Nevertheless, you should be able to purchase an extension cable from Mammotion sometime in the near future.

Now that the LUBA 3 is on its base, it’s time to open the Mammotion app, create an account and add the LUBA 3 by following the set of on-screen instructions. Since this model uses Wi-Fi and 4G-based NetRTK for part of its three-way navigation, there is no need to install an RTK antenna. In fact, it doesn’t even come with one though I’m led to believe that an RTK aerial will soon become available for those with poor Wi-Fi and/or 4G reception.

(Image credit: Future)

Once you’ve connected the bot to the app, it’s time to map your lawn and this can be performed in two ways — automatically or manually. With auto mapping the LUBA 3 follows the perimeter of any grassy areas until it arrives at its starting point. Voila, map created. In manual mode — my preferred option — you carefully drive the LUBA 3 around the perimeter of the lawn using the app’s virtual joysticks until you arrive where you started.

Once mapped, the only thing you may need to do is add a few no-go zones around any trees, garden furniture or ornaments by steering the robot around them. This task isn’t essential because the LUBA 3’s stupendous navigation system will ensure any obstacles are avoided. However, it’s still good practice to add no-go zones around obstacles so the robot can cut as closely as possible when approaching rather than giving it too wide a berth.

(Image credit: Future)

If you have multiple lawns connected by pathways with no obstructions like stairs and gates in the way, you can also program a series of pathways for the robot to follow. Simply select ‘Channel’ in the app’s mapping menu and steer the LUBA 3 from one lawn to the other. You can create up to 30 mowing zones with the LUBA 3 3000 model on review here, 15 with the 1500 version and 50 with the 5000. In essence, when the LUBA 3 has completed its cut on lawn one, it will trundle off down your pre-set path to lawn two, and so on and so forth. If its battery needs a recharge midway through a multi task, the robot will simply head back to its charging station for a top up.

Let’s take a closer look at this amazing mowbot’s main credentials, starting with the cutting deck. Unlike the vast majority of robot mowers that come with a small single 20cm cutting disc, this one ships with two 20cm discs, amounting to a wide 40cm of cutting girth, which is roughly the same as most conventional medium-sized push mowers.

(Image credit: Future)

The LUBA 3’s cutting system is comprised of two spinning discs equipped with six razor-like blades on each that cut and mulch grass more cleanly than any conventional rotary mower. Also, unlike standard mowers that only provide their cutting heights in 1cm increments, this model’s motorized cutting deck can be set to cut in 5mm increments (it has a cutting height range of 25-70mm). Oh, and another thing… Since the LUBA 3’s blades are so small and razor sharp, it doesn’t take much power to move them and that in turn means less battery consumption and almost zero noise while they’re working. In fact you could be lying on the sun lounger while the robot’s working a few metres away and you won’t hear a thing — and nor will your neighbors.

Since the LUBA 3 always cuts in a zigzag, up-and-down pattern (at whichever angle you prefer, including a chequerboard effect), the combination of its extra cutting width and extra-wide tyres ensures a swathe of professional-looking lawn stripes. Granted, they’re not the authentic stripes you see at a cricket ground or football pitch – these are made using a large cylinder mower with a roller on the rear – but who’s complaining when they look this ravishingly good? Incidentally, like all good robot mowers, this one is also fitted with a rain sensor, so if it heads out in the rain it will immediately return to its garage (with optional rain hood) and wait a few hours before trying again.

No robot of any kind is of much use if it doesn’t know where it is at any given time. Well the new LUBA 3 has three types of onboard navigation (one more than the LUBA 2) for insane levels of navigation accuracy in even the most shaded areas of a garden.

Firstly, its equipped with GPS RTK navigation that uses satellites to determine the robot’s position to a few centimetres of accuracy (the standard GPS navigation we use for driving is three to 10 metres). However, unlike the first incarnation of the LUBA 2 which shipped with a separate RTK antennae that required a good line of sight to a large number of satellites, this model uses Mammotion’s own NetRTK system which is Wi-Fi or 4G based and therefore immune to satellite access being affected by overhanging trees and buildings. All you need is decent Wi-Fi reception on your lawn for pin-point navigation accuracy.

If you don’t have Wi-Fi on the lawn, you can also use the robot’s built-in 4G capabilities to perform the same function — Mammotion provides a full three years of free 4G service! Oh, and fear not if your lawn area has neither Wi-Fi nor 4G because you can still use this model with a spiked RTK antenna.

(Image credit: Future)

The LUBA 3 is also equipped with dual-camera AI vision and an LED headlight, and it uses these as an extra layer of cover when navigating darker areas of a lawn or when the robot encounters obstacles like children, pets, garden toys, furniture and ornaments. You have two levels of obstacle avoidance to choose from: Standard for better cutting efficiency and Sensitive, which may cause the robot to avoid non-grassy areas and even refuse to cross them on the way back to base. If you’re a dog owner, I wouldn’t rely on this model – or most others for that matter – to avoid dog poop because setting that level of sensitivity would likely cause the robot to also avoid every loose leaf on the lawn.

Last but certainly not least, this model also encompasses LiDAR and I can’t tell you what a difference this makes when it comes to mapping, navigation and obstacle avoidance. LiDAR fires lasers off in all directions to map and navigate a 3D work space with uncanny accuracy, even in pitch darkness. Having this level of navigation redundancy on board is a major coup for Mammotion since most other manufacturers tend to focus on just two navigation systems.

This Tri-Fusion Positioning System, as Mammotion calls it, has also allowed the Chinese company to introduce a unique ‘beta’ feature called Drop Mow so you can take it over to someone else’s lawn and have it cut their lawn as efficiently as yours. In terms of security, the LUBA 3 is firmly linked to the user’s account and that alone renders it useless to any thieves. Moreover, it is also equipped with GPS and 4G tracking for extra peace of mind.

(Image credit: Future)

Let’s take a good look at the Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD’s traction system. Where most smaller mowbots have two sturdy drive wheels to the rear or front and a smaller castor wheel for steering, the LUBA 3 is all-wheel drive and fitted with suspension. Ostensibly, its wheel system is comprised of a pair of large, robust paddled tyres on the rear and a pair of narrower front wheels equipped with smaller omnidirectional spinners that allow the robot to turn on a sixpence. This setup means the LUBA 3 can ride over very rough terrain, scale roots and small sills without getting into pickle. But more importantly its powerful 4x4 drive system also allows it to scale inclines of up to 80% (38.6°) which is steeper than any conventional lawn mower can safely handle.

Granted, the LUBA 3’s specialised front wheels have been known to occasionally tear up grass in soft-soiled shady areas when using the Zero Turn option but this can be cured to some degree by opting for its slower three-point-turn function instead. I’ve personally had no bald-patch issues but I do know that others have.

However, I should add that the omnidirectional front wheels tend to collect a lot of mud which is unsightly, but thankfully the whole unit is IPX6 rated for protection against high-pressure water spray so you can easily blast off the mud with a hose. Perhaps Mammotion will change the LUBA 3’s front drive mechanism at some point and adopt a system like the forthcoming Segway Navimow X Series, which uses a zero-turn method comprised of two front wheels that swivel 90 degrees when turning.

I’ve been consistently blown away by the high level of build quality and huge amount of design flourishes Mammotion injects into its LUBA series and this model is the best yet. However, I will stress that this robot lawn mower has been intentionally designed for large lawns — and even paddocks and fields — and can therefore be considered overkill if used on an average urban lawn. Thankfully Mammotion also produces a smaller LUBA Mini 2 for diminutive lawns, and you should check it out.

Design score: 4.5 / 5

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: performance

• Top cutting performance
• Creates beautiful lawn stripes
• Reassuring reliability

As with its forebear, the LUBA 2, I have no issues to report regarding installation, initial lawn mapping, navigation or cutting performance. I simply set up a series of schedules in the Mammotion app and the LUBA 3 has headed off to mow the lawn while I’ve sat indoors doing other things. And when it has finished leaving its swathe of majestic lawn stripes, it’s followed the perimeter all the way back to its charging base.

Yes, I did use my conventional lawn mower with grass cutting container for the first cut of the season because the LUBA 3, like the vast majority of lawn robots, uses the mulching technique and I didn’t want clumps of cuttings littering the lawn. This is why it’s always best to hang on to your conventional mower.

However, if you program the LUBA 3 to head out every two or three days during spring and summer, it will simply slice off about 2mm of growth at a time and feed the nitrogen-rich cuttings back into the turf, thereby fertilising it as the same time. And without a grass cutting in sight. What’s not to like?

(Image credit: Future)

I have always opted for the parallel ‘zigzag’ cutting option in the app, followed by two perimeter laps (you can select up to four perimeter laps and each pass is a little closer to the edge). No, the LUBA 3 — and almost all other bots — won’t cut to the very edge of a wall, fence or solid flower border, but then neither will a conventional lawnmower. Hence you will still need a grass trimmer to hand.

I also tested the LUBA 3’s multi-zone function though this did entail me carrying the unit up some stairs because I’m unable to create a direct pathway to zones two and three. Nevertheless, I was mightily impressed by how well it navigated between the two new zones while sticking rigidly to the borders, and without venturing into the adjacent road. In fact, so successful is this multi-zone system that, were I able to create a series of unobstructed pathways, I could feasibly program the LUBA 3 to leave my garden and head off to maintain our village cemetery and the lawn areas around the church. Proof positive that, were it not for the prospect of theft, most of the new generation of mowbots could feasibly replace a professional gardener with a conventional lawn mower. Sad but true.

(Image credit: Future)

In terms of obstacle avoidance, the LUBA 3 is perfectly adept at bypassing any obstacle larger than, say, a ping pong ball. I tested it using the unit’s Standard obstacle avoidance setting and it stopped about three feet away from a stuffed seagull toy before rerouting itself for another pass. I then set it to Sensitive and it deftly avoided a toy dog bone just one inch in height. That’s a resounding pass in my book since, were it any more sensitive, the robot would likely avoid garden leaves and you don’t want that. Swings and roundabouts spring to mind.

My final test was the LUBA 3’s toughest. There’s a children’s playground behind my house and it has a bank so steep and slippery that I can’t get up it without scrabbling on all fours. For this test I opted to manually steer the LUBA 3 up the slope using the app’s virtual controls, half expecting it to fail miserably. But, joy of joys, it scuttled up the slope like one of those V8-powered Formula Off-Road cars you see negotiating near-vertical terrain in a disused quarry. Very impressive indeed.

(Image credit: Future)

Granted, some may baulk at the thought of a robot performing a task that they consider enjoyable, and I thought that too the first time I was offered a wireless robot to test. But when I look back at the time and effort I’ve saved to perform other important tasks like lounging in the garden with a G&T, pruning the flowers or simply watching it work — not to say the convenience of having the lawn cut while away from home — I’ve become a complete convert and would now find it hard to live without one.

Performance score: 5 / 5

Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000: Mammotion app

• Exceedingly comprehensive
• Simple to navigate
• Some glitches need ironing out

The accompanying feature-rich Mammotion app is central to getting the best performance from all models in the company’s current line up, and one of its key strengths is the amazing level of customization if offers, whether you’re fettling with it at home or away.

Users can create multiple mowing areas, adjust cutting patterns, height and blade speed, direction and style of travel (zigzag, chessboard effect and angle of cut), even create shapes and words on the lawn. It also offers the wherewithal to set the amount of perimeter laps and whether you want the bot to return to its charging base in a direct route or along the perimeter to avoid spoiling the lawn stripes it has already produced.

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Nevertheless, the experience is not flawless. I’ve experienced occasional connectivity issues when away from home or when using Bluetooth on my iPhone 15 Pro, plus a few interface quirks that can make fine-tuning lawn zones more time-consuming than expected. There’s scope for improvement, in other words.

Should you buy the Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000?

Section

Notes

Score

Value for money

The LUBA 3 commands a high price due to its advanced navigation and AWD capability on complex terrain

4/5

Design

Built like a tank and equipped with an accomplished navigation system for a rugged life on larger landscapes

4.5/5

Performance

Powerful, precise and confident performance across a range of large, challenging lawns

5/5

App functionality

Extremely comprehensive but could do with a tweak or two

4/5

Buy it if

You want advanced wire-free navigation

Tri-Fusion positioning combines LiDAR, RTK and AI vision for highly accurate mapping without boundary wires

You want beautiful lawn stripes

This bot cuts in lovely parallel lines

Your lawn is hilly and lumpy

All-wheel drive enables the LUBA 3 to tackle slopes up to 80%, making it ideal for complex or uneven lawns

Don't buy it if

Your lawn is too small

The LUBA 3’s four-wheel traction and wide body are overkill on small lawns.

You don’t want to spend much

Premium pricing makes it hard to justify for small or simple lawns where cheaper robot mowers perform well.

You need a robot with a more gentle turning system

The LUBA 3 has a tendency to scuff up some thinner grasses when turning.

How I tested the Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000

As per usual, I lived with the Mammotion LUBA 3 AWD 3000 for a couple of weeks, watching it work on a scheduled basis and examining the results of its cutting performance. I then put it to a series of manual tests, including obstacle avoidance, multi-zone mowing and a steep hill climb. It has impressed me in all disciplines and continues to do so. Like the LUBA 2 I reviewed in 2024, I see no major issues with this newer model which has been a breeze to use from initial set up to the reliable way it goes about its bi-weekly chores.

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: 30-second review

The Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer offers up a huge cooking capacity at a price which undercuts pretty much any other serious contender on the market. If you’re looking for capacity and flexibility bang-for-your-buck, look no further.

Is this the best air fryer out there? Not exactly, but for families on a budget it’s hard not to recommend Tower’s large basket machine.

Not only can you cook a whole chicken or pizza in this air fryer, it also comes with a handy divider transforming the single drawer into a dual-basket offering, allowing you to cook separate foods, at different temperatures, for different durations, simultaneously — and it works much better than I expected.

It does have a few key competitors including the premium Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer (with a 10.4L basket), and the almost equally affordable Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer (that only has a 7.1L basket), but with the Tower being the cheapest of the trio you’re looking at a unique proposition.

It’s not perfect. The large basket is heavy when fully loaded and is handwash only, while the controls aren’t overly intuitive, and the cooking presets don’t always deliver the results you want.

There is some trial and error required in the cooking process, but once you’ve got a feel for how it cooks, the Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer can deliver delicious food, from cakes, to chicken, to fries.

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: price and availability

• Affordable £119.99 list price, but…
• It’s often reduced to sub-£100, great value for such a large capacity
• Available in the UK, but not in the US or Australia

The Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer price is £119.99, although it is regularly discounted making this large capacity cooker even better value.

At time of writing (March 2026), I’m seeing it available for £99.99 on the Tower website, and £89.10 on Amazon, with similar prices at plenty of other third-party retailers.

That’s considerably cheaper than its main, single-drawer, larger capacity competitor, the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer, which is twice the price of this Tower.

The Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer is closer in price to the Tower, but still costs more and has a smaller cooking capacity.

The Tower Elite 11 air fryer's list price is equivalent to about $160 / AU$230, but it's not available in the US or Australia.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: specifications

Review Model

T17200

Number of baskets

1 (plus a divider)

Number of cooking programs

8

Cooking programs

Steak, drumstick, fish, prawn, fries, pizza, bake, dehydrate

Extra functions

Smart Finish, Match Cook

Smart control

No

Wattage

1700W

Capacity

11L

Temperature range

35-200 degrees C

Time range

1-60 minutes (24 hours for dehydrate)

Dimensions (H x W x D)

30.5 x 39.2 x 39.8 cm

Dishwasher-safe

No

Weight

8kg

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: design

• Huge 11-liter basket is great for family meals, and divider provides dual basket flexibility
• Controls and overall look don’t compete with premium air fryers, but that’s expected at this price point
• Basket can be heavy when fully loaded, and it’s handwash only

With its sizable 11-liter basket the Tower Elite 11 Litre Flexi Drawer Air Fryer is, unsurprisingly, wide (39.2cm) and deep (39.8cm).

It can dominate the worktop in smaller kitchens, but its horizontal design (unlike the vertically tall Philips 4000 Series Stacked Dual Basket or Ninja Double Stack) means height is kept to just 30.5cm, allowing it to sit neatly under wall-mounted units, and slide into cupboards when not in use (assuming they’re wide enough).

FutureFuture

The matte grey finish provides a sleek, modern aesthetic, while the large, glossy black front panel adds a splash of space-age to the look.

It’s smart, without pushing the boundaries of air fryer design, and on closer inspection I found areas where Tower has cut corners to keep the price point at a tempting level.

The buttons and dial felt a little cheap under my finger, with some travel and wiggle to them. Clicks don’t feel smooth, and having used premium Philips and Ninja air fryers recently, the lower quality finish here was even more noticeable.

This isn’t a massive negative though, and it’s to be expected at this price point. Plus, overall the air fryer feels sturdy so I don’t worry about long-term use, as long as you’re relatively gentle with the controls.

(Image credit: Future)

The main attraction is the massive 11-liter cooking basket though, which slides into the front of the machine, and there's a reassuring clunk when you correctly interest the basket, letting you know it’s snugly in.

What’s particularly nice is the addition of a removable divider panel which you can slide down the middle of the basket, allowing you to have two separate cooking zones. This gives you the flexibility of a dual drawer air fryer, while also giving you a single larger basket when you want to cook bigger items such as a pizza or a small chicken.

But with great size comes great weight. Fully load the basket, and you’ll find it gets rather heavy. This is especially problematic when cooking has completed and you’re attempting to remove the basket while it’s very hot.

FutureFuture

I found that putting a couple of heat mats directly in front of the air fryer and pulling the basket straight out onto them helped alleviate the tricky maneuvring of the larger basket. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you’ve cooked a few times with the Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer, you should be able to find a process that works for you.

Another small frustration is the basket, grill tray and basket divider are handwash only, meaning you can’t just pop them in the dishwasher. The non-stick coating on these parts means grime comes off easily with a bit of elbow grease, but the size of the basket can be awkward to wash in smaller kitchen sinks.

• Design score: 4/5

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: performance

• Solid all-round cooking performance, but not always perfect
• Basket divider works surprisingly well for dual cooking
• Controls not overly intuitive and take time to get used to

The Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer, as its name suggests, offers excellent flexibility in its cooking chamber. It comes with a single base plate which sits across the whole drawer, but also a dividing panel you can slide down the middle to create two separate zones.

I was unsure how this one piece of metal in the middle of the drawer would perform at allowing foods to cook at two different temperatures, but to my surprise it works well.

There are two heating elements in this air fryer — left and right — allowing you to set different temperatures and cooking durations for left and right, and that’s exactly what I did with my veg (carrots and broccoli, thanks for asking) and homemade fries.

FutureFuture

The fries had a much longer cooking time than the veg, and at a higher temperature, but I was able to cook both simultaneously without cremating the vegetables.

I used the vegetable and fries presets for this cook, and while the broccoli cooked well, the carrots and the fries could have done with longer. The carrots were still a little hard, while the fries weren’t as crispy as I would have liked — although they were cooked through.

It’s all part of the trial and error nature of air fryer ownership. It takes time, and several cycles, to understand how types of food cook in a new air fryer, with the details in the instruction manual more of a guide than a hard rule.

I was also able to use the Smart Cook function, where the air fryer will sync the two sides of the drawer to finish at the same time. It’s triggered by selecting the time and temperature for each basket and then pressing the Smart Cook button.

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The only issue is, there’s no visual cue to tell you the mode has been selected until you press start to set the air fryer going. This led to me realizing once cooking had started that I hadn’t set it up properly.

When properly engaged, the digital display on the side with the shorter cooking time displays ‘HOLD’ (but only once you’ve pressed start) until the other side's cook time decreases and matches, at which point cooking will start for the shorter duration side as well. It’s a useful feature, but one I wish was easier to set up.

The controls aren't the most intuitive either, and I found myself checking the manual a few times during the first few days to remind myself of the order things need to be set. I’ve found the controls on Ninja and Philips air fryers to be more straight forward.

During cooking I found the sides of the air fryer get the hottest, with my temperature probe reading 38 degrees. That’s not as warm as some air fryers I’ve used, which is good news if you have other appliances or items close by.

(Image credit: Future)

Being able to remove the middle partition means you can fit large items into the 11L basket of the Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer. There is space for a whole chicken, or in my case a pizza.

Using the dedicated pizza setting (150 degrees C for 12 minutes), it cooked well on top, and the edges were crispy. However that crisp didn’t extend across the whole base, with the middle still a little doughy. I could have left it in for a few more minutes, but I fear the topping would have burnt.

Sliding the partition back in, the Tower Elite impressed when it came to baking. I made a blueberry loaf which rose wonderfully on one side of the basket, while on the other side my chocolate muffins also baked nicely. The muffins didn’t darken on top as much as I expected, but I can confirm they still tasted great.

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With no window on the basket, you’re not able to keep an eye on things while they’re cooking, you have to remove the basket from the air fryer, which pauses the program. This isn’t a surprise considering the affordable nature of the Tower Elite 11 Litre Flexi Drawer, but if you want to see your food while it cooks you’ll need to look at more expensive machines.

I also cooked tempura chicken pieces using the chicken program (200 degrees C for 25 minutes), and these came out with a beautifully crisp batter, while the meat remained succulent on the inside.

The preset programs include a shake reminder, which the air fryer chiming part way through cooking to remind you to shuffle the food in the basket.

• Performance score: 4/5

Should you buy the Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer?Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer report card

Attribute

Notes

Rating

Value

You’ll be hard pressed to find a better value air fryer with the cooking capacity of the Tower Elite 11 Litre Flexi Drawer.

4.5/5

Design

Functional design where the huge basket is the star attraction, along with its clever divider. The basket can get heavy though, and it’s handwash only.

4/5

Performance

Solid cooking performance across all food types, but you need to perfect cooking time and temps as presets don’t always deliver the results you want.

4/5

Buy it if

You want huge, flexible air fryer capacity

With its 11-liter basket, this is one of the largest capacity air fryers on the market. You can fit a whole pizza or small chicken in here, while the included divider instantly transforms this into a dual-basket air fryer allowing you to cook two separate items simultaneously.

You’re a family on a budget

The Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer proves you don’t have to drop hundreds on an air fryer, with this machine offering incredible bang-for-buck in terms of size and cooking flexibility.

You want to get baking

I was particularly impressed by the blueberry loaf and chocolate muffins I cooked simultaneously in this air fryer, so for any budding bakers this is worth considering.

Don’t buy it if

Washing up isn’t your thing

The basket, grill tray and divider are all handwash only, and with the former’s size it can be tricky to handle in smaller sinks.

Heavy lifting is difficult for you

When the basket is fully loaded and comes out hot after cooking, it’s heavy and unwieldy to move about. If you’re concerned about comfortably lifting it, consider a dual-basket air fryer instead.

You rely on the preset programs

While presets are a nice starting point, you’ll need to experiment with times and temperatures to get the perfect cook for various foods. If you don’t have time (or the inclination) for trial and error, look at alternatives.

Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer: also consider

Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer

Another one of the larger capacity options on the market (with a 10.4L basket), the Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer is easier to use and cooks slightly better, but it’s also more expensive.

For more information, check out our full Ninja Foodi FlexDrawer review

Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer

A bigger single basket than your traditional air fryer, the Philips 1000 series is smaller at 7.1L and a touch more expensive than the Tower, but has clearer controls and takes up slightly less space.

For more information, check out our full Philips 1000 Series Dual Basket Air Fryer review

How I tested the Tower Elite 11-Liter Flexi Drawer Air Fryer

• I used the Tower Elite 11 Litre Flexi Drawer for two weeks at home in my kitchen
• I cooked a wide variety of food with it, including chicken, pizza, fries, cakes and vegetables
• I tested the different cooking functions, and the cleaning process

I used the Tower Elite 11 Litre Flexi Drawer for two weeks at home, where I cooked a wide variety of food and meals.

From crispy tempura chicken, homemade and frozen fries, and various vegetables, to baking loafs and muffins, as well as an entire pizza, I ensured this air fryer was put through its paces.

I cooked using the whole basket, just one side with the divider in place, and on both sides, at different temperatures and durations, to experience the full versatility on offer. I tried out a number of the preset cooking options, as well as experimenting with my own settings to improve results.

I even slipped on a pair of marigolds to handwash the basket, tray and divider, as these are not dishwasher safe.

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen had me at hello. With an ominous title like that, how could I resist diving straight in and binge-watching the new Netflix show?

While it's a great title, it also basically gives away the plot, which means that when the titular bad thing does happen, it better be worth it.

Trust me, it is. I love a slow burn and have long been drawn to some of the best horror movies like Hereditary and Midsommar, which build to an awful yet satisfying conclusion. People looking for a fast pace and loads of scares will be disappointed with Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, but for those who like to be pumped full of lingering dread, this should be a blast.

The Netflix series follows Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) and Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco), who are getting married in five days. In the build-up to the big day, the couple is traveling to Summer House, the ancestral home of Nicky's family, for gatherings and celebrations ahead of time.

The Cunningham family gather together before Adam and Rachel get married. (Image credit: Netflix)

My favorite horror movie of all time is The Silence of the Lambs, so seeing Ted Levine in the cast as Adam's father was great. Additionally, The Haunting of Hill House's Victoria Pedretti stars in an important role (you will find out who she is, don't worry!), so there's plenty for horror fans to enjoy star-wise.

The rest of the cast is great, too, and the ensemble creates this difficult family dynamic where Rachel questions whether she is really supposed to marry into this family. The Cunninghams are well off, Rachel comes from a different background, and plenty of the usual pre-marital anxieties arise.

But there's something deeply wrong here. Over the course of the five days before the wedding, Rachel witnesses some very disturbing things. Bad omens seem to be everywhere, and what should be an exciting time turns into one that's filled with dread.

Not just for Rachel, but for us as the viewers, too, as I found myself feeling very uncomfortable when watching this. And when you're discussing horror, that's like the highest praise you can give.

Tension and unease are at the heart of Something Very Bad is Going to Happen, and you can expect unsettling visuals, plenty of blood and disturbing scenes, found-footage style framing that puts you right in the center of it, and yes, a couple of decently executed scares too. It has all the right ingredients for a tense horror that creeps along towards a horrific finale.

This is where things will no doubt divide viewers. After such a slow burn, the finale may not satisfy everyone. But it is the biggest, bloodiest episode of them all, so it certainly makes a statement, helped by some excellent special effects and a creepy score.

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen ultimately plays on our real-life anxieties of fitting in, big decisions like marriage and a family, and worries around our own identities. Despite the supernatural elements, at its core, it can feel very relatable at times.

But that's what well-written horror does, and I was happy to experience it, even if I do need to go and watch something more lighthearted now.

Amnezia VPN review - quick menu

1. Amnezia VPN Free
2. Amnezia VPN Premium
3. Privacy
4. Conclusion

Amnezia VPN is an open-source VPN launched in 2020 that originated at Demhack, a hackathon run by Russian digital rights organization Roskomsvoboda.

It was initially created as a tool to help users deploy their own VPN servers to bypass internet censorship. Over time, the project has expanded beyond its self-hosted roots into a broader VPN service with both managed and user-controlled options.

Today, Amnezia offers products for different types of users. Amnezia Premium provides a subscription VPN with servers operated by the company, while Amnezia Free offers limited free connectivity for users in restricted internet environments. The platform also supports self-hosted deployments on personal cloud servers, plus Amnezia VPN Business for teams and Amnezia VPN Hosting, which simplifies server setup.

For the scope of this review, I’ll be focusing solely on Amnezia Free and Amnezia Premium.

Amnezia VPN Free: features and performance

Amnezia Free works differently from most free VPN services — and indeed from its own Premium version — by only routing specific apps and websites through the VPN rather than all your internet traffic.

This lets you reliably access commonly restricted platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Instagram, TikTok, and selected news sites, while everything else connects normally without VPN overhead.

Unlike many free VPNs out there, you don’t need to sign up for an account to use Amnezia Free, and you won’t have to put up with annoying or irrelevant in-app ads either.

A couple of caveats of the free version of Amnezia VPN, however, are that speeds are capped at 500 Kbps and that it doesn’t let you choose your location. Instead, you’ll be assigned to the region you’re in. If this is all too limiting, then you may want to consider its Premium version, which doesn’t have the same restrictions.

(Image credit: Amnezia)

An Amnezia spokesperson told TechRadar that Amnezia Free is primarily created and operates in countries with a high level of internet censorship and restrictions. These include Russia, Myanmar, and Iran, as well as Turkey, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Brazil, and Cuba.

The UK has also been added as an experimental market due to a high demand. The goal, however, is to make Amnezia Free available to all users worldwide.

Under the hood, Amnezia runs on its own modified WireGuard-based protocol, AmneziaWG, designed to make VPN traffic harder to detect or block.

On the security side, it includes essentials like ChaCha20 encryption and a kill switch. The latter of which serves to cut your internet traffic in the event that the VPN connection drops, preventing the accidental exposure of your data.

Just keep in mind that these protections apply primarily to the traffic routed through the VPN and not your entire device.

Amnezia VPN Premium: features and performance

Amnezia describes its Premium offering as "a classic VPN" for when you want to secure all of your internet traffic all the time. It offers apps compatible with all major operating systems (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux) and comes with an allowance of seven devices.

Apps and servers

With Amnezia Premium, you’ll have access to servers in 20 countries, which include the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, and Japan. This is nowhere near the size of market-leading VPNs like NordVPN, Surfshark, and Proton VPN, which can prove limiting as far as unblocking or simply finding a local server for when you need the fastest possible speeds.

One curious quirk of Amnezia’s desktop and mobile apps is that it isn’t possible to switch servers while connected. Instead, you need to disconnect before reconnecting to your new desired location, making for a slightly clunky experience.

(Image credit: Future)

Having said that, Amnezia is aware of this limitation, which it ensures TechRadar the team plans to fix in a future update. Still, it doesn’t take long to connect to or disconnect from servers, and the app has a lightweight, responsive feel as well as a simple, uncluttered layout that should appeal to first-time VPN users.

Amnezia VPN’s desktop and mobile apps have the same straightforward design, which features a large quick-connect button and a footer menu that takes you to the home page, settings, and connection setup.

Selecting the server location at the foot of the home screen brings up the full list of server locations. These seem to be listed at random with no option to filter them by alphabetical order, latency, or to favorite specific locations for faster future access.

Streaming unblocking and speeds

Many people use VPNs to access their usual streaming services while traveling abroad, and the good news is that Amnezia VPN successfully accessed everything I tested it against, including US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and 9Now. Better still, it worked at the first time of asking in each case.

As for speed, Amnezia claims to offer speeds of up to 200 Mbps, and I found this to be accurate. I recorded speeds of 220 Mbps while connected to the server most local to me (France) and even had speeds of 120 Mbps when connecting to a server further afield in the US.

(Image credit: Future)

These speeds are more than fast enough for streaming, and I had no issues with playback while connected.

Security features

Amnezia connects you by default to its proprietary WireGuard-based protocol, AmneziaWG, designed to make VPN traffic harder to detect or block. With the release of AmneziaWG 2.0, the team strengthened its obfuscation power, promising to outsmart even more sophisticated censorship tactics.

Amnezia Premium also offers the XRay VLESS protocol, which the team says users should choose as an alternative in the event that AmneziaWG struggles in more challenging network environments. You can switch to VLESS by heading to the server's settings.

(Image credit: Amnezia)

Over time, Amnezia VPN has phased out protocols including OpenVPN Over Cloak and ShadowSocks, because they were increasingly detectable by Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) blocking systems.

This isn’t exactly a feature-packed VPN and lacks much of what the best VPNs offer, such as ad blocking or Double VPN servers. Still, it ticks every security box with ChaCha20 encryption, DNS leak protection, and a kill switch.

Amnezia VPN also offers split tunneling, which lets you route only selected apps or IP addresses through the VPN while the rest use your normal connection, which is useful when you want to access local services or improve speed for everyday apps while still protecting specific traffic.

Does Amnezia VPN offer privacy?

Amnezia is headquartered in Romania and has a privacy approach that centers on minimal data collection and user control, as evidenced by its strict no-logs policy and use of RAM-only servers. The VPN’s privacy policy explicitly states they don’t collect or store users’ IP addresses or any other personally identifying information during normal operation.

The only exception is brief temporary logging when users violate terms or threaten infrastructure, with data deleted afterward. This minimal data stance is reinforced by independent security audits carried out by 7ASecurity in 2022 and 2024, as well as penetration testing by the Open Technology Fund.

For Premium subscribers, connections are routed through company-operated servers using the custom AmneziaWG protocol by default, which is designed to resist censorship without compromising the no-logs promise. It's also worth mentioning that Amnezia VPN's apps are open source, so anyone can freely inspect their code.

Regarding payment privacy, Amnezia accepts major credit cards as well as cryptocurrency options, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Unlike Mullvad, it doesn’t offer a truly anonymous cash payment method.

Although payment processing for subscriptions involves third-party vendors that may collect transaction data, the core VPN service avoids tracking browsing activity, connection timestamps, or bandwidth usage.

Amnezia VPN review - final verdict

Amnezia VPN may not have the flashiest apps or the myriad of features of more established VPN services, but that’s not too surprising considering its major focus is developing tech to bypass ever-sophisticated censorship tactics.

If you’re looking for a simple VPN that gets the basics right, though, it certainly ticks that box. Between strong encryption and a kill switch, Amnezia VPN provides a high level of security for your data, all while protecting your privacy with a strict no-logs policy that should satisfy even the most privacy-conscious users.

Particularly impressive in testing was its ability to access streaming services like Netflix. That said, Amenzia VPN's small server network considerably limit its global reach.

The lack of some popular add-on like ad and malware blcoking are also downsizes that need to be considered — especially when many other VPNs are offering them as standard protection.

You should also keep in mind that, if you switch to Amnezia Premium, the company operates under a limited 7-day money-back guarantee, in an industry where the standard is typically 30 days.

Nonthless, Amnezia's fairly competitive subscription prices, which starts from the equivalent of $4 a month, will give you the opportunity to support the work that the team is carrying on in promoting a secure and uncensored internet, even in the most challenging environments.

The desktop resin printing market has seen machines across the board slowly developing with more product design and features that make dealing with the mess a little less troublesome. There’s also the natural progression of features such as higher resolution screens, slightly larger build volumes, and software improvements, most notably in support structures.

Recently, most of the leading manufacturers have started to really focus on their resin offerings, which are commonly side-lined for the more popular and less messy filament options. Having tested the best 3D printers, I’ve seen huge leaps forward from Creality and Elegoo, and now Anycubic has released the Anycubic Photon P1, which visually appears to be a completely new machine.

The Photon P1 is aimed at the higher-end enthusiast and as a budget machine in the pro market, and retails at present for a respectable $549 / £549. That pricing means that it is positioned slightly above the Photon Mono M7 Pro, which impressed me a couple of years ago, and in both specification and design, it’s actually a far greater leap forward than an initial look at the specs sheet would lead you to believe, borrowing components that are more commonly found in industrial equipment.

A few examples of this are the ball screw Z-axis, dual precision linear rails, a milled steel build plate, and a smart heated resin vat, although this last one has become a common feature, and thankfully, in spite of these industrial upgrades the actual footprint has been kept relatively small, meaning that once unboxed it sat quite comfortably on a surface in the workshop.

There’s also the interesting headline feature of the optional dual-material printing via a separate kit, although I didn’t get a chance to look at this during the review, it looks like a great option.

Before I go into the review, a safety note. Through this test, I was careful to adhere to the safety around these machines and at all times when working with the resin and prints, I ensured that I was wearing nitrile gloves, a mask, and always in a well-ventilated workspace with the windows open, which is why at this time of year I’m working in a relatively cold environment.

The reason for this is that the liquid resin is a skin and respiratory irritant, and the precautions that I have taken and you should consider if you’re looking at one of these machines are essential, whatever your experience.

Anycubic Photon P1: Price and Availability

The Anycubic Photon P1 is currently only available directly from Anycubic US and Anycubic UK stores, priced at a discount $549 / £549 right now. I'm also seeing it on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Anycubic Photon P1: Design

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

This is the first time that Anycubic has truly broken from the standard Photon design, discarding the lift-off lid and instead going for something much more refined, at least when it comes to the aesthetics. It looks altogether more professional and solid, and whilst their previous machines were able to turn out a decent print, the lid and bolt-down tank were looking dated compared with the competition.

That design is now all changed, and everything about the Photon P1 is of a high build quality and design standard. The machine itself, despite packing in plenty of advanced features, still only weighs in at 13.6kg and measures 366 x 338 x 539mm,making it easy to move around the workshop and position with the relatively small footprint. As ever, you’ll also need to factor in the space for a wash and cure machine.

From the moment the printer is placed on the work surface, there are two major design changes that really stand out: the hinged cover that replaces the previous lift-off lid and the large LCD screen with an updated interface.

The lid is well designed with a stepless hinge that essentially holds the lid at any angle over 45 degrees, and what I liked about this was that there’s a small handle that enables easy opening. The lid itself also seals well over the machine, stopping any UV exposure escaping while operating, and also helping to keep fumes inside and heat.

One of the major differences between this cover and previous Anycubic lids is that this is far less opaque. While this dark visor does block the view of the build area, if it increases UV protection, then that can only be a good thing.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The other big addition is the 4.5-inch resistive touchscreen, and while a touchscreen featured on previous models, this again feels of a far higher quality and follows the refined UI direction that we’ve seen with the Kobra X FDM range. In use, the navigation through the settings is fast and responsive, as well as being well organised, so it doesn’t take too long to navigate and find the settings that you want.

Considering the size of the print area and the fact that there’s a dual bed option, the footprint of 366 x 338mm enables it to easily sit on almost any workspace with plenty of room around it. The design of the mechanics has also seen an overhaul, and the new ball screw Z-axis is quiet, although checking the print times, and this more refined machine is slightly slower than the M7.

• Design: 4.5/5

Anycubic Photon P1: Features

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)Specs

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

Print Technology: MSLA (Masked Stereolithography)
Build Area: 223 x 126 x 230 mm (6.5 L)
Minimum Layer Resolution: 0.02 mm
Maximum Layer Resolution: 0.15 mm
X/Y Axis Resolution: 16.8 x 24.8 micron
LCD Screen: 10.1-inch Monochrome 14K
Light Source: COB + Fresnel + MASK
Light Intensity: 5,000 μW/cm²
Print Speed: 25–35 mm/h (0.05mm layer, standard resin)
Release Film: NFEP with Wave Release Technology
Resin Vat: Dynamic temperature-controlled, up to 1L, 20–40°C
Build Plate: Precision-milled steel (flatness tolerance < 80 μm)
Levelling: Auto-Levelling 3.0 with four-corner pressure feedback
Software: Photon Workshop 4.0 (also compatible: ChituBox, Lychee, Tango)
Operating Screen: 4.5-inch resistive touchscreen
Dimensions: 366 x 338 x 539 mm
Weight: 13.6 kg

The Photon P1's features build on previous Anycubic resin printers, and the company is keen to highlight that many of the new technologies that have been included in the P1 were previously only available in industrial models. This means that while this is a new Photon printer in many ways, it marks an entirely new line for the company.

Highlights include auto-Levelling 3.0, which is the first of the new features that impressed through the test, and actually saw a complete test period with no misprints or issues. The automatic self-check runs before each print, and while this does slow down the overall print times for individual prints in the long term, it saves time. How this works is to provide real-time pressure feedback across all four corners of the build plate, and if there are any issues, the machine will stop so that you can sort it out.

Through the test period, I poured in around 2kg of resin across more than 20 prints, and from the outset, the levelling proved effective with no hands-on adjustment. Really, getting started with the printer couldn’t have been easier.

Another of the new range of features is the Wave Release Technology, which is Anycubic's proprietary approach to the peel cycle. This uses a specialist NFEP film rather than standard FEP, and again it seems to work. This system is designed to reduce peel force by up to 60% versus traditional FEP, and as the machine ran through the prints, this was noticeable. Often, with some of the printers, the release from the FEP can make quite a noise, but here, the noise as the print was lifted was minimal, and this is one of the quietest printers of this type that I’ve used.

Through the entire test, including complex models with fine details and thin connectors, there were no failed prints. To be honest, this is an unusual result and previously was something that only the FormLab Form4 was able to claim. This dependability is no doubt due to the boost in technology and the combined effect of Wave Release, Dynamic Release 3.0, and the ball screw Z-axis working together.

Another of the technologies inside that helps with this dependability remains the Dynamic Release 3.0 monitors, which watch the real-time layer-separation forces and modulate lift height and speed accordingly, while Light-Off Compensation 3.0 calculates the resin flow-back rate and automatically adjusts light-off duration.

These are all technologies I can read about, and from the reliability angle, through the test, seem to do their job. Essentially, these and many other features are background operations which are invisible to you as the user, but they seem to work when compared to older models.

One feature I have seen on an increasing number of these resin printers is a dynamic, temperature-controlled resin vat. The change that this makes to print quality is the single most important feature and should be an essential part of any feature set for any resin printer.

As this test was carried out at the beginning of the year in the UK, ambient temperatures in the workshop are generally low, especially when testing resin printers, where I like to have all windows open. Therefore, the tests were performed in workshops at 5 to 10 degrees Celsius, these temperatures are at which most unheated resin printers fail or produce unreliable results, especially with supports.

The P1's vat reached operating temperature quickly, and print quality was exceptional throughout, with only a few weak support connectors for a couple of fine models. If you are working in a garage, workshop, or unheated studio, a heated tank is an essential and justifies the price premium of this model over lower-spec machines.

Another major feature of this printer is its wide resin compatibility. Through the test, I used both ABS-Like Resin 2.0 and standard resin, both of which produced excellent results with comparable print times. The machine is rated for resins up to 8,000 cps, enabling you to also print with engineering, flexible, and high-viscosity materials that would be beyond the range of many cheaper printers. I stuck to using Anycubic resins, but third-party resins can be used if you have the correct profile.

When it comes to getting models into the printer, there’s the Photon Workshop 4.0 slicer, but once again, if you want to use another choice of software, such as ChituBox, Lychee, and Tango, then that’s possible. The interface looks minimal on first use, but once you dig into the settings, there is quite a bit here to adjust. The ability to carefully adjust support connection options is particularly useful for complex models.

One feature not tested during this review is the Anycubic app's remote monitoring capability. This will be covered in a follow-up once the evaluation is complete.

• Features: 4.5/5

Anycubic Photon P1: Performance

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

Print quality is where resin printers really come into their own, and this is especially true with the Photon P1. The 14K monochrome LCD with 16.8 x 24.8 micron XY resolution delivers an exceptionally fine level of detail, instantly visible on complex models.

Fingers, fabric patterns, surface textures, and fine structural elements are rendered with a level of definition that rivals that of other 14K machines I have used this year. The surface finish is outstanding, cured prints from the P1 are smooth, proof of both the screen quality and stable ball screw Z-axis movement.

I printed approximately 20 models over the test period, beginning with the test files supplied on the USB drive and then moving to my own library of models, the same files I use consistently when evaluating resin printers.

This includes a series of sci-fi figures with varying levels of fine detail, taller models to test Z-axis stability, basic ornaments for general surface-quality assessment, a tank model with drain holes to test support behaviour, and small engineering parts for dimensional accuracy. The human figures printed exceptionally well throughout.

One dog figure presented a challenge; the first file had particularly fine connectors to the base, which were below the threshold of practical durability, although they did hold, and those connectors eroded during washing. Once I adjusted the connector thickness in the slicer, the supports were a little more robust through the wash while remaining easy to remove.

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The tank model with drain holes added within the Photon Workshop, and full support structures printed well. The engineering parts were all produced with good dimensional accuracy, cleaning up neatly with minimal post-processing.

Across all 20+ prints, I recorded a 100% success rate, no failed prints, no delamination, no adhesion failures. In my experience with resin printers, this is unusual, even in the first ten prints, before particle build-up becomes a factor. The P1 maintained that reliability through the full test.

In terms of raw print speed, the Photon P1 is not the fastest machine on the market. At 25–35 mm/h with standard resin at 0.05mm layer height, it is noticeably slower than the Photon Mono M7 Pro, which can reach 130–170 mm/h with high-speed resin.

In practice, most models I produced with standard resin were completed within four to seven hours for relatively large prints standing 12cm in height, and with speed resin, a small figure that took one hour 38 minutes in standard resin came down to one hour 27 minutes. The P1 feels optimised for consistency rather than speed and the quality of the models reflects this.

Through the post-processing models were washed in IPA for between five and ten minutes, after which support structures were broken away. Surface imperfections were minimal and cleared easily by brushing with my finger, before a second, short wash and UV cure to fully harden the resin. The ABS-Like Resin 2.0 produced detailed results and, unlike standard resin, which becomes brittle relatively quickly with handling, showed noticeably better durability.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

Anycubic Photon P1: Final verdict

(Image credit: Alastair Jennings)

The Anycubic Photon P1 is a really decent machine and a good first step into prosumer resin printing. It’s not the fastest machine you can buy at this price, and the build plate lacks the quick-release mechanism that some competitors have introduced, but otherwise the features and performance are excellent.

For me, the impressive 100% print success across more than 20 prints, with the detail produced by the 14K screen and support of the heated vat in my presently sub-10°C workshop, all make this a great choice, as it overrides many of the usual resin challenges of lesser machines.

At $549 / £549, the Photon P1 is more than many of the other Anycubic machines, but it delivers far more. If you have been using an entry-level resin printer and are ready to step up from a hobby machine to something with near-industrial output without the cost, this is a great option. The optional dual-material kit is a genuinely interesting upgrade, and even without it, the base machine is still excellent.

Should you buy the Anycubic Photon P1?

Value:

You pay a premium over hobby machines, but it’s justified by the performance

4

Design:

Prosumer step-up with hinged lid, remote monitoring, quiet operation and refined touchscreen. 

4

Features:

Well-specced with all the features you'd expect from a 3D printer of this price. The touchscreen is especially good.

4.5

Performance:

Exceptional detail and 100% success rate; print speed is the only small issue.

4

Total:

By far the best desktop resin printer Anycubic has produced to date. 

4.5

Buy it if...

You want reliable, detailed resin output.

Stepping up from a hobby printer? The Photon P1 delivers consistent results with minimal troubleshooting, making this an ideal machine for miniature painters, jewellery designers, and prototyping work.

You work in a cold or unheated space.

The heated vat is a genuinely useful feature for garage or workshop users. In testing at 5–10°C, the P1 performed without issue, something most unheated resin printers cannot match.

Don't buy it if...

Print speed is your priority.

At 25–35 mm/h, the P1 is slower than speed-focused competitors. If high output is your priority, look elsewhere; this machine is for precision rather than speed.

You are new to resin printing.

The P1 presumes familiarity with resin handling, support setup, and post-processing. New users would be better off starting with a lower-cost Photon Mono before stepping up.

For more crafting essentials, I've also tested out the best laser engravers

I tested out the Bluetti Elite 300. It's a portable power station that can only be described as a serious step-up from the usual compact power units I've reviewed. Capable of 2,400W output, this is a 3,014Wh power station — the world's smallest 3KWh, according to Bluetti — although don't mistake that for being a lightweight device.

Bluetti Elite 300: Pricing

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

In the US, the base unit is priced at $1099, and it's available direct from Bluetti, as well as online retailers like Amazon.com, while it's $1199 at Walmart.

In the UK, it's priced at £1399 from Bluetti, as well as at Amazon.co.uk and B&Q.

Upgrade bundles, such as getting the unit with additional batteries and solar chargers, are also available.

Bluetti Elite 100: Design & size

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

• From glovebox to garage

If you’ve used something like the Bluetti Elite 30 V2 Portable Power Station, the Elite 300 feels like it belongs to a completely different category.

The Elite 30 is small enough to throw in a backpack or keep in the boot for casual trips. By contrast, the Elite 300 is a chunky, two-hand carry unit, closer to a piece of site equipment than a travel gadget.

That jump in size brings a massive increase in battery capacity and output, but it fundamentally changes how you use it. Elite 300 can be described as transportable rather than portable, designed for basecamp or van setups

Weight-wise, the Elite 300 is substantial. You’re not hiking with it, but for van life, outdoor setups or keeping in a workshop or garage, it’s perfectly manageable thanks to sturdy handles and a balanced form factor.

Bluetti Elite 300: Build quality & ruggedness

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

• Solid, reinforced and built for real-world us

Bluetti has leaned into durability here. The Elite 300 feels solid, reinforced and built for real-world use, whether that’s a muddy campsite, a job site, or being loaded in and out of a van repeatedly.

The casing has that slightly industrial finish Bluetti is known for, with good resistance to knocks and scrapes. It’s not fully “ruggedised” in the military sense, but it inspires confidence in rough environments far more than smaller consumer-grade power banks.

Bluetti Elite 300: Ports & connectivity

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

• Practical and well thought-out

Bluetti gets the basics right—and that matters. You get:

• 2 x Standard AC sockets - for appliances and tools or anything needing an AC plug with a combined max output of 2400W
• 2 x DC outputs - for camping gear, fridges, etc. 1 x Car cigarette port and 1 x XT90 port for more oomph.
• 2 x USB-A @ 15W each and 2 x USB-C @ 100W and 140W ports for devices

Crucially, everything is laid out clearly and is easy to access, even in low light or outdoor conditions.

When it comes to getting power into the system, the Bluetti Elite 300 is impressively versatile and very much in line with its “serious kit” positioning.

You get multiple charging methods depending on your setup:

• AC mains input (up to ~2,300–2,400W) – the fastest option, taking the unit to full in around 1.6 hours, which is exceptionally quick for a battery of this size.
• Solar input (up to ~1,200W) – ideal for off-grid use, letting you recharge fully in a few hours with a decent panel setup.
• Hybrid AC + solar charging – combines both for even faster top-ups when you’re at basecamp.
• 12V / 24V car charging – slower, but useful for topping up on the move during long drives.

Bluetti hasn’t just focused on output power—the Elite 300 is designed to refill quickly and flexibly, whether you’re at home, on-site, or completely off-grid.

Bluetti Elite 300: App controlBluetti // FutureBluetti // FutureBluetti // Future

• A standout feature

Bluetti’s app is one of the better ones in this category. It allows:

• Remote monitoring
• Power usage tracking
• Turning outputs on/off
• System diagnostics

It adds a layer of smart control that makes the Elite 300 feel more like a modern energy system than just a big battery.

Bluetti Elite 300: Final thoughts

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

The Bluetti Elite 300 isn’t just a bigger power bank—it’s a mobile power solution. Compared to smaller power stations, it opens up entirely new possibilities: cooking proper meals, running tools, and living comfortably off-grid.

The portable power station is a serious step up from compact portable units, blending near home-backup capability with enough portability to remain genuinely useful in the field.

If you just need to charge phones and laptops, something like the Elite 30 remains the smarter pick. But if you want something that can genuinely replace mains power in the field, the Elite 300 is in a completely different league.

(Image credit: Bluetti // Future)

For more models, see our guide to the best portable power stations we've tested.

Sonos Play: two-minute review

The Sonos Play is one of the few products I've tested recently that really converted me to its cause over time. It's a product that Sonos pitches as a home speaker that's also portable — the one speaker you can use everywhere.

I started off thinking that the Sonos Play was struggling for value, because it's more expensive than Sonos' small purely home speaker, the Sonos Era 100, but doesn't sound quite as good. And it costs a lot more than most of the best Bluetooth speaker options, such as the excellent JBL Charge 6.

But over time, I realized that the Sonos Play excels in subtlety. Despite Sonos' claim, I don't think of it as a home speaker first and a portable speaker second. I see it as a portable speaker that's good enough to justify a place out on your furniture all the time, rather than being relegated to a drawer when you're not using it. And as a result, I started using it as both a home speaker for the room its in, and I started grabbing it to take with me to other rooms simply because I could, and it sounds good.

The charging cradle is vital to this. With no cable to fiddle with, you can just grab the Sonos Play and go without pausing your stride. It lasts for ages once it's away from the cradle (24 hours, and it turns itself off when not in use to keep going over days), so you don't need to be precious about returning it for a charge. It's solidly waterproof so you can use it anywhere without fear — It's a great shower karaoke companion.

And the Sonos Play does sound good — better than most portable speakers of its size. It's really well-rounded, with solid mids, clear treble and plenty of bass. It lacks some dynamic edge (though improves as the volume goes louder), but is still a really enjoyable listen.

It's become my speaker buddy — the one I'm using most, because it's so versatile. It's ready to go anywhere, to play in the house on Wi-Fi or out of the house on Bluetooth. You can achieve everything it does from other speakers, and arguably in a way that's better value — but not with this efficiency.

Sonos said it wanted to make a speaker that could be the one you need — powerful enough to fill nearly any room, and easily portable to take to nearly any room — and I think it nailed it.

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: price and availability

• Released on March 31st, 2026
• $299 / £299 / AU$499

The Sonos Play's $299 / £299 / AU$499 price is a fine balance. When it comes to Sonos' portable speakers, it sits neatly between the Sonos Roam 2's $179 / £179 / AU$239 and the Sonos Move 2's $449 / £449 / AU$799.

When it comes to Sonos' home speakers, it sits neatly between the $219 / £199 / AU$289 price of the Sonos Era 100, and the $449 / £449 / AU$749 price of the Era 300.

The difference, of course, is that the Play's performance sits correctly between the two portable speakers, while it doesn't perform any better than the Era 100 — what you get instead is a smaller design and a battery.

There are tons of competing speakers at this size, but few that offer the combination of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and battery portability. Portable competition includes the Bluetooth-only Marshall Middleton II, which is similar in price at $329.99 / £259 / AU$499, or the JBL Charge 5, which costs $199 / £169 / AU$229.

On the non-portable side, there's the JBL Authentics 200, which is $349 / £299 / AU$449 officially (but can be found for a lot less these days) or the BlueSound Pulse Flex for around $349 / £279.

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: specs

Speaker drivers

2x tweeters, 1x midwoofer, 2x passive bass radiators

Amplification

3x Class H

Dimensions

4.4 x 7.6 x 3 inches / 113 x 192 x 77mm

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C (3.5mm line-in and Ethernet via adapter)

Streaming support

Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2

Other features

Sonos multi-room control, Sonos home theater option, stereo pair option, 24-hour battery life, Automatic Trueplay, Amazon Alexa support, audio sharing over Bluetooth, IP67 waterproofing

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: features

• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB-C line-in connectivity, 24-hour battery life
• Charging cradle included, but no power adapter
• Stereo pairing option, or share over Bluetooth with other Sonos speakers even when not on Wi-Fi

The Sonos Play is the company's most versatile speaker to date. It works as a normal Sonos home speaker, complete with Wi-Fi connectivity and support for Sonos' network and app, which support Hi-Res Audio playback from compatible services. You can play to it directly over Apple AirPlay 2 or Sonos Connect as well.

There's also Bluetooth support to play from any other device, and the USB-C port on the back can be connected to an adapter to offer a line-in port for a turntable or other audio source, which then becomes available to all your other Sonos speakers on the network.

Sonos also has a new feature that enables you to group portable Sonos speakers when you're out of the house, so you connect to one of them over Bluetooth, and the sound is shared with the other speakers. There's no Auracast support, though.

The speaker setup consists of two angled tweeters facing slightly left and right, a single midwoofer facing forward, and then two force-opposed bass radiators on the left and right.

You can use a Sonos Play on its own, or you can put two into a stereo pair. You can also use a pair as rear speakers in a Sonos home theater setup.

But it also has a built-in battery, which can last up for up to 24 hours, and the speaker can still play over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when it's running from battery power alone. The Sonos Play comes with a little battery charging cradle, which you just slot it onto to charge, and you can grab it straight off at a moment's notice without fiddling to unplug.

It's a small thing, but I think it makes a difference to its perceived versatility compared to it being plugged in to charge — I'll dig into that more in the Design section.

Be warned, though, that the cable just has a USB-C connector on the end, and no plug to connect to an outlet. Any USB-C port with 20W of charging power should work, so it could be connected to a device like a computer, or to a power adapter.

The Sonos Play can also be charged using its USB-C port, so you don't need the cable if you take it away for a weekend. You can also charge another device from the USB-C port, if you like, so it can work as a power bank for your phone.

The exact battery figure you get will depend on how you use it (Wi-Fi is more battery-consuming than Bluetooth), but I think Sonos' estimate is about right. I took it off its cradle for three days, using the speaker on Wi-Fi by my desk while I worked during the day for intermittent periods, without charging it at all. At the end of that time, it had 21% battery left.

You can get better battery life from the Marshall Middleton II (30 hours), but only over Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi. I think Sonos has found a good balance of longevity compared to size here.

The one thing about portable use that annoyed me a little was that it turns itself off a little faster than I would like, despite me making sure that the option in the settings to turn off faster to preserve battery life was off. To turn it back on, you need to use the on-off button on the back, and it takes a moment — I'd much prefer a button on top to make this feel less like a hassle.

(Image credit: Future)

There can also be times when the flexibility of the speaker conflicts with itself. For example, I put my two units into a stereo pair to test the sound, planning to live with the setup for a few days. But once they're in a pair, the Sonos app (and AirPlay) only want to treat them as a pair, meaning that the idea of grabbing one to take into another room on a whim no longer works. Take them both, or don't bother.

I ended up doing a more intensive stereo audio test, and then switching them back to individual speakers because I was enjoying them more in their most flexible form.

I'll finish this section by touching briefly on the Sonos app. It remains one of the best when it comes to streaming service support, and I've had no problems when it comes to reliability testing either these speakers, or with my current Sonos soundbar/home theater setups.

Setting the speakers up was absolutely seamless, and it was then easy to activate Automatic TruePlay tuning, in which the Sonos Play speaker listens to its own sound output and adjust the sound to better fit the space it's placed in.

The Sonos app can be a bit slow to load new music or screens, though, and there are some design issues that seem needlessly confusing. Sonos CEO Tom Conrad identified some that he plans to fix in an interview with me ahead of the launch of the speakers, though my own gripes are that it's silly that if you tap the cog icon in the top corner to be taken to the Settings screen, the cog icon stays in the corner, meaning it's possible to open the app, tap that because you want to go to the Settings screen, and nothing happens because you don't realize you're already in part of the Settings screen.

I also hate Sonos' design for its on/off switches. They go from black with a white dot, to white with a black dot, depending on whether they're on or off. But which is on and which is off? It's a terrible piece of user communication, you have to play to figure it out. (Black with a white dot is on.)

Now, a lot of other streaming device apps are equally flawed — some have better interfaces, but worse streaming support, for example — so at this point I find the app far from a dealbreaker, but I'm looking forward to seeing it get better. I actually nearly always use AirPlay for playing music anyway, so after setup, I don't interact with it much.

For those who don't want to use an app at all, the Sonos Play support Amazon Alexa and Sonos Voice Control options — but its mic can also be disabled using a switch on the back (which also disables Automatic TruePlay, since it fully disconnects the mic from the system).

• Features score: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: sound quality

• Bass is powerful, but a little heavy handed
• Very well-rounded sound, but best with the volume over 40%
• About as good as speakers of this size sound

The Sonos Play sits in a slightly odd position when it comes to judging its sound quality, because it's a hybrid home and portable speaker. I'm going to mostly judge it based on comparisons with other portable speakers, rather than home speakers, because the design constraints of being portable affect what sound quality you can reasonably expect from it — but I will also compare it to the Sonos Era 100.

As is standard from Sonos, there's a really well-rounded sound with a fair amount of heft across the whole frequency range. The thing that immediately jumps out is the amount of bass depth there is for something pretty small, thanks to its dual passive radiators.

Much like the Era 100, the bass is controlled a little more loosely — a little more heavy-handedly — than I'd like. As with a lot of passive radiator-based speakers, it can feel boomy depending on what surface you place it on, too, but that's situational. It's a trade off in exchange for the punch it provides, and I'm quite happy with it on balance.

The second thing that jumps out is the overall power, which the bass only helps emphasize. This speaker can fill any room in my house without coming close to breaking a sweat or over-stretching itself — in fact, as I'll come back to, it's at its best once you dial up to a certain volume.

The two angled tweeters serve up high frequencies that sound clear and well elevated out of the rest of the mix, with this likely aided by the use of two angled tweeters pointing left and right.

Sonos has also claimed that this set enables stereo sound from a single speaker, but this is, alas, a fantasy. Firing up Crooked by Smilk, the opening of which is basically ‘Now That’s What I Call Stereo Imaging’, reveals only the most minimal stereo effect even from a song that really push separation to the max.

The mid-range is able to find a good amount of detail and solidity in different elements, so that even complex mixes still feel like that have all their constituent parts, rather than getting mushed together in the way that some portable speakers are prone to.

The mid-range and treble are both relatively tame and a little softer on dynamic attack than larger and more expensive portable speakers, or non-portable home speakers. That's a compromise here compared to the Sonos Era 100, for sure — that speaker just has the extra edge in enough areas of sound reproduction to feel like a slightly more robust, more gripping, more revealing listen.

(Image credit: Future)

However, compared to the JBL Charge 6, the Sonos Play is a significant step up in the overall reproduction of a song, with the mid-range the clear area of difference. On the JBL Charge 6, it's simple way too thin, lacking in expression, presence within the sound balance, and really limited in range — in particular, the Charge 6 really struggles to ramp from mid-range down through to bass, compared to the Sonos Play.

Young Blood by The Naked & Famous relies on a foundation of lower-mid synth in its verses, and without this, the song is unbalanced. The JBL Charge 6 just doesn't have this balance in its register, but the Sonos Play is able to add the weight.

The Charge 6 also has less deep bass reach than the Sonos Play — it handles its bass well, but there's just less lower-frequency grunt going on.

I should note here that we have highly rated the JBL Charge 6 for its sound reproduction compared to other portable speakers — this is just what spending the extra on the Sonos Play gets you.

That said, the JBL Charge 6 has a slightly more dynamic treble than the Play, though, with a little better handling of transients (ie, handling the sudden start of a sound) that make it feel more detail-rich. I still prefer the Sonos Play overall, for sure.

However, I mentioned above that going above a certain volume opens things up for the Sonos Play. Pushing past the 40% mark leaves the bass working in the same way that it was before, but suddenly the upper-mids and treble get a boost — a subtle but clear change in profile when ticking up.

This adds to the expansiveness of the sound, and where certain songs that should be thrilling could feel tame at times at lower volumes, they all really wake up past 40%. The Sonos Era 300 had this trait as well, when I tested it.

The only question is whether you want the Sonos Play that loud all the time — in my bedroom, 25% was the volume where I mostly wanted to use it, for example. But again, I still think the sound is very good for a portable speaker even at the lower volumes. It's just that when you can let it off its leash, it improves further.

(Image credit: Future)

Speaking of letting it off its leash, I also tried the sound in a stereo pair. As is often the case, it gives the speakers room to do a little more by sharing the burden, and in particular I noticed that the bass felt like it was able to be a little more controlled at the same level of power, but the mids came across weightier, again improving on the lower-mids particularly.

I don't think it opened up more detail in the treble or anything like that, but two of these are really good at filling even a large room with well-rounded, well-dispersed sound, without pushing themselves hard in a way that can affect the sound quality. You'd rarely need to push them even as far as the 40% volume mark — a pair of Plays is such a powerful system consider how small they are.

For my last sound comparison, I broke out the Sonos Roam 2. This comparison actually made the Sonos Roam 2 look impressive, because it's remarkable how close its sound signature comes to the Play. But the Play's audio is much bigger, much deeper, and more refined in all areas.

• Sound quality score: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: design

• Home-friendly design, but still IP67-rated and drop-proof
• Great size, weight and charging design to grab quickly
• Buttons aren’t as clear as they could be

The design of the Sonos Play sits very much in line with other Sonos speakers. It has a hard dotted grille like most of its designs, with a rubbery top and bottom, like the Sonos Roam 2. The rubberized portion has a hefty lip at the top where it overlaps with the hard grille, and this makes me thing more of older Sonos speakers (like the Sonos One) than the Era 100, in a fond way.

I like the size of the Sonos Play a lot. I can grab it easily in one hand from the side, thanks in part to a smart concave groove on the back that's also rubberized, giving you a little grip aid.

It's weighty, but not too heavy to happily grab and carry around. It's about a third heavier than the JBL Charge 6, but is nearly a third lighter than the Marshall Middleton II, so finds itself in a good balance.

It has a flexible hook on the top of the back, which can use to carry it around or to hang on a bathroom door or something. This feels nice and sturdy.

It's IP67-rated, so should be able to handle all but the worst of water-related accidents. It should be able to handle complete immersion for a short time, so it's no risk for baths or for pool parties.

The charging cable is a little oval of plastic with a lip, and there's not much to it, but it holds on surfaces well enough when you're removing or replacing the speaker, and the charging points always line up perfectly.

I really think Sonos has nailed it with the core physical design here, and not just in a physical sense. Yes, it's durable, it's got a hook, and perhaps most importantly it looks nice — you'll happily have this thing out on a shelf, whereas a lot of people would choose to hide the JBL Charge 6 in a drawer.

But the design also make a different to my mentality, I've found. It's about how its size, weight and charging cradle lodge into my mind that this is a speaker that I not only can grab to take with me for a music blast, but that I should grab because it's so easy. There's no downside.

(Image credit: Future)

The Sonos Move 2 has an identical setup — durable, powerful, portable, easy charging cradle — but it's too large and heavy. You have to reach around to carry it from the back using its carry handle. If I'm taking that anywhere else, it's because I'm committing to being there for a while. I plan ahead.

And I have small portable speakers already in my house (shout out to by beloved B&O A1) that I could grab and take anywhere with me easily — but they're stored in a drawer upstairs, because I don't have them out most of the time.

But the Sonos Play has become my new kitchen speaker, so it's always out on the side, ready to grab. And it's so grabbable because it's about the thickness of a drink can, and I don't need to fiddle to unplug it because it uses a charging cradle, so I can just swipe it one-handed as I walk past. And it's already turned on and ready to play, assuming it's not already playing, because it's the main speaker in that room.

These are small, subtle design elements that add up to me feeling quite differently about the Sonos Play than almost any other speaker I've had, from the many Wi-Fi options to many portable Bluetooth speakers. As the weather where I am improves, the Sonos Play has quickly become my buddy that I take with me more; I grab the one from my kitchen to take outdoors when I sit out there, and I grab the one from my bedroom to take to the bathroom to blast tunes while I shave.

(Image credit: Future)

There must be a 'however', though, and it's the controls. I already mentioned that the on/off button is on the back, and while it's large and easy to find, I would prefer that you could get it to turn back on just by pressing something on top.

But the top buttons are also annoyingly disguised. They're distinguished only by symbols, not any kind of actual raised button element. And 'distinguished' is far too strong a word, because they're the same color and matte material as the rest of the top, so they're genuinely hard to see in some lighting conditions.

They also don't feel super distinct under the fingers. You get used to it, because you've only got four controls — volume down, play/pause (which also skips tracks with a multi-press), volume up, and voice assistant activation — but they just seem unnecessarily disguised.

• Design score: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sonos Play review: value

• It's pricey for a portable speaker…
• But few things are as versatile for the same cost
• It's priced in line with competitors at the same audio level

The Sonos Play is not cheap. For only a little more than the Sonos Play, you can get both a Sonos Era 100 SL and the JBL Charge 6, providing you with the core versatility of the Sonos Play — a powerful home speaker and robust portable speaker. But that's two devices, and part of the draw here is one device that can do both — simpler and more efficient.

But the price is also right in line with other powerful speakers at a similar level of audio quality, like the Marshall Middleton II — and it does things the Marshall doesn't. The JBL Charge 6 is a five-star portable speaker that's nearly half the price, so if the portable side is your priority, it makes sense to get that and save so much money… but the Sonos does sound better, offers more versatility, and looks way nicer to have as a home speaker.

When I look at other options at the same price, is anything ticking as many boxes as the Play? Pricey, yes, but more than justified. I'm not sure I'd buy a stereo pair over other wireless options you can get for $600 / £600 though, such as the Kanto Ren, since you lose some of the versatility in a pair.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Sonos Play?

Attribute

Notes

Score

Features

Tons of connection options, great streaming support, nice charging cradle — some won't like that it lacks a plug in the box, though.

4.5 / 5

Sound quality

A bigger, more well-rounded sound than most portable speakers of this size can deliver. Not the most detailed, and the bass is a tad heavy-handed.

4.5 / 5

Design

Supremely well thought-out, from its grab-able size and weight to its durability and charging cradle. Only the subtle buttons are a bit annoying.

4.5 / 5

Value

It's not cheap, but nothing else offers so much versatility for the price.

4 / 5

Buy it if…

You want one speaker to do it all
It's a room-filling living room speaker, then you grab it to be a bathroom speaker without breaking your stride. It's part of a multi-room system, then it's a Bluetooth speaker out in the country.

You want durability that also looks good
The IP67 rating means it can survive most things that normal use will throw at it — but it still looks good enough to satisfy aesthetes.

You want a big, well-balanced sound from a small speaker
It's a speaker that's capable of filling just about any room without pushing its audio hard, and yet also has a very small footprint.View Deal

Don’t buy it if…

You want real high fidelity
As good as the sound is for a portable speaker, there are compromises, and dynamics and detail are weaker than pure home speakers at the same price can deliver.

You want a really light portable speaker
I think Sonos has hit a good balance with the 1.3kg weight here, but if you're thinking you'll want to take it away in a bag a lot, you may want something lighter.

Sonos Play review: also consider

Sonos Play

Sonos Era 100

Marshall Middleton II

Price

$199 / £199 / AU$499

$219 / £199 / AU$289

$329 / £259 / AU$499

Speaker drivers

2x tweeters, 1x midwoofer, 2x passive bass radiators

2x tweeters, 1x midwoofer

2x woofers; 2x tweeters

Amplification

2x Class H amp3

3x Class D amps

60W Class D amplification

Dimensions

4.4 x 7.6 x 3 inches / 113 x 192 x 77mm

4.72 x 7.18 x 5.14 inches / 120 x 183 x 131mm

9.1 x 4.3 x 3.9 inches / 230 x 110 x 98mm

Connectivity

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C (3.5mm line-in and Ethernet via adapter)

Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, USB-C (3.5mm line-in and Ethernet via adapter)

Bluetooth 5.3, aux-in

Streaming support

Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2

Sonos app, Apple AirPlay 2

N/A

Other features

Sonos multi-room control, Sonos home theater option, stereo pair option, 24-hour battery life, Automatic Trueplay, Amazon Alexa support, audio sharing over Bluetooth, IP67 waterproofing

Sonos multi-room control, Sonos home theater option, stereo pair option

IP67 waterproofing, 30-hour battery life

Sonos Era 100
If you want something with the same audio connectivity as the Sonos Play, and that sounds a little better, and is cheaper, then the Era 100 is ideal — and the Era 100 SL that's even cheaper is also an option. But you won't get the portability and waterproofing, it's not quite as versatile. Here's our full Sonos Era 100 review.

Marshall Middleton II
An alternative to the Sonos Play that's in the same kind of 'Still portable, but hefty and big-sounding' bracket. There's no Wi-Fi here, but you might find some very tempting discounts on it. Here's our full Marshall Middleton II review.

(Image credit: Future)How I tested the Sonos Play

• Tested over three weeks at home
• Compared with other Sonos speakers, and options from other brands

I had two Sonos Play units at home to test, over the course of three weeks. They were updated with the same software that the products will launch with, including all the various features.

I tested over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and using the Sonos app and Apple AirPlay 2. I mainly listened to music on Apple Music.

I've been reviewing speakers for 15 years, and I test audio products of all kinds, from Bluetooth speakers to floorstanding passive speakers.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee

DJI Avata 360: one-minute review

Antigravity launched the world's first 360 camera drone in 2025, but now drone market-leader DJI has arrived with its own spin on the concept – and it's a quite different beast from the somewhat pedestrian Antigravity A1.

The clue's in the name: the DJI Avata 360 is not only a 360 drone but also an Avata drone — the latest model in DJI's line of sporty FPV flyers. If the A1 is a Fiat 500 (tiny, eye-catching, innovative, but not especially nippy), the Avata 360 is a VW Golf GTI – unassuming at first glance and much heavier, but faster, more responsive and more practical, yet (and here's where my automobile analogy breaks down) somehow cheaper too.

The Avata 360 looks a lot like the DJI Avata 2, or perhaps a larger DJI Neo 2, albeit with one obvious difference: its front-mounted camera has two lenses rather than one. Arranged on opposite faces of the gimbal, these record everything surrounding the drone (while using software to seamlessly unify the footage and remove any trace of the drone itself), allowing the user to re-frame footage in post-production using DJI's mobile or desktop apps.

The Fly More Combo bundles each include a sturdy fold-out landing pad — vital for touching down and taking off on long grass or uneven terrain (Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)

I'll get more into how the 360 editing works in the full review below, but for now I'll just say that anyone who's used 360 cameras in the past will have little trouble creating some very impressive clips with this aerial version.

Where the Avata 360 differs from (and beats, in my view) the A1 is that, firstly, it offers a choice to fly it using a traditional twin-stick controller or the goggles-and-motion-controller FPV method. The A1 only supports the latter, and that means I need to bring a buddy along to act as spotter every time I fly it. If I'm on my own, I can't use the A1 at all (not legally, anyway), whereas I have the option to fly the Avata 360 using a RC 2 controller — no spotter required.

And in FPV mode I simply found the Avata 360 more enjoyable to fly than the A1: the design means it's faster, more agile and more responsive, even in high coastal winds, and switching it to single-camera mode (which uses one front-facing camera instead of the 360 setup, and records 4K 60fps footage) almost transforms it into an Avata 2.

Overall, the DJI Avata 360 feels like a more well-rounded (no pun intended) and flexible 360 drone than the A1, and at a more affordable price to boot.

DJI Avata 360: price and release date

• Launched on March 26 2026
• Significantly cheaper than the Antigravity A1 360 drone
• Available in four kits, including two Fly More Combos

Future | Sam KieldsenFuture | Sam Kieldsen

DJI launched the Avata 360 on March 26 2026, with four different packages available. If you already own some form of compatible controller, you can buy the drone and a single battery for just £409 / AU$799. Packaged with DJI's excellent RC 2 touchscreen and twin-stick controller, it's £639 / AU$1,159.

Note: I haven't included US dollar pricing here, and you may have guessed the reason; DJI's troubles in the US are well documented elsewhere on TechRadar. Suffice to say this drone will not be officially launching in the States, which is a great shame.

There are also two Fly More Combo bundles, both priced at £829 / AU$1,619, each of which includes a nice bunch of extras. Both include the drone, three batteries, a charging cradle (able to recharge all three batteries simultaneously, with support for 100W and 65W fast charging), a set of spare propellers, a folding take-off and landing pad (very useful when launching from tricky terrain or long grass, and something I've not seen included in a Fly More Combo before), and a sturdy, sectioned sling bag to keep everything in. But one of the Fly More Combos includes the RC 2 controller, and the other the DJI Goggles N3 and RC Motion 3. So you're immediately set up for either standard or FPV flight.

This is a really affordable drone, especially when compared to the competition. Even with recent discounts, the Antigravity A1 Standard Combo (which includes the drone plus Vision goggles, a Grip controller, drone carry case and an extra set of propellers) costs over £1,000.

• Price score: 5/5

DJI Avata 360: specsAntigravity A1 specs

Camera:

2 x 64MP 1/1.1-inch square CMOS sensors

Video resolution:

8K, 6K, 4K

Frame rates:

60, 50, 48, 30, 25, 24fps

Flight modes:

Cine, Normal, Sport

Storage:

42GB internal, microSD card slot

Battery:

2700mAh, up to 22 minutes flight time

Charger type:

USB-C / Battery Charging Hub

Weight:

455g / 16oz (approx.)

Dimensions:

246 x 199 x 55.5mm / 9.7 x 7.8 x 2.2 inches

DJI Avata 360: Design and build quality

• Flat, non-folding design
• Labelled UK1 / C1 class, weighing around 455g
• Choice between RC 2 or Goggles/RC Motion 3 control

(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)

Rather than a folding design, DJI has opted for the same flat quadcopter shape it's recently used for the Avata 2, Neo and Neo 2. This means it's ready to go in moments (just pull off the included camera cover, if you're using it, and double tap the power button) and also that there are built-in prop guards to help protect the propellers from damage during collisions.

The Avata 360 isn't a super-lightweight drone; DJI claims it's around 455g, but my digital scales showed it to weigh 469g – well over the old sub-250g legal sweet spot. However, thanks to recent changes to UK law, this is no longer the issue it once was. This is the first drone I've seen that's labelled 'UK1' class, meaning that under new CAA guidelines it can be flown over uninvolved people (but not crowds) and closer than 50m to people horizontally. It can also be flown in residential, recreational, commercial and industrial areas. So, that's a good thing – it means I didn't have to venture to the middle of nowhere to test it properly.

It also means DJI hasn't had to make build-quality compromises to hit that magical sub-250g weight. The Avata 360 feels solid, sturdy, and likely to survive minor collisions without catastrophic damage, which isn't something I would say about the dainty, sub-250g Antigravity A1.

The DJI Goggles N3 are included in one of the Avata 360 Fly More Combos, alongside an RC Motion 3 controller.Future | Sam KieldsenThe RC Motion 3 controller, designed for FPV flight.Future | Sam KieldsenThe RC 2 standard controller.Future | Sam KieldsenThe Avata 360 is a class UK1 drone (or C1 in the EU), so it can be flown almost anywhere.Future | Sam Kieldsen

With no extended landing gear or feet, the drone doesn't have much clearance from the ground when landing or taking off, so it's important to launch and land on a flat, even surface in order to avoid potential damage. I found the folding orange landing pad including with the Fly More Combos very useful during testing, as landing even on short grass could cause issues.

The Avata 360 has a USB-C port on its side for file transfer and direct recharging, alongside a microSD slot for adding extra storage. That's optional, though, because there's a reasonable 42GB of internal storage built-in. Batteries slot straight into the back and come with the customary four-LED indicator to provide at-a-glance info on remaining power.

Control-wise, you have the choice between using a standard stick controller or a set of FPV goggles and a motion controller. In testing, I used the DJI RC 2 (it's also compatible with the RC-N2 and RC-N3, according to DJI) as my standard controller, and the DJI Goggles N3 paired with a DJI RC Motion 3 (you could also use the Goggles 3 or FPV Remote Controller 3) as my FPV setup, and found both to be excellent – they're sturdily built and comfortable to use. The Goggles N3 don't have a fancy exterior display like Antigravity's do, but on the plus side I can wear them with my glasses on, which I couldn't do on the Antigravity Goggles.

Finally, DJI has designed the Avata 360's camera lenses to be user-replaceable, should they get scratched, during flight or otherwise. The lenses do protrude a little, which does make them more susceptible to contact than most drone cameras, so this feels like a good move from the company.

• Design score: 5/5

DJI Avata 360: Features and flight performance

• Omnidirectional vision system with front-facing LiDAR and down-facing infrared sensors
• 18m/s maximum speed and Level 5 wind resistance
• Up to 22 minutes of flight time per battery

Like most DJI drones, the Avata 360 is an assured and safety-conscious flyer. It comes with full omnidirectional obstacle avoidance, using a combination of vision, LiDAR and infrared sensors to spot hazards in all directions, plus a reliable return-to-home mode and respectable battery life of up to 22 minutes' flight time (I would put the real-world use closer to 15 minutes, based on my testing, but much will depend on environmental factors – your mileage may vary, as they say).

In the air, it's a nimbler and nippier drone than the Antigravity A1. I found it performed very responsively even in windy conditions, and in Sport Mode (which disables the safety sensors), it's capable of hitting speeds of up to 18m/s (around 40mph). The low-latency O4+ video transmission system is remarkably stable, which helps keep the drone under control at all times. While testing, I never experienced a single loss of signal or even a noticeable reduction in the live-view quality.

(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)

As mentioned, at launch there are two ways to fly the Avata 360: using a standard twin-stick controller or with an FPV headset and motion controller. I love the fact that DJI has given buyers a choice — which for me is one of the main advantages this drone has over its competitor the Antigravity A1, which only offers goggles- and motion controller-based flight. With the Avata 360, a twin-stick controller is perfect for solo trips, as it doesn't require a spotter and the controls are identical to those of standard camera drones like the DJI Mini 5 Pro or Air 3S. It's easy to pick up and fly immediately, with no need to master the intricacies of motion controllers or strap on a set of goggles.

• Flight performance score: 5/5

DJI Avata 360: Image and video quality

• Paired 1/1.1-inch sensors offer up to 8K 60fps videos and 120MP photos
• Single-camera mode also available for traditional FPV video capture
• 10-bit video and flat D-log M color profile supported

The Avata 360 is equipped with two 1/1.1-inch sensors paired with ultra-wide lenses, which work in tandem to capture everything around it in up to 8K resolution at 60fps. That beats the Antigravity on specs alone (it captures 8K, but only up to 30fps), but the larger sensor size and higher bitrate also make the general image quality higher.

With support for 10-bit video and the flat D-log M color profile, this means the Avata 360 offers excellent video for a 360 drone. It won't trouble the DJI Air 3S or DJI Mavic 4 Pro when it comes to real pro-quality aerial footage, but the Avata 360 can really hold its own in terms of detail and dynamic range.

Once you've captured your 360 footage, it can be reframed using one of DJI's apps. I edited videos on both the DJI Fly mobile app and the DJI Studio desktop app, and both work well and in much the same way. You can choose your desired viewpoint, then save it as a keyframe, and the app will automatically, and smoothly, transition from one keyframe to the next. You can then export the video, with 8K 360 recording resulting in final videos of up to 4K resolution.

For those who don't want to reframe, there's single-lens mode. This records 4K 60fps footage using only a single forward-facing lens, which is delivered as a standard 'flat' video that can't be reframed after the fact. It's akin to recording a video on any of DJI's other camera drones, really — what you see is what you get.

It's also possible to snap 120MP panoramic 360 photos, which can then be edited into short videos or cropped and reframed much like a 360 video. I personally rarely felt the need to take a still shot while reviewing, as video is where the Avata 360 really shines in my opinion, but the feature is there should you need it.

Overall, I'm highly impressed by the Avata 360's camera performance. The base quality is higher than that of its only true rival, the Antigravity A1, and its 360 editing is just as good.

• Image and video quality score: 5/5

DJI Avata 360: testing scorecardDJI Mini 5 Pro

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Price

Cheaper than rivals, and excellent value for its specs and features

5/5

Design

A sturdy drone with user-replaceable lenses

5/5

Performance

Packed with safety features and great in the air

5/5

Image and video quality

Superior to the Antigravity A1, and excellent all-round

5/5

Should I buy the DJI Avata 360?Buy it if...

You want the best 360 drone
The Avata 360 beats the Antigravity A1 in every area barring size – and even that's not a major issue given the Avata's UK1 / C1 rating.

You want a flexible, versatile drone
The Avata 360 is both a 360 drone and an FPV drone, and very capable in both roles. It can also be flown using a standard controller, giving you more options.

Don't buy it if...

You want the simplest drone around
360 footage needs to be edited in post-production, and while this isn't a particularly tricky task to master, it does add an extra layer of complexity.

You'd like the best image quality
While the Avata 360's camera is very capable, I'd say DJI's Mini 5 Pro, Air 3S and Mavic 4 Pro all offer superior image quality.

DJI Avata 360: also consider

Antigravity A1

This ground-breaking 360 drone has some issues: it's prohibitively expensive, and can be flown only via a motion controller and goggles which, while undoubtedly immersive, requires you to bring a spotter at all times. It's not as zippy or thrilling as flying an FPV drone, and the Avata 360 has it beat for fun, but its 8K 360 video is impressive and the drone's small folding design makes it slightly more travel-friendly than its DJI rival.

Read our in-depth Antigravity A1 reviewView Deal

DJI Avata 2

If you're not bothered about 360 footage, the DJI Avata 2 offers a welcome balance between the forgiving, beginner-friendly flight of a regular camera drone and the adrenaline-inducing controls of a traditional FPV drone. It'll zip through gaps and skim across terrain to give you exciting shots, but won't plummet into the ground at the slightest mistake. FPV purists might scoff, but the rest of us will be having a blast.

Read our in-depth DJI Avata 2 reviewView Deal

(Image credit: Future | Sam Kieldsen)How I tested the DJI Avata 360

• All flight modes and control methods tested
• Photos and videos captured
• Tracking and safety features tested

DJI sent me an Avata 360 a couple of weeks before its official launch, along with an RC 2 controller, an RC Motion 3 grip controller and a Goggles N3 headset. That meant I had the time to fly it in a range of locations and using both a traditional controller and an FPV setup. I did test the drone in some windy conditions at times, but in general flew it in fine weather and good light — aside from the very foggy day you see in one of the sample videos above.

I flew in every available flight mode for both twin-stick and FPV motion flying, tested the drone's subject-tracking capabilities and how capable it was of detecting and avoiding obstacles.

Once I had recorded footage and captured still photos, I later transferred it from the drone's internal storage to my iPhone and computer for editing and reframing, for which I used the DJI Mimo and DJI Studio apps. I also exported reframed footage from DJI Studio to further tweak in DaVinci Resolve Studio, resulting in the sample videos and photos you see above.

• First reviewed: March 2026
• Read more about how we test

Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park has arrived, and aims to bring enhanced graphics, improved multiplayer functionality, and even more surreal levels to the table.

Review info

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch 2
Available on: Nintendo Switch 2
Release date: March 26, 2026

I’ve spent more than 25 hours playing through the game, during which time I collected every Wonder Seed, completed the new Bellabel Park content, and took on other journalists in competitive multiplayer minigames.

But after all of this, do I think that this Nintendo Switch 2 edition is worth picking up? And should existing Super Mario Bros. Wonder owners consider upgrading? I’ll reveal my thoughts down below.

We’re coming for you, Koopalings

(Image credit: Nintendo)

I want to kick things off by looking at the new stuff — a lot of which is centered around a new area, named Bellabel Park. In this garden-like playground, you can play minigames, take on brand new bosses, or decorate the park. And there’s quite a bit of fun to be had here overall.

First, let’s tackle the new levels, which focus on the dastardly Koopalings. That’s right, Bowser’s minions are back, and they’ve stolen the coveted Bellabel Flowers. In order to reclaim them, you’ll need to venture all across the Flower Kingdom and enlist the help of Captain Toad and his Brigade along the way.

Now, this approach may keep new content evenly spread out, but in reality, it’s never particularly hard to find the Koopalings. You’ll easily encounter Captain Toad tents as you progress through the story, which you can approach to instantly battle it out against the likes of Wendy, Iggy, and Ludwig. But anyway, are these boss fights actually any good?

Well, in my view, yes, they are. Each Koopaling will assume a Wonder Form, and these all impressed me with their creativity. For instance, Wendy becomes almost like a Cheep Cheep, while Morton turns into a puppet-like creature, controlled by a malevolent pair of Lakitu (Lakitus? Lakitii?). These battles are engaging and bursting with imagination, although I certainly found them to be on the easy side — I don’t think I lost a single life to any Koopaling.

Best bit

(Image credit: Nintendo)

I absolutely adored the musical levels, like Piranha Plants on Parade and Ninji Jump Party. Bounding to the beat was seriously joy-inducing, and watching these characters jive along to the beat was magical.

Still, the charismatic designs of each boss, and figuring out how to take them down was entertaining, and I expect that most fans will enjoy these battles.

Another new addition I had fun with was the Toad Brigade Training Courses. Here, you’ll take on a range of challenges, including time-restricted courses, as well as levels where you can’t touch an enemy, to name a couple. These are usually pretty quick to blast through, and some genuinely offer a challenge, making them ideal to dip into between worlds, or when you’ve got a few spare minutes to play.

By completing Training Courses, you’ll earn Bellabel Water, which can be exchanged for flowers and used to decorate Bellabel Park. You might adorn a Wiggler Topiary with fungi, or you may even cover your courtyard in Butterfly Bloom petals. But to be honest, I didn’t get any kicks out of decorating — there’s not much of an incentive to do so, and you could easily neglect this feature entirely without missing out on anything substantial.

However, you can also use Bellabel Water at the shop or the Fountain area, which will earn you items like flowers, but also reactions and instruments. Reactions can be used to communicate during online play, while the instruments can be collected to flesh out a Poplin band. And both of these felt like better rewards than the decorative flowers to me. But I still think there could be a better incentive for completing Training Courses, like unlockable costumes for Mario and friends, for example.

Mario Party lite

(Image credit: Nintendo)

We’ve spoken about the new single-player content, which is pretty good overall. However, it’s the multiplayer additions that have been placed front and center in much of this game’s marketing.

And I have to say, I found the multiplayer games to be a bit of a mixed bag. Nintendo set up a session for me, and a few fellow gaming journalists to duke it out in online minigames, and although there were some fun highlights, I was left feeling pretty conflicted.

Many of these online minigames felt reminiscent of Mario Party. For instance, there are games where you’ll race in a roller-skate or even with a propeller flower, and I found the racing games to be some of the best. Totally not because they were some of the only ones I’d win…

However, there are more options. One that stuck out was a hide-and-seek game, where two players can morph into a block or coin, while others are tasked with hunting them down and tagging them. If you’re ‘it’ when the time runs out, you lose, and this setup created a couple of last-second twists. It’s fun for a little while, but I didn’t feel compelled to play this game more than a few times.

You can also access competitive and co-op minigames when playing locally, with options including Yoshi enemy-eating contests, games where you use mouse mode to assist players through a course, and a relay where you have to get a Bob-omb to the finish line before it explodes. There’s a decent amount of variety, but it’s nothing compared to the eclectic collection of minigames in Super Mario Party Jamboree, for instance.

Overall, I’d argue that the multiplayer additions are…alright. Some of the attractions did put a smile on my face — but only for a few minutes, and they didn’t have the same chaotic and addictive edge that Mario Party minigames possess. Sure, if you’re looking for some quick multiplayer fun, the attractions are by no means bad. But can I see myself coming back to these for years to come — just as I’ve done with Jamboree’s minigames? I don’t think so.

(Image credit: Nintendo)A wonderful core-experience, re-planted

Even if the multiplayer content didn’t blow me away, it’s worth noting that the core Super Mario Bros. Wonder experience is better than ever on Nintendo Switch 2.

There are a few new additions, including a new Assist Mode which prevents you from taking damage — ideal for younger players. There’s also the option to play as fan-favorite princess Rosalina, while a second player can take on the role of Co-Star Luma, and use mouse mode controls to defeat enemies and collect coins.

But there’s more! You can also skip around with the Super Flower Pot power-up, which enables you to hover in the air and throw petals upwards to attack enemies. And of course, badges — which enhance abilities or provide new ways to progress through a level — are back. But this time, you can make use of new Dual Badges, which combine the powers of two badges into one — like Parachute Cap and Boosting Spin Jump, for example. The badge system was already a phenomenal way to add depth and customizability to the game, so expanding that further was always going to be a positive for me.

All of these additions are most welcome, and I loved making use of the new Dual Badges to experience levels in a brand new way.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Oh, and it’s also worth mentioning that the main game itself is absolutely exquisite once more. The game is filled with phenomenal level design, and Wonder Flowers provide a psychedelic take on classic 2D Mario that’s absolutely intoxicating.

The game is packed with so many stand-out moments, from transforming into a blob, a wrecking ball, or Goomba, through to riding on a flying horde of bulls. This zaniness is something the somewhat bland New Super Mario Bros. series was missing, and if you’ve never played Super Mario Bros. Wonder before, this version is a must-buy.

And this really is the definitive way to play, thanks to the game’s improved graphics on Nintendo Switch 2. I tried comparing this new version to the original Switch alternative — which just so happens to be bundled in with this game — and the difference was night and day.

Characters and enemies alike appear way sharper on the Nintendo Switch 2 edition, with details like Mario’s moustache or writing on his cap appearing substantially clearer. On top of this, colors pop beautifully on this 4K release, with intense pinks and deep reds cutting through with vigor. The overall presentation is great on Switch 2, and pair that with basically faultless 60fps gameplay, and you’ve got great all-round performance.

Nintendo Switch 2 editionNintendoNintendo Switch editionNintendoNintendo Switch 2 editionNintendoNintendo Switch editionNintendo

So, I suppose we should wrap things up now, shouldn't we? The ludicrously long-titled Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park is certainly the definitive way to play through the greatest 2D Mario game in many a year. The improved visuals, inclusion of new characters, and introduction of Dual Badges are all great to see.

Most of the new single player content is enjoyable too, with some entertaining albeit easy boss fights and fast-paced Training Courses. Multiplayer attractions are a mixed bag, and I’m not sure they’re going to offer the long-standing appeal of Mario Party minigames. As a result, I’m not sure this edition is a must-buy for those upgrading from the original Super Mario Bros. Wonder — unless you really want to scrap the Koopalings, that is. But for first-time players, this Switch 2 revamp is a great overall package, and I’d highly recommend scooping it up.

(Image credit: Nintendo)Should you play Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park?:

(Image credit: Nintendo)Play it if...

You never got to play Super Mario Bros. Wonder on Switch
If you never got to play the game on Switch, this is the time to give it a go. With upgraded visuals, more characters, and a new area to explore, this is certainly the definitive edition of an already excellent 2D platformer.

You want more mind-bending boss battles
If you’re hankering for more of Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s whacky boss showdowns, then this version may well be worth upgrading to. You get to duke it out against the Koopalings across the course of your playthrough, and you can revisit these battles through the Toad Brigade’s Training Courses.

Don't play it if...

You’re expecting Mario Party levels of multiplayer fun
The new multiplayer games are decent fun in this revamped version of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, but only for a while. I found that they didn’t have the hold on me like Super Mario Party Jamboree’s minigames, and felt a little flat and repetitive after a while.

You’re looking for a challenging platformer
Although there are a few challenging Training Courses in this version, the core experience remains very much on the easy side in Super Mario Bros. Wonder for Switch 2. While accommodations have been made for young players, with assist mode and the re-inclusion of the damage-resistant Yoshis and Nabbit, there’s not a ton of challenge for more experienced Mario fans.

Accessibility features

Although there aren’t a ton of accessibility features in this game, the settings menu does enable you to make some changes. For instance, you can select a number of spoken and text languages, adjust the camera, alter some controls, and have rumble turned on or off. Unfortunately, there’s nothing like a colorblind mode or similar.

How I reviewed Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park:

(Image credit: Nintendo)

I spent in excess of 25 hours playing through Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park. During this time, I played through the entire main game, regained all of the Bellabel Flowers, and even played multiplayer minigames online.

For the most part, I played the game in docked mode, with my Switch 2 console hooked up to the Sky Glass Gen 2 TV and my Marshall Heston 120 soundbar. However, I did also enjoy playing in handheld mode, and I occasionally connected up the Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones to my console when doing so.

More generally, I’ve reviewed a whole lot of games for TechRadar, including Switch 2 titles like Kirby Air Riders and Drag x Drive. I’ve also owned the Switch 2 since launch, and have been playing Mario games for decades, with my favorite entry in the series being Super Mario Odyssey (sorry, Super Mario Galaxy fans).

First reviewed March 2026