TechRadar Reviews

Miofive Mirror 1: two-minute review

While I’ve tried plenty of the best dash cams on the market, I’ve spent less time using one of the alternatives – a mirror dash cam, such as the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam. It's a chunky hunk of kit, being designed to fit over a standard issue rear view mirror, using one of three different mounting options. It can be strapped, stuck or screwed on, but no matter which option is employed, the result is the same – this is a large gadget.

The Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam differs from traditional offerings in the design department, but it’s actually a refreshing variation on the theme. This gadget delivers the same functionality found on a traditional dash cam but everything is presented slightly differently.

Adding to the appeal is the way it can be an electronic rear-view mirror as well as offering a view out of the front too, or indeed, a split combination of the two. Both views also get recorded in a continuous loop process, much like a typical dash cam.

The Miofive Mirror 1 comes with an impressive specification, and sizable price tag. There are twin Sony sensors for the cameras; a 4K (3840 × 2160 30fps) IMX415 Starvis 2 for the front and a 2K (2560 × 1440 30fps) IMX675 for the rear unit, capable of capturing crips footage for regular day time driving as well as after dark scenarios – these sensors have proven performance characteristics. What they see is also presented on the mirror screen, which is an expansive 11.26-inch modestly curved display that features anti-glare capabilities.

(Image credit: Future)

As a premium device, the Miofive Mirror 1 also boasts excellent connectivity features, including 5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, which means moving those high-resolution files is quick and easy – Miofive says up to 7MB per second, while data itself can be managed by an accompanying no frills Miofive app.

The Miofive Mirror 1 dash cam also packs sophisticated and in vogue AI-driven driver assistance features and functions, which are all easily accessed via the touchscreen. These include warnings for abrupt acceleration or braking, lane departure and ‘Stop and Go’ traffic movement.

Along with those bang-up-to-date features, the Miofive Mirror 1 comes with everything needed to keep it running. There’s a super capacitor-based power supply plus the unit can be powered off a 12V socket or, if preferred, hardwired to exploit its functionality more comprehensively. Hardwire features include the 24-hour parking monitor aspect.

Miofive also packs a 128GB microSD card into the mirror’s media slot so, aside from some wiring chores initially, the unit is pretty much ready to go.

Miofive Mirror 1: price and availability

The Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Camera currently costs $299.99 on Amazon in the US. Meanwhile, the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Camera is also available to buy from Amazon UK for £259.99, at the time of writing. Normally, the regular UK list price is £299.99, which is comparable to other likeminded mirror dash cam models with similar specs. Cheaper mirror dash cam alternatives can be found too, but I think the quality of construction makes the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam seem like decent value.

Miofive Mirror 1: specsMiofive Mirror specs

Video

Front: 4K UHD (3840×2160p) @30 fps
Rear: 2K QHD (2560×1440p) @30 fps

Field of view (FOV)

140 degrees front / 140 degrees rear

Storage

MicroSD up to 512GB

GPS

Yes

Parking mode

Yes, with constant power cable, not included

App support

Miofive app

Dimensions

‎31 x 7 x 2 cm / 12.2 x 2.76 x 0.79 inches

Weight

1.01 lbs / 498g

Battery

No

Miofive Mirror 1: Design

While the ample screen real estate offered by the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam, which has overall dimensions of 2.2 x 2.76 x 0.79 inches / 31 x 7 x 2 cm, is impressive, its size should be kept in mind by anyone with a smaller windscreen. In a compact or small sports car, the 11.26-inch IPS touchscreen might feel a little bit too obtrusive. Even in a larger vehicle, such as an SUV, the mirror construction is bulky. However, it looks and feels nicely designed and reasonably durable.

The same can be said for all of the various accessories and ancillary components needed to get the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam installed and operating. Miofive offers three different ways to mount the mirror unit, which is essentially stuck in place over an existing rear-view mirror. I chose the rubberised strap method which worked well, didn’t vibrate or move on the go and was temporary enough to let the unit be removed from my test vehicle.

(Image credit: Future)

A more permanent option is using the supplied screws to fasten it in place, while bonding is another long-term method. I suggest using the rubberised strap method initially, just in case the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam isn’t quite the right fit for your needs. The box contains all the other wiring and connectors needed to hook up to the power, including a 12V plug for that port and colour coded harnessing for connecting peripherals.

The peripherals include a small rear-view camera, which can be stuck in place using a sticky pad on the camera's base and subsequently angled for optimal capture. The other accessory that requires connection to the crop of wires is the GPS unit. Everything is basically finished in grey or black plastic, while most of the cabling is black too. This can be fed behind trim using the usual method just like any other dash cam. There’s just a little more to hide away.

(Image credit: Future)Miofive Mirror 1: Performance

Once I had all of the wiring plumbed in, the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam was actually very simple and straightforward to set up. The media card was already in the slot, and I followed best practice and formatted the card following initial power up. From there, the mirrored screen area displayed an array of small icons, plus a split view. To the left was a view of the read ahead and to the right, a view to the rear of the car. I left it in this default mode for testing purposes although views can be tweaked to suit individual preferences.

The picture quality looks less good in my photos but, in reality, the quality of the lenses was easy to see with clear and sharp images from each angle even in decidedly gloomy conditions. Miofive has done a decent job of including a solid level of control options, via screen icons when the cameras are on. This meant it was easy to tap and change anything, such as brightness, before setting off.

(Image credit: Future)

Dipping into the other features and functions – which include Connect Your Phone, Recording Settings, Parking Guard, AI, System Settings, About and Speed Cam Alert –required more thought, but the large color icons worked well. The AI menu option brings up five different functions that can be enabled and set for intensity, like Reverse Assist Line, for example, which is set as Medium by default. These are okay, although I didn’t feel a desperate urge to use them. In fact, Driver Assistance, as one option, is better off disabled as far as I’m concerned.

Overall, the footage recorded by the Miofive Mirror 1 Dash Cam is largely excellent. It's crisp and clear, capturing details nicely enough, and didn’t leave me wanting anything better. The detail presented along the bottom of the footage, including date, time and speed is also perfectly acceptable. Used as a pure front and rear dash cam setup, this is a very good product. And, should you require them, there are plenty of neat tools to enhance the functionality.

(Image credit: Future)

One important thing to note is anyone wanting to enjoy the parking monitoring will need to do so by enlisting the services of an optional hardwire kit. This does increase the potential of the bundle, especially for anyone wanting the extra parking features that get unlocked by going down the hardwire route.

Should you buy the Miofive Mirror 1?

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

You like the idea of a mirror cam
The Miofive Mirror 1 is a variation on the dash cam theme, but also doubles as an electronic rear-view mirror. However, it might not appeal to everyone, especially those who wear glasses.

You like a complete package
Hardwire kit aside, a real bonus with the Miofive Mirror 1 is the way it has everything in the box to get started, along with a 128GB microSD card.

You want comprehensive coverage
The Miofive Mirror 1 offers both front and rear video surveillance on the move via twin cameras. Both work well and make this unit ideal for anyone needing more substantial coverage.

Don't buy it if...

Conventional dash cams appeal
The Mirofive Mirror 1 is an electronic rear-view mirror that also captures video. The fitting and functionality is therefore more advanced, so it might be a turn-off for anyone requiring a cheap, basic dash cam.

Hard wiring is unappealing
To unlock the Miofive Mirror 1's extra features, the unit requires an extra hardwire kit to be used. This can be fiddly and is also more permanent, so it's less ideal if you need to move the mirror from time to time.

Multiple views are unnecessary
While the Miofive Mirror 1 offers excellent front and fear views within the screen area, and captures said views as well, it might be a little over the top for anyone who just needs a basic 'out front' dash cam perspective.

How I tested the Miofive Mirror 1

• I installed the dash cam in a car for an initial period of three to four weeks
• I used it for various day and night journeys in all types of weather
• I connected it to my phone, downloading recordings to check on quality

I tested the Miofive Mirror 1 dash cam across a period of several weeks. This involved using it in a test vehicle and during a variety of weather conditions. This allowed me to try all of the features and functions, aside from the hardwire options due to it being powered via a 12V power port in a vehicle that was on temporary loan.

On top of that, I downloaded the latest Miofive app, which was installed on an iPhone 17 and used during the installation process and also for file management duties. I also tested the Wi-Fi connectivity between the main camera unit and the app, which based on the size of the 4K video files was a big part of the overall testing procedure and everything worked as anticipated.

• First reviewed February 2026

Coros Pace 4: One minute review

The Coros Pace 4 continues its predecessor’s mantle as one of the best cheap running watches and is a marked improvement upon the previous-gen Coros Pace 3, which was also one of our best running watches overall. There's a lot to like about the smartwatch, including runners wanting to make an upgrade.

The most significant change between the two models is the movement away from a fairly basic Memory-in-Pixel screen to a vibrant 1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen. The resolution has also been increased from 240x240 pixels to 390x390 pixels. This makes the text and graphs substantially sharper, and despite this having an impact upon battery drain, Coros has directly addressed that by increasing the battery capacity.

The watch is aimed at runners, triathletes, and cyclists desiring speed and simplicity. At just 32g (with nylon strap), the Pace 4 is incredibly lightweight and unassuming. The tracking of accurate distances was not pinpoint-sharp, but pace, heart rate, cadence, and other metrics were measured accurately.

That said, this is not a smartwatch for the masses. The lack of everyday smarts, such as music streaming and NFC payments, makes it rather limited for anyone looking for more than a training tool. I wouldn't say this is a negative, though, as not every wearable is for everyone. The Pace 4 sticks close to its running credentials, and at a budget-friendly price of $249 / £229, this makes it a very enticing proposition indeed.

Coros Pace 4: Specifications

Component

Coros Pace 4

Price

$249 USD / £229 UK / $479.95 AUS

Dimensions

43.4 x 43.4 x 11.8 mm

Weight

32g (with Nylon band) / 40g (with Silicone band)

Caze/bezel

Fiber-reinforced polymer (Plastic)

Display

1.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen 390 x 390 pixels

GPS

Dual-Frequency GNSS

Battery life

Up to 19 days or 41 hours for High GPS Usage

Connection

Bluetooth and Wi-Fi

Water resistance

5 ATM

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Coros Pace 4: Price and availability

• $249 USD / £229 UK / AU$479.95
• A fantastic price for a smartwatch with dual-band GPS and an AMOLED display
• Competes well with the Garmin Forerunner 165

The COROS Pace 4, priced at $249 / £229 / AU$479.95, is a lightweight performance running watch that balances high-end features like a vibrant AMOLED display and industry-leading battery life (up to 41 hours of GPS) with a competitive entry-level price tag. The 4.5-star-rated Apple Watch SE 3 is comparably priced, although more targeted at general users rather than runners.

Similarly specced alternatives include the Garmin Forerunner 165 and Suunto Run or if you're looking for a more rugged, outdoor-focused build, then the Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro is a good alternative.

Value score 4.5/5

Coros Pace 4: Design

• Lightweight build feels basic but comfortable to wear
• Bright, high-resolution AMOLED display
• Hybrid three-button system

The Coros Pace 4 is small, lightweight, and has a distinctly budget plastic feel. No-one would describe the watch as premium, but that doesn’t mean the choice of materials doesn’t have any benefits. At 32g (with nylon band), it’s beautifully light on the wrist, and a thickness of 11.8mm means it easily slips underneath the sleeve.

At the heart of the Pace 4 is a small 1.2-inch AMOLED screen that is comparable with the Garmin Forerunner 265 and Apple Watch SE 3. With a 1,500-nit brightness and a 390 x 390px resolution, the Pace 4 lacks nothing in outdoor visibility and image sharpness. To keep the device charged, Coros provides a proprietary charger which magnetically attaches to the watch. The charger also contains a built-in keyring, which reduces the chance of losing it.

Future / Paul HattonFuture / Paul HattonFuture / Paul HattonFuture / Paul HattonFuture / Paul HattonFuture / Paul HattonFuture / Paul Hatton

While Garmin sticks to a traditional five-button layout and Apple relies on a single digital crown and side button, the Pace 4 uses a hybrid three-button system. This includes the signature Coros digital dial plus an Action button, similar to the Apple Watch Ultra 3. These deliver reliable navigation through menus even when your hands are sweaty or you're wearing winter gloves.

At the back of the watch, you'll find a flush-mounted sensor that is flat enough to avoid skin irritation during long periods of wear. I also found it more stable than a lot of smartwatches that I've tested recently. Additionally, its integrated dual-microphone system is a rare design find in this price bracket.

Design Score: 4/5

Coros Pace 4: Features

• 19 days of daily training and sleep
• An innovative voice recording tool
• Built-in GPS

The Coros Pace 4 boasts a voice recording tool, excellent battery life, and a dual-frequency GPS system. Beginning with the voice functionality, it's fair to say that most other smartwatches provide a general-purpose voice memo tool, but the Pace 4 is unique in that its voice features are specifically integrated into the athletic training workflow. More specifically, Voice Pins can be added mid-run to specific locations on your route, while Voice Notes are better suited to capturing subjective information after an activity has been completed.

As you’d expect with a running watch, the Pace 4 utilizes an advanced All-Systems dual-frequency GNSS chipset, allowing it to communicate with five major satellite networks (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou, and QZSS). The ability to connect across two frequencies is designed to improve positional accuracy in challenging environments such as cities and forests.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)

The lack of full offline maps is a little disappointing, although breadcrumb-style navigation with turn-by-turn directions for the planned route is available. Another notable feature is its ability to route sync from platforms like Strava.

And finally, battery capabilities. The Pace 4 continues a growing trend of offering long-lasting performance. In terms of advertised numbers, that looks like 19 days of continuous daily use and 41 hours when using the All Systems (High) GPS mode. This is roughly equivalent to the latest Amazfit Balance 2, which features 21 days of continuous daily use and 33 hours of GPS use.

Features Score: 4/5

Coros Pace 4: Performance

• Fast and responsive interface
• Accurate health tracking
• Reasonable GPS performance for a budget-smartwatch

The Coros Pace 4 features an Ambiq Apollo 510 processor, which, compared to its predecessors, is a significant leap in internal processing power and efficiency. This results in a responsive interface that shows no sign of lag when carrying out health measurements or activity tracking. The interface is basic but simple to navigate, with Coros opting to display all non-activity features inside a 'Control Center' interface that displays everything inside one single face of the watch rather than cycling up and down long lists, as is more common with other watch brands.

The advanced processor also powers voice pins and training logs, which form a key part of the Coros Pace experience. Recording these audio notes is simple and quick and a far better solution than using a separate app or paper-based alternative. A next-step improvement would be to introduce an AI feature that is able to transcribe these notes and summarize progress.

In terms of positional precision, the Pace 4 utilizes an all-satellite, dual-frequency GNSS chipset that has been refined to maintain a lock in difficult environments. I had no problems finding a strong enough signal, even in rural areas and when surrounded by tall buildings.

In distance traveled benchmark tests against the extensively tested Huawei Watch Ultimate 2, I found the Pace 4 to be within 200 meters, not super-accurate but good enough for casual runners. We'll be batch-testing the Coros Pace 4, along with other watches, to better assess accuracy over longer distances in the near future – watch this space. However, it's safe to say the Pace 4 offers a good GPS distance estimation, with a margin for error.

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)

Biometric tracking has also seen a hardware overhaul with a redesigned optical heart rate sensor featuring five LEDs and four photodetectors. This updated array provides reliable health data when compared to the Watch Ultimate 2. That said, I did have to make sure that the watch maintained a snug fit to my skin; otherwise, light leaking onto the sensor caused measurements to jump around.

Despite the move to a 1,500-nit AMOLED screen, the battery efficiency remains a standout, providing up to 41 hours in High GPS mode and 31 hours in Dual-Frequency mode. While using the device to track a few runs and bike rides per week, I was easily able to achieve between ten and fourteen days of usage. The 5 ATM water resistance rating held up when using the watch in wet conditions as well as when submerged in a bowl of water for over a minute.

The Pace 4 is a perfect weight and size for runners and athletes who want their smartwatch to blend into the background. It'll track your vitals and activities to a reasonable accuracy, especially given the price point.

Performance score: 4/5

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Coros Pace 4: Scorecard

Category

Comment

Score

Value

A budget-friendly watch with some higher-end features.

4.5/5

Design

Lightweight and compact but with an unmistakable budget feel.

4/5

Features

Some innovative features are designed around activities, but nothing that’s going to set the world alight.

4/5

Performance

Reasonably accurate health and activity tracking, especially for the price.

4/5

(Image credit: Future / Paul Hatton)Coros Pace 4: Should I buy?Buy it if...

You’re a runner who loves logging their activities

With voice logging and pins, the Pace 4 is ideally suited to recording your experiences.

You like a lightweight smartwatch that blends into the background

At 32g (nylon strap) the Pace 4 is one of the lightest options on the market.

Don't buy it if...

You like a watch with everyday smarts

There’s no music streaming, NFC payments, and no ability to reply to texts.

You need offline maps

If you’re regularly following complex trails or like to go off-route, then you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Also consider

Garmin Forerunner 165

With premium training features, a good-looking AMOLED touchscreen, and 13 days of battery life, the Forerunner 165 is a similarly priced alternative to the Coros Pace 4.

Read our Garmin Forerunner 165 reviewView Deal

Garmin Vivoactive 5

A smartwatch with more sports and health tracking metrics than most will need while staying compact and easy to see with that stunning AMOLED display. Also reasonably priced.

Read our full Garmin Vivoactive 5 reviewView Deal

How I tested

I used the Coros Pace 4 across the period of several weeks, focusing my activities on running, cycling, walking, and gym cardio. I was specifically, although not exclusively, interested in seeing how much use I would genuinely make of the voice recording features. This is a relatively unique feature that I was keen to check out. I also put it through its paces in terms of GPS accuracy and the effect of its use on battery life. The smartwatch shipped with both nylon and silicone straps, so I tested both. Finally, despite it not being a core feature of the watch, I also tested its sleep tracking abilities.

First reviewed: February 2026

The Mortuary Assistant is now streaming on Shudder and playing in select movie theaters, and you may have already seen a few bad reviews for it. But I had a great time with this adaptation.

It can certainly be daunting when you're adapting a beloved video game for the screen. Markiplier's Iron Lung performed very well at the box office lately, even if it was met with poor critic reviews overall. But the audience turnout proves people are interested in game adaptations in general, which is good news since they keep coming, and Exit 8 will soon be following in its footsteps.

When it comes to The Mortuary Assistant, I think it's best to go into it not expecting an exact replica of the video game. Approaches like that worked for The Last of Us, but here, I actually liked the fact that it doesn't follow the game to the letter. It's very much an adaptation and companion piece to the game, which I highly recommend you play.

Director Jeremiah Kipp told me that The Mortuary Assistant's game developer was ‘enormously supportive’ of the movie, and it certainly shows. While the movie does deviate from the game slightly, the location, vibe, and the character of Rebecca are portrayed incredibly well indeed.

We learn a lot more about Rebecca's character here as she spends a night shift at River Fields Mortuary. It's clear she is devoted to her job and neglects other areas of her life, especially when it comes to the demons of her past. Willa Holland gives a great performance here as someone who seems to be more comfortable with the dead than the living, as she continues to ignore and stuff down the things that have happened to her.

The Mimic is one of the most iconic creatures in The Mortuary Assistant. (Image credit: Dread XP)

Unfortunately, this leads Rebecca to be haunted by an actual demon, which does a very good job at tormenting her. Fan favorite manifestation The Mimic, steals the show here, as it appears to terrorize Rebecca during her terrifying shift. The creature design really is good here, and we're left wondering what is real and what is not, bringing us up close and personal to Rebecca's terror and hallucinations.

Rebecca is finishing her apprenticeship with mortician Raymond Delver (Paul Sparks), and these are the two characters we follow throughout the movie. He is ultimately in charge of finding employees he believes capable of combating the demons located there, and Rebecca is his latest colleague to be met with the horrors.

I do think audiences would benefit from playing the video game too, as it can provide more context. I'm not sure if those who know nothing about the game would get quite as huge a kick out of this, as part of what made this exciting for me was already being a huge fan of the game.

Like many horror movies, there is unfortunately an over-reliance on jump scares at times, and this is a point that is sure to divide audiences. Whether you love them or hate them, you can be the judge of how effective they are.

All in all, this is a strong adaptation, and there's lots for fans of the game to enjoy, especially if you're keen to expand on the lore and backstory. Don't go into this expecting a shot-for-shot remake of the game, and instead, it should be treated as a very worthy expansion.

If you're looking for a great supernatural horror with plenty of scares, and a deeper exploration about character's traumas, this is definitely the movie for you. Director Jeremiah Kipp revealed that "a filmmaker needs a deep personal connection to the material", and you can definitely feel that here.

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Eversolo DAC-Z10: one-minute review

Never let it be said that Eversolo is not ever so serious. The Eversolo DAC-Z10 is an extremely well-specified digital-to-analogue converter, headphone amplifier and system preamplifier in a single package – and while it sells for a significant sum, even compared to the best DACs around, it turns out to represent unarguable value for money.

As well as the full-on specification (which includes four AKM DAC chips, twin RSR ‘ladder’ volume control modules, and no fewer than three independent and heavily shielded linear power supplies), the user interface (via a big touch-screen) is excellent even before you realize it offers a choice of virtual VU meters and dynamic spectrum displays.

There are more than enough digital inputs, plus balanced and unbalanced analog outputs, and an extremely capable discrete headphone amplification module.

And it all works very well indeed. The DAC-Z10 is almost fanatical when it comes to detail retrieval, really holds its own where rhythmic expression, soundstaging and dynamic impetus are concerned, and maintains the tonal balance of the music as originally recorded as much as possible.

In fact, about its biggest shortcoming is how overtly intolerant it is of inferior partners – don’t imagine the DAC-Z10 is about to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is sub-par electronics or loudspeakers. But that's not a real flaw for something that costs this much anyway – you'd expect an expensive DAC to sing with expensive other components, wouldn't you?

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Price & release date

The Eversolo DAC-Z10 launched during November 2025 and in the United Kingdom it sells for a strangely specific £1,939. In the United States it’s $1,980, while in Australia the going rate is AU$3,339 or thereabouts.

This puts it in line with options from the likes of Denon and NAD – big names in the hi-fi separates space.

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Features

• Numerous digital and analog inputs
• Independent left and right channel AKM digital-to-analog conversion modules
• Three independent power supplies

Even by Eversolo’s established standards, the DAC-Z10 is extensively specified – ‘lavishly’ may not be too strong a word. It’s difficult to know where to start, really. Maybe on the outside would be best…

At the rear of the DAC-Z10, there are numerous digital and analogue inputs, alongside balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA analogue outputs for connection to a power amplifier, powered speakers or what-have-you. There’s also a grounding post for channeling even the most minor electrical interference out of harm’s way.

The digital stuff consists of an IIS (aka I2S) input (featuring eight switchable modes, naturally, and capable of dealing with digital audio resolutions of up to 32bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512), HDMI eARC, USB-B (with multi-core audio processor and again supporting 32bit/768kHz PCM and DSD512), a fully isolated AES/EBU input, and a pair of coaxial and a pair of optical audio inputs (all of which support 24bit/192kHz PCM and DSD64). There’s also wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 5.0, with SBC and AAC codec compatibility.

There’s a further analog output on the fascia: a 6.3mm single-ended headphone socket. It’s powered by a dedicated amplification module, and automatically detects the impedance of the headphones it’s driving and adjusts gain accordingly.

The internal layout of the Eversolo is no less thorough. Built on the company’s ‘Fully Isolated Architecture’ platform, which isolates the digital and analog domains in a drive for optimal signal purity, the DAC-Z10 features three linear power supplies. One is for the left channel, one for the right, and one for system circuitry – each is isolated from the others in an effort to minimi`e interference.

The DAC-Z10 is big on the concept of independent left and right stereo channels elsewhere, too. For instance, each stereo channel has a dedicated pair of AKM DAC chips – an AK4191 and an AK4499 – so left and right digital signals are kept completely separate from input to conversion.

Volume control uses an independent R2R ‘ladder’ module for each channel, so signal integrity and phase alignment should be uncorrupted, even if the selected volume level is very low or very high.

The Eversolo ‘Precision Core’, which features a temperature-controlled crystal oscillator, phase-locked loop technology and FPGA clock reconstruction, makes up the DAC-Z10 clock system. Despite the extremely thorough attention it has paid to this critical componentry, though, the Eversolo also has an input for an external clock – and with multiple impedance options.

This allows the DAC-Z10 to integrate into super-high end systems that have even more effective clock systems than the one specified here. Either way, though, the DAC-Z10 seems extremely well-served where clocking, and by extension the imaging and transient response of its sound, are concerned.

• Features score: 5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Sound quality

• Profoundly impressive detail retrieval
• Expansive, organized and front-foot sound
• Not especially tolerant of less-capable partners

Let’s get the minor negative out of the way first, shall we? The Eversolo DAC-Z10 is not about to indulge in partnering equipment that is less capable than it is. The DAC-Z10 punches above its weight, not below it – so it can hold its own in systems with high price-tags, but it’s not about to make your run-of-the-mill power speakers or wallet-friendly amps into world-beaters. If anything, it’s more likely to expose their shortcomings.

But as long as the stuff before and after the Eversolo in the chain is up to scratch, there’s a whole lot to enjoy about this device – especially where its powers of digital-to-analog conversion are concerned.

Where detail retrieval is concerned, the DAC-Z10 is as good as anything I've heard at anything like the price. No event in a recording is too minor, no harmonic variation is too subtle, no over- or undertone surrounding the fundamental note of an instrument or a voice is too muted to elude it.

The production of Horsegirl’s Phonetics On and On is open and so spare that you might think every shred of information is available even when it’s playing on an unremarkable system – but the Eversolo demonstrates that even deeper subtleties and transients are there, and it has the power to reveal and contextualize them. If you’re after the most complete image possible of your music, the DAC-Z10 is ready and able to give it to you.

It’s more than willing to get out of the way of the music, and of the source machine that’s playing it. So when it comes to tonality and frequency response, the Eversolo tries its utmost to have as little input as possible even though it’s responsible for D-to-A conversion – the sound you get, in these respects, seems very much to be the sound stored on the disc, the digital file or whatever.

What the DAC-Z10 will do is ensure that low frequencies are shaped and controlled to the point that rhythmic expression is coherent and momentum levels never dip below what is appropriate.

It takes care of the minor dynamic variations with just as much ease as it does with every other aspect of detail retrieval – and when the music undergoes big shifts in intensity or volume, as it does during a listen to Daniel Blumberg’s soundtrack to The Brutalist, the Eversolo is able to describe them in full, and in the most articulate manner.

It ensures the top of the frequency range always carries enough substance to prevent its bite becoming problematic, and allows the midrange to project with real confidence.

And the bigger and more information-packed the audio content you serve it, the more impressive the DAC-Z10 sounds. A DSD64 file of Michael Jackon’s Off the Wall sounds positively ferocious once the Eversolo has done with it – the clean, open and pristine recording (especially in 2024 remaster guise) sounds more animated, more immediate, and more engaging than it does via any even vaguely price-comparable alternative. And there are plenty of very capable, vaguely price-comparable, alternatives around.

• Sound quality score: 5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Design

• Aluminum chassis
• A choice of VU meters, spectrum displays and control dial colors
• 310x88x365mm / 12.2x3.5x13.4in (WxHxD)

As is only to be expected, given the asking price, the Eversolo DAC-Z10 is carefully constructed from premium materials, and finished to an extremely high standard. Fundamentally it’s simply a rectangular box in the established ‘hi-fi’ manner – but in terms of look, feel and finish it’s a fairly upmarket proposition.

It’s not quite as wide as your average hi-fi separate, but nevertheless Eversolo has found space for an 8.8-inch touchscreen that’s bright, clear and responsive, and is able to display a great deal of information without looking in any way crowded.

It forms the majority of the fascia of a chassis built from aircraft-grade aluminum and coated in a soft(ish)-touch finish that only adds to the impression of refined good taste.

Eversolo has remembered to make sure the design of the DAC-Z10 is enjoyable as well as admirable, too. As well as an exhaustive amount of relevant information, the screen can display a number of different VU meters or dynamic spectrum displays – and the single ‘turn/push’ control dial alongside it can be illuminated in one of quite a few different colors.

• Design score: 5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Usability & setup

• Remote control, app and touchscreen control options
• Some end-user tweaking available
• Switchable XLR polarity

Despite its wealth of features and extensive functionality, setting up and operating the DAC-Z10 is pretty straightforward. And you have plenty of options, too.

Obviously the first thing to do is make your relevant connections into and out of the device. The DAC-Z10 will support plenty of digital devices, of course, and there’s the ability to route a single analog source through too – which is useful if you’re connecting directly to a power amplifier rather than a pair of powered or active speakers.

It’s worth noting the XLR connections have switchable polarity, which makes system-matching a great deal more straightforward than it otherwise would be. After that it’s just a question of trimming each individual input in terms of volume – every digital input can have a choice of six filters applied, which allows the end user a fair amount of input into the way the quartet of DAC chips performs.

In terms of control, you’ve a gratifying number of well-implemented options. The control wheel, which is a turn/push number, is responsive and reliable, and the same can be said for the weighty little remote control handset that is, in its own way, just as tactile a device as the DAC-Z10 itself. The touchscreen is equally simple and logical to use, and just as reliable in the way it reacts.

Best of all, though, is the ‘Eversolo Control’ app that’s free for iOS and Android. It’s far from the most visually exciting control app around, it’s true – but once you get beyond the relative lack of visual stimulation you’ll find a thorough, stable and eminently useful interface that enables you to control every single aspect of the DAC-Z10’s performance.

• Usability & setup score: 5 / 5

(Image credit: Simon Lucas)Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Value

• It costs a lot, but it does a lot
• Performs as well or better than anything else at the same price
• Versatility really adds to its value as a long-term buy

Obviously spending this sort of money on a DAC with preamplification functionality means you have a system that justifies the outlay, and in that case there’s really no arguing with the value for money that’s on offer here.

The amount of things it can do, the range of connections it has, the usefulness of its various control options, and the impeccable quality of its audio mean that its price is very agreeable… to people with this kind of money to spend.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Eversolo DAC-Z10?Buy it if…

You have digital audio sources that need a proper decoding
Even quite expensive CD players and the like will feel the benefit of the DAC-Z10's audio expression.View Deal

You enjoy a good user interface
The touchscreen and, especially, the control app are as it good as it gets.View Deal

You love a virtual VU meter
Or, even better, a choice of virtual VU meters.View Deal

Don't buy it if…

Graphic design is your passion
The control app may be entirely fit for purpose, but it is tedious in the extreme to look atView Deal

You’re hoping to make an ordinary system sound extraordinary
The Eversolo is not especially tolerant of inferior partners.View Deal

Eversolo DAC-Z10 review: Also consider

Audiolab D9
On a pound-for-pound basis, the D9 DAC/preamplifier is a very decent bet – for a little over half the price of the Eversolo, it gives you a great deal of solid audio competence.View Deal

Chord Hugo TT2
If you’re after something slightly more portable, this an exceptional device – it doesn’t come cheap, though, and it has one of those user interfaces that Chord seems to think is a good idea but the rest of us get madly frustrated by. View Deal

How I tested the Eversolo DAC-Z10

I slotted the Eversolo DAC-Z10 into my reference system – so it took care of the digital-to-analog conversion required by a Rega Apollo CD player, a Naim Uniti Star (meaning internet radio, network streaming and music streaming service content was available), and an Apple MacBook Pro via USB to access digital audio of the highest possible resolution.

It also accepted an analog signal from a pre-amplified Technics SL-1300G turntable. It was connected to a Cambridge Edge W power amplifier via balanced XLR connections, which in turn was connected to Bowers & Wilkins 705 S3 Signature loudspeakers on their bespoke FS-700 S3 stands.

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: February 2026

I’m not going to get to have the Acer Veriton GN100 for long, so this is more of a hands-on discussion than an actual review.

My first reaction, out of the box, to the Acer Veriton GN100 is that it all seems remarkably familiar. An elegant mini-PC style case with a car-grill aesthetic, a selection of USB-C ports alongside a 10GbE LAN port and the mercurial NVIDIA ConnectX-7 SmartNIC.

While it’s physically a little smaller, the ports on this machine are identical to those on the ASUS Ascent GX10, as both brands followed Nvidia’s Blackwell system plan exactly.

The only significant difference is that where the Asus provided access to the single M.2 NVMe drive that was installed, the Acer Veriton GN100 is an entirely sealed unit, where whatever storage it has can’t be replaced or upgraded.

Inside is the same Nvidia DGX Spark Personal AI Supercomputer built around the ARM v9.2-A CPU and Blackwell GPU integrated silicon. This, when combined with 128GB of LPDDR5 memory and 4TB of NVMe storage, is collectively called the GB10 platform.

This is a remarkably powerful platform that has uses in data science, medical image analysis, robotics and AI model development. To be clear, this isn’t a Windows PC, and an understanding of Linux is required to use it.

As the specification suggests, this isn’t an inexpensive item, starting at $2999 for the US-supplied hardware, but £3999.99 in Europe. For those who want a highly compact and efficient development environment, especially for AI, the Acer Veriton GN100 is an option, but it isn’t the only machine available using the same platform.

Acer Veriton GN100: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $3000, £4000
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available from Acer and online retailers

To avoid any confusion about specifications, Acer decided there would be only one SKU of the Veriton GN100, with 128GB of LPDDR5 and 4TB of storage.

Inexplicably, it costs £3999.99 direct from Acer in the UK, but only $2999.99 from Acer in the US. Why do we pay 82% more for an identical part when the UK doesn't tariff Taiwanese goods, Acer?

Also, this product doesn’t seem to be available elsewhere, so finding it cheaper on Amazon, for example, isn’t currently possible.

The alternatives built around the same platform are the ‘founders edition’ Nvidia DGX Spark Personal AI Supercomputer, ASUS Ascent GX10, Gigabyte AI TOP ATOM Desktop Supercomputer, and MSI EdgeXpert Desktop AI Supercomputer.

The Nvidia DGX Spark Personal AI Supercomputer, as the originator modestly calls it, undercuts the Veriton GN100 in the UK and costs £ 3699.98 for a system with 128GB of RAM and 4TB of storage. But, it’s more expensive for US customers, costing $3999 on Amazon.com.

The ASUS Ascent GX10 price on Amazon.com is $3088.94 for the 1TB storage SKU (GX10-GG0015BN), and $4,149.99 for the 4TB storage model (GX10-GG0016BN).

Even with the current price of M.2 modules, that is a remarkable price hike for the extra storage capacity.

For UK customers, the 1TB ASUS Ascent GX10 model price is £3713.02, but I found it via online retailer SCAN for a tempting £2799.98. SCAN also carries a 2TB option for $3199.99 and the 4TB model for £3638.99.

The Gigabyte AI TOP ATOM Desktop Supercomputer 4TB model sells for £3479.99 from SCAN in the UK, and can be found on Amazon.com for $3999.

And the final model with the same spec as most is the MSI EdgeXpert Desktop AI Supercomputer, selling for £3,598.99 from SCAN in the UK, and $3998.01 on Amazon.com for US customers.

The conclusion is that the US price is difficult to beat, whereas the European pricing is wildly out of what competitors are charging for this technology.

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Acer Veriton GN100: Specs

Item

Spec

CPU:

ARM v9.2-A CPU (GB10) (20 ARM cores, 10 Cortex-X925, 10 Corex-A725)

GPU:

NVIDIA Blackwell GPU (GB10, integrated)

RAM:

128 GB LPDDR5x, unified system memory

Storage:

4TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD storage

Expansion:

N/A

Ports:

3x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C, 20Gbps, alternate mode (DisplayPort 2.1)

1x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C,with PD in(180W EPR PD3.1 SPEC)

1x HDMI 2.1

1x NVIDIA ConnectX-7 SmartNIC

Networking:

10GbE LAN, AW-EM637 Wi-Fi 7 (Gig+) , Bluetooth 5.4

OS:

Nvidia DGX OS (Ubuntu Linux)

PSU:

48V 5A 240W

Dimensions:

150 x 150 x 50.5 mm

Weight:

1.2kg

Acer Veriton GN100: Design

• Oversized NUC
• Connect-7 scalability
• Zero internal access

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

While the GN100 looks like an oversized NUC mini PC, at 1.2kg, it's heavy, although it is lighter than the ASUS Ascent GX10 by over 200g.

In order to drive the monster silicon inside, Acer included a Delta-made PSU that’s rated to 240W over USB-C.

All the ports are on the back of this system, and nothing is on the front, not even the power button, other than some visual styling and the Acer logo.

These include, identical to the ASUS Ascent GX10, four USB-C ports, one of which is required for the PSU to connect, a single 10GbE LAN port and a single HDMI 2.1 video out.

This arrangement enables a single monitor using HDMI, but additional ones using the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports in DP Alt mode, although one is exclusively needed to power the unit.

Why Nvidia chose USB 3.2 and not USB4 seems curious, since the models and data processed on this unit will eventually need to make it somewhere else, and the best networking on offer is 10GbE, which equals roughly 900MB/s transfer speeds.

And for those working on the hardware, the lack of any USB-A ports for mice or keyboards looks a bit silly.

However, this hardware is intended to be used ‘headless’ using a remote console, so perhaps that isn’t an issue in the greater scheme of things.

Where this design sheds any resemblance to PC hardware is with the inclusion of a ConnectX-7 Smart NIC, a technology acquired by Nvidia when it bought Mellanox Technologies Ltd, an Israeli-American multinational supplier of computer networking products based on InfiniBand and Ethernet.

In this context, ConnectX-7 is like those annoying cables that Nvidia used to make video cards work collectively, when they cared about video cards. Except that the capacity amount of bandwidth that can travel over ConnectX-7 is substantially more.

The port has two receptacles, with each capable of 100GbE, allowing 200GbE to flow between the GN100 and another, doubling the number of AI parameters from 200 billion in a single machine to 400 billion when buddied up to another.

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Acer Veriton GN100: Features

• ARM 20-core CPU
• Grace Blackwell GB10
• AI platforms compared

The Nvidia GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip marks a notable advancement in AI hardware, created through a partnership between Nvidia and ARM. It arises from the growing need for specialised computing platforms to keep pace with the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence models. Unlike a typical PC, the GB10 is designed around the ARM v9.2-A architecture, incorporating 20 ARM cores (10 Cortex-X925 and 10 Cortex-A725). This reflects a wider industry move towards ARM-based options, which are more power-efficient than PC processors, and potentially more scalable for AI tasks.

The capabilities of the GB10 are impressive. It combines a robust Nvidia Blackwell GPU with the ARM CPU, achieving up to a petaFLOP of AI performance with FP4 precision. This level of power is especially suitable for training and inference of large language models and diffusion models, which are fundamental to much of today’s generative AI. The system is further supported by 128GB of unified LPDDR5x memory, enabling it to handle demanding AI tasks efficiently.

The caveat to all this power and memory is that PC architectures aren’t designed to exploit them effectively, and Microsoft Windows memory management has long been an issue.

Therefore, to be efficient and communicate effectively with other nodes, the GB10 needs Ubuntu Linux, modified with NVIDIA’s DGX OS, to harness the platform's power and handle multi-node communications.

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

As I already mentioned, the GB10 delivers up to 1 petaFLOP at FP4 precision, ideal for quantised AI workloads. But that is still less than the multi-petaFLOP performance of NVIDIA’s flagship data centre chips, the Blackwell B200 or GB200.

However, where it goes toe-to-toe is in respect of power efficiency, since this node only consumes around 140W, which is much less than the Blackwell B200, which can consume between 1000W and 1200W per GPU. The GB200 combines two B200 chips and a Grace CPU, and the power demand can bloom to 2,700W. Although these systems might offer up to 20 Petabytes of performance, at around 19 times the power.

The balance here is that the GN100 can sit on your desk without needing any special services or environment, whereas the datacentre hardware needs a specialist location and services to ensure it doesn’t overheat or cause the local electricity network to fail.

In this respect, the GN100 and its counterparts represent the more realistic end of the AI wedge, but how useful they can be is dependent on what you are attempting to do, and if this much power is enough for your purposes.

Acer Veriton GN100: AI Reality Check

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

In my prior Asus GX10 coverage, I talked at length about AI, and how there are lots of people making a bet that it is the next big thing, and others who are much more critical of the technology and how it's developing.

I’m not going to rehash the obvious flaws of AI, or the lack of a path to address all of those, but I would strongly recommend researching before starting any AI endeavour and creating expectations that either can’t be met with current technology, or the power in this physically small computer.

What I can say is that recent AI releases have substantially improved over previous generations, but access to these advanced models, like ChatGPT 5.3 Codex and Claude 4.0, is ringfenced for paid subscribers using the Cloud.

Obviously, the beauty of a device like the GN100 is that you can download these models and run them on your own hardware, even if getting the most out of them requires them to be connected to the Internet to source information.

For those interested, running GPT-5.3-Codex on this hardware requires you to install Tailscale and a local inference engine like Ollama, pull the codex to the GN100 using the appropriate commands. Then you can open up an Open WebUI from another system, ideally, and use the model.

For anyone familiar with Linux, none of this is especially taxing. But to make it even easier, the ChatGPT team (or is that the AI?) has made a Codex App that does most of the legwork for you.

If you want to try something else, some models come in pre-prepared Docker Containers that can simply be installed and executed, making deployment remarkably straightforward.

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

When you first power the system up, you are presented with a web interface created for the Nvidia DGX Spark, and install VS Code, the DGX Dashboard with JupyterLab, Open WebUI with Ollama and Comfy UI.

To be clear, this isn’t like a Windows application install. You are given instructions as to the commands you need to execute, which install the tools and libraries that are needed. Those who don’t use Linux every day will find it a challenge, but eventually, even I managed to get almost everything working, at least enough to load models and create some output. Image generation was especially impressive, although some of the deep thinking models aren’t that responsive if you ask them something genuinely challenging.

Some people might assume that because the code for these models is being run locally on the GN100, the cost of a subscriber model should be cheaper. But I’ve not noticed that so far, you just get better performance and save the creators' electricity bill. What running a model on this hardware gives you is that you own the model, it can’t be removed from you, and there is the potential for you control the model, customising it in a specific and personal way.

For those exploring AI in a serious way its necessary to use the latest models, and that often has a cost implication, even if you own the hardware platform.

What you certainly don’t want to do is install some free model from a couple of years ago, and then be disappointed with the results. The steepness of the curve of development on models is extraordinary, and even versions of the best ones from six months ago have been overtaken by the latest releases.

For those working in this area, using modern AI is like trying to get onto a bus when they don’t stop or even slow down to allow passengers on or off. Being aware of where the model of interest is, and when it's been overtaken, is critical to not being completely out of date before the project is completed.

Acer Veriton GN100: Early verdict

(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)

NVIDIA decided to ship its Grace Blackwell technology in an entry-level form and created a blueprint for that in their NVIDIA DGX Spark Personal AI Supercomputer, its partners are delivering their versions, like the Acer Veriton GN100.

Other than the outer case and a few other small choices, it's debatable how much variation we’re likely to see between these machines. It’s not like the GPUs, where the partners get to design variations and even tweak the founders' editions for better performance.

Maybe if these become massively popular, then we might see more variation, like combining two systems in a single box, or blending the technology with DAS storage. But for now, this is where we are.

That said, the Acer version is perfectly serviceable, but when the specifications are so close its mostly about price. For Americans paying $2999 for the GN100, it's probably one of the cheapest options, and for those in Europe, oddly, it's one of the more expensive. Perhaps Acer can fix that for Europeans, but given the rising cost of RAM, it's more likely the USA will have to pay more.

The one weakness of this design is the lack of access to the SSD, and if that’s a deal breaker for you, some other machines do have that capability.

As ever, Acer has delivered a workable solution for demanding computing tasks, but what this brand can’t guarantee is the skills needed to make the most from their platform. Buyers need to appreciate that while the hardware offers more than ten times the AI processing of a high-end PC, making the most of what it can do requires a particular skill set.

For more compact computing, see our guide to the best mini PCs you can buy

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro: one-minute review

I've had a busy time reviewing Viltrox lenses this year – including a range of primes such as the cheap and characterful 'body cap' 28mm f/4.5 lens, my dream reportage photography 35mm f/1.2 lens, the buttery bokeh-delivering 135mm f/1.8 LAB and the lightweight 50mm f/2 Air. Now, it's the turn of the AF 85mm F1.4 Pro.

It's designed for full-frame and is currently available for Sony and Nikon cameras only, with no word yet on an L-mount version (Fujifilm's X-mount is APS-C, and there's already an equivalent 56mm F1.2 Pro lens available). It's the first 'Pro' autofocus lens I've tested in Viltrox's range, which also includes the AF 50mm F1.4 and various APS-C lenses, including the 27mm F1.2 and 75mm F1.2 (for Sony E, Fujifilm X and Nikon Z).

In short, it's the classic portrait lens for pro photographers, with upper-body portraits and dreamy animal portraits (think cats and dogs) being its speciality. I also like the focal length for street photography.

Just 15mm in length – Viltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 is a true body-cap lens, with a much faster f/4.5 aperture than other such optics, including the Panasonic 26mm f/8. If you don't mind something a little larger and pricier, there are f/2.8 alternatives (Image credit: Tim Coleman)

In the hand, the Viltrox 85mm F1.4 Pro's rugged build quality is immediately evident – this is a weather-sealed metal lens, with a range of external controls for photo and video work, even if it lacks the digital display found in Viltrox's flagship 'LAB' lenses.

Image quality is top drawer in every regard, too, demonstrating everything you'd hope for in a portrait lens; detail is sharp, bokeh is smooth, lens distortions are minimal. And then comes the mic drop: this lens costs just $589 / £569 / AU$919 – that's a third of the price of Sony's 85mm F1.4 GM II, and almost half the price of Sigma's 85mm f1.4 Art DG DN. It's regularly on sale for less, too.

Surely we can forget these rival lenses then, and save a packet with the Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro instead? Not quite. At 800g and measuring 108.5mm in length, this is a hefty lens that's a fair bit heavier than rivals. If an 85mm f/1.4 lens is your workhorse optic, it could be well worth forking out extra for a lighter alternative.

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro: price and availability

• Available in Sony E and Nikon Z-mount versions
• It costs $598 / £569 / AU$919
• Viltrox regularly discounts its lenses – there's 15% off the AF 85mm F1.4 Pro at the time of writing

Viltrox's 'Pro' series, which includes the 85mm F1.4 lens, sits between its flagship 'LAB' series, and above its lightweight 'EVO' in terms of both price and quality. At $598 / £569 / AU$919, it's not a cheap lens by any means, and is the priciest of a trio of Viltrox 85mm lenses, with an f/1.8 and f/2 EVO also available. That said, the f/1.4 aperture is a better option, especially for pros who work in challenging situations, including indoors and low light.

The lens is currently available in Sony E and Nikon Z versions, but not L-mount or Canon RF (don't expect the latter – Canon has locked Viltrox out. But for reference, Canon's own 85mm F1.4L VCM costs 3x the price of Viltrox's, and for me is very similar).

A fairer comparison for value, then, is against Nikon and Sony's own 85mm lenses, plus lenses from other third parties such as Sigma. Nikon doesn't have a f/1.4 version in its range yet.

Here's how the Sony and Nikon-mount 85mm lenses stack up (spoiler alert – the Viltrox wins on value):

Sony E mount

Nikon Z mount

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro

$598 / £569 / AU$919

$598 / £569 / AU$919

Nikon Z 85mm F1.2 S

N/A

$2,999 / £2,799 / AU$4,749

NIKKOR Z 85mm f/1.8 S

N/A

$849 / £789 / AU$1,399

Sigma 85mm F1.4 DG DN Art

$1,319 / £979 / AU$1,596

N/A

Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM II

$2,049 / £1,799 / AU$2,499

N/A

Sony FE 85mm F1.8

$649 / £499 / AU$949

N/A

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro: specsViltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 specs

Type:

Mid-telephoto prime

Mount:

Sony E, Nikon Z

Sensor:

Full-frame

Focal length:

85mm

Max aperture:

f/1.4

Minimum focus:

0.79m, 0.13x max magnification

Filter size:

77mm

Dimensions:

84.5 x 108.5mm

Weight:

28.2oz / 800g (lens only)

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro: design

• Durable, weather-sealed design, but prone to scratches
• Around 25% heavier than alternatives
• External controls suit photo and video work

Tim ColemanTim ColemanTim ColemanTim Coleman

The Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro's build quality and design are clearly excellent, and remind me of Sony's current standard-focal-length GM lenses – and even more so of Canon's new range of hybrid 'VCM' lenses, which includes a triple-the-price 85mm F1.4L VCM. As mentioned, Viltrox isn't permitted to make Canon RF lenses, but I've used both the Canon RF 85mm F1.4L VCM and Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro, and I'm having a hard time spotting any meaningful differences, besides the Canon lens being 25% lighter.

There's a ridged aperture ring that can be set to clicked or smooth adjustments between aperture values, and which could host a follow-focus mechanism for cinematic manual focusing, equipping the Viltrox 85mm lens well for photo and video work. Elsewhere, there's an AF/MF switch, a custom button, plus a large focus ring – every control is beautifully dampened / smooth in operation.

A rear rubber seal confirms the weather-sealing, and you'll find a USB-C port within the metal rear mount, through which future firmware upgrades can be installed.

Tim ColemanTim Coleman

Viltrox supplies a chunky lens hood which easily screws on and off, while the lens accepts the common 77mm size of threaded filters.

There's a reassuring weight to the metal lens, although it's perhaps a little too weighty for its own good; at 800g it's around 25% heavier than the aforementioned Sony, Sigma and Canon equivalents. Measuring 108mm in length, it's similar in size to the Sony lens but bigger than Sigma's.

Despite its weight, I thought the balance between the Viltrox lens and mid-range Nikon camera, with which I was testing the lens, felt pretty good. I wouldn't want it any heavier or longer, but it just about sits within comfortable limits – and it would be an even better match with chunkier a Nikon Z8.

Over the course of two months with the lens I've managed to look after it, and it still looks pristine. However, I've tested other Viltrox lenses in other scenarios with less care, including the AF 35mm F1.2 LAB which has a similar finish, and they've proved to be prone to scratches. I'm not going to test that theory for the sake of it, but that's my word of warning.

Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro: Performance

• 11-blade rounded aperture with f/1.4 to f/16 range, capable of smooth bokeh
• Speedy and reliable VCM autofocus
• Extremely sharp between f/2 and f/8

Tim ColemanTim ColemanTim ColemanTim ColemanTim Coleman

That big f/1.4 aperture is for sure a major selling point of the lens, especially when you consider that Viltrox already has two 85mm lenses for full-frame cameras in its range: the original 85mm f/1.8 and an 85mm f/2 EVO – the latter is the lightweight and affordable choice.

You can see how chunky the diameter of the lens is in the product gallery above, plus how big the lens aperture is through the range, with a generous 11-blades creating a circular aperture for attractive bokeh.

Like Canon's range of hybrid lenses, the Viltrox 85mm lens employs a Voice Coil Motor (VCM) which drives autofocus, and the result is snappy autofocus – it's quicker in my experience than Viltrox's pricier 135mm f/1.8 LAB.

Focusing is internal, meaning the lens size remains unchanged as it focuses, and that there are 'floating' lens elements inside. That means there's an unsettling rattling noise when moving the lens when it's not on the camera, or when the camera is not turned on. There's nothing to worry about here – that's totally normal, and it's the same with all such lenses. Those elements 'lock', and are ready to go for focusing when paired with a camera that's turned on.

f/1.4Tim Colemanf/1.8Tim Colemanf/2Tim Colemanf/4Tim Colemanf/1.4Tim Colemanf/1.8Tim Colemanf/2Tim Colemanf/2.8Tim Colemanf/4.5Tim Coleman

Image quality impresses, truly. Detail is incredibly sharp, especially between f/2 and f/8, where lens distortion is also pretty much non-existent. Open the lens to f/1.4 and there's vignetting (darkening in the corners), but that's gone by somewhere between f/2 and f/2.8.

An 85mm f/1.4 lens is a good option for product photography – I used it for my Instax Mini Evo Cinema shotsTim ColemanAnd of course it's a top choice for portraiture, especially head and shoulder shotsTim ColemanI can't take credit for this photo – unlike the previous self portraits where I've shot remotely through Nikon's app, my son took this one of me with my daughter on a hikeTim ColemanIt's also a decent option for animal portraits!Tim ColemanTim ColemanTim ColemanThe f/1.4 aperture lets in plenty of light, which makes the lens a great choice for low light / indoor shotsTim ColemanTim Coleman

Only in the most extreme scenarios, and with all lens corrections turned off, have I seen chromatic aberrations in my photos. One example was an image that included dew drops on a backlit cobweb.

Bokeh is super-smooth. Provided you're relatively close to your subject and shooting between f/1.4 and f/2.8, you'll typically get smooth and big bokeh that's rounded in shape – no ugly onion-ring effect in sight.

Increase focus distance and, as bokeh consequently gets smaller, it can go a little cats-eye in shape. Overall, however, bokeh looks lovely, and is a real reason to opt for this 85mm lens over Viltrox's other offerings.

At f/5, detail is staggeringly sharp across the entire frameTim ColemanAgain, f/5.6 delivers crisp detail, and with the compression effect of the mid telephoto focal length, the background can still be blurred here for decent subject separationTim ColemanI opted for f/1.4 here for a dreamy effectTim ColemanOne big strike against the lens is its limiting minimum focus distance. I wish I could get closer to subjects like this fungiTim ColemanThe out of focus dew drops in this photo exhibit a little chromatic aberration distortion, but I'd expect that from such a subject, and with lens corrections turned off.Tim Coleman

As is the case with other 85mm f/1.4 full-frame lenses, macro photography is not the Viltrox lens's forte. Minimum focus distance is 0.79m, making for a modest 0.13x maximum magnification. To be clear, the Sony and Sigma alternatives are no better.

Close focusing beyond the lens's capabilities is hardly the regular concern of a portrait photographer, but for me I like mixing up what I photograph, and would appreciate more versatile close focusing – it would make for a more complete lens.

Should you buy the Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro?

(Image credit: Tim Coleman)Buy it if...

You specialize in portraiture
Upper-body portraits, animal portraits – if these are your thing, you'll want to pick up a pro lens like this.

You're a pro on a budget
You'll get similar performance from this lens to what you'll get from much pricier alternatives.

Don't buy it if...

You regularly shoot long and demanding portrait sessions
If portrait photography is your full-time job, it could be worth stretching your budget to a pricier but lighter alternative (Sony users in particular).

You'd like a versatile prime
With modest close-focusing, the 85mm lens is fairly niche – it works well for portraiture and street / documentary photography, but not a great deal else.

How I tested the Viltrox AF 85mm F1.4 Pro

(Image credit: Tim Coleman)

• Viltrox loaned me a Z-mount version of the lens
• I paired it with my full-frame Nikon Z6 II
• My review period spanned two months, and I used the lens in a range of scenarios

Viltrox sent me a Z-mount version of the lens at the back end of 2025, which has given me plenty of opportunity to test it out in various scenarios with my Nikon Z6 II full-frame mirrorless camera (but not with an APS-C body).

I set up my Z6 II for the lens, including the various subject-detection autofocus modes (Auto area, with specific subject detection based on what I was shooting).

I used it indoors and outdoors, in good light and bad, and I shot sequences of the same photos through the aperture range in order to check for lens distortion, sharpness, bokeh and so on.

First reviewed February 2026

V-Copter Falcon Mini: one-minute review

From ZeroZero Robotics, the drone company responsible for the impressive HoverAir X1 Pro and ProMax selfie drones, comes another interesting model: the V-Copter Falcon Mini. This is a sub-250g version of the V-Copter Falcon, which was released in 2020 and weighed 26.8oz / 760g. The original Falcon was admired for its unique design, and gained a cult following, but it never quite made it into the mainstream.

With the launch of the more regulator-friendly sub-250g Falcon Mini, with availability on Amazon on the horizon, it looks like this new model has greater potential than its predecessor. You may be wondering what makes these drones interesting, and it’s the simple fact that they’re bi-copters rather than quadcopters, so they only have two motors and two sets of rotors, rather than the standard four.

The advantage here is that the Falcon Mini is extremely agile and quiet compared to standard quadcopters. You can even install the propellers upside down to fly the drone upside down in Reverse Flight mode, which is a bit gimmicky, but is possible due to the rotors having tilt mechanisms that help to keep the drone steady in a hover and during flight.

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This is a drone that’s more about flight than image capture, in my opinion. Sure, the Falcon Mini has a camera, and can capture up to 4K 30fps video and shoot 12MP JPEGs, but the camera is completely automatic. With no manual control, not even exposure adjustments, you're beholden to how the camera’s light meter responds to what’s in front of it. So, nipping around upright and in Reverse Flight mode are the order of the day.

(Image credit: James Abbott)V-Copter Falcon Mini: price and release date

• Available at Amazon US by the end of February 2026
• European launch by the end of March 2026
• Standard kit and Fly More Combo available

The Falcon Mini will officially launch at the end of February 2026, after a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo raised $519,461 from 1,338 backers. The drone will be available at Amazon US at this time, with two kits available: Standard and the Fly More Combo.

The Standard kit will cost $379 in the US, while ZeroZero Robotics says the European launch will follow by the end of March, with a retail price of £379. The Fly More Combo will cost $399 / £399, respectively.

The Standard kit is the single-battery option, while the Fly More Combo includes a couple of extra batteries, a two-battery charging hub and a carry bag. This option, as with all drones, is going to be the best option for most people because of value, and the simple fact that more batteries increase flight times.

I'll update this page with links for purchase once the product is available to buy.

• Price score: 3/5

V-Copter Falcon Mini: specsV-Copter Falcon Mini specs

Camera:

12MP 1/2.3-inch CMOS

Video resolution:

4K

Frame rates:

4K 30fps / 2.7K up to 50fps / 1080p 50fps

Video transmission range:

Up to 1.5 miles

Flight modes:

Normal, Sport, Turbo

Battery:

2330mAh; up to 34 minutes flight time

Charger type:

USB-C / battery charging hub

Weight:

8.78oz / 249g

Dimensions:

Folded: 7.24 x 3.74 x 2.36 inches / 183.9 x 95 x 59.9mm

Unfolded 5.91 x 8.98 x 5.12 inches / 150.1 x 228.1 x 130mm

V-Copter Falcon Mini: Design

• Unique bi-copter design
• Folding propeller arms
• Tilting rotors

The one thing you cannot get away from is the Falcon Mini's unique design: it’s a bi-copter rather than a quadcopter, like we’re used to. Not only does this drastically change the way the drone looks, but it also makes the Falcon Mini surprisingly quiet in flight when compared to quadcopters. To compensate for having just two rotors, there are proprietary tilt-rotor controls and twin servo motors that precisely adjust the angles of the propellers to create balance and stability during flight. These also allow for fast acceleration by tilting the propellers.

Moving back to the basic design, as the name suggests, the V-Copter Falcon Mini creates a unique V shape in the sky. At certain angles, only having two propeller arms makes it tricky to see in the sky because it's such a compact drone.

Folded, the Falcon Mini is just 7.24 x 3.74 x 2.36 inches / 183.9 x 95 x 59.9mm, and it extends to 5.91 x 8.98 x 5.12 inches / 150.1 x 228.1 x 130mm when unfolded, with a weight of 8.78oz / 249g. You can buy the Falcon Mini in two colors: Matte Black and Canary Yellow.

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If you opt for the Fly More Combo you’ll benefit from a two-battery charging hub. This is, of course, much quicker for charging batteries than doing it individually in the drone. However, it’s strange that ZeroZero opted for just two battery slots when the Fly More Combo includes three batteries.

ZeroZero claims that the 2330mAh batteries provide up to 34 minutes of flight time, but during testing this was much shorter in real-world flying conditions. Flight times were around 20 minutes until batteries reached 20% and indicated that performance had been limited, and that the drone should be landed. Battery testing took place on a mild winter day in temperatures of around 50F / 10C, so battery life should improve slightly during warmer months, although I can't see that it would ever reach 34 minutes.

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The controller is simply designed and looks quite minimalist, although you have all the direct-access controls you need, including standard control sticks, a Return to Home/Stop button, a flight mode button, a photo button and a video button.

The phone holder folds back and stows away alongside the control sticks, and it’s rotated over to the front to hold your phone above the control sticks for use. With the vertical mode switched on, rotating your phone to portrait orientation sets the Falcon Mini to capture upright photos and videos.

• Design score: 4/5

V-Copter Falcon Mini: Features and performance

• Three flight speeds
• Reverse flight (upside-down)
• Agile flight

The Falcon Mini flies just like a standard quadcopter, although it’s considerably quieter. ZeroZero claims that it’s 50% quieter than a quadcopter, which makes sense since it has 50% the propellers and motors. Noise has been measured to be 62 decibels at two meters by ZeroZero, and it’s fair to say that the drone is noticeably quieter than the many quadcopters I've flown.

Flight, as previously mentioned, doesn’t feel dramatically different to a quadcopter despite only having two rotors. To compensate for less motors, the rotors tilt forward to boost airflow and generate thrust, with each rotor moving independently to allow for sharper turns. This, combined with the tilting rotors, does mean that the Falcon Mini can accelerate quickly when in its faster flight modes.

Normal mode allows for speeds of up to 8.9mph, Sport up to 26.8mph and Turbo up to 35.8mph. Sport is the mode that you’ll probably use the most, since it’s like Normal on other drones. Normal and Sport are accessed using a button on the controller, while Turbo is accessed via the V-Copter app. This option sits alongside Orbit and Zoom Out automated flight modes and the Reverse Flight Mode. Reverse Flight enables you to fly the Falcon Mini upside down, where it looks like it’s skating in mid-air rather than simply flying.

To do this, you have to refit the propellers upside down and use the Reverse Flight Kit, which is a plastic bracket that locks the propeller arms in their extended/unfolded position. Reverse Flight makes the drone even more agile in some respects, and with the propellers facing down you have to use hand take-offs and landings, which isn’t as bad as it sounds because you can grab the drone's airframe with your fingers, well away from the propellers.

For Reverse Flight, you’ll definitely need to be outside in an open area to reduce the risk of crashing. When you’re indoors, due to the lack of GPS signal the Falcon Mini goes into an indoor flight mode, in which the drone flies slower and is less responsive. It’s useful, but this isn’t the type of drone you’d typically want to fly indoors, unlike the HoverAir X1 Pro/ProMax with their built-in propeller guards.

Video transmission is 1.5 miles, which suggests the signal isn’t as strong as drones that offer transmission over six miles or more. What I did find during testing is that even when flying the Falcon Mini just a few hundred meters away from me in open space, I did occasionally receive low-signal warnings, and there was sometimes a lag in the camera view on the app screen.

Flight seems to be where the Falcon Mini Excels, thanks to its fast acceleration and agility. Plus, let’s not forget Reverse Flight, which is a bit of a gimmick, but it is unique and takes advantage of the drone’s innovative design. For me, this drone is about as fun as you can get with a camera drone in terms of flight, before you have to move on to FPV drones like the DJI Avata 2 to enjoy the most thrilling flights.

• Performance score: 4/5

V-Copter Falcon Mini: Image and video quality

• Fully automatic camera
• Up to 4K 30fps video
• Photos captured in JPEG only

(Image credit: James Abbott)

The Falcon Mini certainly sits within the camera drone category, and surprisingly comes with an extremely basic camera; this is what makes me think that this is a drone designed more for fun and flying than it is for image creation. The camera features a 12MP 1/2.3-inch CMOS sensor, which appears to be the same spec as the original V-Copter, but it could be a different, newer sensor.

This can capture video in 4K at 30fps, 2.7K up to 50fps and 1080p at 50fps, while vertical video is captured in 2.7K at 30fps. Photos can only be captured in JPEG format, which is a shame because raw files provide more editing flexibility. You capture photos in landscape and portrait format.

V-Copter Falcon Mini video

The camera is fully automatic – you just aim the camera and shoot – so it’s easy to use, but this does mean you have no control over exposure at all. It’s best to shoot with the sun behind the drone to avoid overexposure or underexposure, which does limit creativity somewhat.

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Vertical shooting can be initiated by rotating the camera holder on the controller to portrait orientation. This is cropped vertical rather than natively captured vertical, as on the DJI Mini 5 Pro, but it’s still useful for capturing social media-ready footage. You simply have to activate the feature in the app menu, and it appears to use your phone’s accelerometer rather than the position of the phone holder.

Despite having only 50% of the rotors of ‘standard’ camera drones, the Falcon Mini’s 3-axis mechanical gimbal keeps footage smooth and lets you adjust the camera's angle depending on what you’re shooting, as with most drones.

There’s also a Night Mode for shooting at Night which, in a nutshell, optimizes the automatic camera for night capture. It works well, and I found most photos and videos captured at night to be satisfactory, but you can see heavy image processing in both cases, and the results are far from professional quality.

• Image and video quality score: 3/5

V-Copter Falcon Mini: testing scorecardDJI Mini 5 Pro

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Price

The drone isn't expensive, but it should be cheaper than the direct competition.

3/5

Design

The design is undoubtedly unique, and works surprisingly well.

4/5

Performance

The Falcon Mini Flies well, and has the Reverse Flight mode trick up its sleeve.

4/5

Image and video quality

Image quality and camera functionality are what let this fun-to-fly drone down.

3/5

Should I buy the V-Copter Falcon Mini?Buy it if...

You'd like fun-to-fly drone
The Falcon mini is more about fun flight than it is for quality image capture – if you like to smile as you fly, this is about as fun as you can have outside of FPV drones.

You don’t need the best image capture
If you’d like a camera that can capture 4K video and photos with a fully automatic and worry-free camera, that's what you get with the Falcon Mini.

You want to turn heads
Being a bi-copter alone is enough to turn heads, but you’ll definitely do it with Reverse Flight, which enables you to fly upside down.

Don't buy it if...

You’d like obstacle avoidance
The Falcon Mini, like most sub-250g drones, doesn’t offer obstacle avoidance, so you have to take greater care when flying close to obstacles.

You want great image quality
If you're looking for the best image quality currently available in a sub-250g camera drone, the DJI Mini 5 Pro is your best bet by a long shot.

You'd prefer more features
The Falcon Mini is unique in its design and can even be flown upside down, but beyond this, its features are basic compared to those of some other mini drones.

V-Copter Falcon Mini: also consider

DJI Neo 2

The DJI Neo 2 is a selfie drone that can also be flown like a camera drone and an FPV drone with the required accessories. It offers obstacle avoidance, which is useful when flying the Neo like a camera drone or as a selfie drone. Video can be captured up to 4K, while photos can be captured in JPEG format, all for an impressively affordable price.

See our DJI Neo 2 reviewView Deal

DJI Mini 5 Pro

If you’d like a camera drone that's the best sub-250g model available, the DJI Mini 5 Pro is what you’re looking for. This impressive drone features a rotating camera with a 1-inch sensor and impressive image quality and features. This is a drone that’s perfect for beginners and professionals alike, thanks to its great image quality, safety features, build quality and more.

See our DJI Mini 5 Pro reviewView Deal

(Image credit: James Abbott)How I tested the V-Copter Falcon Mini

• I tested the drone over a period of several weeks
• I tested all of its features, including image and video capture
• I assessed flight performance in its various modes

I tested the V-Copter Falcon Mini over several weeks, trying out all of the features and functionality, including Reverse Flight (upside-down flight). The drone was used in the same way as other camera drones to assess both flight performance and camera performance. The Falcon Mini was flown through a range of maneuvers to see how smooth and stable flight is with just two sets of rotors.

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

Shopify is one of the most dominant ecommerce platforms globally, powering millions of online stores. The platform has evolved significantly in 2026 with its AI design tools and a revamped pricing structure.

We rigorously test the best ecommerce platforms across many criteria. All together, our reviewers have hands-on experience with more than 80 of the best website builders.

Read my full Shopify review to see why I still rate it as the best website builder for online stores.

Shopify pricing and plans

Shopify's pricing strikes me as reasonable for what you get, though the value proposition varies significantly across tiers. I appreciate the 25% discount when paying annually, but the jump between plans feels steep. Transaction fees on third-party payment processors can also eat into margins, especially on the lower tiers.

Plan

$/mo (paid monthly)

$/mo (paid annually)

Basic

$39

$29

Grow

$105

$79

Advanced

$399

$299

Plus

$2,300+

$2,300+

Pricing last verified: 13/02/2026

Shopify plans: Explained

Best for solo entrepreneurs
Starting at: $29/mo

The Basic plan gives you everything needed to launch your first store . You get 10 inventory locations, 24/7 chat support, and up to 77% shipping discounts .

However, you won't get any staff accounts, which surprised me.​View Deal

Best for small teams
Starting at: $79/mo

I found the Grow plan offers the sweet spot for growing businesses. You get 5 staff accounts, better transaction rates (2.7% + 30¢), and enhanced shipping discounts up to 88%.

The lower transaction fees on third-party processors (1% vs 2%) make a real difference.​View Deal

Best for scaling operations
Starting at $299/mo

The Advanced plan targets businesses hitting capacity limits on Grow. You get 15 staff accounts, 10x checkout capacity, and third-party calculated shipping rates.

The price jump feels justified only when you're consistently bumping against Grow's limitations.​View Deal

Best for enterprise businesses
Starting at $2,300+/mo

Shopify Plus starts at $2,300/month on a 3-year commitment . You get 200 inventory locations, unlimited staff accounts, fully customizable checkout, and B2B capabilities.

I'd only recommend this for businesses exceeding $5 million in monthly revenue.​View Deal

Getting started with Shopify: Reviewer's experience

Step 1: Onboarding

You can pick from an email, Google, Apple, or Facebook login. (Image credit: Shopify)

Creating my Shopify account took less than two minutes. I entered my email, created a password, and chose a store name. This launched a Setup guide that guided me through initial configurations.

It asked about my business goals upfront, which helped tailor subsequent recommendations.​

Step 2: Store dashboard

Shopify's dashboard utilizes plenty of white space, making it simple to navigate. (Image credit: Shopify)

Everything felt logically organized with clear navigation paths in the dashboard. The left sidebar grouped related functions together, with options like Products, Orders, Customers, and Analytics.

I never felt lost during my testing, which speaks volumes about the interface design.​

Step 3: Adding products

Uploading products is a breeze. For bulk uploading you can use a CSV file, saving you a bunch of time. (Image credit: Shopify)

Setting up my first product took about five minutes.

The product creation form included all necessary fields with tooltips explaining each option. I could add multiple images, set inventory levels, and configure variants among other things.

Step 4: Themes, design, and customization

Shopify comes with plenty of free themes, but serious stores may want to opt for a paid theme to get that premium look. These cost in the region of $140 to $500. (Image credit: Shopify)

Choosing and customizing a theme was straightforward because I wasn't looking to build anything fancy. Shopify's Theme Store offers both free and premium options.

I selected the free Horizon theme and launched into the theme editor. It let me rearrange sections, change colors, and upload my logo without touching code.​

Step 5: AI content generator

Shopify's AI helper 'Sidekick' can help you create new pages and content with just a short prompt. (Image credit: Shopify)

Then, I tested the AI layout builder by describing a product page I wanted. Within seconds, Shopify generated a complete layout that I could customize further. The AI content generator helped me draft product descriptions quickly, though the output needed refining.​

Shopify's business tools

Shopify offers the following business tools:

• Point of Sale (POS) system​
• Inventory management and tracking​
• Order processing and fulfilment​
• Payment processing via Shopify Payments​
• Multi-location warehouse management​
• Tax and duty calculator

Shopify's business toolkit is vast yet practical. I found most essentials built right in, but for everything that isn't, you have third-party apps.​

Read more about Shopify's business tools ▼

Point Of Sale (POS) system

Shopify makes it easy to integrate online and in person sales with its POS system. (Image credit: Shopify)

Setting up Shopify POS on an iPad takes about 10 minutes.

According to Shopify, POS sales grew 31% year-over-year globally over the most recent Black Friday, leading to the platform launching a host of new POS features in early 2025.

The interface syncs up with your online inventory, centralizing all data. However, the POS Lite plan feels limited. You don't get detailed reports or staff permissions. POS Pro costs $89/month per location.

Inventory management

Inventory management is crucial to online store success, especially for those with multiple locations or a large volume of products. Shopify's built in inventory management tool can help with this. (Image credit: Shopify)

The inventory system tracks stock across multiple locations in real-time. I could monitor 10 locations on the Basic plan, which seems generous. The interface shows stock levels clearly with color-coded alerts.​

If I sold a product through POS, my online storefront would update instantly. However, advanced forecasting requires either the Stocky app or third-party solutions.​

Order processing and fulfilment

Order processing is straight forward on Shopify, reducing potential stress and saving time on fulfilment. (Image credit: Shopify)

Processing felt snappy throughout my testing. Shopify’s dashboard displays orders chronologically with clear status indicators. I could fulfill orders, print shipping labels, and send tracking info without leaving the platform.​

Shopify's pre-negotiated carrier rates claim it saves up to 77% on shipping. Label printing works smoothly with both desktop and mobile. But carrier-calculated rates at checkout cost extra on Basic.​

One downside to Shopify's order management is the limited ability it offers when it comes to editing orders. For example, if a customer asks to swap products after the order has been placed, change their payment method, or edit a 'fulfilled' order, you cannot. Often this means orders need to be cancelled and placed again, adding unneeded work to often busy online store owners plates.

Shopify Payments

Alongside its own dedicated Shopify Payments option, you can pick from over 100 payment providers, helping you offer customers easier ways to pay. (Image credit: Shopify)

Setting up Shopify Payments took less than five minutes. It supports credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay.

I'd recommend sticking with Shopify Payments unless you have specific needs.​ Transaction fees are competitive: 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic. But using third-party processors adds 2% extra, which quickly eats profits.

Multi-location warehouse management

Businesses with multiple locations can benefit from this dedicated tool, helping better manage stock and reduce friction. (Image credit: Shopify)

I set up three test warehouses and assigned inventory to each.

Shopify automatically routes orders to optimal locations based on proximity.​ Stock transfers between locations happen through a simple interface. However, automated transfer recommendations require third-party apps.

Tax and duty calculator

For online stores managing tax is dull, time consuming, but essential. This tool can take a lot of the leg work, minimizing the time you spend on calculating tax. (Image credit: Shopify)

Shopify's tax calculator now works across all plans. I tested international orders and found the duty calculations accurate. The system displays full costs at checkout, preventing surprise fees for customers.​

One caveat: Shopify charges a 0.5% transaction fee when duties are calculated. You'll also need duty-prepaid labels from third parties to avoid double-charging customers.​

Shopify's marketing tools

Shopify offers the following marketing tools:

• Email marketing via Shopify Email​
• Abandoned cart recovery​
• SEO optimization tools​
• Social media integration​
• Discount and coupon creation​
• Marketing automation with Shopify Flow​
• Analytics and reporting

Shopify's marketing features cover the basics well. I appreciated the email, workflow automation, and SEO tools. But advanced automation requires add-ons, which was a bit disappointing.​

Read more about Shopify's marketing tools ▼

Shopify Email

Built in email marketing can help you re-engage potential customers, bringing them back to your site and driving sales. (Image credit: Shopify)

Shopify Email integrates into your admin panel. I created my first campaign in 15 minutes using pre-built templates. The editor lets you drag product images straight from your catalog.​

You get 10,000 free emails monthly, which helps small businesses. Beyond that, it's $1 per 1,000 emails sent. The segmentation options felt basic compared to Klaviyo, but adequate for simple campaigns.​ ​

Abandoned cart recovery

Abandoned carts offer a prime opportunity to close a sale. (Image credit: Shopify)

Abandoned cart emails work automatically once enabled.

I set mine to send 10 hours after checkout abandonment. The system includes the cart contents and a direct checkout link.​ Setup took less than five minutes. I also liked how Shopify checks for email consent before sending to avoid compliance issues.

SEO tools

Optimizing your site and product pages for search engines is essential in helping customers find you, but can also take up a lot of time. Shopify's built in SEO tools can help speed this process up. (Image credit: Shopify)

The built-in SEO features cover fundamentals well. I could edit meta titles, descriptions, and URLs for each product. It also generates a sitemap automatically and submits it to Google.​

However, I noticed some limitations during testing. URL structures aren't fully customizable, which bothered me. Duplicate content issues can occur with product variants.​ Blog functionality also feels basic. Advanced SEO work requires apps like Booster SEO or TinyIMG.​

Social media integration

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram help you sell your products in spaces where your customers are already active. Shopify lets you easily sell via these on one central platform. (Image credit: Shopify)

Connecting Facebook and Instagram took about three minutes. I synced my product catalog and created shoppable posts directly from Shopify.

Orders from social platforms flow into the same dashboard as web orders.​ The integration supports TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube Shopping too. But what I missed was native social media scheduling.

Discount and coupon creation

Discounts and coupons can drastically increase sales. However, monitoring and managing them can be tricky. This is where Shopify's dedicated discount tool comes in handy. (Image credit: Shopify)

Creating discounts felt straightforward throughout my testing. I set up percentage discounts, fixed amounts, free shipping, and buy-one-get-one offers. The interface also lets you set start/end dates and usage limits.​

You can also create unique codes for specific customers or campaigns. But advanced features like tiered discounts require apps. The native system handles basics well but won't satisfy complex promotional strategies.​

Shopify Flow

Shopify Flow takes some time to set up and master, but can automate many repetitive tasks, saving considerable resources in the long run. (Image credit: Shopify)

Shopify Flow was a pleasant surprise for a native automation tool.

I created workflows that trigger based on inventory levels, customer tags, and order values. I set up a workflow that notified me via Slack when inventory dropped below 20 units. It then automatically drafted a purchase order and offered to email my supplier. However, mastering it requires time.

Analytics and reporting

Shopify's analytics give excellent insight into what is and isn't working. Use the data here to shape your strategy for products, marketing, and website improvements. (Image credit: Shopify)

The analytics dashboard provides a clear sales overview.

I could track revenue, traffic sources, and customer behavior at a glance. The real-time data updates helped me make quick decisions during testing.​ Basic reporting felt adequate, but advanced reports like customer cohorts and forecasting lock behind higher tiers.

Reviewer's experience: Shopify support

Shopify support is comprehensive, but can be a little slow. Our testing found support agents to be knowledgeable enough to answer basic questions, although help for more advanced issues needed to be escalated. (Image credit: Shopify)

Shopify offers 24/7 support via live chat across all plans. Phone support is reserved for Shopify Plus customers. Email responses typically take 2-4 days.​

I tested the live chat during my review. The initial wait time was about 14 minutes, despite a 5-minute estimate. Once connected, the agent was polite and helpful, though responses felt somewhat scripted. They resolved my basic question about inventory management but couldn't address a more technical theme-related issue without escalation.​

That said, user opinion on support is decidedly mixed.

On Capterra, Shopify scores 4.5/5 from over 6,500 reviews, with many praising ease of use. G2 shows a similar 4.4/5 rating from nearly 4,500 business users. However, Trustpilot tells a different story with a 1.3/5 rating from over 4,000 reviews.

Common complaints include billing disputes, payment holds, and difficulty reaching knowledgeable support staff. Reddit users frequently mention that support quality has declined, with offshore teams providing inconsistent answers and reluctance to escalate issues.​

Test results: Shopify

Attribute

Notes

Rating

Value for money

Solid pricing for what you get, but app costs add up quickly. Third-party payment fees hurt margins. Similar entry-level price to other website builder ecommerce plans.

★★★★☆

Ease of use

Intuitive dashboard and setup process. Minimal learning curve for beginners.

★★★★★

Design

Professional themes with decent customization. Limited free options require premium purchases.

★★★★☆

Business tools

Comprehensive POS, inventory, and payment systems. Advanced features need higher plans.

★★★★☆

Marketing tools

Covers basics well but lacks depth. Advanced automation requires third-party solutions.

★★★☆☆

Support

24/7 chat available, but wait times vary. Quality inconsistent based on user feedback.

★★★☆☆

Competitor comparison: Shopify

Below we show you how Shopify compares to BigCommerce and Wix, two of its closest competitors:

Platform

Best for

Our overall rating

Free plan

Paid plans start at

Ease of use

Support

Shopify

Growing online stores

★★★★☆

Trial only

$29.00 USD/month

★★★★☆

Live chat, email, community

BigCommerce

Large product catalogs

★★★★☆

Trial only

$29.00 USD/month

★★★★☆

Live chat, phone, email

Wix

Beginners and hobbyists

★★★★½

Yes

$17.00 USD/month

★★★★★

Live chat, phone, tickets

You can read our Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison to learn more about how the two stack up. To see how it compares to Wix you can check out our Wix vs Shopify guide.

Other options can also be found in our guide to Shopify alternatives.

How we tested Shopify

I built multiple test stores on Shopify to evaluate every aspect of the platform. My hands-on testing covered setup speed, design flexibility, business tools, marketing capabilities, and support quality. I assessed how well Shopify performs for different user types, from solo entrepreneurs to scaling businesses.​

At TechRadar, we conduct thorough, real-world testing of every website builder we review. We build actual websites, test features extensively, and compare our findings against marketing claims.

You can read our full guide to how we test website builders to learn more.

Shopify review: FAQsIs Shopify good for beginners?

Yes, Shopify is accessible for beginners, though simpler platforms exist.

You get an intuitive dashboard, guided setup wizard, and drag-and-drop design tools. You don't need coding knowledge to launch a professional store. AI-powered features help generate layouts and content quickly.

However, costs can escalate as you add apps and upgrade plans.​

How much does Shopify really cost?

Shopify starts at $29/month when paid annually. However, total costs vary significantly based on your needs.

You'll face transaction fees (2.7% + 30¢ on Basic), app subscriptions, and potentially theme purchases. Third-party payment processors add extra 2% fees. Budget $50-150/month realistically for a functional store with essential apps.​

Can I sell on Shopify without inventory?

Yes, Shopify supports dropshipping and print-on-demand business models.

You can connect with suppliers through apps like DSers, Printful, or Spocket. Digital product sales work seamlessly too.

The platform handles order routing to suppliers automatically. This eliminates upfront inventory costs and storage concerns.​

Does Shopify take a percentage of sales?

Yes, if you use third-party payment processors, Shopify charges 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, and 0.6% on Advanced.

Using Shopify Payments eliminates these fees. Standard credit card rates apply: 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, and 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced. The duty calculator adds 0.5% when calculating international taxes.​

What are Shopify's biggest limitations?

Shopify's main limitations include limited free themes, restrictive URL structures, and plan-locked features. Basic plans restrict staff accounts severely. Advanced customization requires liquid coding knowledge.

Transaction fees on third-party processors hurt margins. App costs accumulate quickly, inflating monthly expenses beyond base subscription rates.​

Is Shopify good for agencies?

Yes, Shopify is one of the best website builders for agencies.

Its robust ecommerce platform offers a wide range of features and customization options, making it suitable for building and managing online stores for clients. Additionally, Shopify's partner program provides agencies with resources and tools to streamline client management and boost their businesses.

Editor's note

Hostinger recently announced that the Zyro website builder is now fully integrated with Hostinger. This integration sees Zyro's user-friendly website building tools and features combined with Hostinger's leading web hosting solutions.

Although all sales and services of Zyro are now discontinued, Zyro clients can continue to manage, edit, and grow their site with the Hostinger website builder.

Hostinger Website Builder is a strong cloud-hosted no-code platform for those looking for an affordable website creation tool.

After testing it against many competitors in our best website builder guide, we found it to be a great value, offering an all-in-one solution similar to Wix or Squarespace, but at a more affordable monthly price.

Plans start at just $2.99/mo (intro rate), well below the entry points of most competing solutions.

We have spent thousands of hours testing over 140 website building platforms, giving us insight into how each platform stacks up against the rest of the market. While Hostinger doesn't fully match the feature set of Wix — our top pick for 2026, it still provides an impressive range of tools at a lower cost.

Read our full Hostinger Website Builder review below to find out how its beginner-friendly UI, AI-driven website creation, and strong ecommerce features make it ideal for both businesses and freelancers. We especially liked the unlimited web pages, free domain registration, and SSL certificates included with all plans, offering great value for budget-conscious users.

Hostinger Website Builder: 2-minute review

Our testing of Hostinger Website Builder shows it is a strong yet affordable choice. The platform stands out with its drag-and-drop editor and AI tools, making it easy for beginners. Plans start at just $2.49/month with our exclusive discount code. This offers great value compared to other website builders.

Hostinger Website Builder is included in all Hostinger web hosting plans, which also include a free domain for a year, 100 email addresses, and SSL certificates for user safety. You can also purchase it as a standalone for $2.99-$3.99 per month.

We found the platform ideal for small businesses, freelancers, and personal sites. It offers over 170 responsive templates across various categories, making it simple to create professional-looking sites fast. While it may not have the extensive features of premium competitors like Wix, Hostinger provides impressive capabilities at a lower cost.

However, there are some limitations. There’s no free plan to test, and you can’t switch templates without starting over. The platform lacks an app marketplace for extra functionality, and many advanced AI tools are only available in the higher-tier plan.

What is Hostinger Website Builder?

Hostinger Website Builder is a user-friendly tool. It allows you to create websites without coding or design skills. Think of it as digital building blocks that you can drag and drop. Unlike complex platforms, Hostinger's builder focuses on simplicity. It uses customizable templates as starting points for your site.

The builder has two main toolbars. They contain everything needed to design and manage your website. You can easily add text, images, buttons, and other elements with simple clicks. For a quicker start, Hostinger offers an AI option. It can generate a website for you in just 2-3 minutes based on your preferences.

What makes Hostinger great for beginners is that it includes everything in one package. You get website building tools, hosting, and even a free domain name. This all-in-one approach removes the technical challenges of connecting different services. Plus, the editor works smoothly on mobile devices. You can update your site from anywhere.

Features

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

Hostinger Website Builder is a terrific tool for creating personal blogs, professional sites, and online stores without special technical skills. The core of the process is choosing a template and customizing it until you like it. Thanks to Hostinger’s easy-to-use editor this will be an easygoing experience. However, there’s one catch with this - once you choose a template, you can’t switch it without starting all over, and doing this more than once can become awfully annoying awfully quick.

The site builder profits from a clear interface, intuitive layout, and drag-and-drop functionality. The UI is minimalistic, the core options on the left menu are almost self-explanatory, and adding new elements is easy. There are almost no restraints on how can one move content elements around.

Also, its automatically responsive web design can adjust to any screen and look beautiful to boot - computers, tablets, and smartphones alike.

As for ready-made templates, there is a decent amount of them and they are designed to fit different types of sites - online stores, art portfolios, all sorts of blogs, and so on. And if none of them is what you wanted for your site, you can adjust colors, change fonts, and move elements around. Plus, Hostinger provides a royalty-free image library you can browse and borrow any image that catches your eye.

Like with other Hostinger products, its site builder works as an all-in-one sort of solution for creating sites. So, in addition to the site builder and all its tools, the package also includes a domain name registration and a web hosting service with unmetered traffic, and a free SSL certificate. Plus, you can create up to 100 sites and up to 100 domain-based email accounts, if you wish to do so.

If you’re interested in e-commerce features, you’ll be glad to hear that (with the 'Business Website Builder' plan) Hostinger site builder covers all essentials including the ability to accept 20+ payments methods and offering 0% transaction fees.

Tools

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

Since we’ve pretty much covered standard site-building tools (as well as e-commerce tools) in the previous chapter, we’ll now check out the awesome AI-powered tools this builder has to offer.

Hostinger's advanced AI tools makes it one of the best small business website builders — making it quick and easy for those with little time and budget to get their business online.

If you’re eager to create more content for your site, but don’t have enough time for that, you can employ Hostinger’s AI Writer to do the writing for you. To get things started, choose one of the top-level topics (such as “small business”) and then select a topic-specific category (let’s say gaming). Then, choose what part of your site the AI will be creating this piece of writing for (something like the “About” page), and hit the “Generate” button.

While the AI’s scope currently seems somewhat limited, the paragraph you’ll get will be surpassingly readable - and it will save you the time you could spend on something more critical. Plus, AI Writer is now multilingual, which is excellent news for all non-English speakers out there.

Another interesting AI-powered tool is AI Heatmap and it should help you find out what images will your visitors focus on, even before your site is finished. Moreover, it tries to predict in which way the visitors will navigate around your site and what will attract their attention the most. Then, you can organize the elements of your site in a way it attracts the most visitors and maximizes conversion.

Hostinger has also integrated AI in some smart ways to help online sellers. For example, you can use AI to automatically remove the background from images, making it easier than ever to create professional looking product images. You can also use AI to do bulk product uploads from CSV, drastically cutting the time it takes to get new products online.

Other noteworthy tools from Hostinger’s bag of tricks include Logo Maker (as suggested, it creates catchy logos), Site Analytics (it will get you an insight into who visits your site), PageSpeed Insights (a way to test your site’s speed performance), Business Name Generator (it’s self-explanatory), and Slogan Generator (also, self-explanatory).

Hostinger Reach: Email marketing tool

Last year, Hostinger launched Reach, its dedicated email marketing tool. Built for small businesses and creators, Reach leverages AI to turn your descriptions into a professional, mobile-friendly email to send to your marketing lists. It also includes analytics, GDPR compliance, and email deliverability features. It's free to use, but you'll need to upgrade as your list grows.

Hostinger Horizons: Vibe coding

Those looking to build an interactive website or web app should also check out Hostinger's dedicated vibe coding tool, Horizons.

Hostinger Horizons allows freelancers, solopreneurs, and business owners to launch complex projects without needing to write a single line of code. Simply explain what you want to build using natural language and let Horizons do the coding for you.

The platform integrates seamlessly with payment processors such as Stripe. It also keeps everything, including hosting, domains, and professional email, under one roof, removing friction.

User reviews

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

Since its launch in October 2022, Hostinger’s website builder has attracted a modest user base, many of whom have shared their observations and opinions about the product on popular review sites. Some of the sites we’ve closely checked include Trustpilot, HostAdvice, Reviews.io, and TrustRadius.

Since most user reviews are focused on web hosting services, though, we had to get our hands dirty digging through these reviews to find what users think about the new site builder.

Hostinger boasts a 4.7/5 rating on Trustpilot, 4.6/5 on HostAdvice, and 4.7/5 on WPBeginner. But these don't all reflect customer perception of their website builder, since it also includes their hosting services. So we’ve checked the latest user reviews that bring up Hostinger Website Builder to see how it holds up.

On Trustpilot, users have criticized the process of transferring their sites to the new site builder as it was slow, required users to rebuild their sites, and had to wait for a day before the sites appeared on the internet. However, most users found the site builder simple to use, swift, and of big help.

User reviews on HostAdvice paint a similar picture by calling Hostinger Website Builder useful but somewhat slow and lacking in more complex editing options. On Reviews.io no one pointed out the site builder, but the rating of Hostinger’s overall service was a rock-solid 4.4/5.

TrustRadius rated Hostinger with 7.4 out of 10, which is uncharacteristically low compared to other platforms.

But user reviews suggest that most users are pleased with Hostinger’s new website builder overall. Complaints were mostly directed towards its speed and lack of more complex image editing options — but that’s it.

Ease of use

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

The short answer is yes, it is. However, Hostinger Website Builder is not only easy to use but it’s one of the most beginner-friendly site-building tools out there. After all, it was created to address the needs of less tech-savvy Hostinger users.

Building a site with WordPress calls for some technical know-how (or tons of tutorials).

Even if you’re an experienced professional user, a beginner-friendly site builder can help your less-experienced teammates get used to the new tool and speed up the workflow.

The site builder’s drag-and-drop, grid-based editor will make adding text, images, videos, maps, contact forms, and other elements to your site effortless. There’s also an icon that lets you clone the whole section, which can significantly speed up things. And if your site doesn’t turn out exactly as expected, there’s an easy-to-spot “Undo” icon that’ll return your site to its prior state.

And if by a stroke of bad luck, a thunderstorm causes a power outage or you turn off your computer by accident, thanks to Hostinger’s autosaving functionality you won’t lose your cherished content - and this autosaving is activated every couple of seconds.

As mentioned above, Hostinger offers a royalty-free image library, so you can stop worrying about where you’ll find fitting images for your site. While only one image can be uploaded at a time, all of them will be saved in your image library from where you can choose the ones to use, edit, or delete.

To tell the truth, we weren’t exactly impressed with the site builder’s edition options. While the site builder offers more image edition options than the old one, it still isn’t much. You can add/remove backgrounds, resize, crop, and upscale an image, and that's about it.

So, our only complaint about Hostinger Website Builder is that its image editor is a bit too basic. Even so, this tool is probably as user-friendly as one can get.

Pricing

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

Plan

Introductory offer (48 months)

With our exclusive promo code*

Renewal rate

Premium

$2.99/mo

$2.69/mo

$11.99

Business

$3.99/mo

$3.59/mo

$13.99

* You can use the code TECHRADAR at checkout to save 10% off on top of the introductory rate. You can also check out our Hostinger promo codes to find more deals.

Pricing and plans explained

Hostinger Website Builder comes in two package options, making it simple to find a plan that works for you.

Premium Website Builder offers you everything you need to build one website with up to five pages, including an AI website builder, plenty of templates, and a free domain for one year. It starts at $2.99/mo for a 4-year sign-up, but increases to $11.99/mo after that.

More serious users will need the Business Website Builder plan. This unlocks unlimited pages and up to 50 websites, as well as ecommerce features and a bunch of helpful AI tools. This plan starts at $3.99/mo for a 4-year sign-up, then jumps to $13.99/mo after that.

All Hostinger’s web hosting and website builder plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, which means you can try out everything before making a long-term commitment. Hostinger also offers 3 months for free when purchasing 48-month plans. There is no free-forever plan.

As for payment methods, Hostinger accepts all major credit/debit cards, PayPal, Google Pay, AliPay, and Coingate.

So, does Hostinger Website Builder provide good value for money? Yes, particularly if you subscribe for a longer period.

Security

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

With cybercrime on the rise, site owners need to stay very vigilant to keep their sites on the safe side of the internet. A smart place to start is to make sure your service provider is equipped with all the security tools you’ll need to shield your site and its visitors from all sorts of threats. Fortunately for all Hostinger customers, the company takes the security of its products and services very seriously.

For starters, Hostinger provides a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate with all its plans, which adds another layer of security to all data being shared through your site.

With Hostinger you can set up Cloudflare which will conceal all server IP addresses and shield your site against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

All Hostinger’s plans come with weekly backups, which means you can turn back time in case you mess up your site or something goes wrong. If automatic weekly backups aren’t enough for you, you can always go with a business-focused plan and get daily backups instead.

Also, Hostinger supports two-factor authentication (2FA), so you can be sure all your logins are done by you. So, even if someone steals your login credentials, they won’t be able to access your Hostinger account.

Instead of a conclusion, we’ll also add that Hostinger guarantees 99.9% uptime with all its web hosting services, and this is the available uptime per month. If your site suffers more downtime than this, you can contact the customer support staff and request a credit of 5% off your monthly hosting fee for that month.

All in all, Hostinger Website Builder seems like a solid choice in terms of security.

Customer support

(Image credit: Hostinger Website Builder)

With all Hostinger's plans (website builder & web hosting included), customers can rely on round-the-clock live chat, e-mail, and ticket support. However, a telephone line is not available at this time.

Live chat support is probably your best bet out of the direct support channels and you shouldn’t wait for more than a couple of minutes before getting a reply from a support agent.

All do-it-yourself types of users will be thankful for Hostinger's well-supplied Help Center. There, you’ll find both the basic, beginner-oriented web hosting and site-building stuff and tips on mastering marketing and boosting your business strategy. Most how-tos are written in a simple-to-understand way and feature fitting screenshots to boot - so, getting lost is not an option.

However, we suggest browsing through the categories rather than utilizing the search box since it’s astonishingly awful at finding the right articles - strange, it’s usually the other way around.

All things considered, Hostinger hits the marks in all areas when it comes to customer support and it offers more options than most budget-friendly providers.

Alternatives

As a website builder, Hostinger stands out mainly as an affordable and easy-to-use option. It offers good value without confusing users with complex features. We believe it would work best for individuals, freelancers, and small businesses who need a professional-looking website without high costs or a steep learning curve. The platform shines for those creating simple business sites, portfolios, or small online stores with up to 500 products.

Wix is the market leader and our top choice for 2026. It provides more advanced features and design flexibility than Hostinger, but at a much higher price. WordPress offers greater customization and scalability for larger sites, but it can be daunting for beginners. For those focused on ecommerce, Shopify offers specialized selling tools, though at premium prices.

When comparing hosting services that provide website builders, Hostinger competes with Bluehost in the WordPress hosting market. Hostinger has captured a large market share (58.95%) in this area, making it a value leader. For users who want affordability without losing essential features, Hostinger Website Builder is an excellent starting point for building an online presence without the technical challenges of more complex platforms.

Hostinger AI WordPress website builder

Hostinger offers a slightly different version of its website builder for those looking to build their site on the WordPress CMS. Put simply, the Hostinger AI WordPress Website Builder allows users to build a full website template, complete with text and images that will be hosted by Hostinger, but managed via WordPress.

(Image credit: Hostinger)

You start the journey by telling the AI website builder a little about the site you are looking to build, including your brand name, website type, and a description of the website you are looking to create. The website builder then takes that information and uses it to create a website for you.

Of course, like with all AI website builders, you will need to do at least some editing to make your site worthy of representing your brand online, but it does give you a great starting place.

This is a great alternative to WordPress’s built in website builder, Gutenberg. We did a full comparison of the two platforms in our Hostinger AI WordPress website builder vs WordPress.com guide.

Hostinger website builder review: Summary

Hostinger Website Builder is an AI-powered, all-in-one sort of solution aimed at newcomers and less experienced users that plan to create a personal blog, a pretty-looking portfolio, or a small online store.

The templates are beautiful yet simple, the editor is easy to use (but a bit too basic), and the price tag is pretty pocket-friendly. Plus, a free SSL certificate, royalty-free image library, ecommerce features, AI tools, and 24/7 live chat support will only sweeten the deal. It’s one of the best beginner-friendly options out there.

Hostinger Website Builder review: FAQsDoes Hostinger have a free website builder?

While Hostinger provides a free Hostinger Website Builder with all its web hosting plans (even the cheapest one), there isn’t a free edition of this product - nor a free trial for that matter. Besides this, there is a one-and-only site builder plan and it is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Is Hostinger website builder secure?

Yes, Hostinger is considered one of the most secure website builders on the market.

All Hostinger sites come with a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate. The platform also allows you to set up Cloudflare, which can conceal all server IP addresses and protect you against DDoS attaches.

All plans also come with weekly backups, making it easy to jump back in time if anything goes wrong with your site. Alternatively, if you upgrade your plan you can get access to daily backups.

Can I migrate my website to Hostinger’s website builder?

Hostinger website builder offers a tool that allows you to migrate websites directly into its platform. This can be incredibly helpful, but only if you have the original files. However, in many circumstances you will not be able to access what you need to complete a seamless migration.

Other website builders such as Wix and Squarespace will not typically allow you to download your website files, making it impossible to then upload those files onto Hostinger’s website builder.

When our Website Builder Editor, Owain Williams, moved his website from Wix to Hostinger he had to build his site from scratch.

Which is best: Hostinger vs Zyro?

Hostinger Website Builder is an upgraded, feature-rich, AI-powered, rookie-oriented version of Zyro, so we think it’s an improved edition of the site builder. If you were a fan of Zyro, you’ll probably like it as much under the new name.

What payment type does Hostinger Website Builder support?

The online payments platform you can utilize in your online store with Hostinger Website Builder is Stripe and it supports several payment methods. These include all major credit/debit cards (including Visa, Mastercard, and American Express), Apple Pay, Google Pay, Alipay, Afterpay/Clearpay, Bancontact, BLIK, and the list goes on.

We should note that the only payment method available by default is bank cards, while the other methods will have to be enabled. They’re all integrated though.

Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i: One-minute review

The Wharfedale Diamond 12i standmount speakers are the latest in the line of 'Diamond' speakers that has, one way and another, been around since 1982. The most recent (and wildly acclaimed) series, the Diamond 12, launched back in 2020 – so it’s about time the Diamond 12i range made an appearance.

(Obviously not everyone loves a ‘13’ name, and Wharfedale is open enough to acknowledge that this new range of loudspeakers is not a ground-up redesign of the range it’s replacing - so ‘12i’ it is.)

The Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i tested here is a two-way bookshelf (or, more accurately, standmount – I'll come back to this) design that sells for the same £249 that the outgoing Diamond 12.1 launched at – which does, of course, mean it’s less expensive in real terms. It's not a situation that occurs all that often with the sort of hi-fi equipment I deal with. In the US, the new model costs $499, and in Australia it's AU$699.

But if you think Wharfedale has cut corners to get the Diamond 12.1i to market at this very aggressive price, think again. Build quality is more than acceptable. The trio of available finishes look (and even feel) good. Best of all, though, is the way the Diamond 12.1i sound. They’re perfectly OK at lower volumes – but let them loose even just a little and they really come to life, combining insight, balanced, dynamic potency and simple entertainment to periodically thrilling effect.

The specification (with highlights including a 25mm woven polyester tweeter, a 130mm mid/bass driver made from mica-enhanced polypropylene, a carefully tuned rear-facing bass reflex port, and some very judicious cabinet bracing), results in a speaker that’s easy to drive and has a frequency response of 65Hz - 20kHz.

The front baffle of each Wharfedale features the tweeter positioned behind a minimal waveguide – the idea is to expose the driver as much as possible in an effort to achieve wide dispersion. Below here is the 130mm ‘Klarity’ mid/bass driver, backed by a substantial magnet with an aluminum compensation ring, with a voice coil that’s wound on a glass-fibre/epoxy resin bobbin.

The crossover between the two drivers is positioned at a sensible 2.6kHz, and is performed by a Linkwitz-Riley network featuring air-core inductors – it has been specified with minimal phase-shift and smooth integration in mind.

Wharfedale’s description of the Diamond 12.1i as a ‘bookshelf’ speaker is, I think, just a little bit naughty. Yes, you may have a bookshelf big enough to accommodate the cabinet’s 250mm depth (which rises to 280mm once you include the speaker binding posts, and more if your speaker cable is terminated with plugs) – but when you factor in the breathing space the rear-facing reflex port needs, even the deepest shelf is unlikely offer the breathing space the Wharfedale require. Let’s just go with ‘standmount’ and leave it at that, shall we?

At 312 x 180 x 250(ish)mm (HxWxD) the Diamond 12.1i are tidily proportioned for standmounts, and the standard of build and finish is more than good enough to justify the asking price. Both of the available colors (‘deep’ black and ‘stone’ grey) are in a kind of semi-matt finish that looks nice (to me, at least), isn’t all that reflective and is actually slightly soft to the touch. Your other option is ‘classic’ walnut, and I will have to reserve judgment on its qualities as I have yet to see (or feel) it.

Each of the finishes is supplied with magnetically attached, full-length grilles finished in black fabric – it certainly makes for a clean look, but I feel it’s a shame to hide the mildly shiny driver surrounds and clean overall appearance. You may feel differently.

On the inside, the Diamond 12.1i feature minimal and carefully targeted ‘spot’ bracing designed to keep both resonance and resonance transfer to a minimum. In conjunction with cabinet walls of varying thickness, plus the resonant properties of the glue holding everything together taken into account, this is a slightly more sophisticated piece of engineering and design than the asking price might lead you to believe.

Some loudspeakers don’t alter their character no matter the volume level you’re listening at. The Wharfedale Diamond 12.1.i don’t undergo drastic volume-related changes, I must emphasize – but at very modest volume levels they can sound just a little matter-of-fact. All you need to do is nudge the level north just a little, though, and these speakers come bounding to life – and then they reveal themselves to be one of the very best budget options around.

Get a Tidal-derived stream of Zaho de Sagazan’s version of Modern Love playing as a 24bit/44.1kHz FLAC file, for instance, and you’ll find out exactly what’s what. The Diamond 12.1i are a direct and spirited listen, with an uncomplicatedly upfront sonic signature and an almost palpable enthusiasm for the recording.

Low frequencies are respectably deep, and nicely controlled where attack and decay is concerned, with knock-on effects to the rhythmic expression and momentum that are entirely positive.

Detail levels are impressive, too, so there’s plenty of variation where tone and texture are concerned to go along with the straight-ahead punch. Transition into the midrange is clean, and once there the Wharfedale demonstrate a similarly insightful and animated attitude – the details of attitude and character in the voice are just as readily available as those regarding phrasing and technique.

At the top of the frequency range, the Diamond 12.1i have quite sensibly decided that discretion is the better part of valor, staying relatively constrained in the mix – but although the highest rebel sounds are dialed down just a little, there’s still no shortage of bite or the overall enthusiasm for attack.

With the discretion at the very top of the frequency range borne in mind, the frequency response here is nicely even and even-handed – and while the overall tonality has a nice little suggestion of heat to it, it’s not even close to becoming overcooked.

The attention to detail the speakers pay extends to the most transient or fleeting harmonic variation, and there’s a respectable amount of dynamic headroom available for when the tune shifts through the ‘volume and intensity’ gears.

Soundstaging is convincing, and the Diamond 12i are able to escape the confines of their cabinets, just a little, in every direction. The layout of the stage is plain, and while the Diamond 12.1i manage to give every participant on it just a little breathing space they’re capable of offering a sense of unity and togetherness at the same time.

The Wharfedale seem in no way demanding of their partnering equipment, either – they don’t get flustered by sitting at the end of a disproportionately expensive system, and they don’t seem to mind being driven by some standard all-in-one electronics costing less than they do. There are qualitative differences, of course – but broadly speaking the Diamond 12.1i are easy-going and adaptable.

Bear in mind that the Diamond 12.1i, just like every other pair of passive loudspeakers, needs a degree of ‘running in’ before they sound how they are intended to sound – certainly you should ensure they have quite a few hours on the clock before you judge them.

The entry-level in passive loudspeakers has enjoyed a very successful decade so far – and this is in no small part thanks to Wharfedale’s efforts. Yes, the company has inspired some very credible rivals to take this area of the market properly seriously (I’m thinking particularly of the excellent Dali Kupid), but there’s just no getting around the fact the Diamond 12.1i offer prodigious value for money in every respect.

They look and feel more expensive than they are, and once they’re properly positioned they sound it too. Unless you’re been suckered in by the promise of an actually bookshelf-friendly design, I cannot think of a single meaningful downside to Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i ownership.

Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i review: Price & release date

• Launched in December 2025
• Priced at $499 / £249 / AU$699

The new Wharfedale Diamond 12i range of entry-level loudspeakers launched in December of 2025. This 12.1i model is, at £249 in the UK, the second-least-expensive of the five-strong newest Diamond range of stereo speakers. In the United States it sells for $499, while in Australia the going rate is AU$699.

This compares very favorably to options from the likes of Dali, Monitor Audio or Q Acoustics.

Should I buy the Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i?Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i score card

Attributes

Notes

Score

Features

Obviously very limited, being passive speakers, but great driver setup.

5 / 5

Sound quality

Punchy and rapid low-frequency response meets detail and positivity across the range – but best if the volume isn't too low.

5 / 5

Design

Lovely finishes and build quality – but just know they're bigger than you might expect from 'bookshelf' speakers.

5 / 5

Usability and setup

Ideal passive speakers – plug in and go! And they're not fussy about what drives them.

5 / 5

Value

As good as speakers at this price get.

5 / 5

Buy them if…

You’re setting out on your ‘authentic hifi’ journey
Once you hear what a modestly priced pair of speakers designed and built by a specialist can do, you’ll be locked in for life.View Deal

You’re after good looks as well as good sound
The Diamond 12.1i look and feel good, especially in the ‘stone’ gray of my review sample.View Deal

You have a half-decent micro-system that deserves a new lease on life
You might think the speakers that came with your nice little Denon all-in-one are good enough. Wharfedale begs to differ…View Deal

Don't buy them if…

Your bookshelf is only the size of a bookshelf
These are slightly larger cabinets than the description ‘bookshelf’ rather optimistically implies.View Deal

You want to fill an especially large room with sound
There is, of course, a limit to what an affordable pair of speakers fitted with fairly small drivers can do in terms of outright scale.View Deal

You prefer to listen at quite low volumes
The Diamond 12.1i are perfectly OK at low levels, but really come to life if you wind the volume up just a little.View Deal

Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i review: Also consider

Dali Kupid
The Dali Kupid seem to offer a little less (in physical terms) than the Diamond 12.1i while costing a little more – but they’re an energetic, punchy and entertaining listen and can actually comfortably fit on a bookshelf. They’re not quite as easy to drive as the Wharfedale, though. Here's our full Dali Kupid review.View Deal

Q Acoustics 3020c
These are not much more expensive than the Wharfedale these days, and they’re a great-sounding pair of speakers for the money. The cabinet is notably deep, though, so they’re even less of a bookshelf proposition than the Diamond 12.1i. Here's our full Q Acoustics 3020c review.View Deal

How I tested the Wharfedale Diamond 12.1i

I positioned the speakers on a pair of Custom Design speaker stands in my home and usual speaker testing room, and connected them to a Naim Uniti Star and also an A&R Cambridge A60 for amplification.

Sources of music were the Naim (as a network streamer), a Rega Apollo CD player and a Technics SL-100G (with a Goldring 1042 cartridge and pre-amplified by a Chord Huei) as a turntable. So I was able to listen to music from lots of different formats, and of various styles and genres.

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: February 2026

Eureka Ergonomic Axion: One-minute review

Founded in California, Eureka Ergonomic is an office and home furniture manufacturer that – predictably – focuses on ergonomic hardware. The Axion sits roughly in the middle of the brand's vast array of chairs, and is a "hybrid chair that focuses on ergonomics and adjustability."

Immediately, it's clear that this is an attractive bit of kit. Decked out in all-black with a splash of color here and there, it's tasteful enough to be at home in a fairly neutral home office, but energetic enough to satisfy an RGB-obsessed gamer. With plenty of reclining range and an astounding amount of adjustable support areas, there's a lot going on – much of it very well executed, too.

My few complaints are picky ones. I took delivery of the fabric-upholstered version, and this comes with a nylon base. While I'm sure it's more than tough enough for the job, the aluminium base of the mesh version would certainly inspire a little more confidence in the chair's longevity.

However, at less than $500 – and considering the amount of ergonomic features on offer – it's a reasonably-priced daily driver that I've enjoyed using. Of course, spend even more on the very best office chairs and you can get a few higher-end materials from the likes of Steelcase and Herman Miller, and more purpose-built gaming chairs will suit a proper streaming setup better. However, for most, the Axion will be a trusty throne that offers considerable support where you need it the most.

(Image credit: Future)Eureka Ergonomic Axion: price and availability

• Price: US$499

The Axion is found in Eureka's gaming chair section, and at the time of writing, it's the second-most expensive out of four on the company's website. Notably, on the website it's the only one that hasn't got the tag "best seller." Make of that what you will.

However, viewed in the wider context of Eureka's dozens of office chair designs, it sits firmly in the mid-range when it comes to price.

In the US, the list price is $499. However, at the time of writing, this has been reduced to $469, which is a decent, if not super-cheap price for a very adjustable ergonomic hybrid chair.

Compared to gaming chair stalwarts Secretlab, the Axion is about $200 cheaper, which makes it a decent pick in this sector of the market – especially if you're looking for something more understated.

• Value: 4/5

Eureka Ergonomic Axion: Design and setup

• Very smart design
• Huge array of adjustable ergonomic features
• Requires assembly

(Image credit: Future)

As you might expect, the Axion is delivered in a big cardboard box, and requires assembly at home. Each component is neatly wrapped, and I found the level of protection very good. As you'd expect, nothing was damaged in transit.

All of the requisite screws, bolts, and fitting are well-marked in separate bags, and I had no issue completing the assembly. I'd recommend setting aside about an hour of time so you're not in a rush to complete the job.

In terms of instructions, the ones Eureka provides are good, but not great. I didn't run into any issues – it's a quite simple build – but I've definitely had clearer booklets with flat-pack furniture in my time. While fully understandable, the instructions definitely betray the chair's Chinese origins.

(Image credit: Future)

During the procedure, each part of the chair felt very solid and well-made. For example, the base was very neatly stapled together, and while not entirely high-end, it everything felt like it'd stand the test of time. For an example of a chair I felt very differently about, check out my review of the Fezibo C3. Thankfully, so such manufacturing concerns here.

Something I would've appreciated was a little more documentation on all the excellent features of the chair itself. For example, through my testing I discovered most of the angles of adjustment offered by the chair. However, it was only when I referenced the product page on the Eureka website for this review did I realise the lumbar support could move horizontally as well as vertically. A nice problem to have, but a walkthrough guide would have got me using everything the chair offered from the start.

(Image credit: Future)

It's worth noting too that I was supplied with a second gas strut for use on carpets. I'm not sure if this is a known issue or something confined to testing models, but it's interesting to know there's a minor design flaw here that has to be patched by the user. That said, the strut was easy to install, and presumably free to anyone buying the chair themselves.

On to the good stuff though – being a newbie to truly ergonomic seating, I've never used such an adjustable chair. The headrest, lumbar support, and armrests all have three degrees of adjustment, along with an adjustable seating pad too. I found it was very easy to dial in my perfect seating position.

Some parts could be a little "stiffer" – I found myself moving the headrest while leaning back – but overall there's very little that has been overlooked in terms of design.

(Image credit: Future)

Finally, it's interesting that the two upholstery options – mesh and fabric – come with a different base. I can find no reason given for this other than perhaps aesthetics, but I have a feeling most people would rather have a metal base regardless of the upholstery. The nylon base, present on my test model is fine, but at risk of sounding old-fashioned, I find anything metal just feels better.

Overall, there are few chairs that are as adjustable as the Axion in this price range, and beyond some small concerns about the materials, there's not a lot to complain about at all.

(Image credit: Future)

In terms of looks, the Axion is very attractive. It's a simple design, dominated by black plastic and fabric/mesh, but the pop of color on the back gives some welcome levity to the appearance.

There are a number of different colors available too, including blue (the color of the test model), bright green, red, and gray. There is also a "silver gray" version available – although personally I'd avoid this, because I've had silver-painted plastic items before, and they develop scratches and dings far faster than plain black in a real-life environment.

Some may be disappointed that there's no all-black colorway, but the gray version is neutral enough to fit most setups.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Eureka Ergonomic Axion: Comfort

• Tons of support for long sessions
• Comfortable for everyday use
• I had some issues with the castors on my thick carpet

There's no denying the Axion is a great daily driver. The amount of adjustment in almost every area means that no matter your body shape or seating preference, it's easy to get comfy.

In the past, I've found that ergonomic chairs can be more trouble than they're worth – with squeaking hardware and lumps all over making the whole experience unenjoyable. That's not the case here, and there's a great balance between moderate ergonomic intrusion and general easy-going comfort.

The areas you touch while using the chair are made of pleasant materials. The fabric-upholstered version is wrapped in high-quality synthetic material that has a slight fluff to it. Don't worry, it's not fleecy – but it feels warm enough not to feel staticky or slippery.

I haven't had the chance to test the mesh version, but I expect it's slightly lighter-weight, more cooling, and slightly smoother. The choice you make is down to your preference.

(Image credit: Future)

Some of the materials could fell more premium, but it certainly doesn't feel cheap. For example, the rear plastic is nowhere near the scratchiest I've felt, but some really high-end chairs will feel less hollow, and have slightly more give if you were to press them with a fingernail.

Finally, I had a few issues with the castor wheels – most notably that when sitting and rolling towards my desk, the wheel would get slightly stuck in my carpet. Now, I'm aware that the carpet I have is fairly luxurious, but shuffling to move the chair was a little annoying. Of course, if you use a chair pad or have hard flooring, this won't be a problem.

• Comfort score: 4/5

Should I buy the Eureka Ergonomic Axion?Buy it if...

You want tons of adjustable ergonomic features

Almost every part of the Axion can be moved in at least two directions to make sure you're getting the support you need.

You want a hybrid gaming/office chair

The Axion won't embarrass you in your work-from-home meetings, but you also won't feel like you're sat in a boardroom while you're nailing headshots. The best of both worlds.

Don't buy it if...

You want the highest-end materials

The Axion by no means feels cheap. However, there are some parts of its construction that could slightly elevated.

You want a very plain chair

With no all-black colorway and a fairly sci-fi build, the Axion may look too jazzy for the most demure settings.

Also consider

Corsair TC100 Relaxed

Despite being almost $200 cheaper, the TC100 is one of our highest-rated chairs – and our top choice of budget office chair. Granted, it has a gamer-esque design, but the color scheme is muted enough to get away with it, and its build quality is much better than you might expect from the price

Read our full Corsair TC100 Relaxed review

SIhoo Doro C300

If you don't mind missing out on a fair amount of adjustable ergonomic features, the SIHOO Doro C300 is a cheaper alternative top the Axion. Plus, its all-mesh construction will be more comfortable in warmer climes than the fabric version of the Axion.

Read our SIHOO Doro C300 review

• ^ Back to top

Sony WF-1000XM6: Two-minute review

The all-new Sony WF-1000XM6 an impressive set of earbuds with a formidable set of features – especially formidable for tech journos such as me, who are obliged to stick within some sort of length limit for these reviews – but as Sony seeks to recapture class-leading greatness with its 1000X series lineup, I can't help but wonder whether at some point we'll reach a case of diminishing returns.

Here, for example, Sony once again provides us a smaller earpiece. It's 11% thinner but somehow contains a 1.5x larger antenna for better connection stability, an extra mic per bud to equal eight in total, and two processors. One of these is called the QN3E (to take care of the eight mics and facilitate a new auto ambient sound mode) and the other is the V2, to enable 32-bit audio support (with Sony's LDAC codec) using the new 8.4mm unique driver and introduce a new 10-band EQ tab with a 'Find your EQ' tech plus new 'gaming' EQ preset.

But how many mics per bud is enough to facilitate fantastic ANC? And how much do we need our earbuds to shrink before the listener decides enough is enough – because they're actually not sure it's made the product that much better?

But before I answer those questions, know that for sound quality alone, the Sony WF-1000XM6 are a very good set of earbuds.

Some of the best earbuds on the market then? Well, Sony has certainly sought to stuff these buds with every upgrade it can (and every feature you can possibly imagine) using its own proprietary technology.

But there's the rub; the company that brought us 360 Reality Audio with head-tracking would absolutely love for you to use it, but the format is no longer supported on nearly as many of the big music streaming sites as it used to be – Deezer dropped it in 2022; Tidal gave up its support for the 3D format in 2024.

And in terms of hi-res Bluetooth chops, LDAC is of little use to iPhone owners, although Sony's DSEE Extreme upscaler is here again and it does make Spotify streams sound a lot better.

So what's excellent about the WH-1000XM6, what's less so, and are they worth their refreshingly approachable asking fee? The design of the buds is now pill-shaped, and while the earpieces are thinner, the units are also taller with a little notch halfway up to help them fit.

Because they're slightly more raised from their charging nest and covered entirely in a matte plastic for better traction, they boast what Sony calls "easier pick up" from their case – and I can confirm that while I wasn't convinced about the overall fit in the ear, I didn't drop them while first grabbing them half as much as I did the older XM5.

Sadly, the active noise cancellation didn't live up to my expectations in real-world testing. That said, the battery life, at eight hours from the buds and up to 24 with the case – and yes, that is with noise cancellation deployed – isn't bad at all.

Do I love them? Having spent over two weeks with them, I like them a lot, and that new antenna does provide rock-solid connection that never falters. I also liked the new Background Music Effect perk much more than I thought I would – it's a great focus aid, allowing you to push the music back just slightly, so you can hear yourself think.

Also, Sony's Quick Attention feature, wherein you simply cover the left earbud to lower music and quickly filter in ambient sound around you, is a winner, although this isn't new for Sony – we've loved it on the Sony WH-1000XM6 and previous headphones too.

Ultimately for me though, the noise cancellation isn't the class-leading triumph it is billed as, and competing options such as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen (and Apple AirPods Pro 3, if you've got an Apple source device) are offering better access to spatial audio formats and that cocoon of silence noise-nixing you may prioritize.

Add in the Technics EAH-AZ100 as an alternative – offering triple device multipoint, clearer calls and a more comfortable fit – and ultimately, while the WF-1000XM6 are talented and capable earbuds in many respects, there are other buds I would still nudge you to reach for, at this level.

(Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Price and release date

• Released on February 12, 2026
• Priced $329 / £250 / (about AU$480)
• Available in Black or Platinum Silver

Thankfully, Sony's kept a lid on price increases here here. The older flagship Sony WF-1000XM5 launched in July 2023 for $299.99 / £259 / AU$499, so the WF-1000XM6 are only slightly more expensive in the US, and are actually cheaper in the UK.

That said, Sony's hand has been somewhat forced, because Apple's AirPods Pro 3 came with a $249 / £219 / AU$429 price tag when they hit shelves back on September 19, 2025 – ie. cheaper or the same as the AirPods Pro 2's $249 / £249 / AU$399 price tag in the UK and US (although in Australia, they did come with a more expensive launch price).

Other direct competition at this level? The closest rivals are most pressingly the aforementioned AirPods Pro 3, followed by premium offerings such as the Technics EAH-AZ100, which are $299 / £259 / AU$478 or the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) for $299 / £299 / AU$450. I might even mention the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 although those are a fair bit pricier, at $399 / £349 / AU$599.

So as you can probably deduce, Sony has actually gone in quite aggressive with the asking fee here.

(Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Specs

Drivers

8.4mm dynamic with 'soft edge, hard center'

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Battery life

8 hours (buds, ANC on); 24 hours (case)

Weight

6.5g per bud

Connectivity

Bluetooth with LE Audio and LDAC; USB-C and wireless charging

Waterproofing

IPX4

Sony WF-1000XM5 in the center, with WF-C710N on the left; WF-1000XM5 on the right (Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Features

• 10-band EQ tab with 'Find My EQ' and new Gaming preset
• DSEE Extreme upscaler, LDAC, LE Audio and 360 Reality Audio
• Background Music Effect is surprisingly useful
• …but the noise cancellation isn't the smash-hit it's billed as

Sony has once again stuffed these earbuds with all the perks and extras it knows, but a lot of them will be a case of "Yes, we know about that – what's new?" to fans of Sony's WF-1000XM lineup.

So what is new? The 10-band EQ tab (it used to be limited to five) is one upgrade, plus a specific Gaming EQ preset. Sony's more recent Sound Connect app is also newly used with the flagship lineup (this used to be the Sony Headphones app, until October 2024) but Sound Connect was already around for the budget-friendly Sony WF-C710N, which landed April 2025 – so anyone who owns those will be familiar with the 'Find My EQ' tab.

If you're not one of them, I can tell you that it's still good here: you tap on various sound profile bubbles and the software continues to supply more, based on your preferred listening choices, until it presents a personalized profile you can save as a preset.

But again, it's something that is also available in much cheaper Sony earbuds. It's also not a hearing test, as such (there are no diminishing tones to engage with; no analysis of your hearing and curation of a truly unique profile with augmented tones for you) and while you may not want a full hearing test, it's worth stating that competing options I've mentioned do offer it, for similar money. And if you're hoping for a huge app overhaul from the older Headphones app, you won't get it sadly.

For me, this companion app isn't the most intuitive. For example, the home screen is essentially a list of tabs – you can assign elements to be placed at the top of this, from the depths of the device settings, although for me this sometimes just further complicates things – but along the bottom are four smaller tabs labelled 'My Device' (the one you're brought to upon launching it); 'Scene', which attempts to work out what you're doing physically and also suggests profiles that can be deployed at specific times, such as 'Gym' or 'Commute Home', if you feel you need them; 'Discover' for your listening history (Sony likes to offer logs and 'badges' for listening) plus the option to deploy a gentler Safe Listening experience; and lastly, 'Menu'.

Now, you'd think 'Menu' is where all the good stuff lives, but this is basically just a home for the support bot, a 'Help' function, backups and 'About this app' info.

This means that what you need to do in order to get to any tweakable features is to scroll down to a small tab at the bottom of the 'My Device' toggle labelled 'Device Settings' and from there into the minutiae of customization tabs.

It just feels like a lot of taps. It also presents many chances for newbies to venture down the wrong route, to a dead end, and then wonder how to get back to what I like to call 'that long list I had before'. A reshuffle of the app might be sensible, to bring the user more quickly to the perks they actually want to find quickly.

(Image credit: Sony)

At the top of these Device Settings is 'Noise Canceling/Ambient Sound', but although Ambient Sound has a manual incremental 20-step slider, a 'sensitivity setting' which can be either Standard, High or Low, an auto toggle, and an option to toggle on Voice passthrough (to filter in voices while still suppressing noise), your actual noise cancellation options are still just 'on' or 'off', which feels a little disappointing, especially given the extra mic per-bud onboard here.

Sony hasn't listed a figure for the noise-nixing power in decibels, but the company is keen to tell us that the WF-1000XM6 are the "best noise-cancelling" earbuds it's ever released.

Sadly, I need to manage your expectations here, because although certain sounds are indeed dulled when I deploy ANC, when I switch to the AirPods Pro 3 and it's a different level. Want that bubble of silence feeling where the noise drops and extraneous sounds simply melt away? The kind of ANC that makes you genuinely surprised at how noisy your immediate surroundings have become, when you remove them? Sadly, the Sonys are fairly good, but they're not that good – Bose and Apple both have them beat.

Call handling? This is also a bit of a let down – and not just because it's been so hyped by Sony in these new buds. Although Sony couldn't wait to extol the talents of the new mic on each bud, the new wind-nixing structure around them, plus a new AI algorithm with beamforming and bone conduction sensors to aid with both ANC and call-handling on those four mics per earpiece… in practice, callers said I sounded "muffled" when using them for voice calls, especially when compared to my regular Technics EAH-AZ100.

While I'm on the comparison, Sony's answer to Technics' excellent Sidetone tech, to amplify your own voice in calls, is an on/off toggle called 'Capture Voice' in the app, but I couldn't detect much difference either way when trying to use it. And because I had to really screw the earpieces quite far into my ears to get a secure fit (more on this later), I think I would have benefitted from more of a boost here.

(Image credit: Sony)

All of this aside, a lot of things are really enjoyable about the WF-1000XM6 – and Background Music Effect is top of the list. To find it, you have to scroll down that thin tab at the bottom of the 'My Device' tab, labelled Device settings > Sound Quality/Volume > Listening Mode > Background Music – see what I mean about decent features being somewhat hidden away?

Only then will you be able to select from 'My room', 'Living room' or 'Cafe', which spreads and pushes your music just a little further away from your ears each time. I thought it'd be gimmicky; I was wrong. If you're someone who sometimes turns the TV on just for a bit of background noise to focus, or simply can't concentrate if lyrics are too prominent in your ears, say, this feature is for you.

I also like that the on-ear controls are now fully customizable, once you've delved into Device settings > Controls > Change the touch sensor function > Custom. The one caveat is that if you set a long-press of the left earbud to be volume decrease (which is always my preference) you lose Quick Attention, which is one of my favorite Sony-specific earbuds features because it's so useful – if someone starts talking to you or there's been an announcement about the late arrival of your train, say, simply press and hold the left bud and music is pushed low while ambient passthrough is boosted.

Other pleasing notable mentions go to the app's ability to corral my Apple Music subscription to the fold so I can see some playback information in the My Device tab, the 'Optimal Earbud Tips' wearer test (it's quite strict, you know) and the option to prioritize either a stable connection or audio quality. And I should probably mention that thanks to that bigger antenna, I never once experienced any dropouts in connection with this iteration (which was an issue with the older Sony WF-1000XM5 when I reviewed them, initially).

I've also long been a fan of Sony's DSEE Extreme upscaler, which takes your lossier music streams and does remarkable things to add detail and nuance. Here, it is very well implemented; I had to check more than once that I hadn't switched over from Spotify to one of the more audiophile-friendly streaming platforms, and that is something I don't say lightly.

There's also multipoint to two devices and Auto Switch, for handing off the audio from your buds to your Sony Linkbuds Speaker when you come home – but that's the only Sony speaker currently supported, so is pretty niche as an option.

Spatial audio? Ah. Yes, it's technically here, because you can have 360 Reality Audio – if you can find any content presented in the Sony-made format, given that Tidal and Deezer both dropped support a little while ago…

• Features score: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Sound quality

• Crisp bass that neither bloats nor overstates itself
• Plenty of texture through upper mids
• Beaten for dynamic nuance and detail across the frequencies

Switching all sound profiles to 'standard', with a neutral EQ and making sure I've selected the connection profile that prioritizes audio quality (rather than a stable Bluetooth connection) in the Sony WF-1000XM6, I cue up Sevdaliza's Mad Woman. The clock chimes in the opening of the song simmer beautifully initially, with razor-sharp leading edges of notes from the buds. And that note goes all the way down to the abyss without issue too, which is more than can be said for entry-level (and even most mid-range) earbuds.

I'm just missing an extra ounce of build and intentional distortion through the belly of the note that I know to be there – and it's confirmed when I switch to the Technics EAH-AZ100, which have no trouble revealing it.

If you've heard Harry Styles' new track Aperture, it's a similar idea; the timing ticks along beautifully and the Sony buds never shy away from a bass drop, but I can't help but notice when they gloss over a marginal inflection or pop within a gloriously imperfect synth note – because that wants to be remembered as such, and the buds aren't quite recreating it perfectly.

I'm being hypercritical, of course. The sound here is very good indeed – in fact, in instrumental works such as Nicholas Gunn's Campfire there's an expansive and emotive soundstage wherein each musical strand is held together in a cohesive and rewarding mix.

Human breath feels three-dimensional and, for want of a better word, real. It's just that when the flute comes in, I'm missing an iota of excitement as the soundstage builds in intensity and the shaker comes in.

That said, I'll caveat all of this with one potential reason: I did struggle to get the Sony WF-1000XM6 to fit perfectly, even after a week with them… but that's for the next section. If you can achieve a secure fit and seal, I do think there'd be very little in it between them and the best-sounding earbuds in their class.

• Sound quality: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Design

• On-ear controls are reliable and the headshell is grippy
• Divisive fit and ear-tip material – although plenty of tips are provided
• Case magnets feel a little weak

Sony has once again reworked the shape of its earbuds and I have to say that the company's commitment to tweaking and amending the fit in the pursuit of excellence is commendable. These earbuds are 11% thinner than the older model and are very much pill-shaped from above, but they are taller.

That means – and there's no pretty way to say this – they stick out of your ears a little more (as well as from their taller case), and there's a little notch or nub halfway up the housing, to nestle into your outer ear.

Far from being disappointing to me, this initially quite bulbous-looking fit can work very well (see the 'concha fit' style pioneered by the aforementioned Technics EAH-AZ100), however, in this thinner shape, I found that getting a secure fit did involve a fairly rigorous push and twist into the ear, to get them to 'lock in', as it were.

I worry that in the pursuit of a positive 'they're smaller!' goal, Sony hasn't quite achieved the aim of a better fit – although fit is a very personal thing.

FutureFutureFutureFuture

I eventually achieved the best fit using the 'S'-sized small tips (not the XS, which is unusual for me), backed up by Sony's in-app ear-tip fit test tech, but after several hours of listening, the lower part of my antihelix and on to my antitragus did ache a little.

I also think there's a small chance that the shape of these buds affects the efficacy of the noise cancellation – their thinness perhaps means they didn't fill my outer ear fully, quite where they should? It's hard to know for sure, but as someone who's testing more buds than I can count, it felt a little off.

One good aspect of the taller buds, along with the fact that there's no shiny plastic involved in the design, is that I never once dropped an earbud while getting them out of the case, and that is a comment often levelled at the older XM5 buds.

The ear-tips are again memory foam in style, and while I like them a lot and found them very easy to switch out (particularly thanks to the little colored bands on the bottom, so you don't mix them up), unlike silicone options you do need to give them a moment to re-form if you inadvertently squish them while fitting.

The case is much more angular and a little taller, but maintains a USB-C charger and reset button on the back (it'll also charge wirelessly) plus a solo green LED light on the front. It can charge wirelessly too.

My only point on the case is the magnets that snap the case lid shut; given the extra height and bulk on the top, it feels as if they could be stronger. I did an initial drop-test and it did stay shut, but I didn't feel as confident of this happening consistently as I have with other class-leading buds.

In terms of battery life, their claim of eight hours from the buds with ANC and 24 from the case equals that of the AirPods Pro 3, which means it's good – but this is a standard rather than outstanding figure. In testing, I got a little less from them, at seven hours before they needed charging – but my testing does often involve boosting the volume above 50% and scrolling through features and profiles.

• Design score: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Sony WF-1000XM6 review: value

• Stuffed full of features and far from the most expensive buds around
• …but the ANC isn't class leading, and spatial audio might be hard to access

Do you want the best noise-cancelling earbuds on the market for noise-blocking power? If so, the WF-1000XM6 are not my first choice – but that's not at the top of everyone's list, and doesn't mean you should discount them.

For sound, there's plenty to celebrate. These earbuds offer an expansive and pleasing soundstage with neutrality and plenty of options to further tweak the sound to your liking. If pushed, I could've used a little more energy and oomph to allow for an extra ounce of dynamic nuance, but it's my job to nitpick and I maintain that for sound, they're still bang on the money. Buy them, and you won't be disappointed in the WF-1000XM6 sonically.

But do you want device- and streaming-service agnostic spatial audio profiles with dynamic head-tracking? That's more of an issue sadly, since 360 Reality Audio isn't what it once was (Deezer and Tidal no longer support the format) and as such, you might feel you're missing out – where options such as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) do offer that, in various guises and in conjunction with tweakable ANC.

• Value: 4 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Should I buy the Sony WF-1000XM6 review?

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Features

Stuffed to the gills with perks, but the ANC isn't class-leading – and spatial audio is hard to come by

4/5

Sound quality

Neutrality and faithfulness in spades, but they could use just a little oomph injection at times

4/5

Design

The tweaked taller shape may work for you, or it may not, but they do well in most areas

4/5

Value

Plenty to celebrate and competitively priced, but there are a few compromises you need to make

4/5

(Image credit: Future)Buy them if…

You really need a good quick attention feature
I've tried literally scores of wireless earbuds that claim to offer an effective way to quickly hear external sounds without the faff of removing your buds or fully going into a transparency mode. I maintain that Sony's Speak to Chat (simply speak, and the music pauses and ambient sound filters in) and Quick Attention (cover the left bud for the same thing) features are the best in the business.

You want a rock-solid connection
Thanks to that larger antenna, I never once had Bluetooth connectivity dropouts using these earbuds in any situation, and you can prioritize the connection stability over audio quality – well done, Sony.

You're fed up of dropping your buds on the floor
Often grab your buds a hurry? Sony's worked hard to make sure there's enough traction on the earpieces and within the design of the case so that you won't lose a bud underfoot as you try to pluck them out of their battery nests, and it really works.

Don’t buy them if…

You want the absolute best noise cancellation around
It pains me to say this, because I really did want Sony to challenge the likes of Bose and Apple here. Sadly, in my tests it didn't quite match up to what was promised.

You need them for super long-haul flights
The battery life is far from bad here, but it hasn't been upgraded from the older set. And compared to direct rivals it can be bettered – the Technics EAH-AZ100 lasted over an hour longer, in my tests.

You want easy-to-find head-tracked spatial audio
At the time of writing, you can still get 360 Reality Audio on Amazon Music Unlimited, but it's safe to say that support for this Sony tech is on the wane.

Sony WF-1000XM6 review: Also consider

Sony WF-1000XM6

Apple AirPods Pro 3

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)

Technics EAH-AZ100

Price

$329 / £250 / AU$TBC

$249 / £219 / AU$429

$299 / £299 / AU$450

$299 / £259 / AU$478 (approx.)

Drivers

'Unique' 8.4mm dynamic with 'soft edge, hard center'

'Custom high-excursion' Apple driver with new multiport acoustic architecture

10mm

10mm free-edge dynamic

Active noise cancellation

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Battery life

8 hours (buds, ANC on); 24 from case

8 hours (buds, ANC on; 10 hours with ANC off); 6.5 hours (buds, heart rate sensor on); 24 hours (case)

6 hours (earbuds, ANC off; 4 hours with it on) case not specified

12 hours (earbuds, ANC off); 17 hours (charging case)

Weight

6.5g per bud

5.6g per bud

7.7g per bud

5.9g per bud

Connectivity

Bluetooth with LE Audio and LDAC

Bluetooth 5.3

Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX Lossless / Adaptive

Bluetooth 5.3 with LDAC and LC3 compatibility

Waterproofing

IPX4

IP57 case and earbuds

IPX4 earbuds only

IPX4 earbuds only

Apple AirPods Pro 3
No LDAC, but these will take your heart-rate, offer a pretty comprehensive hearing test and (provided you've got an iPhone) translate various languages for you. Also, the ANC is some of the most effective I've ever heard, and Dolby Atmos head-tracked spatial audio is excellent. iPhone owner? You'll be hard pushed to beat these… 
Read my in-depth AirPods Pro 3 review for the full scoop.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)
This is the better pick over the XM6 for device- and streamer-agnostic immersive audio profiles, wonderful noise cancellation, and a colorful look (if you like). Some wearers may find the buds a touch big (though they're secure and fit excellently), but if profiles that combine bubble-of-silence ANC as a backdrop for wonderful spatial audio experiences sounds like your bag, you've found the best buy in the business.
See our full Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) review for more. View Deal

Technics EAH-AZ100
An option with slightly better stamina that also offers slightly better sound quality – and just costs slightly more. You'll still get LDAC higher-resolution Bluetooth support if you've got a device that supports it, but here, you also get multi-point to three brand-agnostic devices (rather than the standard two) and for me, the fit is also just that bit better. And Technics' sidetone tech (to better hear your own voice in calls) makes them the better bet for call handling.
Get the full picture in our Technics EAH-AZ100 review.

(Image credit: Future)How I tested the Sony WF-1000XM6

• Tested for two weeks
• Tested at home, on a plane, on long train journeys, and while running (occasionally in the rain)

I used the Sony WF-1000XM6 for two weeks to complete this review. My testing process involved listening to new music on Tidal, Qobuz and Apple Music as well as podcasts and plus streamed TV shows from my Apple iPhone 15 Pro (I'm catching up on Married at First Sight UK, please don't judge me) on long train journeys to and from London. I also paired simultaneously to my MacBook Pro and both connections were easy and solid.

I listened at home, on a quiet train, on admittedly half-hearted runs in the constant UK rain, and I even taught myself to make natural soy wax candles from YouTube videos with the WF-1000XM6.

I've been testing audio products full-time since 2019, firstly at TechRadar's sister publication What Hi-Fi? as a staff writer, then as senior writer and now audio editor here at TechRadar.

My background as a professional dancer means I never tire of listening to music, and my still-insatiable need to move to what I'm hearing is what drives me to search for faithful timing, neutrality, precision, clarity, energy, and good old fashioned fun in recorded audio.

• First reviewed February 2026

• Read TechRadar's review guarantee
• Learn more specifically about how we test earbuds at TechRadar

Squarespace is a designer-friendly no-code platform with great aesthetics that consistently ranks among the best website builder platforms on the market. With its sleek templates and comprehensive feature set, Squarespace positions itself as an all-in-one solution for creating stylish and functional websites with minimal effort.

Over the years, Techradar has spent thousands of hours testing 140+ website builders, making our reviewers the leading experts in what makes a platform exceptional. Squarespace stands out to us for its award-winning templates, which can be modified down to the last pixel thanks to a powerful block-based editor.

Wix remains our top pick for the best website builder of 2026, thanks to a slightly higher number of features at a reduced price point. But Squarespace's new Blueprint AI and Design Intelligence tools make it a close competitor that gives the former a good run for its money.

Squarespace: 2-minute review

Squarespace is a complete website builder, with everything you would expect from one of the best-known names in the industry. This includes a range of stunning website templates, a full AI website builder, ecommerce features including payment gateway integrations, marketing tools, analytics, and the ability to integrate with select 3rd party services.

The platform was originally built to serve the blogging space but is now capable of hosting practically any type of website, from ecommerce stores to freelancer portfolios. Despite the platform's growth, it stays true to its roots by continuing to offer some of the more aesthetically pleasing website templates available.

Squarespace isn’t the cheapest website builder, but it is fairly priced when compared with competitors with similar features, tools, and ease of use. Its entry-level plan starts at $16/mo with an annual plan, which is in the same ballpark as Wix ($17/mo) and Hostinger ($11.99/mo). Plus, you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial to test it out, although unlike Wix, it doesn’t offer a forever-free version.

Overall, Squarespace is a safe bet for those looking for an easy-to-use website builder with all the features most businesses will ever need.

What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a website builder that helps you create professional websites without coding. It’s like a digital canvas where you can design your online presence. You can use pre-made templates and customize them to fit your vision. Whether you want a blog, portfolio, or online store, Squarespace has all the tools you need.

When you sign up, you can choose from over 180 designer-made templates or use their AI-powered Blueprint tool for a custom design. After that, you can easily add your content, change colors and fonts, and arrange elements with its drag-and-drop editor. Squarespace takes care of technical details like hosting and security, so you don’t have to stress about them.

What’s great about Squarespace for beginners is that everything is in one package. This includes domain registration, cloud hosting, design tools, and a CMS. The all-in-one approach saves you from juggling services from different providers, which can be overwhelming when starting out.

Recent updates

Squarespace 7.1 represents a fundamental shift in the platform's design philosophy, moving away from fixed template families to a highly flexible design system powered by Fluid Engine. This introduces a grid-based editing system that allows users to drag, drop, and layer content blocks with unprecedented freedom, essentially transforming every website into a custom design canvas with zero template limitations.

Design

The Fluid Engine editor enables independent mobile and desktop layout design, giving users granular control over how their content appears across different devices, a significant improvement from the previous version where mobile layouts were automatically generated.

Squarespace 7.1 introduces Auto Layouts that intelligently present content sets, gallery sections for cohesive image displays, and advanced visual effects like Block Pinning for split-scrolling and Text Highlights for emphasizing selected content.

Content management

We found the new page section functionality particularly impressive, as it allows users to divide content into distinct sections with unique design, layout, and styling options. This is a major improvement from 7.0's single content area limitation. They also added Saved Sections functionality in May 2025, enabling users to create reusable design components across multiple pages, speeding up the design workflow for both beginners and professionals.

Ecommerce

For ecommerce users, 7.1 delivers substantial improvements in selling capabilities and product management. The platform now supports up to 10,000 products per page (compared to 200 in version 7.0) and 250 variants per product (up from 100), while introducing nested category navigation and optimized mobile scrolling for longer product descriptions. Product waitlists, previously available only on specific templates, are now accessible across all websites.

Support

Security and support options have been strengthened through Squarespace's dedicated security team implementing enhanced technical and organizational measures updated in January 2025. The platform maintains a risk-based security approach with continuous monitoring, red team exercises, and threat modeling for new system developments, ensuring robust protection for both company and customer assets.

Integration capabilities have also evolved, though 7.1 maintains Squarespace's philosophy of relying primarily on native tools rather than extensive third-party integrations, which some users find limiting compared to competitors but ensures better stability and support.

Partner program

The platform's recent major update arrived in September 2025 with the launch of Squarespace for Pros, unveiled during Circle Day 2025. This professional-grade experience introduces Finish Layer Design Tools with interactive block animations, customizable transforms (opacity, rotation, offset), and the ability to import external fonts for complete brand consistency.

It also includes integrated practice management for project oversight and client collaboration, plus expanded Circle partner program benefits representing Squarespace's most significant investment to date in supporting professional designers and agencies. However, you should be aware that upgrading from classic editor sections to Fluid Engine is irreversible and may break custom CSS implementations.

Note: Upgrading to the 7.1 version of Squarespace is entirely optional for now. While new users get introduced to Squarespace 7.1 by default, existing website owners can choose to keep the legacy version of the website builder, along with all its existing features and support.

Features

Squarespace provides a wide range of features for different website needs. (Image credit: Squarespace)

Squarespace has always offered some of the best website templates on the market, making it a firm favourite amongst creatives such as artists and photographers. Anyone looking for a stunning website should seriously consider Squarespace.

Owain Williams, Website Builder Editor

Squarespace provides a wide range of features for different website needs. At the heart of the platform is a powerful drag-and-drop editor with a smart grid system. This helps keep your design elements aligned. You’ll also find over 180 professionally designed templates. These templates are great starting points for creating stunning websites. They feature a modern, minimalist design with plenty of white space and room for photos.

If you want to sell online, Squarespace offers strong ecommerce tools in its Business plans. You can sell physical and digital products, offer subscriptions, and create discounts. It even helps with abandoned cart recovery emails and social media sales. The platform supports various payment methods, such as PayPal, Stripe, and Square, and includes automatic tax calculations. However, these ecommerce features come at a higher price compared to some competitors.

In 2023, Squarespace introduced Blueprint AI, which streamlines website creation. This AI system guides users through five simple steps to create a personalized website. It also generates content with its AI text generator. We found this feature helpful for beginners facing the "blank page" anxiety. Still, the AI-generated templates seem basic compared to Squarespace's professionally designed options.

The platform has specialized tools like Acuity Scheduling for booking appointments, available for $16 a month. It also offers portfolio collections for showcasing work and various blocks to enhance user experience, like search and archive functions. While Squarespace includes many built-in features, it mainly relies on its own tools. This limits extensive third-party integrations in most areas. Squarespace’s pricing ranges from $16 to $52 per month (billed annually). Although it's a premium price, the quality of design and features usually justify the investment for users.

Tools

Over the years, Squarespace has stacked on a bunch of different tools and add-ons to make its website builder more lucrative. (Image credit: Squarespace)

Over the years, Squarespace has stacked on a bunch of different tools and add-ons to make its website builder more lucrative. This includes everything from SEO features to help you optimize your content strategy to AI tools for assistive design suggestions.

Blogging

Squarespace is well known for being one of the best blogging sites around. So, if you’re into blogging, you’ll be glad to hear that Squarespace provides a full set of blogging features such as built-in blog pages, a comment section, and content promotion tools. However, if you’re making a blog as a means of making money, Squarespace shouldn’t be your first choice. First off, to get hold of ecommerce features, you’ll have to purchase the “Business” plan or up, and it will set you back $23 per month (if you subscribe for a year) or $36 for one month.

Ecommerce

The Business plan (and up) will also let you integrate a shopping cart into your website with ease, as well as sell physical products, digital downloads, online services, and subscriptions. However, if we take the 3% transaction fee on sales and the plan’s initial price tag into account, this solution doesn’t seem particularly pocket-friendly.

Also, Squarespace isn’t as strong as some of its competitors (like Shopify) when it comes to shipping and payment options – for instance, manual payment isn’t an option, and you can’t sell in multiple currencies.

SEO and marketing

Squarespace also offers superb Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features, which will help you get your site in front of your core audience. There are multiple options for social media marketing, email marketing, and custom post designs. Not only are these tools powerful, but they are easy to use - this makes it one of the best small business website builders on the market.

AI tools

Although Squarespace’s AI offering isn’t quite as advanced as some competitors such as Wix and Hostinger, it does offer a host of helpful AI-powered tools that will make creating your website a breeze.

The list starts with the option to use AI to get your initial website set up. If you select this option Squarespace will ask you a few questions such as the name of your site, which sections and pages you want on your website, which colors and fonts you want to use, and then use your answers to build your site.

Like with most AI website builders, the results are a little generic and will need some editing. Luckily, Squarespace also offers some AI tools to help you do this. For example, you can use an AI copywriter to help you complete your site's written content. A similar tool can be used to create product descriptions, which can be a lifesaver for large online stores.

Finally, Squarespace also offers AI-powered branding and email marketing tools, helping you make the right impression and get you in front of the right people.

Integrations

Squarespace doesn’t take too kindly to third-party tools – while there’s a decent variety of versatile tools it’s not up to scratch – so, you might feel like you’re stuck with Squarespace's ecosystem.

Website editor

We should also talk about Squarespace’s up-to-date, drag-and-drop editor called Fluid Engine, a superior version to their old editor. As soon as you add an element or change something on the template you’re using, it will become visible straight away. It also offers a decent level of customization choices, so you can adjust your template to suit your needs and desires.

The only major drawback is that you can’t place elements (such as images or text) wherever you want them to be - you can position them in pre-built places bounded by grid lines. Also, while you’ll be prompted to save your site after each change, you won’t enjoy the convenience of the autosave functionality.

Ease of use

Of all the website builders we have tested, Squarespace ranks as one of the easiest to use. (Image credit: Squarespace)

Of all the website builders we have tested, Squarespace ranks as one of the easiest to use. Its drag-and-drop editor balances simplicity and functionality. This makes it great for beginners but still offers depth for experienced users. The clean, minimalist interface removes clutter. It shows only the tools you need, like the option to add a new section, which appears when you hover over an existing section.

Getting started with Squarespace is easy. During onboarding, you answer a few questions about your website's purpose and goals. This helps the platform tailor its recommendations to your needs. The 14-day free trial lets you explore without rushing into a paid plan. We liked that no credit card is needed to start the trial, allowing risk-free experimentation.

Squarespace emphasizes user experience (UX) principles, evident in how the platform works and the sites it creates. The editor uses a smart grid system to align elements. This helps beginners create visually balanced pages. Real-time previews show how your changes affect your site, making the design process dynamic. However, some users notice lag or unresponsiveness with larger, content-heavy websites.

The platform includes accessibility features through its All in One Accessibility Widget. This makes your website more usable for people with various disabilities, including visual, hearing, motor, and cognitive impairments. Yet while customization is simple, Squarespace has limits. Once you pick a template, you can't switch to another without rebuilding your site. And some advanced customizations need CSS or JavaScript knowledge, which is only available on higher-tier plans.

Pricing

Plan

Monthly cost (paid monthly)

Monthly cost (paid annually)

Basic

$25

$16

Core

$36

$23

Plus

$56

$39

Advanced

$139

$99

Pricing last verified: 12/02/2026

The site builder’s price tag is on par with similar all-in-one solutions on the market, and it provides plenty of bang for the buck. However, if you only wanted a pocket-friendly site builder without other components of Squarespace, we’re sorry to say you won’t find this here.

If you’re in for an all-in-one solution, you can choose between four plans ranging from $16 to $99 per month, if you opt for an annual billing option, that is. If you choose a one-month-only option, the price will spike significantly.

While Squarespace doesn’t offer a forever-free edition of its site builder, there is a 14-day free trial with all four plans, and no credit card details are required. It is also worth mentioning that you can often save on your subscription by using Squarespace promo codes and/or signing up for a longer period of time.

As for payment methods, Squarespace accepts all major credit/debit cards (Visa, Mastercard, and American Express included), JCB, Diners Club (in USD only), and SEPA direct debit (in EUR only). As you already suspect, you can’t pay via PayPal or Bitcoin (BTC).

For a more detailed review of the plans available on Squarespace, you can read our full Squarespace pricing guide.

Integrations

Squarespace takes a curated approach to integrations, offering built-in connectivity to carefully selected platforms rather than an open marketplace of third-party apps. The platform provides what it calls "Connected Services," which are seamlessly integrated into the core Squarespace experience.

This includes essential tools for payment processing (Stripe, PayPal, Square), shipping carriers (FedEx, UPS, USPS), social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo), and marketing services (Google Analytics, Mailchimp, Facebook Pixel). We find that this approach ensures reliable performance and support, though it may feel limiting compared to platforms that offer thousands of third-party integrations.

But for automation enthusiasts, Squarespace also supports Zapier integration, which opens up connectivity to over 1,000 additional 3rd-party apps and services. Through Zapier, users can create automated workflows (called "Zaps") that trigger when specific events occur on their Squarespace site, such as new form submissions, newsletter signups, or product purchases. Common automation scenarios include adding new form submissions to Google Sheets, creating CRM entries in Salesforce or HubSpot, sending notifications to Slack, or adding contacts to email marketing platforms like ConvertKit.

Finally, Squarespace offers API access for developers looking to build custom integrations, though this requires technical expertise. API key generation is possible through the platform's developer settings. It uses OAuth 2.0 authentication and provides REST endpoints for managing content, products, orders, and inventory.

Developers can access endpoints for site-level configurations, e-commerce functionality, and content management, enabling custom solutions for businesses with specific integration needs. This is useful for connecting Squarespace to enterprise systems like ERPs, CRMs, or custom fulfillment services that aren't available through the standard integrations.

Security

Squarespace websites are all kept on secure with SSL certificates, two-factor authentication (2FA), and protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. (Image credit: Squarespace)

Squarespace websites are all kept on secure with SSL certificates, two-factor authentication (2FA), protection against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and a login activity panel. While the activity log won’t protect your site by itself, it’ll help you discover if any logins were made from suspicious or unknown devices.

Squarespace’s security staff is monitoring all Squarespace sites round-the-clock for threats and vulnerabilities to make sure your site is properly protected. Still, if you discover a vulnerability, you can report it to the security staff and they’ll conduct their investigation on it.

Customer support

You can seek assistance from Squarespace’s support staff via live chat, email, and X (Twitter). (Image credit: Squarespace)

If you get stuck somewhere during your Squarespace journey, you can seek assistance from their support staff via live chat, email, and X (Twitter). Sadly, phone support isn’t available.

Live chat is available Monday to Friday, 4 AM to 8 PM, ET, and once you contact the staff, someone will get back to you in a matter of minutes. In contrast, email support is available 24/7, but the response time can sometimes be sluggish.

As for self-service, you can visit the Help Center which contains a well-supplied knowledge base, video guides, and an avidly active community forum you can conveniently browse by topics.

Alternatives

Wix

As we noted earlier, Wix is an awesome alternative for those who want to build their site on a tight budget or entirely free — it even offers a forever-free edition of its site builder for personal use. Plus, it’s super simple to use, packed with features, and provides automatic backups.

Discover more about Wix in our Wix review.

WordPress.com

If you’re searching for a cheap yet endlessly customizable site builder, WordPress is the solution of choice. Since it’s an open-sourced software, it has thousands of themes, templates, plugins, how-to guides, and a committed community that can lend you a helping hand. While it’s not as beginner-friendly as Squarespace or Wix, it makes up for it with a fabulous level of flexibility and freedom.

Read our WordPress.com website builder review to learn more.

Shopify

Shopify is built for ecommerce from the ground up, so if an ecommerce solution is what you’re looking for, it might be the best choice. Squarespace offers all essential ecommerce features, but it’s still better suited for a professional site or a blog.

You can learn more in our full Shopify review.

Hostinger

With plans starting at just $1.99/mo (intro rate), Hostinger offers many of the same tools as Squarespace, including a full AI website builder. Although it doesn't offer the same level of design prestige, websites built on Hostinger still look clean and professional, making it a great choice for small businesses.

You can see how the two stack up in our Hostinger vs Squarespace guide.

How we tested Squarespace

To test the Squarespace website builder, we started by setting up an account. We then got hands-on with the tools and features available when building a website on the platform. This included exploring the various available website templates, SEO and marketing tools, and testing the drag-and-drop website editor.

We also reviewed the available plans, comparing their pricing and what they include. Finally, we researched what level of help and support is available to users and how the platform protects users’ websites from security threats.

You can learn more about how we test website builders with our full guide.

Summary

Squarespace is a splendid, simple-to-use site builder with terrific templates and it gets better each time a new version crops up. Hitting high marks in all major areas, Squarespace site builder qualifies as an amazing all-arounder in the market, and it’s also fit for small and mid-sized online stores.

Their website builder comes packed with tools and features such as email marketing, an SSL certificate, and options for mobile responsive templates - giving you everything you need to launch and grow your website in one convenient space.

However, Squarespace keeps its users on a short leash with a low level of customization and the inability to switch between templates without starting from scratch. Also, the lack of auto-save features makes it less convenient than some of its competitors.

Squarespace: FAQsDoes Squarespace have a free plan?

No, unlike some other website builders, Squarespace doesn’t have a free plan. However, it does offer a free 14-day trial. This offers you the opportunity to test out the platform to make sure it is the right one for you.

Does Squarespace charge a transaction fee on sales? 

It depends on the plan you pick.

The Business plan ($23/mo paid annually) is the cheapest plan which offers the full range of ecommerce functionality but charges a 3% transaction fee for physical products and services sold via the site. Both the Commerce plans (Basic ($27/mo paid annually) and Advanced ($49/mo paid annually)) charge a 0% transaction fee.

So, at just $4 extra a month, most ecommerce businesses would benefit from investing in the Commerce plan. But you will need to do the math to decide which one works best for you.

Can I get a discount on a Squarespace plan? 

Yes, we keep track of all the latest Squarespace voucher codes.

Is Squarespace better than Wix?

Well, it depends on what you’re looking for in a site builder. Wix offers more templates overall, but the ones you’ll get with Squarespace look better. Also, Wix has a forever-free edition, while with Squarespace you can make use of a 14-day free trial, and that’s about it.

Both site builders are easy to use, offer robust ecommerce features, and provide superb value for money. However, Wix is cheaper while Squarespace has more additional tools for growing your site.

Is Squarespace good for beginners?

Yes, Squarespace is one of the best site builders for beginners. Its intuitive, drag-and-drop editor is backed by simple-to-follow guides in case you get stuck. And if that doesn’t do the trick, you can rely on rather responsive customer support staff.

What are the downsides of using Squarespace?

The primary drawbacks of using Squarespace are the shortage of customization capabilities, the absence of auto-save features, and the lack of phone support. Also, there are cheaper options around and some of them offer a free edition of their site builders too.

Specs

Type: color laser multifunction printer

Functions: Print, scan, copy, fax

Connectivity: Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi

Data storage slots: USB Host

Print speed: 33ppm

Max paper size: Letter/legal/A4

Print quality: 1,200x1,200dpi (4,800x4,800 enhanced color)

Memory: 2GB

Apple AirPrint: yes

Consumables included: 4 x setup cartridges (1,500 black, 1,000 color pages)

Dimensions/Weight: 479 x 475 x 491 mm (WxDxH)/60lb/27kg

With its rapid print rate of 33ppm (pages per minute), duplex printing and scanning and a modular design that can expand its paper capacity in step with your growing business, the Xerox C325 is a significant step up from the Xerox C235. The extra $100 buys you a higher spec and premium features such as duplex scanning.

On paper, it has the chops to serve a busy workgroup with high print demands and Xerox suggests a print volume up to 6,000 pages, which could make it an easy entry into our best small business printers guide.

The Xerox C325 is essentially a rebadged Lexmark CX532adwe and since Xerox bought the Chinese-owned brand in 2025, I’ve been keen to see what, if any, improvements have been made.

Xerox C325: Design and build

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

The C325 looks like a typical Xerox MFD (multifunction device) with its two-tone grey plastic and large ADF giving it a top-heavy appearance. One big difference though, are the four square toner cartridges and their compartment at the side of the printer.

Previously, Xerox had always housed its elongated torpedo-shaped cartridges in the center of its printers. The advantage here is that you can swap out your empties as easily as if they were inkjet cartridges. Frustratingly, the Xerox and Lexmark cartridges are not interchangeable.

The Xerox C325 is larger than the C235, with the overhanging ADF and scanner bed being raised up so the unit is almost 50cm tall. The footprint, however, is reasonably compact and in order to load Letter or A4 paper, you first need to extend the main tray beyond the rear panel by an inch or two.

The 4.3-inch tilting touchscreen control panel is both detailed and sensitive and there’s a USB Host port conveniently located close by. All other connections are at the rear. It looks and feels like a sturdy piece of office equipment that would withstand the demands of a workgroup. For my home office, though, I’d prefer the smaller Xerox C235.

Xerox C325: Features & specifications

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

In addition to key features such as auto duplex, Wi-Fi with AirPrint and Mopria and embedded security software, the Xerox C325 also has a DADF — that’s a duplex automatic document feeder. The ability to scan both sides of a stack of documents saves a whole lot of standing around the printer and is something only upmarket MFPs can do.

With its fast print rate of 33ppm, powered by a 1.2Ghz processing and 2GB inbuilt memory, the Xerox C325 has a higher spec than the C235 in every department. It holds a similar amount of paper (251 sheets of Letter or A4) but this can be upgraded to 901 sheets with the purchase of additional cassettes, while the deeper out-tray can hold 120 sheets. The manual feed slot is useful for printing envelopes and headed letter paper and the USB Host port is handy for scanning directly to a USB thumb drive.

The native print and scan quality is the usual 600x600 DPI (dots per inch), but this is enhanced to 4,800 DPI for best quality color prints. It can recognize and print on a wide range of media up to Letter or A4 size and up to 216gsm in weight. The only absent feature that might have improved this model is NFC (near field communication) which could have enabled more secure printing in a shared office.

Xerox C325: Setup and operation

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

The Xerox C325 comes with pre-loaded setup cartridges, so the initiation is simple and should only take a few minutes. My printer fired up quickly and launched straight into the setup procedure, which can be done via the touchscreen.

You can use the free companion app called Easy Assist and use your smartphone to help, but I tried both methods and found it faster to use the printer’s own touchscreen interface, which is particularly responsive and easy to type on.

The first test sheet you get from a new laser printer often looks faded as it takes a page or two for the toner to feed through, but this one printed crisply right from the box. In both setup and operation, the Xerox C325 responds promptly making it a pleasure to use.

Xerox C325: Performance

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

The Xerox C325 printed a whole range of documents with the speed and accuracy you would expect from a printer at this price, but its bright and vivid presentation with color prints gives it an edge over the competition.

The advantage is most noticeable when printing photos on laser photo paper. The Xerox produces a slighter lighter image with more discernible detail than rival lasers such as the HP Color LaserJet Pro 4201dw thanks to its strong contrast. You can still see the pixels that comprise the image, so it cannot compete with an inkjet photo printer for photos, but it is very good with mixed color documents.

And like most laser printers, it’s more consistent at printing text than your average inkjet. Characters always look sharp on plain paper and remain legible down to the smallest point size. The Xerox 325 churns out long Word documents at around 33ppm in simplex mode and about 22ppm in duplex mode, which is to say that it can turn the page over quickly.

The Xerox C325 also makes a great photocopier, thanks to a combination of a speedy scan rate and that valuable duplex scan function. Place your documents to be copied on the 50-sheet ADF (or DADF in this case) and each page will be sucked in, copied on both sides and duplex printed in a few seconds. Copies are so faithful it’s hard to tell them apart from the original.

Xerox C325: Consumables

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

With the Xerox C325, you get four pre-installed setup cartridges containing enough toner for 1,500 black and white pages and 1,000 color pages, while the highest capacity carts available for this model will yield up to 8,000 black pages and 5,500 color. It works out at around 3 cents (2p) per black page, and 12 cents (9p) per color page, which is quite competitive.

However, the Lexmark CX532adwe, on which this model is based can take even higher capacity cartridges promising yields up to 15,800 mono pages and 8,800 color with a slightly lower CPP (cost per page). This seems to be the main difference between the two MFDs, so for very high print volumes, the more expensive Lexmark makes more sense.

Xerox C325: Maintenance

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

The only parts that might need replacing apart from the toner cartridges are the black and color imaging drums. These cost several hundred dollars each, but the good news is that they last so long, Xerox says it’s unlikely you’ll need to renew them.

Xerox C325: Final verdict

(Image credit: Xerox // Future)

The Xerox C325 fills its roll as a do-it-all workhorse for a busy workgroup well. It has all the key features you could ask of an office printer, with single-pass duplex scanning being a real bonus. It has the paper capacity and upgradability to satisfy a growing business and pretty good toner capacity too, though it has to be said, the near identical Lexmark CX532adwe manages even higher yields. T

he intuitive touchscreen makes it easy to use and the print and scan rates are impressive. Crucially, the print quality also lives up to expectations. The black text output is good, if unremarkable, while the color output is especially strong with lots of detail and bright color. In short, this is a great multifunction device for the office.

Xerox // FutureXerox // FutureXerox // Future

For more top-rated options, I've tested out the best home printers and the best laser printers.

Back in 2023, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lisa McGee on the BAFTA red carpet the night she won for Derry Girls season 3. It was one of the highlights of my career to date, but after watching her character Saoirse (Roisin Gallagher) flee for her life from the awards in new Netflix show How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, I'm starting to wonder if McGee felt the same way.

The Derry Girls creator was always going to have all eyes on her when it came to her follow-up show, and I'm pleased to report it's an absolute belter. This time around, McGee is blending eerie tragedy and crime-style mystery into her signature blend of Irish wit and charm, and together, it goes down like a spoonful of sugar.

At its core, best friends – screenwriter Saoirse, mum Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) and reclusive mummy's girl Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) – are told that an estranged friend from their school days has died after falling down the stairs. When they get to the wake and discover Greta (Natasha O'Keeffe) might not be dead after all, they open a can of worms bigger than they could ever have imagined.

When I say you are going to race through these eight episodes because they're so addictive, I mean you won't even move to get another drink. After a doozy of an opening episode, I almost resented the plans I had that meant I had to leave my TV screen unwatched. That's the power of McGee, people... it's almost witchcraft.

The critical eye in me has to really pick this apart... yes, it could have been easily condensed into six episodes and I'm not too sure how much I love one of the most significant sub-plots. But for the most part, I'm breathing a sigh of relief that great Irish telly is back once again (and this is possibly the most Irish show I've ever seen).

How to Get to Heaven from Belfast isn't Derry Girls, but it won't let you forget where Lisa McGee started

Think about Bad Sisters, Big Little Lies and Orphan Black all getting together and having a little Irish TV baby, and you've got How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. McGee's latest work has much darker undertones than we're used to, touching on everything from murder and the occult to witness protection and false arrests. Even the intro titles are creepy enough to send a shiver running down your spine.

While these are topics you'd rarely joke about, How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is teeming with natural laugh-out-loud moments. Our lead trio are just as hilarious as they are charismatic, making them the ideal characters to deliver McGee's exceptional script with the timing and wit it needs.

This is where it's most similar to Derry Girls – but if anything, the new Netflix show is almost an ode to it, ramming in Easter eggs wherever you look. Everything from subtle dialogue references to the cast mural that now sits in the center of Derry is there, and that's before you get to cast appearances from the likes of Saoirse Monica-Jackson, Art Campion and Father Ted legend Ardal O'Hanlon.

The comedy is strong enough to stand on its own, but I loved reminiscing on some of my favorite Derry Girls scenes as How to Get to Heaven from Belfast went along. Again, it's something that shouldn't work but does, and it's a testament to McGee's craft that she's managed to pull off intertwining the two shows.

As McGee said the night I interviewed her, "I'm Irish, so I can talk quickly." It's this snappy and dynamic pace of storytelling that makes any of her work feel so electric, meaning we can power through the scenes that don't quite work and not feel hard done by. It's such a creative leap that it was almost a given that there would be imperfections, but like all good things, the pros far outweigh the cons.

The soundtrack is any 2000s kid's dream – and almost a character in its own right

It's giving ITV crime drama. (Image credit: Netflix)

It took watching How to Get to Heaven from Belfast for me to realize that we've scarcely had any dramas centering on 2000s school culture. The 80s and 90s have been done to death, with the 70s not too far behind. Even the 2010s to now are well represented thanks to shows like Euphoria.

But for some reason, the 2000s has been a blind spot... until now. Much of Saoirse, Dara, Robyn and Greta's backstory takes place during their high school days in 2003, and boy has production paid attention to the all-important details. Classic McGee motifs like diary writing and shifting boys at house parties are all present and correct, but the day-to-day culture of the early naughties almost feels refreshing.

This best comes to life in the (frankly, exquisite) soundtrack that I hope somebody at Netflix eventually turns into a Spotify playlist. We've got Liberty X, 'The Ketchup Song', and copious plays of 'Sound of the Underground' by Girls Aloud in multiple episodes (though their featured discography is not limited to this).

In peak humor, we've also got B*Witched's 'C'est La Vie', which had me both roaring and subconsciously Irish dancing within seconds. How lucky are we to have a talented creator who doesn't take themselves or their work too seriously? Where else can we have a payoff that resembles Popstars: The Rivals?

I will go as far as to say that How to Get to Heaven from Belfast is my best TV show of 2026 so far. It's not perfect, but the smorgasbord of cultural and craft references we're getting are a feast for the eyes and ears, and I'm thrilled McGee's talents will be appreciated on a global streaming service. Let's keep funding her work until the money runs out, please.

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There was a moment late last year when I thought I'd lost my wallet. I searched everywhere, in every nook and cranny. It was nowhere. I began walking through all the steps I'd have to take to secure my life; my IDs, my credit cards, even some memories stuffed inside. I was, for a moment, devastated. Then I remembered something: I'd had the wallet on me the other day when I briefly wore a pair of pants... then I switched into shorts.

The wallet was in the pocket of those pants, folded, and laying a shelf in my closet. Now, if I'd had an AirTag on it, I could've located the wallet with some ease. The irony is that this wallet came with a perfect circle cut-out to hold Apple's popular tracking tag. After that scare, I decided to slip an AirTag in, and now I can find it in my house.

And if I had the new AirTag (Second Generation or AirTag 2), I'd find it even more easily – because, as promised, it's got far better range, and can chirp loud enough that you can easily hear it from a room away.

Apple AirTag 2: Price and availability

•  $29 / £29 / AU$49
• Available now at Apple Store and retail

Apple AirTag 2: SetupLance Ulanoff / FutureLance Ulanoff / Future

If you own one of the best iPhones, setting up the new AirTag is as easy as it was with the original tracking disc. After unpacking the AirTag, I pulled the thin plastic covering off and then tugged until the tiny bit of embedded flexible plastic pulled out of the AirTag.

With that, the AirTag started looking for its iPhone mate. My iPhone 17 Pro Max, which was sitting nearby, immediately detected the AirTag and lit up. On-screen steps guided me through the process of pairing it with the phone and naming the tag (you typically choose a name that aligns with what you want to track, so 'Backpack,' 'Luggage,' etc.).

There's also a pretty stern warning about how AirTags are not intended to be used to track people without their consent. The new AirTags support all the same privacy features, like alerting you if an unknown AirTag is somehow on your person. Plus, if the AirTag is separated from its owner for an extended period, it will start making noise.

Since Apple sent me one of its $35 / £40 / A$59 FineWoven Key Rings, I slipped the AirTag into it and attached it to my backpack.

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)Apple AirTag 2: Test drive

From the outside, the Apple AirTag 2 is indistinguishable from the original AirTag launched in 2021, but inside it's a whole different story.

Apple replaced significant components, including the ultrawideband chip, which now matches what we've had in the iPhone since 2023 (iPhone 15), and new speakers. Both of these changes are critical to the AirTags 2's biggest updates.

When I learned about the new Apple AirTag, I noted Apple's claims of 1.5x better range and a 50%-louder speaker with some skepticism. Those sounded like big leaps, and I wondered, at first, how I might test them.

The answer was simple, and it resided in my wallet. I simply compared the original AirTag to this new and improved one.

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)Finding things near and far

The AirTag is useful for finding stuff you've misplaced in your home, but even more impactful when you, or say, your airline has misplaced your luggage, for example. Apple has partnered with dozens of airlines that can now use an AirTag to help locate your lost luggage and let you know it's been found; a reunion with your luggage should soon follow.

Like the original AirTag, the new one can tap into a network of one billion Apple devices to phone home. Basically, an AirTag separated from its owner can ping, for instance, a nearby iPhone, and that connects with the iCloud network to deliver the AirTag's location information (based on that original iPhone's location) back to the owner in the Find My app. All of this information is delivered anonymously, and it's also end-to-end encrypted.

A locally misplaced item can be found via the AirTag's ultrawideband capabilities.

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

To be clear, I had no intention of losing my wallet or backpack, but I thought I could test out the new range and audio capabilities.

My house is about 40ft front to back and 50ft diagonally from one corner to the other. I placed my backpack with both the AirTag 1 (in my wallet) and the AirTag 2 in one corner, and then I walked to the opposite, far corner of my house.

In the FindMy app, I started by selecting my wallet and then choosing 'Find' to launch Precision Finding. The app reported that my wallet was 'far' and, though connected, said the signal was weak and suggested I move to a different location.

AirTag (2026): The range is much better.FutureAirTags (First Gen): It works but the range is much shorter.Future

I started walking in the direction of the wallet and AirTag 1. When I was almost two-thirds of the way to its location, the Find My interface picked up the wallet at 22ft away, but could not identify the direction.

It wasn't until I was within six feet of the AirTag 1 that I got directional information, which is a giant white arrow on a green background that points you to your missing bag, wallet, or whatever.

Next, I returned to the far corner of my house and selected the backpack, in which I had placed the AirTag 2.

Even from that location, the phone connected to the AirTag and told me it was 47 feet away. By the time I was just a third of the way across my home (roughly 32ft), Find My started displaying directional information – a significant improvement over the original AirTag.

I reran the test with the wallet and backpack AirTags fully exposed, and the results were the same.

Sound off

The new AirTags are also advertised as being significantly louder than the original tags, thanks to new speakers.

Keeping the AirTags in the same location, I first selected the wallet AirTag in Find My devices and then chose 'Play Sound'. I heard the familiar two-tone sound.

From inside my backpack, I could just make out the muffled dat-dat-da-dat-dat, which plays three times before ceasing.

I made sure the AirTag 2 was similarly seated inside the backpack, and then selected 'Play Sound' for that AirTag. The difference in volume was stark; I could hear it clearly, even over the din of a nearby television. Impressive.

Watch this

If you have an Apple Watch 9 (or above) or Ultra 2, try this with the new AirTag. (Image credit: Future)

The new AirTag also works with the Apple Watch (Series 9 and above or Ultra 2), though enabling it was slightly less intuitive than I'd prefer.

To add an AirTag to your Apple Watch, you open the Control Panel, hit Edit, and then select 'Find AirTag'. The system walks you through selecting a compatible AirTag, in my case, the backpack one, and once that's done it's just a press of your Apple Watch Side Button and a tap on the Find AirTag icon to launch a search for that item.

When I did it on my Apple Watch 9, the screen immediately transformed into a searching graphic similar to what I see in the iPhone Find My app's Precision Finding feature. It instantly showed me how many feet I was from the backpack, and when I started walking toward it, it switched to a circular wayfinder, with one portion of the circle turning bright white to indicate the proper direction. When I arrived at the backpack and its AirTag, the screen turned green with a bright check mark.

While I can't test battery life, you'll be pleased to know that the new AirTag uses the same CR2032 3-volt lithium coin battery, and is rated to last a year. Finally, the IP67 rating remains, which means the AirTag (2026) can handle splashes of water (rain) and dust.

Overall, this is an excellent little update that retains all that's good about the original AirTag, and updates crucial features to make them much more useful when you're trying to find your lost item. And Apple earns extra points for not raising the price or altering the design, which might have forced you to buy new AirTag accessories.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Two-minute review

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is the very latest premium laptop from the South Korean tech giant. While Samsung is better known for its TVs, smartphones, and home appliances, in recent years it’s been steadily releasing some of the best laptops we’ve ever tested through its Galaxy Book lineup, and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra was launched at CES 2026 alongside the Book6 Pro and more affordable Galaxy Book6.

They all come with Intel’s brand-new Core Ultra Series 3 mobile processors (also known as Panther Lake), which have been seriously impressing us, as well as Samsung’s increasingly sophisticated ecosystem that allows these laptops to interact with other Samsung devices, especially smartphones and tablets, and gives, in my mind, the closest experience to Apple’s slick Mac/iPhone/iPad integration for Windows 11 and Android devices. More on that later.

As a Galaxy product, this is naturally a high-end flagship device, and with a price tag of £2,999 (around $4,000 / AU$6,000) for the base model, this isn't going to be a laptop for everyone.

However, if you can afford it, you should be pretty happy with what you get for your money. The latest hardware from Intel and Nvidia means this is a brilliant performer for basically any task you require, and Samsung has made sure this is a solidly-built laptop with excellent build quality - and comes with one of the best screens you can get.

But that high price and abundance of power mean a lot of people simply won't need the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, and a more affordable laptop (such as the standard Galaxy Book6) will be a much better choice.

(Image credit: Future)Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Price & Availability

• Starts at $2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000)
• Launch seems to have been delayed

As with Samsung’s other Galaxy products, the Galaxy Book6 series of laptops are premium devices with designs, specs, and price tags to match. The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, as the name suggests, is the highest-end model, and starts at $2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000) for the model that comes with an Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU and 1TB of storage.

That’s expensive for a laptop. Very expensive. It makes the Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5) from last year seem like a bargain at $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,499, and while you can argue that the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a much more powerful laptop, mainly thanks to its high-end CPU, discrete GPU and more RAM, if you’re making a product that’s a more expensive rival to an Apple device, you’ll need to justify the extra cash.

Arguably, comparing the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra to the more powerful 16-inch MacBook Pro with either M4 Pro or M4 Max chips (which, despite being last-generation, are more powerful than the M5) is more fair. The MacBook Pro 16-inch with M4 Pro and 24GB of unified memory is $2,499 / £2,499 / AU$3,999, while the model with an M4 Max chip and 36GB of unified memory is $3,499 / £3,499 / AU$5,699.

• Value: 2.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: SpecsSamsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Specs

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Base Config

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra Review Config

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra High end Config

Price

$2,449.99 / £2,999 (around AU$6,000)

TBA

TBA

CPU

Intel Core Ultra 7 series 3

Intel Core Ultra 7 series 3

Intel Core Ultra 9 series 3

GPU

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070

RAM

32GB LPDDR5X

32GB LPDDR5X

64GB LPDDR5X

Storage

1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2)

1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2)

1TB PCI Express NVMe 4.0 (M.2)

Display

16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits

16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits

16-inch Touch AMOLED, Anti-Reflective, WQXGA+ (2880×1800), 1000nits

Ports and Connectivity

Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120),
SD, Headphone/Microphone

Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120),
SD, Headphone/Microphone

Thunderbolt 4 (2), USB Type-A, HDMI 2.1 port (Supports 8K@60, 5K@120),
SD, Headphone/Microphone

Battery

80.20Wh

80.20Wh

80.20Wh

Dimensions

14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm

14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm

14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches / 356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm

Weight

4.2lbs / 1.89kg

4.2lbs / 1.89kg

4.2lbs / 1.89kg

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Design

• Very smart looking
• Excellent display
• Manages to be slim

As with previous Galaxy Book laptops, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a great-looking product, with a sleek, understated design in silver that is reminiscent of Apple’s Intel-based MacBook Pros (before they underwent noticeable redesigns with the switch to Apple’s own M-series processors). This won’t be the last time I’ll mention the Book6 Ultra’s similarities to a MacBook.

Unlike the Galaxy Book6 Pro and Galaxy Book6, which come in both 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes in a single 16-inch size. While this might mean that if portability is your biggest concern when buying a new laptop, you might not want a large-screen device like the Book6 Ultra, Samsung has done a good job of keeping this laptop feeling thin and relatively light.

It measures 14.05 x 9.76 x 0.6 inches (356.9 x 248 x 15.4mm) and weighs up to 4.2lbs (1.89kg). This means it’s slightly thinner than the 14-inch MacBook Pro (M5), despite its larger screen and discrete GPU, although because this is a 16-inch laptop, the overall footprint is larger than the M5 MacBook Pro.

(Image credit: Future)

Despite the thin design, there’s a decent selection of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports, a standard USB Type-A port, HDMI 2.1, and an SD card reader. Thankfully, Samsung’s decision to drop the headphone jacks from its smartphones hasn’t made it to its laptop division, as the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes with a port for plugging in headsets and microphones.

Fans of USB-C formats (come on, there must be some) will note that the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s two ports are Thunderbolt 4, rather than the newer (and faster) Thunderbolt 5. While this means the Book6 Ultra isn’t quite packed with the very latest components, it’s worth noting that its main competitor, the MacBook Pro 14-inch (M5, 2025), also comes with Thunderbolt 4 ports.

(Image credit: Future)

The keyboard, which again invites comparisons with the MacBook Pro, is decent, and while the keys themselves are rather shallow, they still feel responsive and comfortable to use. As with Apple’s laptops, there’s a dedicated button on the top-right of the keyboard that’s used to scan your fingerprint. This allows you to securely log into Windows 11 with just a touch, and it also means you can use features such as the controversial Recall tool that require advanced biometric security.

The main appeal, design-wise, of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, however, is its screen. Samsung is known for using excellent screens for its devices, especially TVs and smartphones, and the Galaxy Book6 Ultra continues that tradition.

(Image credit: Future)

The 16-inch touchscreen comes with a sharp WQXGA+ (2880 x 1800) resolution, and AMOLED screen technology that results in an incredibly vibrant and detailed image quality. That, combined with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz, makes Windows 11, its apps, and pretty much any media you play on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra look absolutely fantastic.

The display is surrounded by a thin, modern bezel, which means Samsung can maximize the screen size without bulking up the rest of the laptop, and there’s no controversial ‘notch’ that modern MacBooks have around the webcam.

• Design: 4.5 / 5

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Performance

• Excellent Windows 11 performance
• Can even play games
• Gets very hot

Coming with Intel’s latest, and very impressive, Panther Lake processors, and able to be configured with up to an Nvidia RTX 5070 graphics card, the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra offers an exemplary Windows 11 experience, with the operating system and apps all running smoothly.

Whilst testing the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra, I had no problem at all running various apps, and with plenty of RAM, multitasking between apps is smooth and responsive.

The model I reviewed comes with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 laptop GPU, something that’s often found in the best gaming laptops. The inclusion of this high-end GPU doesn’t mean the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a gaming laptop, however, as it can be used for graphically-intensive workloads, such as ultra-high-definition video editing, 3D animation, and advanced AI tasks. So, this model of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a great choice for creative professionals, especially thanks to its gorgeous OLED screen.

(Image credit: Future)

The Galaxy Book6 Ultra certainly had no issues while I was editing a 4K movie in Adobe Premiere, with clips loading quickly, and scrubbing through the video’s timeline was instant. This was also while I had numerous apps and websites open at once, and Windows 11 felt incredibly fast and smooth.

Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra: Benchmarks

Here's how the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
3DMark: Fire Strike: 26,767; Time Spy: 12,309; Steel Nomad: 2,758; Port Royal: 7,687
Geekbench 6.5: Multicore: 16,655; Single-core: 2,852
PCMark 10: 6,827
Crossmark: Overall: 1,880; Productivity: 1,669; Creativity: 2,275; Responsiveness: 1,514
Cyberpunk 2077: (1080p, High, DLSS Quality): 111.86fps
Assassin's Creed Shadows: 1080p, Medium: 54fps; 1080p, Ultra High: 32fps, 1080p, Medium, DLSS Quality: 65; 1080p, Ultra High, DLSS Quality: 39fps
Total War: Warhammer III: 1080p, High: 101.3fps
Battery Life (TechRadar video test): 13 hours, 39 minutes
Battery Life (Battery Informant): 15 hours, 11 minutes

Also, while the RTX 5070-toting Galaxy Book6 Ultra is not a gaming laptop, it can still play games, though you’ll want to enable DLSS upscaling where possible. At 1080p with DLSS on and graphics set to ‘High’, I got Cyberpunk 2077 running at a very impressive 111.86fps. Meanwhile, Assassin's Creed Shadows at ‘Medium’ settings with DLSS switched on hit 65fps.

Sure, these aren’t the most mind-blowing numbers, and there will be plenty of PC gamers who turn their noses up at the need to use DLSS, but the fact that such a thin and light laptop can play these games at all, let alone at those kind of frame rates, is really impressive, and again thanks to the OLED screen, they look incredible.

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra also remains impressively quiet. Even when performing intensive tasks, fan noise was kept to a minimum. The lack of distracting whirring is nice, but it does mean that at some points, primarily just above the keyboard, the laptop can get very hot to the touch. Using it for prolonged periods of heavy workloads (including gaming) could lead to the performance getting throttled to stop the Galaxy Book6 Ultra from overheating, though it didn’t happen during my tests. Packing such powerful components into such a slim chassis does mean that this is a risk, however.

One of the key features of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is how it can work with other Samsung devices, much like how MacBooks can work with iPhones, iPads, and other Apple devices.

(Image credit: Microsoft / Samsung)

I connected the Galaxy Book6 Ultra to my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and with a bit of tweaking, I was able to easily share documents between the laptop and the smartphone. 'Multicontrol' is a particularly impressive feature, whereby dragging the mouse cursor to the edge of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s screen, the cursor will jump to the smartphone, and you can use the Galaxy Book6 Ultra’s trackpad and keyboard to interact with the phone.

I used this to type out some long messages that would have been a pain to write using the phone’s touchscreen. You can also use Samsung’s tablets as a second display for the Galaxy Book6 Ultra, a nice touch if you have invested in Samsung’s ecosystem.

If the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is going to be your first and only Samsung device, then sadly you won’t be able to make use of most of these features, though Windows 11’s Phone Link feature remains a great way to access your phone via your laptop, and it’ll work on the Galaxy Book6 Ultra without the phone needing to be a Samsung model.

You’re missing out on some really useful features, though, many of which make life easier – and Samsung has made it the furthest out of any of its rivals when it comes to providing an Apple-like experience with its ecosystem.

This is all the more impressive as Apple has complete control over its ecosystem: it builds both the hardware (including many components) in its Macs, iPhones, and tablets, as well as the software those devices run on. That means making everything interact with each other is a lot easier (relatively speaking, I mean. I’m certainly not downplaying the hard work and effort that’s still required).

Meanwhile, Samsung’s laptops and smartphones are mainly made of components made by other companies, such as Intel, and the software they run (Windows 11 for laptops, Android for smartphones and tablets) is also made by other companies (Microsoft and Google, respectively).

(Image credit: Microsoft / Samsung)

So, making its various products all work together is an impressive feat, and for the most part works well. It does mean that you need to use Samsung’s own apps for a lot of things, and you need to sign into your Samsung account (on top of your Microsoft account, Google account), so if you’re not a fan of extra apps (sometimes uncharitably called ‘bloatware’) on your laptop or smartphone, then you’ll be frustrated with Samsung’s penchant of preinstalling its own apps.

Also, it’s not quite as slick as Apple’s implementation, and there are a few performance niggles. While using Multcontrol to use the trackpad and keyboard of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra on my Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone was helpful, it prevented the onscreen keyboard on the phone from appearing when I moved control back over to the laptop. Not the end of the world, but a bit annoying if you forget and then wonder why you can’t type out a message. It’s easy to fix by reenabling the touch keyboard, but it’s an example of how Apple’s ecosystem works so much better.

As well as the excellent OLED screen, which offers beautifully dark blacks, high contrast, and vibrant colors, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra comes with six Dolby Atmos speakers with four force-cancelling woofers and two tweeters, which allows the laptop to handle both deep bases and high details. It can reach loud volumes without the audio distorting, and there are no annoying vibrations thanks to the speaker design.

As a Copilot+ PC, it’s also been designed with on-device AI in mind, but even though both Microsoft and Samsung seem fully committed to AI, I’ve yet to find a compelling case for it in a laptop. Sure, it’s nice to have and means this laptop is certainly future-proof, but it’s the least exciting part of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

(Image credit: Future)Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra review: Battery Life

• Over 15 hours
• Gaming drains it in 2 hours

Despite what many companies, including Microsoft, insist, AI is not the most interesting or exciting feature of this new generation of Copilot+ PC laptops (ugh, I hate that name) – but rather, it's the battery life.

The processors powering these laptops are getting ever more efficient, which means they can offer excellent performance as well as longer times between charging, and the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is an excellent example of this, managing over 15 hours in our benchmark tests. That’s not the longest we’ve seen, and the MacBook Pro comfortably beats it by about five hours in the same test. It’s still very good for a laptop that offers this kind of performance.

I was able to use it for multiple workdays without needing to plug it in, and when I did, the battery charged quickly. I used the included power adaptor, but any USB-C charger should do the trick – and it’s worth noting that in the UK and EU, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra does not come with a power adaptor, similar to the MacBook. This is supposed to help reduce e-waste, and while that’s an admirable goal, it does add to the expense if you’ve not got a spare charger already.

• Battery Life: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Acer Aspire 16 AI?Acer Aspire 16 AI Scorecard

Attributes

Notes

Rating

Value

This is a stylish and very powerful laptop that predictably comes at a very high price that will likely put off a lot of people.

2.5 / 5

Design

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is one of the nicest-looking laptops on the market right now, and its AMOLED screen is a particular highlight.

4.5 / 5

Performance

Windows 11 is incredibly fast, and even the most intensive workloads are handled with ease. It can also play games.

4.5 / 5

Battery Life

Scoring over 15 hours in our tests, this is very impressive for a laptop that offers this level of performance.

4.5 / 5

Total

The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is one of the best laptops you can buy right now thanks to its awesome performance and stunning design. It's especially great if paired with a Samsung phone, though the high price means it won't be for everyone.

4.5 / 5

Buy the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra if...

You have other Samsung devices
The Galaxy Book6 Ultra really comes into its own when you pair it with a Samsung smartphone, tablet or headphones.

You want a thin and light creative workstation
Intel’s latest chips and the ability to configure the Galaxy Book6 Ultra with an RTX 5070 GPU mean this is an incredibly powerful laptop that’s ideal for creative workloads, all wrapped up in a thin and light chassis.

You want a fantastic screen to work on
The 16-inch AMOLED screen of the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is one of the best displays you can currently get in a laptop.

Don't buy it if...

You have a tight budget
The Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra is a flagship laptop with cutting-edge components and features, which makes it very expensive.

You want a gaming laptop
Despite coming with an RTX 5070 GPU, this is not a gaming laptop, and while it certainly can play games, you’d be better off buying a machine specifically designed for gaming, as they will offer better cooling and other gaming features.

How I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra

• Tested for several weeks
• Used for various tasks
• Connected it to my Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra smartphone

I tested the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Ultra over the course of several weeks, using it for work and writing the bulk of this review on it. I also played a few games on it to see how the dedicated GPU copes.

I also edited a 4K video using Adobe Premiere Pro and streamed several movies and listened to music. I've been reviewing laptops for nearly 20 years, and I've used my extensive experience to rate this device.

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

It's rare that I don't know where to start when it comes to writing a movie review, but there's a first time for everything. I'll just give the bad news to you straight: like a vet's trip to get your old pet put down, "Wuthering Heights" is about as spicy as a plain meal at Nando's, and as basic as the restaurant choice.

But we knew this going into it, didn't we? We've had the collective debate about the death of modern literacy, the outrage about the casting choices and Emerald Fennell's outright refusal to include the Emily Brontë novel's original themes of race and colonialism. They're all necessary conversations and causes for concern, and I agree with them.

On the other hand, I also agree with freedom of interpretation and creative license. I'm a huge fan of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, so it made sense that Fennell was the director who could reinvent a classic into something jaw-dropping, pushing the boundaries of how we interpret a classic tale.

Alas, we've actually ended up with something superficial that can be commercially marketed, inspiring 10-second TikToks instead of critical thinking. Add two and two together, and you get boring... the most mortal sin in cinema.

From the impeccable first trailer with Charli XCX's Everything is Romantic remixed into it (as it's better than the entire movie, I'll link it below for you to enjoy), "Wuthering Heights" sold itself as lustful yearning confirmed to get you hot under the collar. I thought this would make it messy and overbearing – but I never expected it to be as dull as dishwater.

From teaser to feature, something's gone wrong

If I'm completely honest, I so badly wanted to fall head over heels for "Wuthering Heights" just so I could spite the masses who hate it. Perhaps I'm as petty as Fennell's version of Cathy (Margot Robbie). But that dream wasn't to be, so let's dig deeper into what didn't work.

Here's the infuriating part – you can completely buy the chemistry and sense of longing happening onscreen, even the unhinged behavior that makes up being driven made with selfish desire. But you'll struggle to care about any of it.

Working with deeply unlikeable characters needs a master at the helm, and I wonder if Fennell is too focused on translated her own personal experience of reading the book as a young girl. In essence, what's happening in the movie might mean a lot to her, but not to anybody else.

A friend of mine described "Wuthering Heights" as a two-hour Taylor Swift music video, and I think she's nailed it. We're looking at something that could easily have been featured on The Life of a Showgirl, laced with vibrant colors and ostentatious production design shaped by period drama Instagram.

While the costuming is easily the star of the show, production often reveals Yorkshire to actually be on a soundstage, with props so 2D you'd fear squashing them into cardboard mulch if you got too close.

Charli XCX's tailor-made album for the film is in scant supply too. The orchestrated soundtrack is hauntingly melodic, but I was promised some electro-pop bangers in between this snoozefest, and I only counted three.

Everything isn't always romantic. (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Then there's the wayward casting. Perhaps somebody like Mia Goth, Mia Wasikowska or Elle Fanning might have been a better fit for Cathy than Robbie, who can never truly shift that beautiful Gold Coast glow. Her performance is solid and she's clearly done the groundwork for it, but full suspension of belief doesn't follow.

I've got a lot more time for Jacob Elordi's Heathcliff, especially after his riveting role of The Creature in Frankenstein. He sells the hard done by Yorkshire grafter better than anybody else, but the press tour had helped solidify our yearning for him. Holding Robbie's dress, making sure she doesn't get soaked in the rain and taking the time to answer every endless press question thrown his way... yeah, that's a man raised right.

While Hong Chau's Nelly Dean remains constantly stone-faced and Shazad Latif's Edgar Linton looks like he doesn't even know he's in a movie, I'm bowled over by Martin Clunes' Mr. Earnshaw. It's hilarious for a Brit to see the Doc Martin star scold Elordi and crawl on a dirty floor for coins, but God does he pull it off. Both cruel and captivating, we definitely don't spend enough time with him during "Wuthering Heights'" 132-minute runtime.

Owen Cooper and Charlotte Mellington are the exceptional ace up Fennell's sleeve though. Matured and emotional beyond their years, they reel us in during the movie's opening 20 minutes with such vulnerable honesty that I almost had a tear in my eye. Thank you Netflix and Adolescence for giving us a star being born in Cooper.

But surely it's erotic... right?

Get ready to see this sort of pose a LOT. (Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Where "Wuthering Heights" removes the socio-political context of Brontë's novel, it fills out with a 50 Shades of Grey approach to what's left. Again, this leaves a bland taste. Aside from one truly erotic scene – Fennell seems to pull her lust off best when she stops just shy of sex – nothing is sexy, shocking, or particularly inviting. If you want sexual scandal, try Rivals on Disney+.

As I said in the headline, if this film was a spice, it would be flour. You can't market something solely on the promise of hedonistic lusting and then deliver something you'd actually feel comfortable watching with your parents. I doubt it would even have made ripples 20 or 30 years ago. But sure, Elordi will get some cheers when he takes his top off.

Will I be watching "Wuthering Heights" again? No. Do I remain a Saltburn truther? Yes. Will Fennell's latest make a shed-ton of money at the box office despite being widely panned? Absolutely. I've got a sneaking suspicion that Fennell kicks into full gear with original stories, so don't count me out of her work completely.

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Light spoilers follow for Crime 101.

Chris Hemsworth can't seem to catch a break away from the MCU.

Best known for playing Thor in Marvel's cinematic juggernaut, his CV largely reads like a list of critical darlings that underperformed at the box office (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Rush) and critically-panned flops (Spiderhead, Men In Black: International, and 2017's Ghostbusters). Sure, there have been successes, such as Netflix's Extraction franchise, but even those are considered to be unoriginal overachievers by plenty of people. Not exactly the consistent hitmaker some might have expected him to have become, then.

And so comes the turn of Crime 101, an action-heist thriller fronted by Hemsworth. At first glance, it looks like the kind of gritty and pulsating film that'll go down well with fans and critics alike, and be the big, non-superhero box office success that the Aussie actor needs. Enjoyable for what it is, though, Crime 101 commits too many offences to be a must-see film and/or an immediate genre classic.

To catch a thief

Chris Hemsworth plays Mike Davis, a careful but effective jewellery thief (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures)

Written and directed by BAFTA-winning crime genre fanatic Bart Layton (The Impostor, American Animals) and based on Don Winslow's short story namesake, Crime 101 introduces us to Mike Davis (Hemsworth).

An extremely meticulous and seemingly untraceable crook, Davis' penchant for committing armed robberies – often of the jewellery variety – along the Hollywood Freeway puts him in the crosshairs of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).

Davis is a walking contradiction in every sense of the word – and, by proxy, an incredibly interesting individual

When a routine diamond heist goes awry, Davis soon finds Detective Lou Lubesnick (Mark Ruffalo), who's hunted him for an extended period of time, hot on his trail once more. The only way to evade capture and set himself up for life, it seems, is to successfully carry out one last money-spinning crime. And, for that, Davis will need to employ the services of Sharon Colvin (Halle Berry), a disillusioned insurance broker who holds the key to his $11 million plan.

Detective Tillman (left) joins Mark Ruffalo's Lou Lubesnick in pursuing Davis throughout the film (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures)

There's no question that Hemsworth has the charisma and acting qualities to be a leading man, which he's demonstrated as Marvel's heroic God of Thunder and Furiosa's the love-to-hate villain Dementus. It'll come as no surprise to learn, then, that he turns a potentially one-dimensional character in Davis into a fully rounded individual with real emotional depth and complexity

Okay, given his line of work, Davis has learned to become a enigma whose vulnerabilities only surface with people he's close to. Once the soul-shuddering moment that spooks him during the near-botched diamond robbery occurs, though, a window is opened into Davis' life and mysterious backstory that suggests he's not the run-of-the-mill thief you might expect.

Neither a master of his craft nor a perfect executor of a plan, and armed with an unexpectedly strict moral code that juxtaposes the criminal world he operates in, Davis is a walking contradiction in every sense of the word – and, by proxy, an incredibly interesting individual to accompany as Crime 101's story unfolds.

Davis enlists the help of Berry's Sharon Colvin (right) to land his next – and potentially last – score (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures)

It's the journeys that Davis and his fellow alienated individuals in Lubesnick and Colvin embark on, plus the broken systems they operate in, that makes Crime 101 shine as a character-led crime drama.

Crime 101 shines as a character-led crime drama

Whether it's Davis' faith being shaken by his near-death experience, Lubesnick's hands being tied by red tape and lacking the support of his law enforcing counterparts, or Colvin being overlooked by her peers due to her gender and age, Crime 101's core trio are all pushed to their breaking point.

Watching these individuals grapple with their conscience and fully transform into morally ambiguous individuals, especially once their worlds collide, is arguably the Amazon and Sony flick's best feature. My only criticism? That these engrossing interactions, which I was fully invested in alongside their individual arcs from the outset, aren't revisited as often as I'd have liked.

Under pressure

Crime 101's romance-laced subplot between Maya and Davis is trite (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures)

Outside of these character interactions, Crime 101's story is as disappointingly derivative as they come.

Its action, while slick, kinetic, and at-times edge-of-your-seat viewing, is pretty par for the course. When you consider the Mount Rushmore of genre movies that Layton says Crime 101 was influenced by, especially from an action spectacle standpoint, I expected more from its rubber-burning set-pieces and gun-toting stand-offs.

I expected more from Crime 101's rubber-burning set-pieces and gun-toting stand-offs

The same can be said of Crime 101's romantic sub-narrative, which sees Davis fall for, and later date, Maya (Monica Barbaro) after they're involved in a car accident during its first act. Hemsworth and Barbaro have a mostly natural chemistry that bubbles with sexual anticipation, and its inclusion certainly adds some amorous spice that's missing from Winslow's original tale. Contextually, though, it's a storytelling addition that's hokey at best and, at worst, is an unnecessary distraction from the primary plot.

Despite Barry Keoghan's best efforts, Ormon isn't a villain who'll live long in the memory (Image credit: Amazon MGM Studios/Sony Pictures)

Even Ormon, a belligerent, overeager, and violent criminal portrayed by the ever-excellent Barry Keoghan, lacks originality. A one-note pantomime villain, his inclusion is nothing more than simply being a deeply unlikeable, antagonistic foil to the multifaceted Davis, and play a vital role in Crime 101's nail-biting albeit formulaic final showdown.

Crime 101 feels like a throwback to movies that aren't made anymore – but maybe that's the point

And that's a pity, because Crime 101 could've saved face if said confrontation had built upon the suspense-riddled foundations that it had done a largely good job of laying throughout.

Sure, it's not the worst face-off in movie history, and it would be remiss of me not to mention that the Amazon MGM Studios and Sony Pictures venture dispenses with the usually grim endings that the crime genre is renowned for. Spoilers notwithstanding, I respect that it wraps up many of its characters' individual stories in a satisfying manner.

Nevertheless, the slow but purposeful ratcheting up of the tension throughout its two hour and 20 minutes runtime doesn't get the payoff it deserves once things come to what should be a thrilling, high-stakes head.

My verdict

Crime 101 is a serviceable albeit puzzling film. There's a fair amount to admire about the first feature that Layton has directed that's based on a work of fiction rather than a real-life crime. That's especially true from a character-first perspective, with the action-thriller anchored by many strong performances.

Still, while it's commendable that it's a largely authentic retelling of Winslow's original tale, Crime 101 just isn't ground-breaking or genre-bending enough as it needs to be to stand out.

It's honorable that one of this year's new movies tries to evoke films of its ilk of yesteryear, and feels like a throwback to movies that aren't made anymore – but maybe that's the point. Filmmaking and storytelling has moved on so much since the crime movie genre's heyday of the late '80s and early '90s. Such big-screen offerings need to do or say something fresh and exciting to drive the genre forward. Put simply, Crime 101 doesn't.

Crime 101 arrives in theaters worldwide on Friday, February 13.

Wix may be the biggest name in website building, but is it right for you? Our Wix review helps you get all the information you need to make an informed decision.

We’ve extensively tried and tested 80+ website builders and found that Wix consistently beats competitors in important areas including tools and features, ease of use, and price. In fact, Wix features heavily across all our buying guides and has maintained the #1 spot in our list of the best website builder platforms for some time.

Wix is a fully-comprehensive website builder, offering everything from high-impact templates and an outstanding AI website builder to powerful business tools including ecommerce features and a booking platform.

There is a lot to cover in this Wix review. We signed up, built a host of test sites, and took an in-depth look at the templates, editor, features, ease of use, speed, security, SEO, apps, hosting, and more. But before we dive into the details, let’s get the TL;DR for those who just want the most important insights and information.

If you decide that Wix is the website builder for you, you can now save on your subscription with our list of the best Wix promo codes.

Wix review: Overview

Wix is the world’s most popular website builder, and by a very long way.

According to BuiltWith, Wix has a massive 33% share of the market, more than any other commercial website builder. It's closely followed by Squarespace at 26%, with GoDaddy and Weebly trailing further behind in 2026.

1. Wix - a top-notch website builder

Wix offers some powerful paid plans, starting from as little as $12 per month for the Light plan (on a three year plan), which gets you 2GB of storage space, a free domain, and the removal of Wix branding.View Deal

What’s the secret? Some website builders focus on newbies, others on experts and the most demanding sites, but Wix targets everyone. Whether you’re a first-timer looking to build a simple personal site, or a company launching a new web store, Wix has the tools and technology to help. We signed up and built a stack of test sites to find out more.

Wix is the world's most popular website builder, the power behind 46% of the market by the number of websites, more than the likes of Squarespace (17%), GoDaddy Website Builder (10%) and Weebly (5%) combined.

Getting started with Wix

Wix got our website project off to a very quick start by allowing us to choose from a huge library of 900+ templates. Whether you’re creating a food blog, an online CV, a pet store, a site for your restaurant, or wedding events business, there’s a template to suit.

We chose a Hotel template, and were immediately impressed. It was a very complete site, with pages showing the rooms, hotel amenities, our policies on hosting weddings and events, with slideshows, downloadable menu PDFs, a Live Chat button, and a Contact Us page with a map and a working Contact form.

Wix offers some stunning templates right off the shelf (Image credit: Wix)

All we had to do next was change the built-in photos and text for our own. If you already have the content you need, you could have most of the site up and running in an afternoon.

Although most templates come with a sensible default set of pages and features, you may well want to add others, and Wix has more options than we’ve seen with anyone else.

This starts with core features like photo galleries, video and music players, embeddable social media streams, buttons, maps, forms and more. But there’s so much more such as blogs, web stores, and forums.

Wix app market adds over 500 possible tools and feature to your website (Image credit: Wix)

If the standard tools don’t deliver what you need, the Wix App Market has 500+ extensions to add new website features and connect your sites to various platforms and services - that’s way more than anyone else.

As with the templates, although Wix has an array of features and apps, they’re not the best in every area. The sheer volume and number of options can make Wix more difficult to use, too. But we think it’s important to have that choice.

Blogs, ecommerce, and speed

If your website needs a blog, then the good news is Wix can add one to any template with a single click. We found it easy to create, organise, and manage posts.

The blogging system doesn’t have the power or flexibility of WordPress, but then neither does anything else. Although we noticed a few issues, they are minor (a post can’t have two authors, for instance). Overall, Wix has all the blogging power most personal and business users will need.

Wix offers simple, yet powerful ecommerce functionality. (Image credit: Wix)

It’s a similar story with ecommerce. Wix can’t fully compete with platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, but that’s no surprise. Ecommerce is only one of the areas Wix covers, and it’s trying to create a service that anyone can use.

But let’s keep this in perspective. If you’re a newcomer, maybe a small or medium business looking to build a capable web store, Wix’s ease of use and lengthy feature list could make it the perfect partner.

Whatever your website or audience, performance is important. We built several test websites and used some of the best speed testing platforms around to see how they compared.

The results were reasonable. Wix adds lots of scripts and other files to its sites, and that means it’s not as fast as, say, a hand-tuned WordPress setup. But that’s no surprise - all website builders have the same issue. Wix delivered similar and very acceptable speeds to Squarespace in our tests, even with its most basic paid plan.

Value

You can get started with Wix for free, no credit card details required. The plan is very limited, with a tiny 500MB storage and bandwidth per month, but it’s enough to test the service.

Paid plans start at $17 a month, but you only get 2GB storage and there’s no ecommerce support. If you’re building a web store or need more features or speed, you’ll be spending $29+ a month on one of the higher plans. That’s a little above average, but it’s also very similar to Squarespace, and we think it’s fair value for what you get.

Wix example websites Animal Music StudiosIzzy WheelsKode With KlossyEvolve Clothing GalleryRoee Ben YehudaMananalu

In this review we’ll talk about Wix’s many features and what they can do, but if you’re in a hurry, the quickest way to understand the possibilities is to look at what others Wix users have created.

A website about your coding camps could easily be just dull blocks of text, but Kode With Klossy makes great use of Wix photos features, scrolling effects, and animations to create a modern and appealing site.

Evolve Clothing, Roee Ben Yahuda, and Izzy Wheels are professional ecommerce and portfolio sites which use eye-catching graphics, scrolls, and effects to grab and hold your attention.

Wix makes it very easy to use video on your site, and we’re talking about way more than just embedding some YouTube clip. Animal Music Studios produces award-winning music and sound design for ads and elsewhere for many of the world’s biggest brands, and its Wix site allows you to browse them all in an amazing video wall.

If you do nothing else, scroll down Mananalu and count all the handy features Wix allows you to use in ecommerce and other sites: shopping cart top right, video header, social media sharing buttons, Amazon shopping integration, a ‘Find a Store’ button which uses your current location, animations, easy newsletter subscriptions, and more.

Wix pricing and plans

Wix offers a range of plans for everyone from hobbyists to enterprise level businesses. (Image credit: Wix)Wix Plan Options:

Plan

/mo (paid monthly)

/mo (paid annually)

/mo (paid every 2-years)

/mo (paid every 3-years)

Free

$0

$0

$0

$0

Lite

$24

$17

$14

$12

Core

$36

$29

$24

$21

Business

$43

$36

$29

$26

Business Elite

$172

$159

$121

$110

Pricing last verified: 11/02/2026

Free: Great for giving Wix a try

Wix's limited free plan inserts ads on your site, doesn’t support custom domains, and limits you to only 500MB storage and 1GB monthly bandwidth. It’s not for serious sites, but the free plan does give you an easy way to try Wix before you buy, and we think it’s a big plus for the service.

It is worth noting that you cannot currently connect Google Analytics to Wix with its free plan, which can make the plan unsuitable for more serious users.

Lite: Ideal for solopreneurs and personal sites

Lite drops the ads and bandwidth limits. It also allows you to use your own domain, making it more suitable for professional users than the free plan. Storage is limited to 2GB, though, there’s no ecommerce or analytics, and there are assorted other restrictions and issues.

For example, you get one automatic monthly backup only (you can have up to three active manual backups); video streaming is limited to 30 minutes; and there’s no support for adding live chat to your site.

Core: Perfect for small, ambitious businesses

If you’re a small business building a web store, a business or other demanding site, we think you’ll be better off with the Core plan. This plan lifts your storage limit to 50GB, it also unlocks ecommerce features, analytics, and site chat.

You’ll also get some added marketing tools and site collaborators, making it ideal for a business that is growing its team.

Business: Great for growing businesses

The business plan is similar to the Core plan, but it gives you more. More storage (100GB), more collaborators (up to 10), and more marketing and ecommerce tools and features. This is a great plan for more established businesses that need that extra bit of power.

Business Elite: Best for established businesses that want to scale

The Business Elite plan is aimed at serious users with big international sites, and although it comes with a hefty price tag, when we dug into the details, we could see why.

Opting for Business Elite gets you unlimited storage and video streaming time, for instance. You also get multi-cloud hosting, access to an advanced developer platform, up to 100 site collaborators, and advanced marketing tools.

This really is an all-in plan from Wix, and most businesses won’t ever use up any limits here.

Hidden costs

There are some additional costs that you should be aware of with Wix.

Although the Wix App Market is a huge selling point for Wix, many of the apps charge one-off or monthly fees for using them.

Many Wix plans come with a free domain, but only for the first year. After the first year, your domain will renew at anything from $20 and up.

If you opt to connect a professional email (such as hello@mywebsite.com), you can do this via Wix, but it will also come at an additional cost.

What do Wix users think?

To get a feel for how Wix users feel about the service, we’ve looked at how it scores on popular ratings sites around the world (and how it compares to some of it's top competitors).

Review Site

Wix

Squarespace

Jimdo

Trustpilot

4.6/5 (24,981+ reviews)

1.2/5 (1,494+ reviews)

4.5/5 (5,551+ reviews)

G2

4.2/5 (1,729+ reviews)

4.4/5 (1,089+ reviews)

3.9/5 (18+ reviews)

Capterra

4.4/5 (10,406+ reviews)

4.6/5 (3,328+ reviews)

3.8/5 (42+ reviews)

SoftwareAdvice

4.4/5 (10,406+ reviews)

4.6/5 (3,327+ reviews)

3.8/5 (42+ reviews)

GetApp

4.4/5 (10,400+ reviews)

4.6/5 (3,325+ reviews)

3.9/5 (40+ reviews)

Recent reviews often praised Wix for ease of use, its range of features, and specific incidents of great customer support from individual agents.

Although there are relatively few negative reviews, common themes include poor speeds when creating and editing the site (but not for site visitors), and problems solving complex support issues which can’t be handled in a single contact.

Put it all together and this is a good result for Wix. Its ratings are generally high, comparable to or better than the competition, and although negative reviews are always a concern, we don’t see any indication of major service problems.

Getting started with Wix

Get started quickly with Wix's help, or take your time with a more bespoke design (Image credit: Wix)

We clicked the ‘Design a Site’ box, and Wix offered us two choices: allow the service to build a site for us, or choose one of Wix’ many templates and customize it with the editor.

We chose the first ‘Build it for me’ option, and the service asked us a series of questions about our site and our business. What was our business name, email, physical address, or phone number? Did we have any social media links? What colors and fonts did we like? Did we have a logo?

(If you don’t have or want to share any of these details, leave those boxes blank and Wix won’t mention them on the site.)

Wix gives you options to pick from, helping tailor your site to your preferences (Image credit: Wix)

Next, Wix suggested three site layouts. We chose our favorite, and Wix asked which pages we needed: ‘Locations’, ‘Store Policies’, ‘FAQ’, ‘About Us’, and ‘Contact.’ Helpful scrolling thumbnails showed us what each page contained.

Pages chosen, we clicked Next, and Wix both created our site and put it online using a Wix subdomain (oursitename.wixsite.com/my-site-1.)

Our results weren’t bad at all, considering we’d told Wix little more than we were running an online shoe store. It chose a good quality ‘woman-putting-shoe-on’ picture for the top of the page, displayed more products (with neat animation effects) as we scrolled down the page, had a built-in store with product filters and a shopping cart, 12 product pages, and more.

Although you’ll want to customize the default copy to suit your needs, this is quicker and easier than you might think. Our sample site used this as its first paragraph, for instance:

‘At My Site, we are dedicated to carrying your favorite designers and showcasing their latest collections. We make sure to offer you outstanding value without compromising on quality. All online orders are inspected prior to shipment to ensure that your package arrives in perfect condition. Are you ready to find your next favorite pair of shoes?’

That may not work for everyone, but it’s a decent first attempt. If you’re happy with the text, add your own business name and it’s sorted in seconds. But even if you want something else, having good default text shows you the points you should probably make (‘favorite designers’, ‘latest collections’, ‘outstanding value’), and you can rephrase or expand those however you like.

We noticed one unexpected limit with Wix sites on all plans: you’re allowed a maximum of 100 static pages. That doesn’t include blog posts, product descriptions, and other dynamic pages, so it shouldn’t be an issue for the vast majority of sites. But if you know it might be a problem for you, Squarespace has a far more generous 1,000 static page limit, and we’ve seen WordPress handle 10,000 static pages successfully in the past.

Wix templates

Wix offers a huge range of stunning templates to pick from (Image credit: Wix)

Wix has a huge library of 900+ professionally-designed, clean, and modern website templates to explore, far more than we see elsewhere (Squarespace has 150+, Jimdo 100+.)

The templates aren’t all fully responsive. Wix generally does a good job of ensuring websites look just as good on mobile devices as desktops, but there can be occasional glitches. We didn’t have any notable issues with our test sites, though, and even if we did, the good news is that Wix now has very advanced editors which can produce fully responsive sites. (You can try them for free, too, but more on that later.)

A library of this size means there’s a very good change that you’ll find a template which suits your needs. When we chose the Food category at Squarespace, it showed us eight templates, with cryptic design names like ‘Lexington’ and ‘Hester’, giving us few clues about what they were for.

When we searched for ‘Food’ at Wix it gave us 70+ hits, with clearly labeled templates helping us find food blogs, food shops, online grocery stores, nutritionists, bakeries, cafes, catering companies, Italian/ vegetarian/ pizza/ fast food/ seafood/ burger and other restaurants, and more.

Once you have picked a template, you can use the easy editor to make it your own. (Image credit: Wix)

Many templates are sensibly set up with appropriate pages and content for their purpose. The Steak House Restaurant has gorgeous pics of juicy steaks, along with default menu and reservation pages, for instance, ready for you to customise with your own details. Meanwhile, the Musician site we chose had default links to our Tiktok, YouTube, BandCamp, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and other sites, along with placeholders for our latest music and video, and a Subscription form for visitors to join our mailing list.

Even if you can’t find a template which precisely suits your needs (you’re a musician but don’t have any videos, for instance), having this many pre-built templates gets you off to a quick start. You can then customise your favorite to deliver just what you want.

If the regular designs just don’t work for you, Wix also provides a bunch of blank templates. These have a range of layouts, but no images or industry-specific titles or text, so you’re free to start with a blank page and create whatever design you like.

Whatever you’re after, the good news is that Wix makes all its templates visible to everyone, without signing up. (Jimdo only displays template thumbnails until you sign up.) Visit the Wix Templates page and you can choose a template and browse it as a full website, exploring every page and feature to see if it’s right for you.

Wix website editor

The Wix editor is one of the easiest to use on the market (Image credit: Wix)

The standard Wix editor opens with a simple and beginner-friendly look which uses the vast majority of your screen space to display the current page, and keeps other clutter to a minimum.

The first editing steps are simple. We moved our mouse cursor around the page sections - headers, footers, image galleries, sliders - and, in most cases, a Quick Edit button appeared. That sounded promising, so we clicked it, and the Wix editor displayed a single sidebar with options to change titles, captions, images, and everything else in that section. It’s a great approach which makes it easy for anyone to begin editing a page, even if they’ve never used a website builder at all.

Select other elements and Wix gives you relevant options. Click a paragraph of text, for instance, and you can just start typing to add content; clicking a menu displays options to change how it works; and experienced users can right-click just about anything to access a host of advanced options.

Highly customisable

Wix offers great freedom in your design, but not so much that it is easy to mess up your site. (Image credit: Wix)

If the items on your page (text blocks, images, videos, maps, forms) don’t quite work for your needs, then the editor allows you to resize and reposition them as you like.

One significant feature of the Wix editor is that it allows you to precisely position objects wherever you like on the page, and resize them appropriately. That’s different to Squarespace and some other editors, where you can drop objects onto the page, but they snap to a grid: you can still place them approximately, but you don’t have as much creative freedom.

If you’re an experienced web designer, or you’re looking to achieve very specific goals or effects, the customization options in the Wix editor could be just what you need.

If you’re very much at the beginner end of the market - you’ll probably choose a template, replace the text and images but not much more - then the Wix Quick Edit feature also makes it relatively easy to use.

But if you’re an intermediate user, inexperienced but you’d like to try a few page and site tweaks, then the more guided approach of the Squarespace editor could make it easier to use.

Wix recently integrated AI into its website editor, making it easier than ever before to tailor your website to your needs. Users can interact directly with AI via conversational chat, in response to your questions or instructions the AI will help you edit templates, guiding you through key areas such as selecting color palettes and fonts by extracting colors from your logo to helping you experiment with various themes.

Developer features

Wix Studio offers advanced creative tools to all users. (Image credit: Wix)

If the standard Wix-generated pages don’t work for you, the service has advanced options which might help.

The standard editor has a Velo Dev Mode, which allows developers to add custom JavaScript code, or use an array of low-level APIs to reconfigure precisely how the service works.

As of January 2025, Wix Studio has now replaced Wix's Editor X as the platform's more advanced editor aimed at web design freelancers and agencies. It's designed specifically for agencies and professionals. You get advanced design tools without the complexity.

This isn't your typical website builder. Studio offers pixel-perfect control and responsive design by default. Every element automatically adapts to different screen sizes. No manual adjustments needed.

The collaboration features shine for team projects. Multiple designers can edit simultaneously. You see where colleagues are working in real-time. Comments and task assignments keep everyone organized.

Lots of website builders promise design freedom with efficiency, but Studio actually delivers. You can create custom breakpoints for precise responsive control. Drag-and-drop editing works alongside advanced CSS options. Even Figma designs import directly into Studio.

We found the AI integration especially impressive. Smart layout suggestions speed up initial designs. The AI creates custom wireframes based on your project goals. Content generation handles copy across multiple pages instantly.

Client management gets streamlined too. Custom branding removes Wix logos from your sites. Detailed reporting keeps clients informed about progress. Handoff tools make site transfers seamless.

Studio includes over 375 professional templates. Each one's industry-specific and fully responsive. So even with the advanced editor, you're not starting from scratch every time. Wix Studio is purchased separately from the website builder. There's no free plan, but paid subscriptions start at just $19/month with a 14-day money-back guarantee. You don't need a regular Wix subscription if you use Studio.

The flexibility that Wix Studio offers makes it one of the best website builders for agencies and freelancers.

Wix features and tools

Templates get your site off to a good start, but every quality website builder allows you to add a bunch of other features.

In a click or two, Wix can add text boxes, images, video and music players, social media bars, buttons, maps, menus and more. Plus the new AI features pack a ton of value.

AI marketing assistant

Wix's newest AI tool tackles one of business owners' biggest headaches. Meet Kleo, the AI marketing assistant that arrived in 2025.

You don't need advanced marketing expertise to start building your online presence. Kleo handles SEO, social media, email campaigns, and paid ads from one place. It's like having a marketing manager built into your dashboard.

The setup process is refreshingly simple. Tell Kleo about your business goals. The AI creates tailored marketing plans automatically. No guesswork required.

What sets Kleo apart from basic automation tools is that its suggestions are actually useful. Other website builders offer simple content generators. Kleo goes much deeper. It understands your brand voice and target audience.

The AI publishes social posts across multiple channels. It sends email campaigns when timing matters most. You can upgrade your social media and email plans to unlock even more publishing power.

We also found Kleo very consistent during our testing. It does not stray too far from your original voice and tone instructions. However, some assembly might be required to get the content to a publishable state.

Currently, Kleo works in English only. But, Wix plans to expand to other languages soon. The tool also comes free with all premium Wix plans, so no extra subscription is needed.

AI business assistant

Astro launched in April 2025 as Wix's first AI business assistant. Think of it as your digital business partner. Available 24/7 through a simple chat interface.

You'll find Astro in the top right of your dashboard. Click the blue "AI" button to start chatting. The assistant understands natural language perfectly. Just ask questions like you would a human colleague.

The range of tasks Astro handles is impressive. It monitors website traffic and analyzes sales trends. Need a performance report? Astro generates one instantly. Want to optimize your SEO settings? The assistant guides you through every step.

Content creation becomes effortless with Astro. The AI writes blog posts, social media content, and email campaigns. It maintains your brand voice across all platforms. Quality stays consistent whether you're writing one post or one hundred.

Business expansion gets simpler too. Astro helps you add new products to your store. It explores dropshipping opportunities that match your niche. The assistant even manages subscriptions and team permissions.

We liked Astro's proactive approach during testing. The AI doesn't just answer questions, it spots opportunities for growth and suggests relevant tools. This often leads to discovering features you didn't know existed.

Guy Sopher from Wix calls Astro "the largest collection of skills" they've ever built into one assistant. The AI learns continuously, adding new capabilities regularly.

Currently available in English for Wix and Wix Studio users. But, Wix has said that support for languages is coming soon. The assistant works on all Wix plan levels, including the free tier.

Simple forms are a great way to interact with your website users. (Image credit: Wix)

Image handling

Wix earned a thumbs up from us for its strong image support. Squarespace and most of the competition limit you to the usual JPEG, PNG and GIF formats, but Wix also supports the ultra-efficient WebP, saving bandwidth and improving speeds.

We found the very capable Wix image editor helped us prepare most photos without using external tools. We could adjust brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows and more just by dragging sliders; there are 27 filters, crop and resize features, and you can automatically enhance your images with a click.

Other website builders have decent photo editors, and some outperform Wix in one or two areas (Squarespace has more flexible image cropping, for instance.) But, overall, Wix has more adjustments and tweaks than anybody else, and also crams in some surprisingly advanced features.

A Cutout feature automatically identifies the subject of a photo and removes the background. Its success rate depends very much on your photo, but we had excellent results with most of the images we tried.

We loved the ability to add elements to your photos, too. This can be as simple as a text caption, but you can also choose overlay effects including image flares, shadows and reflections.

If you’re short on quality photos, Wix gives you access to free images from both its own library, and the excellent Unsplash. The image search engine isn’t always the best with complex searches (entering ‘traffic lights UK’ still got us photos with freeways and palm trees), but it’s more choice than we usually see elsewhere (Squarespace offers free images via Unsplash only), and we had no problem finding what we needed.

If you can’t quite find the right image, Wix also allows you to search Shutterstock and purchase individual images from only $2.99 each. There are some restrictions (you can use the image for free, but on Wix only), but that’s still a very good deal. Squarespace uses Getty for its premium photos, but it asks around $10 per image.

Wix forms and collections

Some Wix page elements have a huge amount of depth. Choose to add a Form, for instance, and Wix displays multiple templates for various form types. There are Contact forms, Order forms, Registration forms to collect visitor details, and others for applications, feedback, donations, subscriptions, waivers, and more.

That’s just the start. We chose a Contact Us form, clicked Settings and found all kinds of configuration tools.

Forms can change dynamically as users fill them in, for instance (ask an extra question if they choose a certain value.) When a user submits a forum, you can choose whether to display a message, a download link, redirect them to another URL, something else. Wix can save time, too, by automating common tasks: sending them a Thank You email, sending them a coupon, adding them to this or that contact list.

One big plus for Wix is that, because of its vast App Market (with many free options), it can add very major features which completely transform your site.

Squarespace doesn’t offer built-in support for adding live chat or web forums to its sites, for instance. Users can do it, but they must connect their Squarespace sites to third-party apps or services. That works, but it makes life more complicated if there are problems, because you must work with multiple support teams to sort them out.

Vibe coding platform

In January 2026, Wix launched its dedicated vibe coding platform, Wix Harmony. This platform allows Wix users to take a new approach to building, combining 'vibe coding', where you simply describe what you want the website builder to do (like explaining to a friend), and traditional drag-and-drop website building.

Wix promises that, unlike some other vibe coding tools, this new feature works in 'Harmony' with your website, ensuring no broken code.

Forums and groups can help you increase engagement and even offer new methods for generating profit. (Image credit: Wix)

Wix, meanwhile, can add live chat and all kinds of community features (forums, monetizable groups, areas where your visitors can share files or photos with each other) with built-in features and the company’s own apps. They’re much easier to add, and if they have any issues, Wix’ own support team should help you get everything working.

That’s important, because these larger features can extend your site in ways you may not even have thought about. You might sign up with Wix thinking you’ll get a simple site about your gardening company, for instance. But what if you added a forum, where you could offer gardening advice? Or a photo sharing area where customers could share before and after pics of your latest projects? There are all kinds of possibilities, even for the smallest of sites.

Wix ecommerce features

Wix is best known as an easy-to-use website builder for blogs, simple personal, and small business sites, but it also includes a very complete ecommerce platform that includes every web store feature you might need.

The service gets off to a great start with its huge choice of templates. When we searched for ‘online store’, Wix presented us with a list of 100 store types, making it easier to find a site which suited our needs.

There’s wide support for selling physical and digital products, services (appointments, classes, courses and more), as well as dropshipping (products shipped by a third party) and print-on-demand products (your designs, produced and shipped by a third party.)

Selling on other platforms such as Amazon is easy with Wix (Image credit: Wix)

Wix can handle multiple sales channels, and has support for selling on eBay, Amazon, Google, Instagram and TikTok, and physical stores, as well as your own web store. It also recently launched a new tool that allows you to sell directly through Pinterest.

Connect your store to Wix Payments and you can accept payments via credit card, Google Pay and Apple Pay. It’s easy to add PayPal, too, and support for 80+ other payment gateways allows you to handle crypto, bank transfers, ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes, and more.

Wix Payments charges a reasonable 2.9% fee + $0.30 per online credit card transaction in the US. (Beware, the figures vary widely depending on your customer’s region and payment method. The Wix Payment Processing Fees page has all the figures you need.)

This is similar to many top providers, although there are ways you can cut your costs. Shopify’s starter plan also asks 2.9% per transaction, for instance, but upgrading to the Shopify plan cuts that to 2.6%, and the Advanced plan charges 2.4%.

There’s a lot of work involved in setting up any substantial web store, but Wix does a better job than most of walking you through the process. A helpful wizard breaks this down to the key steps - setting up payments, adding products, defining your shipping rules and more - and there are some excellent help tools.

We particularly liked the tutorials. ‘How to’ guides are often lengthy documents, with lots of screenshots, where it’s hard to connect what you’re seeing to the real control panel. These tutorials aren’t separate documents; they work by explaining steps and animating the actual Wix dashboards, making it much easier to understand what’s going on and remember it for later.

The Wix App Market has a vast range of ecommerce tools to take your store even further. We found impressive apps to create and sell online courses, print barcodes and labels, manage inventory, handle accounting tasks, shipping, marketing, and more. If you’re interested, take a look at the Wix Ecommerce apps, see what’s available.

Wix doesn’t offer ecommerce support with the free or $17 a month Light plan. But signing up for the Core plan gets you the main ecommerce features, including support for selling up to 50,000 products, accepting payments, selling on social media and top online marketplaces, and more. It’s $29 a month on the annual plan, and only $19 if you’re willing to sign up for three years.

Upgrading adds valuable ecommerce extras, such as support for multiple currencies, adding customer reviews, and even creating a loyalty program.

This is fair value, especially at the lower end of the range. Shopify’s starter Basic plan is $29 a month billed annually, for instance; Squarespace offers basic ecommerce features with its $23 a month business plan, but that doesn’t include some of the advanced extras (selling subscriptions, abandoned cart recovery) that Wix bundles with all its ecommerce plans.

Overall, Wix gives you a lot for your cash, making it a decent choice for ecommerce newcomers or small existing sites. But if you’ve a busy existing store, BigCommerce or a good WooCommerce plan could also be worth a look.

Creating a Blog with Wix

Blogs are a great way to engage your audience and boost search engine rankings (Image credit: Wix)

Wix is one of the best blogging sites on the market. It id very simple for beginners to create their first blog, but also has a pile of advanced features for more demanding and experienced users.

Getting started is really easy. Just select Blog when Wix asks you which pages your new site should include, and it’ll add a blog section for you. (But if you forget, you can add a blog later in a couple of clicks).

A straightforward blog editor allows you to create new posts. This opens with a choice of standard templates for common post types (‘How to…’, ‘Ultimate Guide to…’, ‘Product Review…’, recipes and more. That doesn’t just save time, it helps the blog look more professional because you’re using a consistent format for each post type.

Alternatively, you’re able to create rich posts from scratch, with text, images, galleries, video, GIFs, downloadable files (a PDF you want to share, say), buttons, tables, lists and polls. Squarespace allows you to create blog posts with even more types of content, but, realistically, Wix likely has more than enough options for most people.

Wix AI is now integrated into the platform's blogging tools. You can turn to AI for tailored blog suggestions based on your website/business information. It can also help you by generating comprehensive blog outlines, delivering AI-generated images, and optimizing your content for search engine results.

Ecommerce options include the ability to display product descriptions, and you can allow readers to book services or make appointments directly from the page.

There are some really professional touches here. Hit ‘Publish’, say, and Wix doesn’t just put your post online. It also has templates allowing you to immediately promote your new post via an email campaign or social media post (Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, and Linkedin are supported.)

A strong core set of blog and post management features include the ability to schedule your posts for a later date, and organise your posts with categories or tags to make them easier to find.

We had some issues with the fine details of Wix blogs. You can’t add multiple authors to a blog post, for instance, unlike Squarespace and WordPress.

It was a mixed story with some of the more advanced blog features, too.

We liked the Monetize feature, where you could put some posts behind a paywall and charge for access. But the Import tool, designed to import posts from an existing WordPress blog, didn’t work reliably for us. And a ‘Translate’ option to translate posts into 180+ languages sounds appealing, until you realise it charges per word, won’t translate everything, and has all kinds of usability issues (probably why it rates only 2 out of 5 stars on the App Market as we write.)

Overall (and as we expected), Wix can’t match WordPress for blogging ability. Squarespace is fractionally more powerful, too. But the differences are marginal, and Wix is still a very capable blogging platform with more than enough power for most people. (If blogging is a top priority, create a free Wix account and you can try before you buy.)

What video features does Wix have?

Video can add an element of depth and excitement to your website (Image credit: Wix)

Wix scores for its powerful built-in video features. You can upload videos up to 15GB into your own video library; there’s support for accessing video files stored in your Dropbox or Google Drive account; and you can embed videos directly from YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Dailymotion and Twitch.

If the standard Wix tools aren’t enough, the App Market has plenty more. We ran a few searches and quickly found apps to embed video content from Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram, and others.

Wix allows you to host up to 30 minutes of video, even on the free Wix plan. (Beware the 500MB free bandwidth limit, though: streaming services use around 700MB per hour, even with basic 480p footage.)

We were happy to see Wix offers significantly more video storage as you purchase higher plans, with the Business plan giving you 10 hours, and the Business Elite plan dropping all video limits. Squarespace only offers a basic 30 minutes storage on all its plans, and you need to purchase an add-on product to get more.

Unusually, Wix also has direct support for live streaming, both from your mobile or a desktop (Windows, Mac or Linux.) Free Wix users have a 10 minute limit on a single stream, but upgrade to a premium plan and this jumps to three hours. You can even monetize your stream, with options to take payments for individual streams, to (on the higher plans) sell weekly, monthly, or annual subscription plans.

We noticed some issues. When we chose to ‘stream now’ from a mobile device, for instance, Wix could only point us to an iOS app; Android users are left out. Streaming from a desktop takes some work, too, requiring you to install and set up an encoder. And although the Support site does a fair job of walking you through the desktop process, it ignores mobile streaming entirely.

Still, most website builders offer far less video streaming support (and regular web hosts rarely allow it at all.) If you’ve big video plans for your website, Wix’s flexibility and range of tools make it well worth a look.

Wix app market

The app market helps you grow your site in the ways that matter most. (Image credit: Wix)

Wix has more built-in features than we can count (we know, we’ve tried), but they’re just the start of what it has to offer. The Wix App Market has 500+ apps which can add new design elements, integrate your site with marketing or sales platforms, connect to social media platforms and a whole lot more.

That’s way more than even the best of the competition. Squarespace only recommends 40+ extensions on its site, for instance (although there are plenty of others around, if you go looking.)

This doesn’t quite give you as much choice as you’d think. Although there are loads of apps here, most of them are for niche situations which only apply to relatively few users ( an app to offer extended warranties, say, or connect your Wix store to Simla.com’s CRM platform.)

We checked the number of ratings for various apps to get a feel for how many users they might have, and the results were a surprise. Although Wix has 200+ million users, we noticed that 59 out of the 86 ‘Store’ apps had less than 10 ratings (35 had none at all), and only four (including the built-in web store) had been rated more than 100 times.

If you happen to need one of these niche apps, though, you’ll be very happy they’re available, and there are plenty of other more generally useful examples around. We found some great social media apps to integrate feeds with your site, for instance, or automatically post on your social media site when you create a blog post or add a new product. There are a number of new AI chatbots you can use on the site, and a wide range of marketing, sales, and shipping integrations.

A few apps are entirely free, and most have limited free plans, but it’s likely you’ll have to pay to get their full benefits. Prices vary according to the vendor, but small apps might be just two or three dollars a month, and we noticed some gave us benefits you won’t see outside of Wix.

Sign up with the excellent 123FormBuilder from its own site, for example, and the cheapest standard ad-free plan is $24.99 a month. Sign up via Wix and you’ll find a Starter plan which is much simpler, but also ad-free, and priced at only $3.99 a month.

Overall, the Wix App Market is a big plus for the service, both because it has many ways to help you build your initial site, and it also gives you a lot of scope to grow later. If you’re at all interested in third-party apps or integrations, browse the App Market before you sign up, find out what could work for you.

SEO on Wix

SEO tools are essential if you want people to find your website (Image credit: Wix)

Building a great website isn’t just about stylish templates and quality design tools. The site should use core SEO (Search Engine Optimization) principles to automatically boost your Google ranking, as well as allowing experts to fine-tune everything for the best results.

Wix does a good job with the SEO basics. While we got on with creating pages and dragging and dropping content, Wix automatically took care of common SEO-related tasks such as managing an XML sitemap, creating a robots.txt file, adding default canonical and other tags, and boosting website speed (also important for SEO) by converting large images to the hyper-efficient WebP format and using its own CDN.

A new AI-powered tool SEO tool analyses your page content to understand search intent, then automatically comes up with the most relevant meta tags. That’s great news, whether you’re new to SEO or just want to save some time.

If the AI suggestions don’t work for you, there are plenty of low-level tweaks available. We were able to edit title tags, meta tags, descriptions, enable AMP for faster-loading pages on mobile devices, even create structured data markup to increase the chance of Google highlighting your site in its search results (for example, by displaying a snippet of your site content in the searcher’s results page.)

An SEO panel includes a host of tools and options allowing you to take more manual control of your site. The SEO Setup Checklist walks you through a personalized set of first steps; an issues lists warns you of problems, and a recommendations list offers useful advice.

If you need more, there are a handful of useful SEO tools in the Wix App Market, including a couple of decent options in Rabbit SEO and rankingCoach.

To get an understanding of how Wix handles SEO, we used SEO checkers seobility and SEO Site Checkup to analyse three Wix templates. Although this could only tell us about the default Wix SEO setup (it can’t account for what you might do later), we were interested to see how a Wix site might perform if you don’t make any SEO changes.

The tests delivered decent results overall, essentially scoring a B grade: not perfect, but no fundamental SEO problems, and there are plenty of tweaks you can make to improve results.

We did notice one more general issue, though, with all our SEO reports saying the site used a lot of CSS and JavaScript files, slowing it down and potentially affecting search engine rankings. That’s not unusual for website builders, though, and we found some used even more. Our Wix templates used 4 CSS files and 10 JavaScripts, for instance, but when we created a couple of Squarespace sites, they used 8 CSS and 14 JavaScript files.

Overall, Wix offers a strong set of SEO abilities which delivers reasonable baseline settings by default, and includes many more advanced options which experts can adjust to suit their needs. That makes the service one of the best small business website builders and a great option for start ups, although if you’ve complex needs, using WordPress gives you even more tools and control.

Wix also recently launched a new analytics tool that helps websites better understand how much traffic they are driving via mentions on AI tools.

Wix security and safety

Good site security can give you and your visitors peace of mind (Image credit: Wix)

Having a secure website is vital to protect your visitors, your reputation, and your search engine rankings. But it’s also a technical topic, so we were happy to see Wix manages all the complicated bits for you.

The service automatically creates an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate for your site, allowing users to safely browse your pages with a secure encrypted connection.

Wix is compliant with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), the top industry standard to show a provider can securely protect credit card payments.

Wix doesn’t say much about protecting your site from malware. A support site page simply tells you to report a virus if you spot one, for instance, although Wix does claim to monitor the service 24/7 to ‘identify threats as they appear’ (and there’s built-in DDos protection, too.)

Even if something happens to your site, or perhaps you accidentally trash it yourself, the good news is that Wix automatically maintains a site history. You can easily go back in time to a previous version of the site whenever you like.

Account protection

2 step verification is considered an essential security process (Image credit: Wix)

Every quality website builder needs the best possible security to protect your account, website, and visitors from hackers, malware, bots ,and all the other threats out there.

Wix gets off to an excellent security start with its logon features. 2-step verification (also known as 2-factor authentication, or 2FA) prompts you to enter a code, as well as your username and password, before you can access your account.

Wix can send your 2FA code using email, SMS, and even an authenticator app for the most secure results.That’s a wider choice than we see with many providers. For example, Squarespace also supports 2-step verification by SMS and app, but not email; Hostinger supports app and email, but not SMS.

A Login History page displays account logins, locations, and dates. Even if someone could find a way to bypass the 2FA, their illicit login would show up here and raise the alarm.

If you’re building a business site, you might want to allow other colleagues to help you manage the process. You could share your username and password, but that’s horribly insecure. The Wix ‘Collaborator’ feature allows you to securely share access to your account by adding trusted users, each with their own roles. If one staff member works solely on the web store, for instance, you could allow them to manage store products but not change the site design.

Wix mobile apps

Wix's mobile app makes managing your website incredibly convenient (Image credit: Wix)

Running busy websites is a 24/7 business, but Wix, Squarespace and some of the other top website builders try to help by offering custom Android and iOS mobile apps with assorted site management tools.

Features include the ability to create blog posts, handy as a way to keep productive while you’re on the move.

You can respond to visitors via your site’s Live Chat, if you’ve enabled it, or post replies in your web forum.

The real value of the app, though, is its ability to manage your online business. You can check appointments made on the site, take payments, view the latest sales figures, and explore a bunch of other surprising extras. (If you’ve created an event and issued tickets, for instance, you can scan those tickets with the apps and check those visitors in.)

It’s not all good news. Despite the relatively high app ratings (4.7 for iOS, 4.3 for Android), recent reviews consistently report poor speeds, unreliable blog features, and a host of usability issues.

If you really need to edit your website while on the go, you might also be a little disappointed. Squarespace and Jimdo have apps with a fair amount of editing functionality, but Wix only allows you to tweak its most basic sites.

Overall, the Wix app delivered the functionality we think most people need, allowing them to chat to visitors and keep up-to-date with website stats. But it is a very complex tool with a lot of features, and if mobile functionality is important to you, we’d recommend you give it plenty of testing time before you buy.

Wix AI tools

Wix has plenty of tools to help you manually build a website yourself, but that’s not your only option. It also has AI-powered features which can handle many tasks for you.

Wix's AI website builder asks you a few basic questions and automatically creates a custom website complete with relevant content. It’s easy to use and is a great way to kickstart the website building process. However, like with all of the best AI website builders, the site will almost certainly need some editing in order to make it fit to represent your business online.

Wix's AI website builder starts with a short conversation between you and the AI assistant. It then uses the information you provide to produce a complete website. (Image credit: Wix)

The editor has more interesting features, including an ‘AI Creator’ tool to build custom common website sections: About, Welcome, Services, Contact, Team, Features, Promotions and Subscribe. An AI assistant can also be used within the editor to help customize elements such as theme colors and fonts.

Outside of website building tools, Wix also offers a host of other AI tools including a dedicated AI portfolio builder, AI text creator, AI powered image creation, editing, and enhancement tools, as well as image background and object removal features. Further to this, AI is integrated into the blogging feature on Wix, offering everything from ideation to outline and image creation.

Wix users that opt for a Google Workplace account will also gain access to Gemini for Workspace, helping them streamline workflows and boost efficiency via the power of AI.

Wix help and support

Wix provides a great level support - essential when you run into unavoidable issues (Image credit: Wix)

Wix help begins with the design of its dashboard and editor. Click a web page image, say, and buttons appear with clear captions for common tasks (Change Image, Edit Image.) There’s also a toolbar with small icons, but if you don’t recognise one, hovering your mouse over it gets you a quick description. Even if you’ve never used Wix before, it’s relatively easy to discover features and begin to use them.

A search box points you to the next level of support. Can’t see how to use PDF files on your site, for instance? We typed PDF in the search box, and Wix pointed us to Document Buttons (page elements which allow visitors to download documents), a couple of PDF-viewing apps, and useful support documents on how to upload and share PDFs and other files. Wix has so many features that we couldn’t always find what we needed, but the Search box always pointed us in the right direction.

There’s more detailed Wix help available in the content-packed web support center. Articles are organized into sensible categories (‘Getting started’, ‘Creating your site’, ‘Managing your business’, ‘Promoting your site’, and more), or you can search for whatever keywords you need.

We searched for ‘SEO’, and Wix returned 20 support articles. The top ‘Optimizing Your Site’s Content for SEO’ has a lot of useful information, and points to many related documents if you’d like to know more. It’s good, but we think Squarespace’s SEO Checklist is even better: longer, with extra details and more in-depth advice.

If you can’t find the answers you need - or you’re in a hurry, with a problem you need to fix right now - then you can contact the Wix support team 24/7.

Getting in touch with support is a little more complicated than we expected. When we hit the Contact button, we had to explain our issues to a chatbot first, which tried to refer us to various support site documents.

The bot also asked us if its advice had solved the problem, though, and when we clicked No, it offered us options to open a live chat session, or set up a callback with a support agent. (Yes, while GoDaddy expects you to work through a host of call options and then wait for ages, Wix will call you back, and often in under five minutes.)

That’s better than most of the competition. Squarespace doesn’t offer phone support at all, for instance. It does also have fast email and live chat support, so there’s plenty of help available, but if you like phone support then that’s a big Wix plus.

Is Wix right for you? Summary

Wix works best for home, small or medium business users who want an easy way to build a professional website with some very advanced features.

Whether you’re building a website about your hobby, your band or your business, for instance, Wix goes way beyond the basics. The 800+ template library gets you off to a stylish start, there are hugely configurable image galleries, live streaming support, multiple types of form, a comprehensive booking system, and all the ecommerce, sales, marketing and SEO tools to build a successful web store.

Don’t be intimidated by the length of the feature list, though: you don’t need to master all (or any) of these options right away. If you’re happy with a simple three page website with some text and photos, then that’s fine, start there. But if, in a couple of months, you want to allow visitors to subscribe to a mailing list, you can do that in minutes, no technical knowledge required.

This doesn’t mean Wix is right for everybody. If you feel you’ll never need more than the very simplest of websites, for instance, then there’s no point paying Wix for features you’ll never use. Hostinger website builder could give you everything you need for a fraction of the price.

And if you’re at the other end of the requirements spectrum, building the most demanding of high-traffic business-critical sites, Wix probably won’t give you the control or hosting power you need. Instead try Managed WordPress and our Best Dedicated Server Hosting guide, instead.

But if you’re anywhere in between those two extremes, Wix’s blend of power and ease of use makes it an excellent first choice. And if you’re unsure, sign up for the free plan (no payment details required) and browse the templates, editor, and feature list for yourself.

Wix review: FAQsHow do Wix prices compare?

Wix prices are very similar to Squarespace. Wix's entry level plan starts at $17/mo and Squarespace's just $1 cheaper at $16/mo. Both also have more powerful plans in the mid $20’s which can build very capable web stores.

We worked through the small print, and noticed some significant differences. Squarespace wins out on the $16 plan by offering unlimited storage (Wix only gives you 2GB); but Wix is better for the cheapest ecommerce plan as it doesn’t have a transaction fee (Squarespace charges you 3%, although it drops this on higher plans.)

The differences are more obvious if you’re looking for a high-end ecommerce plan. Wix’s high-end Business Elite is stuffed with ecommerce features, but it’s $159 a month. Squarespace’s high-end Ecommerce plan is less capable, but only $49 a month. And Shopify’s mid-range Shopify plan also can’t match Wix for features, but it’s only $105 a month, and it saves you money with cheaper US credit card fees (2.6% + $0.30 vs. 2.9% + $0.30 for Wix and Squarespace.)

Overall, Wix is at the higher end of the website builder price range, but we think it’s worth it. The mix of power and simplicity means Wix will help you build a better site and save you time, probably justifying any extra cost all on its own.

Note: If you’re looking for something significantly cheaper, take a look at the Hostinger Website Builder. It has only a fraction of the features of Wix, and it’s based on more limited shared hosting technology, but you can get an ecommerce-capable plan from $3.99 a month for the first four years - although it does climb to $13.99 after that.

You can also find great Squarespace promo codes that will make your Squarespace subscription much cheaper for an introductory period.

Does Wix include hosting?

Wix is an all-in-one service which helps you build your website, and hosts it for you on its own servers. You don’t have to pay for a separate hosting service.

This approach makes life much easier. Go shopping for hosting and you have to think about all kinds of technicalities, from whether there’s free SSL, to if there’s a speed-boosting CDN, and what hosting control panel do you get? With Wix, every site automatically gets SSL for security, a CDN for extra speed, and other hosting essentials, so you can focus 100% on building your site.

One issue is that, even if you register your custom domain with Wix and buy a premium plan, you don’t get email included. Wix offers a Business Email plan (which is Google Workspace), but it’s a paid extra, and costs from $6 a month.

There can be disadvantages for expert users, too. The lack of advanced hosting options keeps Wix simple, but it also means you can’t take full fine-tuned control of the hosting to suit your own needs.

You also have relatively limited upgrade options. If you’re using WordPress on shared hosting and need more speed, you can usually upgrade to faster VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting from just a few dollars a month. With Wix, all you can do to get more resources is to sign up for one of its more advanced ecommerce plans (even if you’ll never use any of the ecommerce features.)

Does Wix offer free domains?

Wix offers a free domain for one year with every Premium plan.

You don’t have to choose a domain name when you sign up, good news if you’ve not chosen one yet. When you buy a plan, Wix gives you a ‘1 Year Free Domain Voucher’, and you then have up to two months to redeem it.

Beware: the voucher isn’t valid for all domain extensions. You can use it for .com, .net, .org, .biz, some country-specific domains (.com.au, .co.uk, .com.br, .de, .nl) and more modern extensions such as .blog, .fitness and .shop. But you can’t use it to register .ai, .site, .tv and many other domains.

Check the Free Domain page on the official Wix support site for the full list.

What does Wix charge for domains?

Getting a free domain with your Wix plan sounds appealing, but remember, it’s only free for a year. It’s important to look at what you might pay for a domain long-term.

Wix doesn't spell out its domain costs up-front, so we tried purchasing a few sample sites to get an idea of its prices.

Our test .COM domain was available for $17.35, dropping to $16.35 if we paid for two years up-front, or $15.35 on the three-year plan.

Our test .NET and .CO.UK domains were a little cheaper at $14.95 on the one-year plan, $13.95 over two years, and $12.95 per year over three.

.SHOP domains always go for a premium price, and it's the same with Wix. Our domain was $45.95 for one year, $44.95 per year over two years, $43.95 over three.

Wix offers partial privacy protection for free, masking your name, address, phone number and email address in the WHOIS database. That's good news for individuals, and enough to help you avoid most domain-related spam. But if you're a business, or just want to be thorough, a Full Privacy Protection option also hides your country, state/ province and organization for an extra $9.90 a year.

These prices are more expensive than most, and there are big savings to be made if you get your domain elsewhere. Namecheap charged $10.28 for our .COM domain ($13.98 on renewal), only $6.98 for our .CO.UK ($7.48 on renewal) and only $1.78 for the first year of our .SHOP, then $30.98 afterwards. Full privacy protection is free forever with Namecheap, and you can lock in these savings by purchasing the domains for up to 10 years.

Our advice: take your free domain from Wix, but transfer it to a cheaper registrar towards the end of the year to get the best possible deal.

Does Wix include email?

Wix doesn’t include email as standard with its free or Premium plans. To get email with your domain, you must either buy one more Wix Business Email (aka Google Workspace) accounts at a cost of $6 a month, or use a third-party service from the best email hosting providers.

This isn’t just an issue for Wix. Squarespace doesn’t include free email, either, and although GoDaddy includes free professional email for year one, you’ll pay on renewal.

Does Wix have a money-back guarantee?

If you sign up with Wix and it doesn’t work out, you can cancel within 14 days and get your money back.

The good news is this applies both to monthly and annual subscriptions. Many hosts (including Squarespace) only refund annual plans.

There are some exclusions, but nothing we haven’t seen elsewhere. Wix won’t refund domain registrations or other third-party products, for instance, so be careful when choosing your perfect domain: there’s no changing your mind later.

What payment methods does Wix support?

Wix supports payments via card and PayPal.

Is Wix better than WordPress?

Wix makes it quicker and easier to build your first site than WordPress. Spend just one or two minutes answering some questions and Wix can create a very capable custom website for you, even including a working web store with a built-in shopping cart.

Signing up with Wix is also more convenient, because the service includes web hosting, and Wix will put the site online. Choose WordPress (we’re talking WordPress.org here, not the hosted WordPress service at WordPress.com) and you’ll have to choose the best web hosting service for you, then install WordPress yourself. That’s not difficult, even for newcomers, but it does take more time and effort.

WordPress wins out if you’re more interested in power and features. Wix includes hundreds of apps to add design, marketing, SEO and other tools, for instance, but WordPress offers tens of thousands of plugins which can handle just about any task you can imagine.

WordPress is also far more customisable, and you’re free to use whatever HTML, CSS or JavaScripts you need.

The bottom line: Wix is best for users looking for a quick and easy way to build a professional website or web store, without requiring any web design knowledge of experience.

But WordPress is best for more complex or demanding websites where you need the maximum control and configurability.

How fast is Wix?

The speed of a website varies according to all kinds of factors, from the type of hosting, to the number and size of the files used on each page, and exactly what the size is doing (downloading someone’s full Instagram feed will be much, much slower than displaying a couple of paragraphs of text.)

We can’t give you a definitive verdict on Wix performance, then, but what we can do is use some of the best web benchmarking tools to check the speed of various Wix templates, and report on the results.

Pingdom awarded our Wix sites a performance grade of B, with a score of 84. The site did well on five out of seven performance areas, but Pingdom rated it only a C for the number of HTTP requests (which means pages are slowed down by loading too many files), and a bottom-of-the-class F for not using gzip compression.

GTmetrix also found our site had some room for improvement, partly because its large number of files (675) and some marginally slower-than-usual stats (360ms time to first byte, 1.4s time to first byte, 2.8s time to interactive and 7.3s overall load time.) But the overall GTmetrix verdict was positive, with our site earning the best possible Performance Grade A, with a score of 91%.

Catchpoint essentially said our site wasn’t bad, but did have room for improvement. The details broadly matched our other tests, with GTmetrix reporting that the site was slow to connect and deliver the initial code, also suggesting this might be down to the number of files and scripts.

These results are broadly similar to what we’ve seen from Squarespace and the top competition. Wix doesn’t offer leading-edge server speeds, and (like all website builders) it’s weighed down a little by the sheer number of scripts and CSS files. But it’s more than powerful enough to handle some very large and feature-packed sites, and most users are unlikely to have significant performance problems.

Do big companies use Wix?

Some huge names use Wix - music video platform Vevo (26 billion views a month) is one of the best known - but they’re in a minority, and that’s no great surprise. If you’re in the Fortune 500, you’ll probably want maximum control over your website and hosting, and you’ll have no problem at all finding the funds and expertise to make that happen.

But, Wix is recognized everywhere as a great way to rapidly build amazing-looking websites, and it’s regularly used by some very big names to run their latest web projects.

Booking.com’s Sustainability subsite, for instance; the UN’s Human Rights and Digital Technology hub; TED’s leading-edge AI event site; Unicef’s Core Commitments For Children site ; Live Nation’s user support portal , even the PBS Kids store, are all powered by Wix.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Wix will be right for you, but it does show the service is widely trusted by some very expert users, and that’s a very positive sign.

What are the disadvantages of Wix?

If we leave out the limited free edition, the main disadvantage of using Wix is the lack of mobile-responsive templates. While Wix templates are mobile-friendly, you’ll have to work with the mobile view editor to make sure your site looks good across all devices.

Also, once you choose a template, you can’t simply go back and swap it for another one. No, with Wix you’ll have to start building your site from scratch.

Is selling on Wix worth it?

If you’re wondering whether Wix charges additional transaction fees, the answer is no. However, there’s a standard processing fee for using Wix Payments to process orders and it’s 2.9% of the transaction amount plus $0.30 for the USA. For UK citizens it’s 2.1% of the transaction amount plus £0.20. And if you want to check the processing fees for other countries, check the “Wix Payments Processing Fees” section on Wix’s official site.

So, is selling on Wix worth it? Yes, it probably is. Wix provides all essential (and some additional) e-commerce features and everything else an online store should have. It’s also powerful, superbly secure, and a scalable solution excellent for any e-commerce business.

Is Wix good for SEO?

Wix has a wide range of great SEO tools to help websites rank well in search engine results. Wix gives you the ability to customize your website’s meta tags, URL structure, canonical tags, structured data markup, robots.txt file and more.

Can you switch from Wix to WordPress?

There are two ways you can convert your Wix site to WordPress. The first way is by using an automated migration plugin and the second is by using the RSS feed to import all your posts then manually migrate your pages, images and other content on your website. Website owners who built on the New Wix Blog can use an automated migration plug-in by CMS2CMS.

Do Wix sites show up on Google?

Wix websites are search engine friendly, with Wix guaranteeing that all of your website content can be crawled and indexed by search engines (e.g. Google and Bing) whether you have a Premium site or not.

Is Wix payment secure?

Yes, Wix Payments are secure and complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).

Why is Wix so slow?

If you are experiencing a slow loading time on your website, this could be down to the images and media used. If you've chosen high-definition images and videos, it takes up a lot of space. The server first loads the image before loading the site, thus those high-quality images and videos will take more time to load.