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The global supply chain is the backbone of the world’s economy. From suppliers and manufacturers to transporters, retailers, and consumers, every step is interconnected. Yet, as powerful and efficient as it usually is, this vast network is highly vulnerable to disruption.

A cyberattack can delay shipments, halt construction projects, or leave manufacturers unable to get the parts they need—whether it’s for electronics, medical supplies, or even everyday goods. For consumers, it means missing out on the products they rely on, facing longer wait times for deliveries, or even seeing prices skyrocket as shortages set in. When cybercriminals target supply chain operations, the ripple effects can be devastating.

One of the growing threats in this space is phishing scams – specifically, double brokering fraud attacks. In the past few years, freight and transportation companies have faced an alarming rise in these scams. Complaints relating to double brokering have surged by 400% since 2022, with 50% of freight brokers naming it their top concern.

Attackers impersonate legitimate transport companies, tricking victims into divulging sensitive shipment details, which are then intercepted or redirected for financial gain. The consequences can be severe: financial losses, uninsured loads, delayed deliveries, and lasting reputational damage.

Double brokering: The hidden cyber threat affecting global transport

Double brokering scams are particularly effective because they exploit the fast-paced nature of the logistics industry, where efficiency and cost savings often outweigh thorough vetting processes.

Here’s how they work: Scammers pose as legitimate freight brokers or create fake transportation companies. Using phishing emails, they gain access to shipment details – such as pick-up, destination, size, and scheduling. They then offer a lower rate than competitors for their services, in order to win contracts from unsuspecting businesses.

Once they secure the job, instead of transporting the shipment themselves, they pass it off to a legitimate carrier – often a real trucking company that believes it has been hired for a normal job. The scammer collects payment from the original client but never pays the actual carrier, pocketing the money and then disappearing – long before the fraud is discovered.

These scams have gained traction due to the sheer number of transportation companies out there, many of which – surprisingly in this digital age – operate without websites, making them much easier to impersonate. Meanwhile, phishing emails have become increasingly sophisticated, with scammers using real carrier numbers and forged (but legitimate looking) documents to avoid detection.

Why phishing is the perfect vehicle for double brokering

Phishing is the go-to tactic for double brokering scams because it doesn’t rely on hacking technical systems – it preys on human error. A simple click on a malicious link or an unwitting disclosure of shipment details can be enough to set a scam in motion. Since email is so ingrained in the supply chain, it provides cybercriminals with an easy, high-reward entry point.

Scammers often register fake domains that mimic legitimate ones (e.g., xyzshippingllc.com instead of xyzshipping.com). Once they deceive a victim into sharing shipment details, they act fast – hijacking the load and redirecting payments before anyone realizes what’s happened. The fallout extends far beyond financial losses. Businesses face delayed deliveries, lost or damaged goods, and a tarnished reputation that can have long-term consequences – leaving businesses to pick up the pieces long after the scam is over.

With cybercriminals becoming increasingly sophisticated, staying one step ahead requires a proactive approach to security, verification, and fraud prevention.

Staying ahead

The foundation of any cybersecurity strategy is awareness. Phishing may be subtle, but it’s preventable. Employees must be trained to recognize the warning signs of fraudulent emails – such as unusual variations, where cybercriminals swap out characters or add extra words like "LLC" or "INC" to make an email look legitimate. When in doubt, always verify. A quick call to confirm the sender’s identity before sharing sensitive shipment information can prevent costly fraud.

Technology plays a crucial role in strengthening defenses, but it’s not foolproof. Solutions like zero trust security postures help businesses secure their applications and data, ensuring only verified users and legitimate requests can access critical systems, reducing the risk of phishing-based fraud.

Email security protocols including DMARC, DKIM, and SPF, help reduce phishing threats, but they aren’t perfect – 89% of phishing emails still slip through traditional filters. This is where advanced technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence provide additional benefits, identifying patterns and flagging suspicious activity with greater accuracy and in real time to detect fraud before it hits.

Beyond prevention, businesses must also focus on cyber resilience – the ability to withstand and recover from cyberattacks without significant disruption. It’s not just about preventing threats but ensuring operations can continue even if a breach occurs. Strengthening cyber resilience starts with evaluating your risks and vulnerabilities across the entire supply chain, from internal systems to third-party logistics partners, and making sure there is no weak link.

By combining awareness, advanced security tools, and a cyber-resilient mindset, organizations can stay ahead of cybercriminals and protect their operations from the growing threat of double brokering scams.

Collaboration is key

Protecting the global supply chain against phishing and cyber threats isn’t just an individual responsibility – it requires industry-wide collaboration. Given the complexity of modern logistics, mitigating cyber risks depends on businesses, industry groups, and regulators sharing knowledge, threat intelligence, and best practices.

For transport companies, cyber resilience must be a priority. Raising awareness, investing in advance technology, and promoting a secure culture can significantly reduce the impact of phishing scams and double brokering fraud. Meanwhile, consumers who interact with logistics platforms must also remain cautious, as cybercriminals exploit vulnerabilities at every level of the supply chain.

A stronger, more secure supply chain starts with identifying and reinforcing weak links. By making cybersecurity a shared mission, businesses can protect not just their own operations but the broader economy – ensuring a safer, more resilient future for global trade.

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• Chiral semiconductors use a few tricks from Mother Nature
• The same brightness with much less energy usage
• Big implications for future computers as well as displays

A breakthrough new OLED technology could mean smartwatches with longer battery life, more energy-efficient TVs, and even brighter displays all around.

The breakthrough comes from researchers at the University of Cambridge and the Eindhoven University of Technology, and it revolves around what are called chiral semiconductors.

The research shows that these semiconductors can deliver "record-breaking" brightness and efficiency, and that could be a really big deal for any device with a display from the smallest smartwatch to the most massive OLED TV.

Here comes the science bit

One of the biggest energy drains in screens is the use of polarization layers, which in OLED TVs are generally used to reduce ambient light leakage, ensure the precise contrast the tech is known for. But this filtering process absorbs a lot of light – the firm American Polarizers Inc says that any polarizer absorbs more than 50% of the light going through it; that's a lot of wasted energy.

This new technology is different because it does its own polarization.

According to Eindhoven University of Technology, the semiconductor that the researchers have developed emits circularly polarized light that "carries information about the ‘left or right-handedness’ of electrons." Where normal silicon semiconductors are symmetrical, chiral molecules are left- or right-handed and mirror one another. The most famous example of that is in DNA, where they form the double helix we know so well.

Making chiral semiconductors has proven to be very difficult, but the researchers have found a way. Taking their inspiration from nature, the researchers created right- and left-handed spiral columns from stacks of semiconducting molecules. And those columns could transform the best OLED TVs, the best smartwatches, and everything in between.

According to Professor Sir Richard Friend from Cambridge University, who co-led the research, “Unlike rigid inorganic semiconductors, molecular materials offer incredible flexibility – allowing us to design entirely new structures, like chiral LEDs. It’s like working with a Lego set with every kind of shape you can imagine, rather than just rectangular bricks.”

The semiconductor the team has created is based on a material known as triazatruxene, or TAT for short. It self-assembles into a helix and electrons can spiral along it; the university describes it as being like the head of a screw.

Those structures can be incorporated into OLED panels, as co-first author Rituparno Chowdhury, from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, explains. "We’ve essentially reworked the standard recipe for making OLEDs like we have in our smartphones, allowing us to trap a chiral structure within a stable, non-crystallising matrix."

The circularized, polarized LEDs demonstrated "record-breaking efficiency, brightness and polarization, making them the best of their kind," Eindhoven University of Technology says.

We're still years away from seeing this technology in any of the best TVs. But it's a big breakthrough that's relevant not just to TVs and other electronic items. According to Eindhoven University of Technology it also has big implications for quantum computing and what's known as "spintronics": a field of research that uses electrons' spin to store and process information, and that one day may lead to faster, more secure computers.

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Samsung 9100 Pro: Two-minute review

It's very hard to say that a drive that sequentially reads nearly 12,500MB a second doesn't live up to expectations, especially not when its performance everywhere else is better than anything else I've tested, but that sticker on the box of the Samsung 9100 Pro that promises up to 14,800MB/s sticks in the craw of an otherwise perfect M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD.

Starting at $199.99 for a 1TB capacity drive (about £155/AU$315), the 9100 Pro is Samsung's first 'true' PCIe 5.0 SSD after the Samsung 990 EVO and Samsung 990 EVO Plus. Both those drives are PCIe 5.0, but they only use two PCIe 5.0 lanes, which limits their practical speeds to PCIe 4.0 standards.

The 9100 Pro, meanwhile, is a full-fat PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 drive, meaning its theoretical max speed for sequential reads is upwards of roughly 15,000MB/s and 14,000MB/s for sequential writes (this number has been edging up over the past 3-5 years, so take that theoretical maximum with a grain of salt at this point).

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Samsung promises that its latest drive can hit up to 14,800MB/s sequential read and 13,400MB/s sequential write, and the Samsung 9100 Pro gets there somewhat. It clocks in a max sequential write rate of 13,066MB/s in my testing, but the 9100 Pro's maximum sequential read speed only hit 12,427MB/s. This is still incredibly fast—but, it's not what's promised on the box.

Could that change with BIOS or firmware updates, sure. Possibly. But it's not like other PCIe 5.0 drives like the Crucial T705 aren't hitting close to 14,500MB/s. The T705 hits a max sequential read speed of 14,390MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8 on the same testbench with a Gigabyte Aorus X870E motherboard, AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, and 32GB Corsair Dominator DDR5 running at 6,600MT/s and integrated graphics, so there's no interference from a graphics card.

Meanwhile, compared to its predecessor, the Samsung 990 Pro, the 9100 Pro is a much better overall drive, but there are circumstances where the 990 Pro still manages to outperform its successor such as same and secondary drive copy time and random read and write speeds.

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

On balance, the Samsung 9100 Pro isn't the undisputed best SSD you can buy, and for some users (such as gamers or general-use enthusiasts), you will likely be happier with other PCIe 5.0 or even PCIe 4.0 drives on the market, many of which will be cheaper than the 9100 Pro.

That said, this is a drive for professional users and for those who need to save or otherwise write large files to disk regularly, and for that, the Samsung 9100 Pro is the best M.2 SSD on the market.

Gamers won't find much here worth the investment, unfortunately, with even the 990 Pro outperforming the 9100 Pro in 3DMark's SSD benchmark, which is a gaming-exclusive test. It also falls about 17% behind the Corsair MP700 Elite PCIe 5.0 SSD on this benchmark as well.

For general business users, the 9100 Pro is better than its predecessor but lags behind the Crucial T705 in PCMark 10, which tests general productivity speed and performance as well as its performance as a data drive rather than your main system drive.

Given all this, you'd think that the 9100 Pro should score lower, but it really comes in strong on sequential write performance, which is a very big deal for professional users who might need to save media projects that are many, many gigabytes large.

Nothing disrupts a workflow more than a project autosaving for up to half a minute or more, and this is where the 9100 Pro shines. Offering up to 39% faster sequential write performance than the Crucial T705, its nearest competitor in this category, the Samsung 9100 Pro really leans into its pro branding here.

The 9100 Pro unit I tested did not come with a built-in heatsink, so its thermal performance is largely a factor of the excellent PCIe 5.0 heatsink on the Gigabyte Auros X870E motherboard I used for testing (I also used the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X and 32GB of Corsair Dominator DDR5 RAM at 6,600MT/s), so I can't speak much to the heatsink's quality in this review.

Also, I tested a 9100 Pro with a 4TB capacity, whereas every other drive I tested had a 2TB capacity. This, in itself, shouldn't impact baseline scores too much, if at all, but it's worth pointing out that while I still consider this an apples-to-apples comparison, it's more of a Cosmic Crisp-to-Red Delicious comparison, so your actual experienced performance might vary slightly from mine.

All that said, the other major problem with this drive is its price. It's an expensive drive, and for a lot of gamers and those who are more interested in faster loading times for their programs and files, the Crucial T705 is simply a better option with comparable write speeds but close-to-max read speeds for a lower price.

If you're looking for a drive that you can use in more of a professional capacity with frequent saves of very large files like video projects or video game packages in Unreal Engine, the Samsung 9100 Pro is the best SSD you're going to get for that purpose and it will absolutely speed up your everyday workflow considerably.

Samsung 9100 Pro: Price & availability

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

• How much does it cost? Starting at $199.99 (about £155/AU$315)
• When is it available? Available now
• Where can you get it? Available in the US, UK, and Australia

The Samsung 9100 Pro is available in the US, UK, and Australia starting on March 18, 2025, for $199.99 (about £155/AU$315) for a 1TB drive.

Higher capacities will cost you more, with the 2TB capacity going for $299.99 (about £230/AU$470)and the 4TB capacity going for $549.99 (about £425/AU$865).

The 9100 Pro 8TB capacity drive is expected to launch in H2 2025, though its price hasn't been released yet.

This puts the 9100 Pro roughly 30% more expensive to start over the Crucial T705 1TB, and slightly more expensive than the launch MSRP of the Samsung 990 Pro it replaces.

Samsung 9100 Pro: Specs Should you buy the Samsung 9100 Pro?

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler) Buy it if...

You need pro-level sequential write performance
Are you writing 20GB files to disk every time you save your architecture project? This drive is for you.

You want an M.2 SSD with high-capacity options
With a 4TB drive available now and 8TB capacity coming later this year, this is one of the most spacious M.2 SSDs on the market.

Don't buy it if...

You're on a budget
This is hardly the cheapest PCIe 5.0 drive out there, even at this level of performance.

You're looking for a PS5 SSD
If you want a new SSD for your PS5 console, this drive is way too fast for the PS5's PCIe 4.0 interface. You're better off getting the 990 Pro.

Samsung 9100 Pro: Also consider

If my Samsung 9100 Pro review has you looking for other options, here are two more M.2 SSDs to consider...

Crucial T705
The Crucial T705 is the best all-around PCIe 5.0 drive you can buy, with stellar performance across the board and a fairly accessible price point.

Read the full Crucial T705 review

Samsung 990 Pro
The Samsung 990 Pro is the best PCIe 4.0 SSD going, and for 95% of users, this drive will be more than enough for your needs at a decent enough price.

Read the full Samsung 990 Pro review

How I tested the Samsung 9100 Pro

• I spent about two weeks testing this SSD
• I used it for gaming, content creation, and general storage use
• I used my standard suite of SSD benchmarks as well as daily use

To test the 9100 Pro, I ran it through our standard benchmark suite, including CrystalDiskMark 8, PassMark, PCMark 10, 3DMark, and our proprietary 25GB file copy test.

I used this drive as my main system storage (C:\) drive for over a week on my test bench, where I used it extensively for loading games for graphics card benchmarking purposes, content creation, and more. This included loading games and large batches of photos for editing in Lightroom and Photoshop for various reviews.

I've been testing hardware components for TechRadar for over three years now, including several major SSD reviews from Samsung, PNY, and others, so I know what the latest SSDs are best for and whether they are worth your hard-earned money.

First reviewed March 2025

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Review information

Platform reviewed: Nintendo Switch
Available on: Nintendo Switch
Release date: March 20, 2025

2053 A.D. The last bastion of humanity flees Earth as it’s caught up in a conflict between two unknown alien factions. The White Whale mothership crash lands on the seemingly habitable planet of Mira where humanity has a chance to begin again, but their struggles are far from over. Two months later, you’re discovered in a drop pod without a single memory save for your name. And so begins Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition - easily one of the best RPGs (role-playing games) I’ve played in recent years.

As the newest resident of New Los Angeles - humanity’s massive home base that successfully landed on Mira mostly intact - you’re swiftly encouraged to join BLADE (a handy shortening of Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth), an elite force tasked with everything from exploring Mira and subduing threats to gathering resources and keeping the peace on home ground.

Within your first hour, you’ll select one of eight BLADE divisions to be a part of, each specializing in a particular field (though these are fairly inconsequential outside of the online modes which I wasn’t able to try for this review). These include Pathfinders who specialize in deploying FrontierNav probes to expand the map, and Interceptors who’re tasked with handling dangerous fauna. No matter which division you pick, you’ll still get to explore Mira in pretty much any way you like.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

While Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition does have a main story to follow, it’s not as much of a focus compared to the other three games in the series. Instead, you’ll be spending the bulk of your playtime ticking off side quests and party member affinity missions (of which there are plenty of both) in order to meet requirements for unlocking story missions and expanding your home base of New LA.

On paper it sounds like a slog - and indeed many quests can boil down to simple item fetches or enemy hunting. Thankfully, the context of each quest makes almost all of them worth doing. Each one meaningfully expands the lore of Mira and its many alien races. There’s also a fantastic feeling of progression here, as a good amount of quests will unlock more features in New LA as well as allow these other races to gradually inhabit the city.

There’s a real feeling of growth and community that’s seldom seen in the genre. And, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice the various races co-existing. They’ll form their own friend groups, frequent commercial establishments, develop romantic relationships, and contribute to New LA in their own ways. It’s not a real-time simulation by any means, but it all still adds so much detail and flavor to the world around you.

In summary, I love the world of Mira, and I love Xenoblade Chronicles X’s approach to character development and overall progression. Sure, the lengthy gap between main story missions won’t sit right with everyone. Think of it like a hot bath; dipping a toe in can be intimidating, but if you allow yourself to slowly settle in, you’ll find an incredibly rewarding and satisfying experience. It might well be a re-release, but Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition is handily one of the best Nintendo Switch games today.

The world’s your (extremely dangerous) oyster

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Besides the hub of New LA, Mira is split into five distinct (and utterly massive) biomes. Bordering the city is Primordia, a lush grassland dotted with lakes and mountains. To its west is Noctilum, a labyrinthine forest that combines wide open spaces with plenty of narrow pathways to explore. In the east you have the desert-like Oblivia, then off to the north is the ethereal Sylvalum and then bordering that is the volcanic region of Cauldros.

Best bit

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Exploring the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition is its own multi-faceted reward. It aids with overall progression, sure, but it’s also full of individual moments that wowed me. As an example, running through the towering forests of Noctilum for the first time while its vocal-driven theme kicked in was a simply awe-inspiring moment. The Xenoblade series has some of the best music in gaming, and that’s certainly no different with X.

While these all sound like your cookie-cutter video game biomes, each has unique touches that help them really stand out. Noctilum, for example, is dense with large coral-like structures. Oblivia is dotted with towering ruins of an ancient civilization. Cauldros is heavily industrialized, having been largely taken over by the antagonist Ganglion race.

As you might expect from the Xenoblade series, there’s no shortage of breathtaking vistas to discover and the sense of scale is truly unmatched. The old adage of ‘if you see it, you can go there’ is often claimed but rarely actually true. However, in Xenoblade Chronicles X, you’d better believe that this is absolutely the case. Especially later in the game when you unlock the Skell, a flight-capable mech that greatly enhances your traversal options.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

What’s especially great about Xenoblade Chronicles X is that you’re free to explore much of Mira from the off with your party of four including the player character. At first, your key objective in exploration will be finding FrontierNav sites at which you can unlock new fast travel points and reveal surrounding points of interest such as treasure locations or powerful Tyrant-class enemies.

On the topic of enemies, you’ll swiftly find that Mira is an incredibly dangerous place. High-level mobs are abundant, often strategically placed to discourage careless exploration. Xenoblade Chronicles X is not a power fantasy; you will frequently fall foul of enemies more than happy to ambush you when you least expect it. Thankfully, punishment for a full party wipe is lenient, simply taking you back to the nearest landmark or fast travel point.

Enemies are also surprisingly dynamic in their behavior. Many only appear at certain times of the day. They can also change their approach to you depending on your mode of travel; some may be perfectly willing to leave you be if you’re on foot. But in your Skell, they might be more hostile. Skell travel, while convenient, isn’t exactly a free lunch, either. Skell fuel is a limited resource and certain airborne mobs will attack if they spot you flying around.

This may sound super frustrating, but the flipside is that eventually, you will be able to fight back against enemies that previously gave you a hard time. It’s so satisfying to plow through an area that was at one point impassible due to the level gap. As you continue to improve your ground gear and Skell builds, you’ll gradually find that more of Mira opens up to you in a very natural way.

Guns, blades and indigens

(Image credit: Nintendo)

Describing Xenoblade Chronicles X’s combat in full would require at least another 5,000 words and my boss would hate me, so I’ll do my best to detail the highlights instead. In short, X’s battle system is rich in depth and so incredibly fun once you get your head around it. But thanks to Definitive Edition’s better tutorialization, things are generally much easier to learn.

You and your party members will have access to a pool of Arts (read: skills) depending on their class (you can freely upgrade and switch yours as you progress, too) which you’ll assign to one of eight slots on the Arts Palette. Arts are color-coded; orange and yellow are melee and ranged attacks respectively. Green Arts provide support such as buffs or healing. Purple Arts typically apply debuffs to enemies, while Blue Arts grant the character an ‘aura’ which provides various temporary benefits.

What makes combat in X so engaging is you can’t just be throwing out Arts willy-nilly. Most will be more potent when used under certain criteria, such as hitting an enemy from its side, or activating the Art while you have an Aura active. It’s largely up to you which Arts to put on your Palette, but the game strongly incentivizes using Arts that synergize with one another.

A new ‘quick cooldown’ button has been added to Definitive Edition, too, which lets you immediately use an Art without waiting for its cooldown. The Art usually won’t be as powerful in this state, but it’s a very handy thing to have if you’re clearing out a group of weaker mobs or looking to quickly reapply a debuff.

(Image credit: Nintendo)

That’s most apparent with Xenoblade Chronicles X’s coolest combat feature: Overdrive. Unlocked early on in the story, Overdrive is a massively powerful party-wide state. It lasts for about half a minute, during which time your Arts cooldowns will be greatly sped up and the party will be able to access a variety of bonuses based on the Arts you use.

In Definitive Edition, it’s easier than ever to tell which Arts to use, thanks to a color-coded chart displayed on-screen during Overdrive. For example, using three melee Arts in a row will boost the experience gained from the fight. Using a Blue and Green Art in succession will provide healing, and using a Green Art followed by any other will double its hit count which increases your TP (the resource required to enter Overdrive in the first place) gain.

Ideally, to get the most out of tough encounters, you’ll want to get your TP back up to 3,000 within your Overdrive window in order to activate it again, replenishing its timer. If managed correctly, you can keep the Overdrive state active throughout an entire fight. Pulling that off feels so, so satisfying and in the late game, it became the reason why I think X has the best combat system in the whole series. It’s up there with Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s take on the Chain Attack system for me.

As great as the on-foot combat is, I unfortunately can’t say the same for Skell combat. It’s as slow and clunky here as it was in the original. Skells feel incredibly floaty, and the Arts provided by its equipment typically have much longer cooldowns. You also can’t use the quick cooldown feature while in your mech. They can certainly be powerful, and hopping into your Skell if you’re running low on health is a viable tactic, but I do wish developers Monolith Soft could’ve taken the time to tighten up Skell combat as it just doesn’t provide the same rush as the on-foot Overdrive loop.

The fairest of them all

(Image credit: Nintendo)

While Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition is certainly a little dated in the visuals department, by no means does that make it an ugly game. On the contrary, it provides some of the most gorgeous environments I’ve ever seen rendered on Nintendo Switch. Improved character models and an overall bump in resolution also help Definitive Edition look much sharper and cleaner than its Wii U counterpart.

As ever with the series, draw distance is incredibly impressive for a Switch game. However, some pretty egregious object pop-in is still an issue, especially in the busy hub of New LA. Non-player characters (NPCs), objects, and moving vehicles can materialize right in front of you. This can also happen out in the open world; I’ve had many times where I’ve descended onto a seemingly empty patch of earth to grab a treasure or open up a FrontierNav site, only for a group of high-level enemies to spawn in and obliterate my Skell in an instant.

In better news, performance is a mostly stable 30fps (frames per second), only rarely dipping when loading into a new area after fast travel. Load times are also impressively quick for the Switch; it wasn’t often that I had to wait longer than 10 seconds to beam into a new location, making general exploration extremely quick and convenient.

Lastly, I have to make a note of Xenoblade Chronicles X’s god-tier soundtrack. Composer Hiroyuki Sawano - well-known for his work on Attack on Titan and Kill la Kill - provides a legendary score for this game, and he’s back with new music for Definitive Edition, too. His work here does feel distinctly anime, with epic, sweeping tracks for the game’s biomes and vocal-driven battle themes that I never get tired of listening to.

Should I play Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition? Play it if...

You want to get lost in a unique RPG for potentially hundreds of hours
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a very unique game even within the confines of its own series. The glorious sci-fi setting matched with a deep and involving battle system provides a consistently moreish experience.View Deal

You love exploration
This game simply gets exploring a vast, open world so right. Expanding your map via FrontierNav to discover new, interesting locations as well as treasures and powerful enemies is incredibly rewarding throughout the experience.View Deal

You like mechs
Despite the weak Skell combat, it’s more than made up for in their aptitude for exploration and sheer customizability - which includes everything from weapon loadouts to color schemes.View Deal

Don't play it if...

You just want to get on with the story
You’ll be spending a lot of time in Xenoblade Chronicles X completing side quests and affinity missions in order to meet requirements and recommended levels for main story content. If you’re not willing to take things slow then you may find progression to be irksome especially later on in the game.View Deal

Accessibility

Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition is unfortunately very minimal in terms of accessibility features. You’ve got subtitles on by default and you can adjust dialogue text speed, but that’s really about it. There are no colorblind options, which would have been helpful to some players given the battle system’s reliance on color-coded Arts.

How I reviewed Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition

My playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition lasted around 80 hours. This included the main story, most side quests, a good amount of affinity missions, and the new postgame content. I unfortunately wasn’t able to test the game’s online features for this review, as these will open up on release day.

I played the game on my Nintendo Switch OLED in both docked and handheld modes. I found it to be surprisingly playable and stable in handheld mode despite the drop in overall image quality and resolution, but still looks noticeably less soupy than other Xenoblade titles on that OLED screen. For docked play, I played on an LG CX OLED TV primarily with a GameSir Nova controller.

First reviewed March 2025

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• It demonstrates a clear lead over the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V
• The tests were conducted in LM Studio with various LLMs

Official benchmarks have backed up the "Strix Halo" AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395's performance as the "most powerful x86 APU" on the market for AI computing.

The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is a 16-core (32 threads) processor with a 50+ peak AI TOPS XDNA 2 NPU, and Radeon 8060S integrated graphics (40 RDNA 3.5 Compute Units) for some serious processing power for the form factor. It's being primarily marketed by AMD for its handling of AI workloads, such as in applications such as LM Studio.

This is evident in AMD's published benchmarks for the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which are measured in 'tokens per second' and 'time to first token' in LM Studio against its competition. Specifically, we see how the new "Strix Halo" processor inside of the Asus ROG Flow Z13 with 64GB RAM compares to a similar spec Asus Zenbook S14 with 32GB RAM.

The latter machine has half the unified memory and is using the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V APU with its baked-in Arc integrated graphics clocked at 140V, so it's not necessarily a 1:1 comparison. However, AMD has showcased the prowess of its latest chipset in LM Studio 0.3.11 with "various LLMs" with a 16GB model size, demonstrating at least twice the effective tokens per second with DeepSeek R1, Phi 4 Mini Instruct, and Llama 3.2 compared to its rival.

The lead becomes more dramatic when comparing time to first token in text models, with up to 12.2x faster as evidenced by the benchmarks in DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 14b, with a similar lead of 11.3x in Phi 4 14b. It's not a consistent lead across all text models, however, as the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is anywhere from 4x to 9x faster in Llama 3.2 and other DeepSeek R1 distilled models.

AMD's Ryzen AI Max+ 395 is also claimed to be up to seven times faster in SOTA vision models in the time to first token, this can be seen in IBM Granite Vision 3.2 2B while the chip is six times faster in Google Gemma 3 12b; it's roughly halved when comparing against Gema 3 4b, though.

Powerful performance that should not be too shocking

AMD's leading "Strix Point" APU is head and shoulders above the Intel Core Ultra 7 processor in a way that should not be surprising to those interested in AI computing. That's because Team Blue's hardware was made with lower threshold AI computing in mind, and this can be seen in the architectural differences when analyzing the two.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 258V features eight cores and eight threads with a maximum boost clock of up to 4.8 GHz and a maximum TDP of 37W. In contrast, the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 has 16 cores, 32 threads, a boost clock of up to 5.1 GHz, and a default TDP of 55W. However, this TDP is configurable up to 120W, so it's a night and day hardware difference in the chipsets. Of course, AMD's hardware was going to come out on top; it's far more powerful across the board.

Then we have to consider the two tested machines used for the benchmarks, the differences between the Asus ROG Flow Z13 (a leading gaming laptop) and the Asus Zenbook S14 (a midrange ultrabook). We reviewed the latter device late last year giving it a four-star write-up, citing the "solid performance" from the Lunar Lake processor. The chip debuted inside this machine (and similar) back in September 2024, while the AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 hit the scene this month.

It's not just AI laptops that are using the flagship Ryzen AI chipset for its performance capabilities as a myriad of mini PCs are using them for productivity and even gaming use. It's become a race to launch the most powerful AI mini PCs possible as mid-March to mid-May are targeted from companies, such as GMKTec and Aoostar, which are leading the charge.

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• Garmin smartwatches have been used in a study conducted by Harvard and Oxford
• Early results have indicated a link between happiness, wellbeing, and the data provided by smartwatches
• Key findings suggest that daily physical activity and sleep are "strongly correlated" with increased happiness and reduced stress

A new study from Harvard University and the University of Oxford powered by the best Garmin watches has suggested a direct link between daily activity, sleep, happiness, and stress.

Garmin has revealed the early results from the study, which it says is the first large-scale study of its kind in this field.

The study aims to "identify predictors of happiness and wellbeing" using data from smartwatches and smartphones. While these results need to be corroborated with a larger upcoming global study, early indications appear to reveal "an important relationship between sleep, exercise, and happiness."

We already knew this didn't we?

(Image credit: Future / Matt Evans)

So what exactly do Garmin's early results reveal? Garmin says "Daily physical activity and adequate sleep, both measured by Garmin devices, were strongly correlated with increased happiness and reduced levels of stress."

What's more, emotional stability varies with age, but appears to increase as we get older.

The study also had a high retention rate, which appears to indicate that participants found value in self-monitoring their emotions during the day.

Finally, respondents were found to be happiest "when involved in cultural and social activities, eating, or spending time with friends and family."

Garmin also shared a happiness and physical activity graph constructed from the data, which reveals the link between happiness and burning calories.

The good news? Burning calories increases happiness. The bad news? To increase happiness, you need to burn calories...

(Image credit: Garmin)

The preliminary results hint at what we all probably know at some level about fitness and well-being: getting active and exercising is good for your mood and your overall happiness.

Garmin, Oxford, and Harvard now plan to expand their study to 10,000 participants across the globe. Respondents will be sent a survey three times a day asking them to identify their level of happiness, and the activities they've completed. The data will be cross-referenced with metrics from Garmin devices to build a picture of the link between happiness and variables like sleep and activity.

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