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The biggest phones of 2024 have all now launched, but we probably won’t have to get far into 2025 before we see another major handset – in fact, three of them should land all at once, early in the year, in the form of the Samsung Galaxy S25, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

This trio of high-end phones are likely to be the best of Samsung’s non-foldable phones for the year, and based on past form will probably rank among the absolute best phones from any brand.

While we don’t know exactly when these handsets will launch, we can take an educated guess based on rumors and tips, and Samsung’s typical release date patterns. Below then, you’ll find the predicted announcement date, our prediction for the pre-order date, and when we think these phones will actually go on sale.

We’ll also update this article whenever we hear any credible release date news or rumors, so make sure to keep checking back.

Samsung Galaxy S25 announcement date predictions

The Samsung Galaxy S24 series (Image credit: Samsung)

We've heard two credible release date leaks so far, one of which suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S25 series will be announced on January 23 and the other points to a Galaxy S25 announcement on January 22. However, with the first leak coming from South Korea and the launch event likely happening in the US, it's very possible due to time differences that both are correct, but for our purposes then the January 22 leak would be more likely.

Beyond that, another Samsung Galaxy S25 announcement date hint comes in the form of a Vietnamese survey, shared by @pnk505 on X. This states that on January 5, respondents will get a 10% discount off the next Galaxy S models.

So you might assume January 5 would be the announcement date of these phones, but that’s a Sunday, which is not a day Samsung is likely to use. Still, the discount code needn’t necessarily be sent on the announcement date, so if the survey is genuine then we could still see these phones get announced in early to mid-January, or indeed on January 22, as mentioned above.

But we’d be surprised if we see the phones before the middle of the month, as CES 2025 runs from January 7-11 (with some announcements potentially happening ahead of the official start of the show).

That will ensure the tech world’s attentions are elsewhere on those days, and Samsung itself typically uses CES to announce TVs and smart home products, so it probably wouldn’t want to distract from them with a major phone launch.

So where does that leave us? Beyond leaks, in its quarterly earnings report for Q3 2024, Samsung confirmed that the Galaxy S25 line would land in the first half of 2025, so we can round the release date down a little at least.

But based on when Samsung typically launches new models, we can round down the likely timing further. The Samsung Galaxy S24 series was unveiled on January 17 of 2024, while the Samsung Galaxy S23 line was announced on February 1 of 2023. For the Samsung Galaxy S22, Samsung used February 9, and the Galaxy S21 was unveiled on January 14 of its release year.

So in recent years Samsung has always unveiled new Galaxy S models in either January or February, and no earlier than mid-January or later than mid-February. We’d expect the company will follow the same pattern with the Galaxy S25, so these phones will likely be unveiled somewhere roughly between January 15 and February 15.

January 22 fits comfortably into that window, so for now we'd say that's the most likely date, but any other date in that timeframe is possible too.

Samsung Galaxy S25 pre-order date predictions

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus (Image credit: Future)

In recent years, Samsung has opened pre-orders for new Galaxy S models the same day as they’re announced, and we have no reason to think that trend will stop with the Samsung Galaxy S25 line.

So we predict you’ll be able to pre-order the Galaxy S25, Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, straight after they’re announced – which as detailed above will possibly be on January 22, and at the very least will probably be sometime between around January 15 and February 15.

Samsung Galaxy S25 on-sale date predictions

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (Image credit: Future)

The Samsung Galaxy S24 went on sale on January 31, which is two weeks after it was announced. There was a similar but not identical gap with the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy S22, each of which went on sale 16 days after their announcement, and the Galaxy S21 which went on sale 15 days after it was announced.

So we expect there will be a roughly two-week gap once again, meaning that if the Samsung Galaxy S25 is announced on January 22, it will probably go on sale sometime around February 5, give or take a couple of days, as that's two weeks later.

Of course, we're not certain of that January 22 announcement date, but assuming the Samsung Galaxy S25 line is unveiled between mid-January and mid-February anyway, you’ll be able to have one of these phones in your hand sometime between late January and early March.

What about the Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim and S25 FE?

The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE (Image credit: Future)

As well as the Samsung Galaxy S25, Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus, and Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, we’re also expecting to see a Samsung Galaxy S25 FE and perhaps a Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim.

The FE is a slightly lower end alternative to the main Galaxy S line, and Samsung launches a new FE model most but not all years, while the Galaxy S25 Slim is a new rumored model that would be thinner than the rest of the Samsung Galaxy S25 line.

However, most leaks suggest neither of these will land alongside the main Samsung Galaxy S25 series. Typically, the FE launches well over six months later – with the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE for example only going on sale in October of 2024. One tip suggests we could see the Samsung Galaxy S25 FE in April, but that would still probably be at least two months after the main Galaxy S25 line.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 Slim is similarly said by some sources to be landing two or three months after the main Samsung Galaxy S25 series, so probably April or May. That said, one leak suggests the Galaxy S25 Slim could actually arrive alongside the rest of the S25 line, if Samsung gets it finished in time. So don't count it out just yet.

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Jake Paul won a unanimous decision over Mike Tyson as the hits didn't match the hype in a fight between a young YouTuber-turned-boxer and the 58-year-old former heavyweight champion.

(Image credit: Julio Cortez)

• Cloudbrink hotspot service aims to offer alternative to VPN tools
• The service claims to improve application performance by 30 times
• Can also reportedly reduce the tethering suffered in warehouse environments

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have long been the standard for secure internet access in the remote and hybrid work landscape.

However, while VPNs provide essential encryption, they often also have downsides, as workers relying on tethered connections in challenging environments such as warehouses, or remote manufacturing facilities, can face a frustrating trade-off between security and speed due to relying on mobile hotspots.

Now, Cloudbrink is looking to improve hotspot performance as an alternative to VPNs, offering a solution that not only ensures security but also enhances connectivity without the typical bandwidth sacrifices.

Beyond traditional VPNs

Hotspots can often suffer from performance degradation due to the nature of their connection (combining two wireless links - one from the device to the mobile phone and another from the phone to the carrier network). This dual-link setup increases the chances of performance issues, particularly when signal strength is poor, or packet loss occurs.

While the rollout of 5G networks promises to alleviate some of the performance issues associated with mobile hotspots, widespread adoption remains a distant goal. Currently, only 32% of cellular connections in the United States are 5G, and penetration is significantly lower in many other regions. Additionally, 5G coverage tends to be concentrated in metropolitan areas, leaving many remote and hybrid workers unable to capitalize on the technology.

Cloudbrink’s service is designed as a high-performance alternative to VPNs, with independent tests conducted by Broadband Testing showing that the new service boosts application performance over WiFi, 4G/5G, and broadband connections by more than 30 times.

The company says it uses techniques such as accelerated pre-emptive packet recovery and dynamic virtual access points known as FAST Edges, which minimize latency and maximize throughput even over unreliable and congested networks.

Intelligent packet optimization allows the service to adjust performance, based on signal strength and other variables, ensuring the best possible connection at any given time, as Cloudbrink pairs these technologies with AI-enabled network.

“Cloudbrink was already faster than a VPN or other ZTNA over any remote connection by an order of magnitude," claims Manohar Reddy, head of products at Cloudbrink. "Now we’ve tuned the service to optimize mobile hotspots, we’re seeing better than twice the performance we were previously getting on tethered devices."

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Review info

Platform reviewed: PC
Available on: PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5
Release date: November 7, 2024

Offering you the chance to build a theme park (almost quite literally) brick by brick, Planet Coaster 2 builds on the series’ strengths and addresses some of its most glaring weaknesses. Couple these quality-of-life improvements with a brand new category of attraction – pools, flumes, and water parks – and it certainly seems to be offering a lot to a new generation of theme park fans.

As a creative person who shades on the obsessive side, I’ll admit I’m pretty much genetically predisposed to being a Planet Coaster 2 addict. The series offers almost complete creative freedom at the cost of hours spent meticulously arranging scenery parts and is almost pharmaceutically engineered to squirt dopamine around my pixel-addled brain. As a result, I’ve spent many hours boring the pants off my nearest and dearest about my latest rides and animal enclosures, to the extent I can almost hear the glop of their eyes glazing over as I talk.

But as the oenophile has the shrewdest expectations of the wine they imbibe and the true caffeine addict won’t sip anything other than locally roasted micro-lot beans from a tiny farm in El Salvador, I’ve also got pretty high expectations of my chosen vice. Both Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo helped me scratch my creative itch as PC games while also coming with some limitations that sometimes made me question my habit. So the announcement of Planet Coaster 2 did make me wonder: has developer Frontier Developments finally found a cleaner way for me to get my creative kicks?

(Image credit: Frontier Developments) Pool party

If you’ve seen any of the Planet Coaster 2 trailers, you’ll already be well aware of Frontier Developments’ big pitch for the sequel: water parks. In fact, in terms of new content, they are the only substantial addition the game brings. I was initially slightly nonplussed by this: could the inclusion of one new ride category encourage me to do any more than dip my toe into this sequel? Do pools and flumes really offer enough to justify sinking hours of my time into a new Planet game? In a word: yes. Yes, they do.

First of all, Planet Coaster 2 allows you to create a wide array of pools. Want to create a classy resort vibe, complete with cabanas, palm trees, and juice shacks? Or maybe you want to create a shallow kiddy pool, replete with donut-shaped swim rings and wave machines? You’re free to shape, customize, and decorate your pools however you like and, as in previous Frontier Developments titles, the only limit is your imagination. New tools allow you to carve out pools in any shape you desire, adjust the depth as you see fit, and adorn them with everything from sunloungers to beachballs.

Flumes also add a lot of fun to your water park. From basic chutes to gargantuan inner tube slides with switchbacks and speed bowls, you can create thrilling flumes that will draw more visitors to your pools. As with rollercoasters, they’re fully customizable – you’ll place them piece by piece, controlling both vertical and horizontal bends, adding special parts, and trying to hit that sweet spot between exciting and nausea-inducing that will encourage your guests to take the plunge.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments)

As with your rollercoasters, your flumes will need to be tested before they can be opened, to make sure they provoke just the right amount of excitement and not too much nausea or fear. While testing you can view the results as they change from moment to moment or check out heatmaps of the whole ride to spot problem areas.

It’s not all fun and games though: you’ll also have to watch over your guests’ safety and make sure the water stays free of pe… err, dirt. Nobody’s at risk of drowning in Planet games – they’re far too cozy for that – but swimmers will panic, so you’ll need to make sure your pool is covered by lifeguards to help calm their distress. Meanwhile, you’ll have to add pool filtration to make sure that water remains crystal clear, hooking up water filters to flumes or to the pool itself.

Speaking of pipes, the utilities in Planet Coaster 2 have had an overhaul as well. While the original Planet Coaster was seemingly a Tesla-inspired free-energy utopia and Planet Zoo just required a generator plonking down here or there, hooking up power and water in Planet Coaster 2 requires a bit more thought. Not only will your generators and pumps need regular maintenance from your mechanics but the resulting electricity and water will need to be distributed around your park. Using underground wires and pipes, you’ll hook them up to power distributors and water filters, which will provide the required resources to everything within a set radius. It hardly requires Factorio levels of micromanagement and can easily be switched off but it adds a little extra realism to your parks.

In comparison to the water parks, traditional rides in Planet Coaster 2 have had much less of an overhaul. You can still design a wide array of rickety wooden coasters, water rides, and super-modern hanging coasters, as well as place thrilling flat rides and customize their sequences. They’re as fun as ever to design and integrate well with your water parks but, if you’re expecting a sea change here, you’ll be disappointed. However, I feel like the water parks add plenty of new challenges and creativity to the game and definitely justify picking up Planet Coaster 2 over firing up the original.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments) A smooth ride

As you might expect, Planet Coaster 2 has had a bit of a facelift compared to its eight-year-old predecessor.

Unsurprisingly, the most work has gone into improving water effects – lakes and beaches now look much more realistic, with the gradation between shallow and deep water looking much more true to life. Not only does the sunlight glimmer across the surface of your swimming pools but this casts underwater ripples across the ceramic tiles as well. All the water in the game feels like it’s had a literal glow up and it does help to add some visual polish to your waterparks and natural water alike.

Terrain textures too have received some love. There’s a wider variety than ever: alongside familiar terrain from Planet Zoo, like long and short grass, hard and soft rock, there are now multiple rock types, gravel, scree, and several densities of shrubbery, which help really add variation to the landscape. Whether I was creating small coves or craggy peaks, these extra textures really helped make the terrain look richer and more organic.

This ties in nicely with some of the new Scenery Themes, making it easier to match your landscape to various regions. As well as the classic theme park style, the new game also offers Viking, Mythological (read: Ancient Greece), Resort, and, predictably, Aquatic themes. Some of these are fantastic: Viking offers fantastic runic statues, Aquatic beautiful corals and the Greek pack allowed me to relive some of my favorite Aegean destinations.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments)

However, I do miss the versatility of some of PlanCo’s original themes and the relative paucity of animatronics in the sequel does make sequencing ride scenery less exciting. Being able to perfectly program an explosion in a Wild West mine as a coaster roared past, complete with terrified miners leaping to escape the flames, was one of my favorite moments in the original and I hope new content packs will restore some of this creative potential.

I was expecting this graphical boost to have a noticeable impact on performance but I was pleasantly surprised. Playing on an Acer Predator Helios 300 with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, I found my frame rate rarely ever dropped below 65 frames per second, even on the Ultra graphics settings. With all of its AI pathfinding and animal behavior, I found Planet Zoo could get pretty sluggish on some rigs, especially at high guest counts, but Planet Coaster 2 seems to run smoothly even on an older graphics card.

Not only that but, despite assuming the game would be an absolute no-go on the Steam Deck, it actually runs pretty adequately. Yes, your graphics settings will have to plunge like you’re on a drop tower but the game still runs smoothly, averaging out at a decent-for-Deck 30fps. How true this will remain when you’re working with Disney World-sized parks remains to be seen but it shows there has been some effort to optimize things behind the scenes.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments) Breaking new paths

As someone who has sunk thousands of hours into the original Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, I’ll be the first to admit that they can be… a little idiosyncratic. It’s become something of an inside joke among fans of the series that the games offer almost unlimited creative potential while also forcing you to butt heads with some frustrating design limitations. Paths and scenery placement in particular have drawn ire for being unnecessarily convoluted.

To its credit, Frontier Developments has tackled some of these complaints head-on in Planet Coaster 2. Object placement has received some much-needed love: you can now turn Snap Distances on and off for all objects, meaning you’re no longer forced to keep building parts on a grid but can also set props to move in relation to the grid when you want. And the new Scale Tool allows you to tweak the size of individual items, something I’ve been desperate to see for a long time, and makes it much easier to create organic variations in the sizes of objects. All in all, this adds a great deal of flexibility to the Blueprints you can create.

There are also plenty of labor-saving tweaks that have been made: the new scenery brush groups together similar items like tropical trees or Mediterranean rocks and quickly paints them across the landscape. You can also easily create your own presets by adding a selection of scenery items. The end result definitely requires some editing to get it looking natural but, as someone who has spent many hours in Planet Zoo getting each collection of bushes and stones looking just right, automating a part of this process is definitely something I appreciate.

Best bit: swimming pools

(Image credit: Frontier Developments)

Pools are a blast: not only are the flumes fun to build, there is a good degree of freedom in how you shape and decorate your pools. I can’t wait to start building a tropical indoor swimming paradise replete with beaches, slow rivers and smoothie bars.

In past games, paths were easy to place in general and maddeningly difficult to place in specific circumstances – anyone who has also lost a whole evening trying to stack paths on top of each other in multi-story buildings shares my pain here. Fortunately, path placement has had a complete overhaul: in addition to the Classic Paths tool, there is now an overhauled Line Builder tool, options to manually draw the edges of paths line by line, a Stamp Builder tool to place geometrically shaped paths, and an Edit tool to manually tweak paths point by point. This gives you a whole lot more variability in terms of the shapes of path you can create, making plazas, buildings, and a whole heap more much easier to create.

Water mechanics have previously been this series’ Achilles heel: creating natural ponds, rivers, and lakes was always a bit of a finicky process, often requiring a lot of tinkering before the games would acknowledge water placement as valid. Fortunately, Planet Coaster 2’s swimming pools utilize the new path mechanics – you can carve out pools using shapes or manually set their boundaries by drawing lines, then round their edges using the Smooth Brush. Depth is set according to presets at first – either shallow, wading, swimming, or diving – but you can set the depth to whatever you want with the Edit tool. And you can add paths around the edges automatically using the Customize Brush.

All in all, these features go a long way to reducing the slog involved in perfecting your park.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments) Off the rails

This isn’t to say that some of Frontier Developments’ more eccentric tendencies aren’t on display: you’ll definitely encounter bugs and odd design choices here and there.

Designing rollercoasters is still that same combination of childlike delight and frustratingly finicky refinement. Having spent roughly 20 minutes designing an old-school log flume that wound through forests, plunged down mountainsides, and splashed through salt lakes, I was pretty happy with my handiwork. But I then had to spend at least another 30 minutes closing the loop: there’s no auto-complete function for certain rides and trying to get the returning track on the same height as the station platform required a tedious process of trial and error.

Ride testing has also maintained some of its irksome habits from the original. Any time I’ve attempted a coaster or flume of significant ambition, it still required a high degree of testing and tweaking to keep speed and G-forces within safe limits. And there are still some glitches here. One of my early flumes repeatedly tested as being around a 15 in terms of fear overall – a bowel-liquefying level of terror that wouldn’t allow me to open the ride – despite the fact heatmaps showed the fear didn’t hit much higher than a 6. I’d imagine minor bugs like this will be fixed in future patches but it can be confusing trying to work out whether your design is at fault or an unpatched bug.

But, as I say, I’d maintain these kind of issues are the flipside of the creative freedom Planet Coaster 2 offers. What I’ve come to expect from the Planet series of games is the ability to create pretty much whatever I want and an inevitable side effect of trying to create something the developer never anticipated is the fact I may run up against the odd hard limit where the engine struggles to deliver what I’ve asked for. Ultimately: with great flexibility, comes great errors.

(Image credit: Frontier Developments) Should I play Planet Coaster 2? Play it if…

You want your theme parks to make a splash
The addition of pools and flumes adds a substantial new dimension to creating your fantasy theme park. If you felt the original was a little on the dry side, the sequel should whet your appetite.

You want improved tools over the original
While they’re still not foolproof, tools for object placement, path placement, and scenery creation have all had quality-of-life improvements that make them smoother to use.

Don't play it if...

You want a game you can casually dip into
As fans of the series will know, Planet games can require an obsessive attention to detail. If you really want to customize every element of your park, be prepared to sink a lot of time into this game.

You’re expecting to only have to pay once
The relatively limited scenery items and themes are likely to be augmented by paid-for DLCs. If you’re not prepared to sink extra money into expansions, you may miss out on some of the things Planet Coaster 2 has to offer.

Accessibility

Planet Coaster 2 has a reasonable number of accessibility options, although perhaps there’s room for improvement too. You can scale the interface if you find smaller type hard to read and can tweak color palettes to improve readability if you have protanopic, deuteranopic, or tritanopic color blindness.

For those who have auditory processing problems, you can set the game to mute all other audio when narrative dialogue is playing. Meanwhile, for those with reduced hearing in one ear, you can switch on a mono mix to ensure you’re receiving all sounds.

However, you don’t seem to be able to adjust gamepad controls, which might make things harder for those who require certain tweaks to be able to use controllers.

How I reviewed Planet Coaster 2

I sank over 23 hours into playing Planet Coaster 2. I tried to cover as much of the game as possible, dividing my time between Career Mode, Franchise Mode, and Sandbox Mode. I tried the game out on Low, High, and Ultra graphics settings.

In terms of hardware, I played Planet Coaster 2 on an Acer Predator Helios 300 with a 12th-gen Intel Core i9-12900H CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. During this testing, I used the laptop’s built-in keyboard and an external Logitech B100 mouse. I also played the game for hours on my LCD Steam Deck.

My past experience of the Planet series of games includes almost 400 hours on the original Planet Coaster and over 1,000 hours on Planet Zoo.

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TicWatch Atlas: One minute review

The TicWatch Atlas is a brilliant rugged Android smartwatch and a fantastic alternative to mainstream options like the Google Pixel Watch or the Samsung Galaxy Range. It boasts an impressive chassis made of stainless steel, aluminum, and fiberglass that feels really premium and sturdy, and it’s competitively priced around other Android smartwatches while offering the rugged durability you’d expect from an Apple Watch Ultra or Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra.

The dual display means you can switch between a healthy-looking AMOLED display or an essentials-only low-power option that’s good for 45 days of battery life. The TicWatch Atlas comes absolutely packed with fitness and health-tracking tools and features, including more than 100 exercises. It also features heart-rate monitoring, sleep tracking, blood oxygen monitoring, and more.

The Snapdragon W5+ chip ensures performance all-round is snappy with no hang-ups, and there’s a wealth of health data at your fingertips. The screen isn’t as vibrant as an Apple Watch display, and blood oxygen readings weren’t always spot on, but overall fitness tracking for calories and heart rate kept up with more expensive Apple Watch alternatives, and the GPS showed pretty solid accuracy.

The TicWatch Atlas currently runs Wear OS 4 with no sign of Wear OS 5 coming any time soon, but for those who can do without the latest software, it’s an extremely enticing option in this price bracket and one of the best Android smartwatches this year.

TicWatch Atlas: Specifications TicWatch Atlas: Price and Availability

(Image credit: Future)

• $349/£329/AU$519
• Two colors

The TicWatch Atlas is available now from Mobvoi.com and Amazon in a multitude of territories. There’s only one size and two colors, retailing at $349 / £329 / AU$519. We’ve seen it officially discounted through Mobvoi’s website and Amazon in the UK to just £264.99. In Wear OS terms, that’s around the same price as the list price of the Galaxy Watch 7, but cheaper than the similarly-sized Pixel Watch 3. It’s also, confusingly, the same price as Ticwatch’s other smartwatch offerings, the Pro 5 Enduro and the regular Pro 5.

• Value score: 4/5

TicWatch Atlas: Design and screen

(Image credit: Future)

• Premium design
• Very rugged and durable
• Dual display is enticing

Out of the box, the Ticwatch Atlas really dazzles as a rugged and well-designed smartwatch. The circular chassis measures 52.2mm in height by 47.8mm in width, and the whole package is just 12.05mm thick. The watch housing itself is a mixture of stainless steel, 7000-series aluminum, and nylon with fiberglass. That means you aren’t getting the premium titanium finish of an Apple Watch Ultra or the Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra, but the whole package exudes premium build quality and a rugged durability that really gives you confidence in the watch day-to-day. The TicWatch Atlas is Mobvoi’s adventure-going watch for the great outdoors and the company has really nailed it with this fantastic design.

Garmin fans will find themselves at home here thanks to a raised, chunky bezel that houses a circular AMOLED display, and to one side are a side button and a crown for scrolling. The latter is smooth and precise to operate, and the former takes you to Wear OS 4’s recent apps with a satisfying click, or Google Wallet with a double click.

The fluororubber band shipped as standard is also really excellent – the rubber is soft and grippy, and the metal clasp feels safe and secure to use.

The TicWatch Atlas boasts a dual-display configuration, with an always-on AMOLED and the Ultra-low-power display. Starting with the AMOLED, this tech definitely lags behind options like the Apple Watch Series 10, which looks altogether more vibrant. Upping the brightness to full really improved the experience, but at the default setting I thought it looked ever-so-slightly washed out. However, the text and metrics all look very clear, and the default Wear OS faces show good color performance. Raise-to-wake was a tad sluggish for my liking, but I’m really nitpicking what’s otherwise a very enjoyable experience.

(Image credit: Future)

There’s also the Ultra-low-power display, which gives you a slew of essential metrics (date, time, steps, heart rate, battery) in a crisp two-tone format. You can pick the color, and the low-power display also has dynamic color changes that reflect your heart rate, so you can gauge what HR zone you’re running in with the quickest of glances. The real selling point of this Ultra-low-power display, however, is the battery life, with TicWatch promising up to 45 days of use in Essential Mode using this feature.

Overall, the TicWatch Atlas is really comfortable on the wrist, with no noticeable wrist fatigue. At 47.2 grams it’s not a heavy beast, but you’ll definitely notice its presence. As noted, it’s circular and quite a bit wider than your average Apple Watch, which I’d say disqualifies it for use in strength training. That’s because the design, coupled with the protruding crown, lends itself to accidental button presses, a fatal flaw that also hamstrings the Apple Watch.

Worth mentioning design-wise are the Atlas’ durability ratings. It’s 5ATM waterproof-rated for open-water swims, and certified to MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability. Essentially, the TicWatch Atlas can handle almost everything you throw at it, rain or shine.

• Design score: 4/5

TicWatch Atlas: Features

(Image credit: Future)

• Packed with fitness-tracking features
• Heart rate monitoring and Afib alerts
• Wear OS 4

TicWatch Atlas arrives sporting Wear OS 4 and a host of impressive features. A lot of these will be familiar to anyone who’s used any of the best Android smartwatches on the market. There are workout tracking modes for over 100 different exercises, including all the usual suspects. You’ll also get 24/7 heart-rate monitoring, recovery time readouts, VO2 Max measurements, calories, blood oxygen, and more.

Overnight there’s sleep tracking which triggers automatically, and health features like irregular heartbeat sensing and atrial fibrillation detection, which are constantly monitored in the background.

Safety features include emergency SOS and Fall Detection, the effectiveness of which I can attest to because I accidentally triggered it during a gym workout when I flopped a bit too dramatically onto a bench while doing barbell bench presses.

Navigation is provided by GPS tracking, which can also give you retrospective routes for your outdoor workouts and is impressively accurate, even when not tethered to a phone. There’s also a compass and barometer, the latter of which will be of particular note to climbers and hikers, who can use it to gauge height and atmospheric conditions that could indicate changes in the weather.

Another standout feature that I wasn’t able to test was Heat Map. With GPS and network connectivity, you can track your heat map for ball games including American football, Aussie rules, basketball, rugby, soccer, and tennis, as well as Frisbee, with your activity displayed as a satellite image of your exploits that you can customize and share with friends.

There’s also TicMotion, proactive tracking for outdoor workouts that can detect walking, running, or cycling without the need for user input, providing heart rate, calories, and VO2 max info automatically. I’ve already mentioned the dynamic screen, which changes color to match your heart rate in Ultra-low-power mode, another epic feature for fitness enthusiasts.

You also get the usual slew of Wear OS features from Google, including G-Suite integration for Maps, Calendar, and Gmail, apps from the Play Store, messaging, Google Wallet, and more. 32GB of onboard storage ensures you can load music and playlists onto your device, so you can run without your smartphone if you’d prefer

Overall, the TicWatch Atlas is packed with features for a $329 smartwatch. The feature-set generally lends itself to the adventuring fitness enthusiast, there is a lot going on when it comes to fitness tracking, health, performance, and more. I’d be inclined to compare the Atlas more to some of the best Garmin watches on the market, rather than something like a Google Pixel Watch 3. As with TicWatch’s Pro 5 offering, LTE is the only glaring omission. Mobvoi has also confirmed to us that there isn’t currently any information about Wear OS 5 support, the rollout of which to old Pixel models was confirmed recently, so this doesn’t put it at a huge disadvantage versus other Android rivals.

(Image credit: Future)

• Features score: 4.5/5

TicWatch Atlas: Performance

(Image credit: Future)

• Snappy processor
• Accurate metrics
• Phenomenal battery life

In my three weeks using the Atlas TicWatch I’ve been really impressed by the overall performance. My daily driver is usually an Apple Watch Series 10, or latterly, the Ultra 2. Personally, I find that the animations of Wear OS 4 leave a bit to be desired, with the lack of bounce and responsiveness versus watchOS 11 making for a more clunky experience; however, the TicWatch’s Snapdragon W5+ chip is more than enough to handle Wear OS. The user experience overall is snappy and responsive, with no processor hang-ups. The Atlas can process a lot of workout data including heart rate metrics, steps and calories, and cadence, and it’s definitely a solid piece of kit.

Accuracy-wise, it leaves little to be desired. In side-by-side tests with my $699 Apple Watch Ultra 2, the TicWatch broadly kept up with heart rate measurements including changes to my pulse. In a 1km test walk, the TicWatch slightly over-egged the distance, giving me 1km when I’d only walked 956m, with a slightly ambitious GPS route that artificially inflated the distance. However, that’s not a massive margin of error, and the Atlas clocked my average heart rate at 89bpm compared to the Apple Watch’s 90, and calories burned at 58 vs Apple Watch’s 60. For almost everyone that’s a perfectly acceptable margin of error, and an impressive set of results. In fact, I was surprised that workout summaries and metrics generally felt more comprehensive than with the Apple Watch and iOS, with step count, VO2 max, average speed, and workout zones served up in addition to Apple’s data offering.

(Image credit: Future)

The only suspect reading I’ve found on the Atlas is blood oxygen, with a couple of erratic readings suggesting that my level was changing quite rapidly to as low as 92% percent and as high as 100%. It seems to have evened out over time, but I’ve wondered if the TicWatch has been giving me readings even when it wasn’t quite able to. On other occasions, however, it matched the Apple Watch in more controlled conditions. Given that this measurement relies heavily on you being at rest and having your watch fitted properly, this could be an error, and it’s one I’m keeping an eye on with continued testing.

Metrics and results are delivered via the Mobvoi Health app, available on the Google Play Store. It’s certainly comprehensive and colorful, but the app’s design and interface aren’t enthralling. Still, it’s practical and easy to navigate.

The aforementioned TicMotion workout detection is impressive, as is the automatic sleep tracking, however, the Atlas’ party piece is definitely its battery life. The TicWatch Atlas is rated for 90 hours of use as a regular smartwatch, or an eye-watering 45 days using the ultra-low-power display. In three weeks of use, I’ve only had to charge it twice, and it easily clears three days of constant use on a single charge, including one workout a day. Charging speed is also impressive, and the standard included cable is good for 2 days of usage from just 30 minutes of charging. Otherwise, a full charge in my experience takes about 90 minutes, and TicWatch’s interface shows the battery charging in real-time to two decimal places for a reassuring sense of progress.

• Performance score: 4.5/5

TicWatch Atlas review: Scorecard TicWatch Atlas: Should I buy? Buy it if...

You want a rugged Wear OS fitness tracker

The TicWatch Atlas excels at fitness and health tracking and has a brilliant, rugged durability.

You want a stylish alternative to mainstream Android smartwatches

The TicWatch Atlas’ design stands out against Pixel Watch and Galaxy alternatives.

Don't buy it if...

You own an iPhone

The TicWatch Atlas is an Android-only smartwatch.

You want Wear OS 5

The TicWatch Atlas doesn’t currently support the latest Android wearable software.

TicWatch Atlas: How we tested

I used the TicWatch Atlas for almost three weeks as my main smartwatch. It was connected to a Samsung S21 Ultra, on which I tested the Mobvoi Health app and connectivity. I used the watch to track my sleeping, as well as multiple strength and running workouts. I also conducted controlled testing to directly compare metrics to the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the Series 10, including a 1km test walk to measure the accuracy of heart rate and calorie tracking.

TicWatch Atlas: Also consider

Samsung Galaxy Watch 7

One of the best Wear OS 5 watches on the market right now, packed with fitness tracking and health features, solid battery life, and more.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 review

Garmin Forerunner 265

With its brilliant OLED screen, comprehensive fitness tracking, and great battery life, the Garmin Forerunner 265 is a great alternative for runners, although slightly more expensive.

Read our full Garmin Forerunner 265 review

First reviewed: November 2024

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Ninja Thirsti Max: one-minute review

Reduce the use of single-use bottles and cans by making your own carbonated beverages at home with the Ninja Thirsti Max. With a touch of the CO2 button, you can add a low, medium, or high level of carbonation for fizzy drinks or you can skip the carbonation entirely for a still beverage.

The Ninja Thirsti Max comes with four bottles of Flavored Drops, which you'll need if you want to make anything besides plain seltzer water. Ninja makes a variety of these flavor drops in different categories: Zero Soda, Seltzer, Fruiti Chill (electrolytes or B vitamins), and Fruiti Chill+ (with caffeine). You can also adjust the amount of flavoring that goes into your drink, either low or high. The machine holds two flavor drop bottles at once, so you can combine the flavors into one drink, proportioned the way you like. You can make four different drink sizes: 6oz, 12oz, 18oz, or one liter.

With some experimentation, I found the fizz and flavor level I liked best. I tested out eight different flavors, at least one from each category. I liked some flavors better than others, but overall the drinks were tasty. The flavored seltzer drops are unsweetened, similar to a La Croix or other sparkling water. All of the other flavor drops are sweetened with the artificial sweetener sucralose.

Ninja Thirsti Max: price and availability

• List price: $169.99 (about £132 / AU$259)

The Ninja Thirsti Max is available at all the major retailers you'd expect, both in brick and mortar stores and online. The price includes a CO2 tank and four bottles of Ninja Flavored Drops. If you order directly from Ninja's website, you can select the exact flavors you'd like, otherwise you get four pre-selected flavors in the box.

The Flavored Drops retail for $6.99 (£5.43 / AU$10.64) apiece. Each bottle yields 17-20 12oz beverages. The 60L CO2 tank runs $36.99 (£28.76 / AU$56.34), but you can save 30% by recycling your spent tank each time. Each canister should carbonate about 100 12oz drinks, depending on how carbonated you like your beverages.

• Value score: 4.5/5

Ninja Thirsti Max: specifications Ninja Thirsti Max: design and features

• Easy to use
• Choose your fizz and flavor intensity
• Choose your beverage size

The Ninja Thirsti Max is a nice neutral matte metallic gray that will probably look at home with nearly any kitchen decor. It's not a tiny machine, but it's reasonably-sized for what it does. Setting up the Ninja Thirsti Max is easy and takes just a couple of minutes. Plug it in, insert the CO2 tank, fill the water tank, attach the drink tray, place your Flavored Drops into their slots, and you're ready to go.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

The 60L CO2 tank is neatly hidden behind a door in the back, so once it's installed you don't notice it.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

The water tank also happens to have a 60L capacity. Ninja recommends that you use either very cold water or water plus ice in order to maximize your carbonation and taste. The water tank has a plunger so you can quickly chill your ice water by pressing it up and down a few times.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

The height of the drink tray can be adjusted depending on the size of the cup or glass you're filling. It can also be removed if you're using an extra large cup.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

• Design score: 4.5/5

Ninja Thirsti Max: performance

The Ninja Thirsti Max works exactly as Ninja describes. Once you have set up the machine, choose the flavor intensity you want from each Flavored drop bottle: none, low, or high. Choose your beverage size: 6oz, 12oz, 18oz, or 1L. Choose your carbonation level: none, low, medium, or high. Place your cup under the nozzle and press start. The Ninja Thirsti Max will beep when your drink is ready.

Ninja recommends using ice water or very cold water in the water tank, and I agree that you get a better result if you do that. I'd also recommend emptying the water tank and adding fresh water once a day or each time the ice melts, otherwise your drink can have a stale 'melted ice' flavor.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

The real limitation of the Ninja Thirsti Max is the Flavored Drops. There are currently more than two dozen zero sugar flavors with more on the way. The seltzer flavor drops are unsweetened, but all of the other flavors are sweetened with sucralose, the artificial sweetener found in Splenda. There are no flavors with sugar or any other sweeteners in the lineup as of this writing.

I tried all of the Flavored Drops that Ninja sent me to test. There were four soda flavors: root beer, orange, cola, and Dr Thirsti. I also received a lemonade with added vitamins, strawberry kiwi electrolyte beverage, peach mango energy drink, and unsweetened black cherry seltzer.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

The sodas are new to the Ninja Thirsti lineup. They all tasted pretty much like the diet sodas they are intended to replicate. However, the cola and Dr Thirsti flavors wouldn't fool you into thinking they are Diet Coke or Diet Dr Pepper in a blind taste test.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

Ninja has changed the labeling on their original Flavored Drops, and I got both some of the old and the new. 'Hydrate' and 'Vitamins' became 'Fruiti Chill', 'Energy' became 'Fruiti Chill+', and what was called "Splash" is now "Seltzer."

All of the ones I tried were pretty tasty, once I got the right flavor intensity and level of fizz for my taste. All of the carbonation levels were sufficient, but I liked the highest level the best. I find I generally prefer a low level of flavor intensity since the higher level tended to be quite sweet, but your tastes may vary. In some cases, I even added extra plain seltzer to cut the sweetness a bit.

It's important to note that I do use sucralose in my everyday life, so I'm used to the way it tastes and I'm fine with it. If you don't, you might not enjoy it.

(Image credit: Karen Freeman / Future)

Of course, the seltzer flavor drops are not sweetened at all, and making sparkling water might be some people's main reason for buying the machine. I'm a big sparkling water drinker, and lugging home multi-packs of canned water is a hassle. I found the Ninja Thirsti black cherry seltzer to be comparable in both fizz and flavor to popular canned sparkling waters like La Croix, Polar, Waterloo, and others.

Keep in mind, there is nothing stopping you from making plain seltzer in the Ninja Thirsti Max and adding whatever you like to it. I tried adding a favorite powdered drink mix to the plain seltzer I made and that was great. You could also try adding fruit juice or even wine for a sort of spritzer beverage. You can always add flavor drops from any other brands.

• Performance score: 4/5

Should you buy the Ninja Thirsti Max? Buy it if

You love carbonated beverages

Whether it's soda, sparkling water, energy drinks, or vitamin drinks, you'll likely enjoy the convenience of making your own carbonated beverages at home.

You want to reduce your use of single-use containers

Rather than buying carbonated beverages in disposable cans and bottles, you can make your own at home and take it with you in any reusable container.

You like sucralose-sweetened sugar-free drinks and/or unsweetened seltzers

All of the Ninja Thirsti sweetened flavor drops contain sucralose, as many diet beverages on the market do. The seltzer flavor drops contain no sweeteners.

Don't buy it if

You don't like carbonated drinks

Technically, you can make non-carbonated drinks in the Ninja Thirsti Max, but what would be the point? I guess if you really like those Ninja flavor drops but not the fizz, go for it.

You don't like any of the Ninja Thirsti flavor drops

You can just make plain seltzer and add anything you like to it, but if none of the Thirsti's flavor drops sound appealing, it's probably not worth buying this particular machine.

You lack counter space

While this isn't a huge appliance, if counter space is particularly limited, it might be a deal-breaker for you.

Ninja Thirsti Max: also consider

If you're not sure about the Ninja Thirsti Max, here are some other options to consider...

SodaStream Spirit One Touch

The obvious competitor to the Ninja Thirsti Max is the slighter cheaper and smaller SodaStream. Unlike the Thirsti, it doesn't add the flavors directly, it just carbonates your water. Any flavorings are added after the fact.

Read our full review here.

Breville the InFizz Fusion

This gorgeous machine is a bit more expensive than the Ninja Thirsti Max, but it carbonates any and all of your favorite cold beverages.

Read our full review here.

How I tested the Ninja Thirsti Max

• I tasted a variety of beverages
• I tried different carbonation levels and different flavor intensities
• I made plain seltzer and added my own drink mix

I've been drinking lots and lots of fizzy drinks over the past couple of weeks. I tried all eight of the flavors that Ninja sent me, plus I tried adding my own drink mix to plain seltzer. I tried different fizz levels and different flavor intensities. Personally I liked the lower flavor setting, as the higher flavor setting yielded too sweet of a beverage for my taste. All of the fizz settings were really fine, but I kept it set to maximum carbonation for the longest lasting bubbles. I tried mixing some of the flavors together, though I didn't find a combination that I really loved. Everyone's tastes are different, though.

Read more about how we test.

First reviewed November 2024

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