Welcome back, TechRadar fans, friends, and new subscribers. Life comes at you fast, doesn’t it? No, I’m not talking about UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who stepped down in less time than it takes to decay a head of lettuce. I’m talking about all the cool new products that arrived in the space of a week.
But it was Apple that probably surprised us the most with not only new tablets (I already have some thoughts about the new iPad and a big port change) but a completely redesigned base model and – surprise – a cheaper, smaller and slightly underwhelming Apple TV 4K. Okay, if we’re being honest, we saw most of this coming (not the Apple TV, mind you).
If you were thinking of buying an iPad last week, you might want to wait for our reviews. Mobile Editor Alex Walker-Todd’s constantly updated tablet buying guide not only lists all the best slabs, it also explains how to shop for a tablet. This is how you learn wisdom such as “Different brands make devices aimed at different buyers, so there's no 'best' brand, there's just a brand that's best for you.”
In a similar vein, Matt Hanson (yes, that Matt Hanson) will walk you through everything you need to know about buying a portable productivity partner in his laptop buying guide. As Matt writes: “With literally hundreds of laptops to choose from, it can often be overwhelming to shop for a new notebook.” Thank goodness for Matt and our team of laptop reviewers.
These product releases are all happening against the backdrop of another tech shopping season, starting with Black Friday and running through to Christmas. I do wonder how many retailers will take into account the current state of the global economy – will we see the best deals ever, or will they foist their own financial struggles onto us consumers?
I know, I’m kind of thinking out loud here as I look at my family, their wishlists, and then my bank account. Keep a close eye on TechRadar, because one of our chief jobs at this time of year is finding you the best Black Friday deals, many of which will be up for grabs well before Black Friday itself.
Like I said, life comes at you fast.
There’s a lot more to talk about, so grab a cup of tea or coffee, lean back and enjoy some of our biggest, brightest, and best stories of the week. Please do let me know what you think via email, and remember to include ‘NEWSLETTER’ in the subject line so we don’t miss it.
Microsoft Designer uses Dall-E 2 as its AI image generator (Microsoft)
I’ve been using Adobe products for decades, and remain a fan of both its bitmap and vector-based art and illustration tools. In recent years, however, I’ve marveled at some of the AI tricks Adobe has developed for its Creative Cloud Suite, and at this year’s Adobe Max conference, the company showed off its new Backdrop neural filter.
Now that might sound a little dull, but as Cameras Editor Mark Wilson describes it in his report, it’s anything but. The filter, Mark wrote, “lets you ‘create a unique backdrop based on a description’. You just type in a backdrop, select 'Create', and pick your favorite result.”
If any of this sounds familiar, it should. This is basically how Dall-E 2, the AI image generator, works. Dall-E 2’s popularity is not just fostering imitators (or maybe emulators). Microsoft recently announced Designer, an image-editing platform that’s powered, in part, by Dall-E 2. Even though Dall-E 2 is now open to everyone, there’s still a waiting list for Designer, which works by asking you for a simple description of your idea to help it generate and iterate visual concepts.
I always wonder if human graphics designers are happy about all these AIs. If you are one, let me know how you feel via email (or maybe via AI-generated image).
We think Intel's Core i9-13900K processor could be the best consumer desktop CPU yet (Future)
I enjoyed Christian Guyton’s deep-dive review of Intel’s newest, and, it seems, most powerful CPU, the Intel Core i9-13900K. Christian hails the chip as the best consumer desktop CPU ever made – that’s high-praise indeed, and a bit shocking coming so close on the heels of AMD’s Ryzen 9 7950X.
Still, the numbers don’t lie. Christian writes: “This CPU dominates in everything from gaming to number-crunching, delivering best-in-class performance in single- and multi-core workloads.”
Apparently the chip is not only more efficient than most other CPUs, it also has a better cost-benefit ratio. That makes sense, since Intel beats AMD on price and it offers better performance across a range of tasks.
It does get hot, although if you’re in the business of buying standalone system components then you probably have a cooling system capable of handling this kind of heat and performance.
I did find it interesting that neither this, nor the top-tier AMD Ryzen chips, are killer gaming CPUs. For that, you need discrete graphics, and probably from Nvidia, which will happily charge you an arm and a leg for its best GPUs.
Overwatch 2 will no longer reward players for 'babysitting the payload' (Blizzard Entertainment)
I wish I was a gamer – someone who could get lost in a good RPG, platformer, or side-scroller, and get so good that I could stop focusing on how to fire a single kill-shot and start to understand the minutiae of a game.
I probably stared at TRG Features Writer Elie Gould’s inscrutable headline for a week before I gave in, read her excellent piece, and finally learned what ‘babysitting the payload’ means.
It’s actually quite simple. There's something of value that you have to move from one place to another (a checkpoint) to win or help you win the game. It’s more complex than that, but I enjoyed Elie’s take, which got down to a small, yet important frustration in the new (and quite popular) Overwatch 2 game.
Basically, Blizzard took away player rewards for ‘babysitting the payload’, and Eli is pretty darn annoyed about it. I recommend that you read her article, which also gives you a real feel for Overwatch 2 gameplay.
The Google Pixel Watch is winning plaudits for its looks (Google)
I tested the Google Pixel Watch a couple of weeks ago, and I was struck by the wearable’s looks. However, no one describes things quite like our US Mobile Editor Phil Berne.
In a story about why the Pixel Watch still beats the relatively new Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 on looks, Phil wrote, “It’s a smoothly polished stone plucked from a stream, placed upon your wrist. The OLED watch screens seem to bubble up information that flows smoothly across the face. It’s so delightful to look at that I almost don’t notice the massive bezel that makes up an outer ring.”
He’s right, of course. Wearable technology can never be just about the technology and, it seems, getting the right balance between looks and smarts is as much about art as it is about innovation.
I like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, but it’s big, beefy and uncomfortable to wear when you sleep. The Google Pixel Watch is far more attractive, and a more comfortable (though not perfect) sleeping companion.
There’s also a different calculation when choosing a smartwatch. With a phone, you’re probably choosing based on power, performance, features, and the screen. With a smartwatch though, you might well put style first.
Phil certainly did. He also wrote that, despite the Pixel Watch’s faults, he’s still choosing it over more powerful wearables because “I love looking at it."
Mini-LED TVs from brands such as TCL can look fantastic – at least when viewed head-on (TCL)
It’s been a while since I shopped for a TV, but the last one I bought was a 65-inch model from TCL. It’s fine. The picture is decent, but the audio is, well, poor. Still, companies like TCL and Hisense make a good business out of undercutting the big-guys with similar TV tech at bargain-basement prices.
That’s why I found this story by our Home Entertainment Editor Al Griffin so interesting. Apparently TCL and Hisense have moved into the mini-LED TV tech space. There are, as Al notes, a lot of benefits to mini-LED technology, like much better blacks and improved brightness.
However, until I read Al’s piece I’d been unaware of one major mini-LED shortcoming: off-angle viewing. In the early days of LCD TVs this was a huge issue, and plasma screens (I had one) were much better in this regard. Like the old LCDs, mini-LED displays can really falter when you move away from dead-center viewing.
This is where things get interesting. The major players, like Sony and Samsung, include countermeasures to ensure that you can still view the screen at some off-center, if not extreme, angles. The cheap guys, including TCL and Hisense, have no such technology.
What it boils down to is that, yes, you can save money with a TCL mini-LED set, but you might be disappointed when you try to view the TV in your living room from your kitchen. Thanks for the tip, Al.
The Victrola Stream Carbon lets you play your vinyl through Sonos speakers (Future)
A few weeks back I went to a sort-of listening party for Victrola’s new Sonos-ready turntable. I liked it, and now our audio writer Becky Scarrott has tested the Sonos-speaker-ready turntable at home – and she loves it.
While I could report that the Victrola Stream Carbon sounded good, Becky notes that the setup is just so easy (the hard part was getting the unit to the UK). She also got to play her records on it. I love that she started with David Bowie’s Heroes remaster – there’s someone after my own heart.
Clearly Becky’s listening experience was so much richer than mine – this sounds like the kind of product that will have you running to the second-hand vinyl store.
I’m just hoping she’ll let me borrow this thing before it has to go back…
(Hancock et al 2022, Annals of the Entomological Society of America, CC BY 4.0)
If you've watched the classic sci-fi movie Alien and its sequels, you might have been struck by how far removed the titular creatures seem to be from anything we have here on Earth. But then you watch a video like this one at Live Science, and realize that’s not entirely the case.
The world’s living creatures do not, in fact, all fit into neat little boxes, with quadrupeds and bipeds ruling, and eyes, ears and mouths all in recognizable places.
The video in question is the first one ever to show a mosquito larva launching its own head from its body to capture prey. I’m not exaggerating.
The video shows researchers from the Metropolitan State University of Denver dangling some live food in front of a tiny mosquito larva (no wings, no needle face), who promptly opens her jaws and launches her head from her tiny shoulders (mosquitoes actually do not have shoulders) and onto the unsuspecting worm. The head does remain tethered by something – let’s call it a ‘neck’, though it’s clearly not that.
This is a useful reminder that there’s still much about our own planet’s cornucopia of species that we need to understand before we go poking around in search of actual aliens.
The Sign Off
I think I’ll leave it there – next week, we’ll have some analysis of all those new Apple and Microsoft gadgets, and Matt Hanson will return in this slot to show you the true meaning of the word 'pithy.' Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback, comments and questions, so keep those emails coming, and feel free to give me a follow on Twitter.
Have a great weekend!
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