Dell Technologies upgrades its PowerProtect portfolio with new features to strengthen cyber resilience across cloud, edge, and hybrid environments for organisations. Read...

Dell upgrades its PowerProtect portfolio with new appliances and cloud features to boost cyber resilience and simplify data backup across edge, core, and cloud. Read...

Guys, I just found the absolute cutest charger! If you want something that stands out and brings joy, forget about boring black or white power adapters. Get this Ugreen Uno that looks like a tiny robot instead! It’s only $17.98 on Amazon right now, a huge 40% off its regular MSRP and a brand-new all-time lowest price. Hurrah! View this Amazon deal This GaN charger block is fast and efficient, able to charge your devices in no time. With 30W of output, it’s perfect for smartphones, tablets, and tons of other gadgets. It’s even fast enough for MacBook Air laptops, if you have one. The charger features a single speedy USB-C port, so note that you can only plug one device at a time. Besides the fact that it looks absolutely adorable with its robot shape in shades of blue, white, and pink, it also features an LED screen. That’s where you’ll see the robot’s cute face, which changes when the device is back at 100% battery to let you know it’s ready to unplug. The outlet prongs are “hidden” within the robot’s shoes, so you’ll need to take them off when using it. (Those shoes are magnetic, by the way, which means they’re easily stored and hard to misplace.) No matter what your desk space looks like, this Ugreen Uno charger block will most definitely cheer things up! $18 is a small price to pay for the cutest charger block everBuy now on Amazon Read...

“Digital fingerprinting” is a way for advertisers and other, even less scrupulous people (if there is such a thing) to track you online. Going far beyond simple cookies, these systems can track specific, unique users across the web. Firefox browser maker Mozilla is fighting back, integrating more aggressive protections against fingerprinting in its latest update. Mozilla has rolled out a new version of Enhanced Tracking Protection that’s, well, even more enhanced. According to the company’s Distilled blog, the new changes can reduce effective single-user tracking from over 60 percent of users down to below twenty percent. This is achieved with a variety of techniques meant to befuddle the automated systems that use your hardware and software settings to identify specific users and devices. This includes blocking specific scripts, inserting random data into canvas elements, not allowing access to locally installed fonts, or even reporting an intentionally incorrect screen resolution or CPU core count. As of Firefox version 145, these changes are only on by default in Private Browsing Mode. But according to Mozilla, the company is working to apply them to all users in standard browsing mode. Privacy advocates will no doubt be happy to hear this. It’s a win for Mozilla, which needed one. As PCGamer notes, the company recently came under fire earlier this year for amending Firefox’s terms of service to, allegedly, enable Mozilla to sell user data. It didn’t help that this happened at the same time as new “AI” features were introduced. Mozilla claimed that it was a misunderstanding and that the amended terms were necessary to implement new features, but the promise not to sell data is still missing in action from the Firefox FAQ page. Read...

Hardly anyone can have missed the AI phenomenon that has taken the world by storm. Almost every major company has some kind of AI initiative now. Politicians talk about how important it is not to “fall behind in the AI race,” and hundreds of millions have started using AI chatbots. The AI wave took off when OpenAI released its chatbot ChatGPT, which gives large language models a conversational interface. Many competitors have emerged since then, from both small and large companies, but ChatGPT remains the most popular. ChatGPT isn’t necessarily the “best” AI service out there (recent tests show other tools can outperform it in certain areas), but it’s the most widely known and the benchmark that all other services are compared to. It’s the standard, plain and simple. If you’ve never tried AI yourself, this guide is for you. Follow along, and I’ll show you how to get started. Make an account and get started You can try out ChatGPT’s simplest features without creating an account, but to access features like the ability to save conversations for later, you’ll need an account. You can create your account in several ways, in the browser on your computer or in the ChatGPT app for iPhone or Android. For this guide, I have chosen the computer, but the app works the same way. You can either create an old-fashioned account with an email address and password or log in with Google, Microsoft, or Apple to avoid having to remember another password. Once you’re in, just start chatting. ChatGPT is conversationally trained, so you can ask questions, request help, or give prompts just like talking to a human. Responses also feel natural and ChatGPT “remembers” everything” (up to a point) that’s been typed in a conversation, so you can ask follow-up questions and reference things you’ve typed before without confusing the chatbot. Should I subscribe? One question many people ask is whether it’s worth paying for a ChatGPT Plus subscription or if the free version is enough. Here are the main advantages of a paid account: Access to the most advanced models (currently GPT-5) Better and faster image generation Other enhanced features More context (“memory”) Possibility to create customized chats, so-called GPTs Access to the Sora video generator Programming assistance with Codex For real power users, there’s also a Pro subscription, but it costs $200 a month. You get minimal restrictions, the highest possible speed of response, and access to experimental new features. My recommendation is that you start exploring ChatGPT without paying. Then, if you get curious about features that require a subscription, try it out for a few months. If you end up liking it, consider switching to an annual subscription, as it will be cheaper in the long run. Managing chats, GPTs, and Projects Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo The interface of ChatGPT is simple, with a column on the left where you can find the different features and a list of past chats, and a main window on the right, where the chats themselves are displayed. At the top of the left column, there’s a quick button to open a new chat, a search bar for past conversations, and a Gallery feature, which collects images you’ve created with the chatbot. New users will also see a Projects button and Plus subscribers get an extra GPT button. Your previous chats are listed just below. Projects is a new addition that allows you to collect multiple chats on a particular topic in one place and get a bit more organized. It basically works like folders and you can use it for all sorts of categories. Once you’ve created a project, you can give it its own icon in any color to make it easier to find if you have many. Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo If you have a Plus subscription, you can also create GPTs. A GPT is a customized chat where each conversation starts with a set of instructions on how the AI should respond. You can upload files that the GPT has access to, choose a preferred model (for example, GPT-5 delivers stronger reasoning capabilities), and enable additional features like web search and image generation. You can just talk to ChatGPT If you prefer, you can talk to the ChatGPT instead of typing and reading the answers. The AI can recognize and respond in many languages, and you can choose your preferred spoken language in the settings. Using ChatGPT as a search engine Many people now use AI instead of traditional search engines like Google. Google even shows “AI summaries” at the top of the search results, and many users likely read those instead of scrolling past. So it’s very common to use ChatGPT to find information of any kind–facts, news, recommendations, and so on. Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo Doing so is easy and the results sound credible. The only problem is that AI is often wrong. Sometimes extremely wrong. According to a study commissioned by the BBC, ChatGPT is flawed in 81 percent of answers, with at least one serious error in a whopping 45 percent of all generated answers. The less knowledgeable you are about a topic as a user, the less likely you are to spot errors and flaws in the AI-generated results yourself. That’s why you shouldn’t rely on what ChatGPT spits out without first checking more reliable sources. You can ask the chatbot to include links to sources and sometimes it will do so on its own, but it’s good to actually follow these and double-check. ChatGPT and other AI chatbots don’t actually “know” anything. Their responses come either from external sources (like a search) or from the data the model was trained on. The more accurate information about a topic that’s in the training data, the more likely the results will be correct, but errors can still creep in. There’s no technical difference between a correct answer and a hallucinated one. What ChatGPT is good (and bad) at What ChatGPT and other AI chatbots using large language models are best at is generating answers that sound good–responses that feel believable and have a clear connection to what you asked for. This in turn makes ChatGPT an excellent tool for improving and rewriting text, rewriting a text in a different style, translating, and much more where form is more important than content. ChatGPT can also summarize long texts, give instructions, and answer complex questions on many topics, but you have to be careful with specific facts. Overall, it almost always gets it right, but individual numbers and other facts often get it wrong. With pictures and videos, it’s easy to see whether the results are good or not, but with text it’s more difficult. The latest reasoning models are better at solving equations, though it’s still easy to trick them into making mistakes on purpose, and some problems they completely miss. ChatGPT is good at generating and correcting errors in code, but it’s not great at building complete systems. You need to have the ideas and the big picture, otherwise it’s easy to pancake. It costs nothing extra to try again Was the result you got from ChatGPT when you asked for something not very good? Try again! For regular text chat, there’s no limit to the number of times you can ask it something. By rephrasing or adding additional details, you can often get the AI to produce significantly better results. To understand why, you need to know a bit about how the AI generates its answers. Large language models are extremely advanced word guessing machines. They take an input in the form of text, turn it into a string of numbers, and then use a huge statistical model to work out what the continuation is likely to be, one piece at a time. The AI has no knowledge, cannot distinguish between fact and fiction, and has no real understanding of anything. But it’s trained on vast amounts of existing text and conversations between humans. Since humans mostly speak coherently and stick to the topic at hand, the AI is likely to do the same. Adding more details increases the likelihood that the generated answer will be appropriate. Prompt engineering can give better results Systematically tweaking and refining prompts to ChatGPT has become a new skill called “prompt engineering.” There are thousands of videos on YouTube with tips on how to get better results, whether you’re writing code or generating images. Dozens of books have already been published on the subject. The basic idea is that some prompts, on average, lead to better answers. For example, adding a phrase like “now it’s time to think hard and rethink all assumptions” when brainstorming a problem can make ChatGPT’s response more creative. Since others have spent a lot of time finding such tricks, you can get a lot out of trying tips from videos, books, and articles. Watch out for fart fatigue Experimentation should be fun and inspiring, but it’s easy to get carried away with fine-tuning. “This is good, but maybe it could be even better if I just change this word here and that word there…” If you find that you’ve started to think like this and that your conversations with ChatGPT don’t feel fun and mentally relieving, you may be suffering from fart fatigue. This is a new phenomenon. The goal of introducing AI is to save time, letting employees get more done, but in many cases they end up spending as much time fine-tuning their prompts as they previously spent doing the work themselves. Privacy and security Foundry / Ashley Biancuzzo ChatGPT isn’t like a noticeboard in a town square where anyone passing by can see what you’ve written. But it’s also not a completely private service, so don’t share your deepest secrets on there. Your conversations aren’t encrypted, so there’s a chance OpenAI staff can see them. The likelihood of your chats being read is low, but it can happen. In addition, if you don’t change the privacy settings, OpenAI can train its models on all your conversations with ChatGPT. You can turn this off in Settings -> Data Controls -> Improve modelling for everyone. But even if you do, you should avoid sharing personal data and other sensitive information, as you can never be sure it won’t leak. Read...

Kensington has released an absolute battlestation of a laptop docking station, the SD7100T5 EQ Pro 19-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station, complete with dedicated function buttons, a CompactFlash slot, and a Copilot button. Priced at $449.99, the SD7100T5 is the older cousin of the Kensington SD5000T5 Thunderbolt 5 dock that we saw last year. (That dock, with an MSRP of $399.99, received a substantial discount of about 34 percent on Amazon when we checked last week, bringing the price down to a much more reasonable $258.) Kensington usually fares well in my reviews of laptop docking stations, and we recommend one of its older Thunderbolt 4 docks as one of the best docking stations you can buy. They’re typically among the most stable I’ve tested, but those features and flexibility come with a price. The three standout features that this dock adds are worth calling out. First, there’s a CompactFlash slot, a relative rarity that caters to photographers. Second, it offers a whopping four audio options, including dedicated headphone and mic jacks, even an optical connection for high-end audio. Finally, there are two “hot key” buttons. By default, these are configured to trigger the Copilot application and lock the PC, though they can be configured by Kensington’s utility software to perform other functions as well. The company will also ship an EQ Pro version designed for the Mac, with the buttons configured to perform photo backup. Inside the dock hides a locking M.2 slot for an SSD.Kensington There’s one more: other docks are now moving towards adding a dedicated M.2 slot for an SSD, and this Kensington dock does as well. Still, the connectivity options goes far beyond those of a typical dock. In addition to three Thunderbolt 5 ports (plus one to connect to the laptop), the SD7100T5 includes a CompactFlash connector, as well as SD and microSD slots. It also offers a pair of 10Gbps USB-A ports and two 10Gbps USB-C ports, one of which is configured for 30W charging — even when a laptop isn’t connected. (Two additional USB-A ports are located on the rear of the dock.) There’s a 2.5Gbps Ethernet connection, too. The charging capabilities are a little less important as phones now ask for 30W to 40W to fast charge a phone, with some Asian smartphones now demanding 100W or more. Granted, Kensington’s SD7100T5 EQ Pro 19-in-1 Thunderbolt 5 Docking Station might just be total overkill for those looking to save a buck or two during this holiday season. Since Intel’s 2026 laptop platform, Panther Lake, still uses Thunderbolt 4, Thunderbolt 5 isn’t quite necessary. On the other hand, this dock offers features I’ve rarely seen elsewhere, making the $400 price tag potentially worthwhile. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Compact Good looking IP54-rated Up to 4TB Cons Slower than most with large file writes Our Verdict We like the look, and we like the performance of the ruggedized PD20 — until we throw larger data sets at it. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Teamgroup PD20 SSD Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The PD20 has a lot to offer. It looks good, is lightweight, rugged, and performs well with smaller amounts of data. However, sequential writing lagged in CrystalDiskMark 8 with the 64GiB data set we test all SSDs with. It recovered to the promised write performance with the 32GiB data set, which is well beyond what most users write. But the issue hurt the PD20’s standing in the performance charts, dropping it to last place among 20Gbps USB SSDs. Teamgroup PD20 SSD: Features The PD20 is a 20Gbps USB drive of diminutive proportions. It’s approximately 2.95 inches long, 1.33 inches wide, and 0.59 inches thick, weighing around 0.8 ounces. There’s a lanyard opening on one end, and a Type-C port (with captive plug) on the other. The unit is dark gray and pewter with the dark gray portion a grippy silicone jacket. It feels nice in the hand and the grippy jacket gives you the torque to insert the drive in tricky ports. Teamgroup claims an IP54 rating for the PD20. If you’re not familiar, you can read about IP ratings here. But basically, IP54 means functionally, if not perfectly, dustproof and safe from water spray. No immersion resistance is claimed, but having looked at hundreds of IP-rated drives, you could probably get away with a quick dip in the tub or sink. Teamgroup was not inclined to provide us with the info on the type of controller, amount of DRAM (I doubt there’s any as 4K performance is just so-so), or type of NAND inside the PD20. I was not inclined to bash it with a hammer to find out. But my guess is, from the 300MBps write performance off secondary cache, the NAND is either recent QLC or generation-old TLC. The company warranties the PD20 for five years, but again, was disinclined to provide a TBW rating. Given my guess on the NAND figure of 250-600TBW, you’re unlikely to write that much data in ten, let alone five years. If you think you’ll exceed that, look to a USB4/TLC unit instead. Note that SSD longevity ratings apply only to writes, SSDs will continue to allow reads far beyond any stated write limits. Teamgroup PD20: Price At the time of this writing, the Teamgroup PD20 was available for $95 for 1TB and $151 for 2TB. Not bad at all. 20Gbps USB SSDs, even light duty models such as the PD20, are generally a bit more expensive. There were also 512GB and 4TB models listed on Amazon, but with no availability or pricing info. Teamgroup PD20: Speed The PD20 performs on par with a 20Gbps SSD — until you hit it with a large amount of data all at once. Then, it seems the controller, caching, and NAND simply can’t keep up. The 2TB drive we tested ramped down its write pace throughout the 450GB copy. First to around 700MBps at about the 50GB mark, which is a hint as to why the PD20 had issues with CrystalDiskMark 8 and its 64GiB data set. Once you start writing very large files to the PD20, performance drops. The PD20 later dropped to 500MBps, stalled at 0MBps for a couple of seconds, then dropped down to 300MBps for the majority of the operation, with a couple of quick, but fleeting jumps back up to 500MBps. You can see this phenomenon in the image above. Though the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential write tests are anemic compared to the competition, the reads are top-notch. Though the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential write tests look rather pathetic compared to the competition, when we tested with the 31GiB data set, the PD20 turned in numbers similar to that of said competitors. See the next image for confirmation of that. Longer bars are better. And, when we tested with the 32GiB data set, the PD20 turned in numbers similar to that of said competitors. See below. GiB = GibiBytes, 2^30 rather than GB 10^9. If you don’t stress it with a lot of data contiguously, the PD20 will do the job. The CrystalDiskMark 8 4K performance (64GiB) for the PD20 was more competitive, but still behind overall. The CrystalDiskMark 8 4K performance by the PD20 was more competitive, if still not earthshaking. Longer bars are better. The PD20 was also slightly off the pace of the Corsair EX400U and Adata PD820 in our 48GB transfers, particularly during the 48GB folder write in FastCopy. The PD20 was slightly off pace of the Corsair EX400U and Adata PD820 with our 48GB transfers, especially with the 48GB folder write. As already discussed, the PD20 was slothful writing our really large 450GB file — taking almost twice as long as the competition, which were also 2TB drives. To be fair, those drives also slow down drastically when writing off secondary cache; it just happens later in the process. Yeah, the news isn’t great when it comes to the PD20 writing really large files. Shorter bars are better. Note: FastCopy is nominally effective with external drives, but often twice as fast as Explorer with internal NVMe SSDs. The end result is that the PD20 is simply not the SSD you want for writing very large files. Say more than 50GB. Anything beyond that, it’s thumb-twiddling time. The attractive, ruggedized PD20 will do the job for most users and at an attractive price point. But as I’ve stated or intimated about a dozen times already, it’s for light duty writing only. That said, how many users write data sets this large on a regular basis? Not many. Even we don’t during our normal workday routine. Teamgroup PD20: Conclusion The attractive, ruggedized PD20 will do the job for most users and at an attractive price point. But as I’ve stated or intimated about a dozen times already, it’s for light duty writing only. Of course, as always — shop around. There’s plenty of zippier competition, albeit for a bit more coin. How we test Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs involved in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card siting in a PCIe 5.0 slot. We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks (to keep article length down, we report only the former) to find the storage device’s potential performance. Then we run a series of 48GB transfer and 450GB write tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what users will see during routine copy operations, as well as the far faster FastCopy run as administrator to show what’s possible. A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used as the second drive in our transfer tests. Formerly the 48GB tests were done with a RAM disk serving that purpose. Each test is performed on a NTFS-formatted and newly TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This issue has abated somewhat with the current crop of SSDs utilizing more mature controllers and far faster, late-generation NAND. Note that our testing MO evolves and these results may not match those from previous articles. Only comparisons inside the article are 100% valid as those results are gathered using the current hardware and MO. Read...

HyperSteam hygienic deep cleaning, HyperStretch lay flat design and innovative Flash Dry self-cleaning technology are the leading features from wet and dry brand. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros USB-C connectivity with 65 watts of power  Attractive contrast, particularly at lower levels of brightness  Very wide color gamut and accurate color performance  Good HDR in bright scenes  Cons Stand is larger than it needs to be  200Hz refresh rate is not that impressive for the price  HDMI ports only hit 100Hz  “Blooming” effect is distracting in darker content  Our Verdict The Acer Predator X34 X0 is an affordable Mini-LED monitor that delivers a bright and vivid image with good HDR and contrast, but distracting “blooming” will turn off some shoppers.  Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Acer Predator X34 X0 Retailer Price $479.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Remember Mini-LED monitors? If not, I can hardly blame you. Though they seemed as if they might be a popular alternative to OLED several years ago, the rapid decrease in OLED monitor pricing pushed many of them aside.  Mini-LED still has its perks, though, and the Acer Predator X34 X0 is a new, affordable Mini-LED option for those who want very bright HDR and a low-glare display on a budget. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best gaming monitors for comparison. Acer Predator X34 X0 (X34 X0bmiiphux) specs and features  The Acer Predator X34 X0’s size and resolution are precisely the same as hundreds of 34-inch ultrawide monitors sold over the past half-decade. It’s a 34-inch diagonal display with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 3440×1440.  Display size: 34-inch 21:9 aspect ratio  Native resolution: 3440×1440 Panel type: Mini-LED VA panel with 1,152 dimming zones  Refresh rate: 200Hz Adaptive Sync: Yes, AMD FreeSync Premium HDR: VESA DisplayHDR 1000 Ports: 2x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB Type-C with 65 watts of Power Delivery, 1x 3.5mm audio out Audio: 2x five-watt speakers Price: $599.99 MSRP, $479.99 current retail What makes this Acer different from most monitors is the Mini-LED backlight with 1,152 independent dimming zones, which is paired with a Vertical Alignment (VA) LCD panel. The monitor also has built-in speakers and a USB-C port with up to 65 watts of Power Delivery, both of which are uncommon for a gaming monitor.  Acer released the Predator X34 X0 at a $599.99 MSRP, but it’s already on sale for $479.99 on Amazon. I expect sales to be frequent on this model, as Acer is often highly competitive on price.  Acer Predator X34 X0 design  The Acer Predator X34 X0 looks handsome, though basic. It uses a simple matte-black color scheme with a bit of flair, which includes a faux heatsink on the rear and an attractive fabric cover over the monitor’s speakers located on the lower lip.  Build quality is average but good enough. Aside from the stand, which includes some metal, the monitor’s exterior is plastic. That’s typical for a monitor at any price bracket, and the few monitors that buck that trend, like some Samsung Odyssey monitors, are more expensive.  This is a curved monitor with a 1500R curve (a lower number means a more noticeable curve). The curve is obvious but not so extreme that it makes the display’s image look extremely warped. I do tend to prefer an even less aggressive curve, though.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Acer ships the monitor bundled with an ergonomic stand that provides height, tilt, and swivel adjustment. It does its job, but I have a beef with the stand base, which is both wide and deep. It’s so deep that I wasn’t able to position the monitor at my preferred viewing distance on my desk, which is about 26 inches deep. A smaller stand base would’ve been a better choice.  The monitor does provide a 100x100mm VESA mount, so third-party monitor arms and stands are an option.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Acer Predator X34 X0 connectivity  You’ll find two HDMI ports, one DisplayPort, and one USB-C port on the rear of the Acer Predator X34 X0. That’s a total of four video inputs, which is one more than the average for a gaming monitor. It’s also great to see USB-C included, particularly at this price point. Some brands, like Alienware, are giving USB-C the cold shoulder.  There’s a problem, though: The HDMI ports only support a refresh rate of up to 100Hz. That’s a disappointment, as it means you won’t see ideal motion clarity from any HDMI source.  The monitor also has two USB-A downstream ports, which expand USB connectivity when using the USB-C port or, alternatively, when using a separate USB-B upstream port. Acer’s specifications didn’t list the version of USB that the USB-A ports offer, but the speeds seem in line with USB-A 3.2 Gen 1.  It’s great to see USB-C included, particularly at this price point. Acer Predator X34 X0 menus  A joystick on the Acer Predator X34 X0’s rear right flank offers quick, responsive access to the monitor’s on-screen menu system. The menu itself is well arranged and provides a good range of image quality options, which include correct gamma settings, as well as six-axis color customization. I do feel the text could be larger and easier to read, though.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Acer offers a Windows utility called Acer Display Widget that can provide access to most monitor settings inside Windows. It works well enough but the user interface feels half-baked when compared to similar software from Asus and Dell.  There’s also a range of gaming options, such as a timer and on-screen crosshair. One feature to note is a mode that restricts the visible space of the monitor to a smaller, 16:9 aspect ratio with several size options. That’s handy if you want to play an older PC game that doesn’t work well with ultrawide resolutions.  Acer Predator X34 X0 audio  Acer packs a pair of five-watt speakers in the Predator X34 X0, and wants you to know it. The fabric covering the monitor’s lower lip, where the speakers are located, looks premium. Audio quality is decent though you’ll need to keep expectations in check.  The good news is that the pair of five-watt speakers are much louder than typical monitor speakers and provide a more precise, full sound. They’re enjoyable if you want to listen to ambient music while working, or if you’re playing a game where the audio experience isn’t front and center.  The Predator X34 X0 doesn’t have a built-in woofer, though, so there are still limits to what the speakers can offer. The soundstage is narrow and bass-heavy situations can make the audio sound muddy.  I also noticed a quiet but audible buzz from the speakers on my review unit, as if the wiring for the speakers wasn’t properly shielded. I didn’t pick up on it until over a week using the monitor, but it was there.  Gamers will want headphones for more immersive titles, but the speakers work well enough for the price, and most competitors don’t have speakers at all.  Acer Predator X34 X0 SDR image quality  The Acer Predator X34 X0 has a Vertical Alignment (VA) LCD display panel. This is a common type of panel found in hundreds of monitors and televisions.  What’s more unusual, though, is the Mini-LED backlight. It includes 1,152 individual dimming zones which can turn on and off independently for better control of contrast and brightness. Most LCD monitors have a lower number of LED backlights placed only along the edges of the display.  The Mini-LED backlight has advantages but also comes with downsides.  Matthew Smith / Foundry First up is brightness, where the Acer Predator X34 X0 provides a maximum of 379 nits in SDR. That is bright, though not unusually bright for an LCD display. As the HDR results will show, the monitor could get brighter, but it appears Acer placed a limit on the brightness in SDR.  It’s also worth mention the display has a matte finish with modest glare, so reflections are rarely an issue. That means the monitor appears bright and readable in a wide variety of lighting situations.  Matthew Smith / Foundry The monitor’s contrast is difficult to sum up in one graph.  As shown above, I measured a contrast ratio of 8,930:1 at 50 percent of maximum brightness. But contrast can vary greatly depending on the brightness of the display, which is not typical for most displays.  The contrast ratio is effectively infinite at lower levels of brightness, where the display’s minimum brightness registers a perfect result of zero nits. At 100 percent brightness, meanwhile, I measured a contrast ratio of 16,470:1, which is still a great result.  I suspect most gamers will use this display at lower levels of SDR brightness, in which case the contrast ratio is effectively infinite.  But the Mini-LED backlight further complicates the issue because, unlike OLED monitors such as the Alienware AW3425DW, it can’t dim or brighten individual pixels. The Predator X34 X0’s 1,152 dimming zones are a lot, but you’ll still see a splotchy “halo” or “blooming” effect around small bright objects—like your mouse cursor—when they’re on a dark background.  This is often not that noticeable in games, but it’s more obvious on the Windows desktop. Even something as simple as white text on a dark background can cause an obvious blooming effect. This will also be an issue if you turn on subtitles in movies or games.  Personally, I don’t mind this overly much, but your mileage will vary. Some people may hardly notice while others may find it completely unacceptable.  It’s worth mention, too, that the dynamic backlight can be turned off. I wouldn’t recommend that for games, as you’ll lose the contrast benefits of the Mini-LED backlight, but it’s a fine option if you dislike how blooming looks in Windows desktop apps.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Next up is color gamut, and the Predator X34 X0 knocks this metric out of the park. It managed to cover 100 percent of sRGB, 98 precent of DCI-P3, and 95 precent of AdobeRGB.  Those figures are similar to OLED monitors and mean the Predator X34 X0 can deliver a vivid, colorful, highly saturated experience. The monitor also covers enough of the DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB color gamut to be useful for photo and video editing or digital art in those wider color spaces.  Matthew Smith / Foundry Color accuracy is good, too. Though not the very best, the average color error was consistently low, which means the image looks realistic. The monitor also hit the preferred gamma target of 2.2. Color temperature was only slightly off at 6600K, slightly cooler than the target of 6500K. Overall, the monitor’s image feels balanced and true-to-life.  Sharpness is just okay. The monitor’s 3440×1440 resolution works out to roughly 110 pixels per inch across the 34-inch ultrawide panel. That’s fairly sharp, but a lot less so than the ultrawide equivalent to 4K resolution, which is 5120×2160 and delivers about 163 pixels per inch. However, 34-inch ultrawides with 5120×2160 are rare, so you’ll probably have to settle for 1440p if you want a 34-inch ultrawide monitor.  The Acer Predator X34 X0 puts in a solid SDR performance for the price. It has color performance similar to more expensive OLED competitors alongside higher brightness and somewhat competitive contrast. The question you need to ask yourself is whether you can put up with Mini-LED’s “blooming” effect, which I think most users will notice and can be distracting.  Personally, I find it most noticeable in games with a lot of menus, like Crusader Kings 3, and much less so in games where you’re typically immersed in the world, such as Cyberpunk 2077. The monitor’s competitive retail price of $479.99 may also help budget-conscious shoppers overlook the blooming effect.    Acer Predator X34 X0 HDR Image Quality  HDR used to be an advantage for Mini-LED, as OLED displays couldn’t reach brightness levels high enough for good HDR. OLED has improved, however, and the competition between Mini-LED and OLED is now mixed.  Matthew Smith / Foundry As the graph shows, the way the Acer Predator X34 X0 performs in HDR is much different from how an OLED monitor will perform.  The Predator X34 X0 actually displayed a lower maximum brightness than some recent OLED monitors, which surprised me. However, the Predator X34 X0 still shows a significant advantage in HDR brightness when larger areas of the display are lit.  Subjectively, I think there’s a brilliance with Mini-LED that you don’t quite get from OLED. This was most obvious in the “Into the Storm” scene from Mad Max: Fury Road. Here, bursts of lighting weave their way through a dust storm. The best OLED monitors also perform well here, but the lighting seems to leap from the scene on the Predator X34 X0.  The flipside is that OLED will perform better in dark scenes, which can make Mini-LED’s “blooming” issue obvious. You can expect to see obvious orbs of light surrounding small, bright HDR details.  It’s worth keeping price in mind, too. At $600 MSRP, and sub-$500 current retail, the Acer Predator X34 X0’s HDR performance will be difficult to beat. OLED ultrawides are often $100 to $200 more expensive. The Predator X34 X0’s HDR performance has pros and cons, but it’s the best I’ve seen recently in a monitor sold under $500.  Acer Predator X34 X0 motion performance  The Acer Predator X34 X0 provides a refresh rate up to 200Hz.  That’s definitely a lot higher than 60Hz, and it means the Predator X34 X0 can feel rather smooth. But 240Hz monitors are now very common, so 200Hz doesn’t feel as special as it used to. You can buy 34-inch ultrawide monitors with a 240Hz refresh rate for less than $300.  Because of that, the Predator X34 X0’s motion clarity is merely okay for the price. It’s smooth and reasonably crisp in fast-paced content. I could use the monitor for many game genres and never have an issue with the clarity. But if you’ve ever used a 240Hz OLED, or even a 240Hz IPS monitor with a low pixel refresh time, you won’t be impressed.  Also, as mentioned earlier, the 200Hz refresh rate is only available over DisplayPort and USB-C. HDMI is stuck at 100Hz. That’s a bit weird. I even thought it might be a typo in the monitor specifications, but I tried it with HDMI and I can confirm 100Hz is the limit at 3440×1440 resolution.  The Predator X34 X0 supports adaptive sync with official AMD FreeSync Premium certification. Nvidia G-Sync support is not official, though it did work with an Nvidia-powered laptop I had on hand.  Should you buy the Acer Predator X34 X0?  The Acer Predator X34 X0 is an interesting addition to the sub-$500 monitor market. It delivers a Mini-LED panel with high brightness, solid contrast, a wide color gamut, and good HDR performance, though these traits come paired with a “blooming” effect that can be distracting.  The monitor also provides USB-C and decent speakers, both of which are an advantage at this price, though it also has a refresh rate of only 200Hz (and just 100Hz over HDMI), which isn’t all that impressive for close to $500.  That makes the Predator X34 X0 a confusing monitor to consider. I can’t recommend it to everyone, but the Predator X34 X0 is a solid pick if you want a vivid ultrawide monitor with decent HDR and USB-C connectivity in the sub-$500 price bracket. Read...

Haptic trackpads are only in a tiny number of Windows laptops, most notably the newer Surface devices. But they’re pretty neat if you get a chance to try them out, enhancing the experience in the same way haptic feedback on phones does. According to some features spotted in a pre-release version of Windows, it’s coming to more interactions in the operating system. PhantomofEarth, a tireless and spot-on investigator of Windows builds, spotted it hidden in the newest developer/beta build of Windows 11, 26220.7070. Though it’s hidden by default, they were able to explore a setting for “Haptic signals” under the main Mouse settings menu. “Feel subtle vibrations when you snap windows, align objects, and more” says the setting, along with a slider for the intensity. phantomofearth Presumably this will mean a little buzz of feedback when you use Windows’ Snap feature, the way to quickly set a specific window to take up half the screen, a quadrant, et cetera. (Incidentally, if you use this often, you simply must download PowerToys and use FancyZones to customize your layouts.) Similar user interface tricks are found on phones and tablets — I get something like this when I open side-by-side apps on an Android phone or tablet, for example. Right now haptic feedback for Windows elements is pretty limited, though it’s expanding since Apple added it as a default on MacBooks, characteristically branded as “Force Touch.” But Logitech recently added haptic feedback to the brand new MX Master Mouse 4, so it looks like it’s definitely a trend. It’s not clear when or if this new option will make its way to general users, considering that it’s got to be a pretty low priority. Read...