PC Pro Magazine

I missed CES. For the first time in 15 years, I couldn’t attend, thanks to a thin red line that appeared on my Covid test strip the day before I was due to fly out. I felt fine, but after a quick consultation with the show organisers it was agreed th

If you’ve tried to buy anything with a semiconductor inside it over the past two years, you’ll know that it has been a nightmare. Supply chain problems and shortages since the pandemic have driven many companies and customers to despair. But then, at

Apple learned the hard way in 2012 that taking on Google Maps is not an easy task. After launch, Apple Maps quickly earned a reputation for dodgy data and pointing travellers in the wrong direction. Instead of taking the mapping crown, it consigned i

When you buy an Apple product, it can often feel like a deal with the devil. On the one hand, you can be confident that your new device will be slick, intuitive and powerful. But on the other hand, you’re acquiescing to Apple’s locked down ecosystem

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. Although he refutes Samuel Johnson’s refuting argument, he likes the good doctor really. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk My column last month was a semi-temperate rant, triggered by sensationalist reporting

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. She looks forward to AI replacing crappy writers, she just hopes she isn’t one of them. It’s not looking good, is it? @njkobie Text generators have been around for years now, but something has changed: they’ve

BarryCollins is the co-editor of Bigtechquestion.com and now an enormous fan of nitrous oxide (for medicinal use only). @bazzacollins Far be it for me to start dispensing lifestyle advice, but if I can offer one tip, it’s this: don’t put the bins out

Following your recent review of printers (see issue 341, p74), I bought a Brother MFC-J4340DW. I am very pleased with the printing ability and general facilities. However, it relies on Wi-Fi for network connections and has no wired Ethernet port. Thi

Podcasts have come a long way in the 16 years since PC Pro broadcast its first, with our survey suggesting that two out of three PC Pro readers now regularly listen to the medium. Peter Jones is a convert, listening to “several martial arts podcasts,

From £1,300, due Feb 2023 At a pre-show briefing, Acer described the 14 as its “flagship Swift product”, and that becomes obvious when you pick up its slender, 1.2kg, CNC-machined frame. It looks gorgeous in the flesh. As the name suggests, it includ

You might not think you need another firewall. The one built into Windows is working all the time in the background to protect individual computers, and many routers have their own firewalls to protect the whole network. But running your own custom f

After two years of being wiped out or severely hampered by the pandemic, the world’s biggest tech show bounced back with a vengeance in January. The Las Vegas halls were once again flooded with more than 100,000 visitors, all eager to find out what t

If you’re buying a new computer, there are two main processor architectures to choose between. Windows PCs are normally built on the x86 platform, used by Intel and AMD, while Apple’s computers use the company’s M1 and M2 processors, based on the ARM

We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench 5 and Cinebench R23 come into play. Both push the CPU to its

Looking for a particular past review? Visit our index at pcpro.link/index SCORE PRICE Matte, £483 (£579 inc VAT) from uk.redmagic.gg Why is PC Pro devoting three pages to a gaming phone? The answer lies within: this is the debut for Qualcomm’s most p

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £3,083 (£3,699 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk 2023’s Apple MacBook Pro 16in update is both surprising and expected. Apple caught all of us cold by announcing it, along with an updated 14in MacBook Pro and Mac mini (reviews of tho

SCORE PRICE 512GB, £1,250 exc VAT (£1,500 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The one previous time we’ve seen Intel’s Core i7-1280P processor was in Dell’s XPS 13 Plus (see issue 337, p52), where it disappointed. This is a far more convincing outing for the ch

SCORE PRICE £1,167 (£1,400 inc VAT) from store.acer.com The Swift Edge is no iterative update: it’s Acer’s attempt to set a new bar for its premium laptops. And it’s worked. The chassis is 14mm thin and weighs 1.2kg thanks to reinforced aluminium all

SCORE PRICE £916 (£1,099 inc VAT) from netgear.com/uk Netgear’s Orbi meshes aren’t cheap, but they typically offer excellent performance and a decent set of features. The latest model stretches the formula, though. It’s an update to the Orbi RBK852,

SCORE PRICE £248 (£297 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk While most major networking brands embraced the Wi-Fi 6E standard last year, Linksys has been notably absent from the party. Now at last the company’s first 6GHz-capable router has landed in the PC Pr

SCORE PRICE From £666 (£799 inc VAT) from store.nvidia.com The RTX 4070 Ti is a card that shouldn’t have been. Not yet, at least. Nvidia originally launched this as a 12GB version of the RTX 4080 (see issue 340, p62), but the negative media and publi

SCORE PRICE Celeron, £125 (£150 inc VAT); Pentium, £180 (£216 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk While it’s easy to be swept away by Intel’s Core i9 chips and high-power computers such as the new MacBook Pro (see p48), there are some tasks that simply don’t ne

SCORE PRICE £22 (£26 inc VAT) from thepihut.com Up to this point, standard Raspberry Pi camera modules have been fine rather than great. Now the Camera Module 3 introduces a 12MP Sony IMX708 sensor, which matches the resolution of the £57 High Qualit

SCORE PRICE £33 (£40 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk If the Logitech Brio 505 below is the deluxe BMW of 1080p webcams, the Kensington W1050 is a mainstream Ford. It even has the hint of a Model T to its square design, and it’s only available in black. Th

SCORE PRICE £91 (£109 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com This webcam’s formal name is the Brio 505 Business, with Logitech envisaging its use alongside VC siblings such as the Rally Bar Mini (see issue 340, p97). Your IT team can then manage devices using

SCORE PRICE 2TB, £413 (£496 inc VAT) from westerndigital.com The SanDisk Professional brand is aimed at customers with specialist needs, and here that means resilience on the move. As you might expect, it’s not cheap. The build quality certainly goes

(10 devices for two years) pcpro.link/norton360 We’ve negotiated a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Sec

SCORE PRICE Part of Adobe Creative Cloud subscription or £17 (£20 inc VAT) per month from adobe.com Adobe Animate can trace its origins back to 1996, when it was known as FutureSplash Animator. This was before Macromedia acquired it and rebranded it

Total value this month £171 DiskImage simplifies the task of backing up your data – whether it’s a single file you want to protect, or a complete drive. The software opens with a user-friendly wizard, offering simple options for creating a new backup

Pareto’s principle applies: 80% of users should be satisfied by any recent Intel Core or AMD Ryzen processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. That’s enough for a snappy system. If you need more power, choose a high-end Ryzen chip or a 12th generation Int

Remember when choosing a laptop was simple? If you needed something for a business rollout, it could be any colour you like so long as it was black. And, for the vast majority of users, it would be big, boxy and pack all the sex appeal of a wet kippe

SCORE PRICE £640 (£768 inc VAT) from laptopoutlet.co.uk The TravelMate P2 has no false airs and graces: it’s a basic business laptop and doesn’t pretend to be anything different. You’re buying an expansive 15.6in, 16:9 ratio screen, a well-made but p

SCORE PRICE £1,333 (£1,600 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk This ExpertBook is one of two laptops on test with an OLED screen, and in many ways it’s spectacular. Its colour coverage is literally off the charts, going well beyond the sRGB standard gamut and

SCORE PRICE £892 (£1,070 inc VAT) from business.currys.co.uk There is much to love about this compact laptop. Weighing a shade over 1kg it’s one of the most portable machines here, and it backs this up with superb battery life: over 14 hours in our l

SCORE PRICE £1,292 (£1,550 inc VAT) from asus.com/uk There is much to like about the ExpertBook B7 Flip. Top of the list is its 14in screen, which impresses both with clear whites and colour accuracy. Then there’s a sharp 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and

SCORE PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from chillblast.com British manufacturers such as Chillblast and PCSpecialist don’t have the R&D resources to create their own laptop designs, so they must focus on specs and value to stand out. That’s immediately obvi

SCORE PRICE £983 (£1,179 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The obvious question to ask before buying the Inspiron 16 7620 is whether you’ll use its 2-in-1 facility. That means the screen can twist round for you to use it as a huge tablet, or simply stick it i

SCORE PRICE £1,517 (£1,820 inc VAT) from box.co.uk Just as the ThinkPad range has proved to be in safe hands with Lenovo, so has the Portégé brand since Toshiba transitioned into Dynabook in 2019. The company’s laptops have consistently won awards in

SCORE PRICE £2,261 (£2,713 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Back in the day, a Dell Latitude was built like a tank and looked like one. Pick up the Latitude 9330 and you can feel that heritage in the rigidity of its magnesium chassis, but a 14.1mm thickness

SCORE PRICE £553 (£664 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com We’ll be frank: if you’re given this laptop as part of a business rollout, then you're not sitting in the executive tier of your company. Where the Tecra below, with its metal lid and pleasant keybo

SCORE PRICE £1,658 (£1,990 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com The HP Elite Dragonfly G3 has much in common with the Dynabook Portégé X40L-K-101. Not only is it extremely light and slim, it’s also stylish enough to earn a second glance of admiration. That w

SCORE PRICE £949 (£1,139 inc VAT) from uk.dynabook.com While the Portégé (see p77) sits at the top of Dynabook’s range, the Tecra nestles one rung below. That means you enjoy more luxuries than with a Satellite Pro, but adjectives such as “featherlig

SCORE PRICE £1,297 (£1,549 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk Lenovo’s P series of laptops is designed for speed, with more expensive configurations than this offering discrete work-stationclass Nvidia processors to tie in with its ISV certification. The P1

SCORE PRICE £1,431 (£1,717 inc VAT) from box.co.uk At a glance you might struggle to differentiate the T14s from its P14s sibling, but there’s an air of sophistication here that the P14s lacks. For instance, there’s a rubberised feel to the magnesium

SCORE PRICE £1,483 (£1,779 inc VAT) from microsoft.co.uk Microsoft takes an unusual approach to its business laptop line-up. Where Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo all offer dedicated business ranges, the Surface Laptop 5 for Business is exactly the s

SCORE PRICE £1,399 (£1,679 inc VAT) from microsoft.co.uk The Surface Pro 9 stands alone this month for one obvious reason: it’s a tablet rather than a laptop. The price above doesn’t even include a stylus or keyboard, but merely the supplied specific

SCORE PRICE £625 (£750 inc VAT) from laptopoutlet.co.uk If you’re looking for a game-playing laptop for £750, then type “MSI Prestige 14-A12UC” into your browser right now: you won’t find a better deal, assuming that others haven’t beaten you to it.

SCORE PRICE £1,041 (£1,249 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Is this is a “pro” laptop? The name suggests so, but like several others here, the Galaxy Book2 includes Windows 11 Home rather than Pro, so if you want to join a domain, encrypt disks using BitLo

SCORE PRICE £749 (£899 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews The Acer TravelMate P2, Dynabook Satellite Pro and PCSpecialist Lafité Pro are all attempting to answer the same question: how to deliver a great-value 15.6in business laptop for under £

We measure speed using a range of tests. PC Pro’s own benchmarks assess how quickly each system can process a set of image and video files, and handle multiple workloads while simultaneously playing high-definition video. We also test using the indus

SCORE PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from laptopoutlet.co.uk The MSI Modern 15 is an unapologetically budget laptop, the cheapest here by some distance, but it still falls within MSI’s “business and productivity” range. It’s certainly built for getting th

An essential IT support role is monitoring network health and providing a rapid response service to ensure problems or faults don’t impact on business productivity. This can be a big ask for IT managers in small businesses, as shrinking budgets in th

SCORE PRICE 50 devices, Premium, yearly licence, £1,309 exc VAT from whatsupgold.com Progress Software neatly avoids any confusion over licensing, with prices for its WhatsUp Gold (WUG) 2022 Premium edition being based only on the number of monitored

SCORE PRICE 100 nodes/interfaces, from £860 exc VAT per year from adremsoft.com SMBs that want a network monitoring solution that does all the hard work for them will love AdRem’s NetCrunch. We found it can be deployed in as little as 15 minutes, and

SCORE PRICE 1,000 sensors, 1yr maintenance, €2,499 exc VAT from paessler.com Paessler’s PRTG is probably one of the most versatile network monitoring products on the market thanks to its simple sensorbased licensing. Just choose the sensor pack you r

SCORE PRICE £625 exc VAT from openreality.co.uk EnGenius offers businesses a fine choice of wireless access points (APs) and the ECW336 is its most powerful yet. This tri-band AP supports the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and Wi-Fi 6E 6GHz bands, as well as the 6GHz

SCORE PRICE SL250 yearly licence, £2,915 exc VAT from solarwinds.com SolarWinds offers one of the most extensive ranges of network management products and its Network Performance Monitor (NPM) has always taken pride of place. This is no surprise: it

We’re only just buying into the internet of things – do we have to invest in a load of additional gadgets for another new internet? Fear not – the internet of behaviours isn’t a network in its own right. Rather, it’s a targeted business tool, which p

SCORE PRICE £1,399 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel’s XMG1930-30HP could be the perfect partner for SMBs seeking a multi-gigabit Power over Ethernet (PoE) switch that has every angle covered. This 1U rack mount switch offers a total of 30 ports

It’s nearly 50 years since the UK last suffered from sustained power blackouts; back then, very few businesses had computer equipment of any kind to worry about. Now, for a variety of reasons, the nation faces a potential energy shortage, and it’s be

magazinesdirect.com/PDV/B23R 0330 3331113 QUOTE CODE: B23R • Every issue of PC Pro delivered direct to your door. Save up to 27% with each monthly issue• The UK’s most in-depth and trusted reviews• Exclusive and in-depth analysis from IT experts Our

If you’re a Bowie fan, you might remember the iconic speech he gave at his final Ziggy gig, as captured in grainy Technicolor by D A Pennebaker. He said, “Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest, because no

Fundamentally, this month’s column is dedicated to the topic of software. But before I get there, please put the popcorn in the microwave, settle in your most comfy chair, then remember the popcorn and go grab it from the microwave, because the lead-

Acure for paralysis and blindness that could one day allow humans to level up their own cognition – and all you have to do is trust the tech’s most tempestuous CEO to plonk an implant into your brain. Elon Musk’s Neuralink has ambitions as lofty as S

“Now then, lad,” said the voice on the phone. “Tell me what you can see.” I was on a nondescript back street, cobblestones poking through here and there, in a small town in Yorkshire. I’d won an eBay auction just on the cusp of Christmas, for a most

ON SALE Thursday 9 March 2023 AI tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and DALL-E are fun to play with, but they can do serious work, too. We explore how businesses are putting AI to work in industries as diverse as landscaping and product design. The we

Running a small business isn’t easy – I know, I have two of them. The testing lab is fortunate in having a close set of clients of many years, so advertising isn’t something we need to do. It’s all word of mouth and recommendations. The food company