“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...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros The indoor video monitor is an excellent addition Outstanding battery life Reasonably priced Considering it comes bundled with a display Cons We encountered some playback bugs Display has very low resolution Subscription plan doesn’t add much Our Verdict Pairing a small monitor with this video doorbell is a no-brainer way to get more out of what has become a something of a commodity device. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell Retailer Price $129.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Part of the trouble with video doorbells is that you don’t always have your phone at the ready to see who’s ringing. If you’re standing in the kitchen when the bell rings, but you’ve left your phone in the bedroom, do you rush to your phone to get a peek at who’s there, or do you take a chance and just answer the door? SwitchBot takes aim at this situation by bundling its doorbell with a stand-alone battery-powered display that gives you an extra way to peek at who’s outside. If you’re in on the SwitchBot ecosystem—and even if you’re not—it’s an affordable combo that’s worth a look. Specifications Not to be redundant, but there are two components in the box: the doorbell and the monitor/display. I’ll break down each of them. The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell can be installed in seconds if you use adhesive, and setup in the SwitchBot app is especially quick. The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell is a plain-Jane design, available only in silver and vaguely resembling an old cell phone. It measures 4.96 x 3.70 x 1.50 inches (126 x 94 x 38 mm) (HxWxD) and carries an IP65 rating for protection from the elements. According to our IP code guide, that means it’s impervious to particulate matter and that it can withstand jets of water coming from any direction (short of a pressure washer, that is). SwitchBot provides everything you need to set up the Smart Video Doorbell, including angle wedges.Christopher Null/Foundry The doorbell is outfitted with a 2K camera lens with maximum resolution of 2304 x 1296 pixels and a 165-degree field of view. It records video with a 16:9 aspect ratio that promises to capture head-to-toe views of your visitors. There’s also an onboard motion sensor and two small LED spotlights at the top of the device that activate on demand. A speaker and ring button that illuminates when motion is detected, are at the bottom of the doorbell. SwitchBot includes straight and angled mounting brackets in the box. The doorbell is powered by an internal 5,000mAh battery that SwitchBot says can last for up to 19 months on a full charge. That battery can be charged three ways: with a 5V/2A power supply and a USB-C cable plugged into a port on the bottom of the device, trickle-charged with a connection to a standard 24V doorbell transformer, or SwitchBot sells a solar panel as a $50 option that’s designed specifically to keep the doorbell’s battery topped off. (One pet peeve: The doorbell has no indicator to let you know when it’s fully charged. A simple LED would be a nice addition for those who must remove the doorbell to top it up periodically.) The display—a “new-generation super monitor,” per the company—features a 4.3-inch screen with a mere 480 x 272-pixel resolution. A smattering of physical controls let you accept or hang up on video calls, manually check the live view, and playback recent videos. (These buttons have other functions when video is streaming live.) The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell isn’t what I’d call a fashion-forward smart home device. Christopher Null/Foundry The screen is dark by default unless the doorbell button is pressed, at which point it displays a live view of what’s happening outside. You can set the monitor to be always on, but this simply shows the time (in 24-hour format) and date, and this can’t be adjusted. It’s powered by a standard two-prong electrical plug. Videos can be stored on SwitchBot’s cloud service or on a microSD card that’s slotted into the monitor. Cards up to 512GB is supported, but SwitchBot throws in a 4GB card for you to use out of the box. You can choose from five canned, quick-reply responses (such as “Please leave the package at the door. Leave a message if you’d like to.”) that conflict-averse types can deliver on demand. These responses can be sent by either the app or the monitor. The SwitchBot app is easy enough to use, but it’s odd that it doesn’t provide you with any means to scrub back and forth along a timeline when you’re watching a recorded event.Christopher Null/Foundry Both devices can be wall-mounted via included screws or adhesive mounting options, and the monitor has a kickstand for placement on a tabletop. The display and the doorbell must be within 100 meters (in open air) to communicate with one another; any physical barriers between the two will, of course, quickly reduce that range. And SwitchBot recommends a more realistic range of just 5 to 10 meters. The two devices communicate with each other (and the web, via your router) using 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Installation and setup Physical installation will vary based on which components you’re mounting to the wall and how, but even the screw-mounted options require just two screws for each device. Use adhesive and installation can be done in seconds. Setup in the SwitchBot app is especially quick, particularly since it does not require a SwitchBot Hub to connect to Wi-Fi. In fact, the Video Doorbell includes its own version of a hub that allows it to also work with SwitchBot Lock devices, allowing remote control of the lock via the doorbell interface, though it can’t serve as a hub for other SwitchBot gear. To complete setup in the app, the Video Doorbell is served up as a new device once it’s powered up, and a few basic steps complete the bridging to your Wi-Fi network. Using the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell The SwitchBot Video Doorbell works largely as expected. When approaching the doorbell, its ring button gently illuminates. Pressing the button causes the bell to ring (very loudly, by default), the monitor to ring, and a push notification to be sent to your phone. If the device is paired with Alexa (its only third-party support), Echo devices will also announce that the bell has been rung. Oddly, ringing the bell does not cause the monitor to automatically display a video feed from the door. You must press the “play” button on the monitor to start the video, after which it takes a few seconds for the stream to start. The display that comes with the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell is a decided low-res affair. Christopher Null/Foundry It’s also worth noting that the low resolution of the monitor is immediately evident. While color representation looks fine, the grainy quality won’t win any awards and is useful only for a quick check of who’s outside. Both bell rings and motion detection trigger video to begin recording, stored by default to the microSD card on the monitor. Clips are limited to a maximum of 60 seconds, after which they are available in the SwitchBot app for playback for three months. The playback interface is segregated by day, with thumbnails for each recorded event appearing chronologically. A few thumbnails were randomly missing in my testing, and I found recent clips would often fail to load without a force-quit and restarting of the app. The app includes AI-based technology to categorize human motion and tag it as such; this was hit-and-miss in my testing. Paying for cloud-storage subscription unlocks pet and vehicle tagging; plus, unlimited online storage space for 30 days of recordings. This plan costs $4/month or $35/year for a single device, with discounts for additional devices available. A one-month free trial is included with your purchase. The absence of significant distortion was a pleasant surprise.Christopher Null/Foundry I found the motion sensor on the device to be extremely sensitive, and at the highest sensitivity it was flagging activity constantly, day and night, even tagging a random bug flying by as a “human” detected. Dialing the sensitivity down helped a lot toward averting false positives. Video looks good when played back on your phone, particularly during the day, and while the viewing angle is wide, it’s not too terribly distorted. The infrared night vision mode looks fine, though its usable range is limited to about 15 feet, and while the device claims a “color night vision” mode, I found this completely useless; all video recorded at night with this mode active resulted in an image that was almost completely black. One oddity about playback: There is no way to rewind or fast-forward through clips in the app, and even the pause button does not work. If you want to carefully scrub through a clip, you’ll need to download it to your phone for viewing elsewhere. (Fortunately, this is easy to do.) Should you buy the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell? This doorbell lists for $150 and I’ve seen it on sale at Amazon for as little as $120. That’s less than many competing products, none of which come with a video monitor. Since it’s not especially tied to the SwitchBot ecosystem, there’s really nothing that should block any smart home user from picking it up; although if you’re not interested in the monitor, a no-frills doorbell will be the cheaper and more effective way to go. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best video doorbells. Read...

Over the past few days, there have been an increasing number of reports about supposed YouTube outages. The number of reports rose sharply on fault-tracking platforms such as Downdetector, but this time there was no technical error. Apparently, the “issue” is simply that YouTube has tightened its measures against ad blockers once more. Many users are suddenly only seeing gray elements instead of videos or thumbnails, and playback only works again when their ad blockers are deactivated. The Opera GX gaming browser, which blocks ads by default, appears to be especially affected—and the issue persists even when the feature has been deactivated, according to some users. Different effects in different browsers As various reports show, the current crop of problems on YouTube occur differently depending on the browser. In Chrome, many users can apparently continue to use YouTube with their ad blockers activated, especially if they aren’t logged in to Google. In Firefox or Edge using the uBlock Origin extension, YouTube seems to work without issues. YouTube already started taking action against ad blockers back in the summer, for example by issuing warning messages or slowing down video playback. The “outages” that are now being observed are apparently a further escalation stage of that initiative. How YouTube detects ad blockers According to a report by Tom’s Guide, YouTube doesn’t directly detect whether an ad blocker is installed and active. Instead, the platform checks whether certain ad scripts are blocked when the page is loaded. YouTube also uses so-called “bait” ads—invisible code that, if removed, basically serves as an indication of ad blocker use. That said, it’s still possible that YouTube recognizes when an ad blocker is installed via the public ID of a browser extension. YouTube Premium as an alternative If you don’t fancy the cat-and-mouse game between YouTube and ad blocker developers, you can opt for YouTube Premium. The subscription costs $13.99/month or $139.99/year and removes ads from videos, plus unlocks features like downloads and background playback. We don’t blame you if you proudly block ads on YouTube, and maybe you’ll continue to do so out of principle despite the inconveniences. But if YouTube succeeds in its efforts, the war might end in favor of the platform, with YouTube Premium emerging as the “best” solution. Read...

The Framework Mini PC brings together sustainability, modular design, and solid performance in a compact form factor. With AMD Ryzen 7040 or 8000 APUs and integrated graphics, it’s ideal for quiet office tasks, media playback, or software development, all while keeping hardware upgrades and customization straightforward. The concept behind the Framework Mini PC is exciting for anyone who wants a flexible, repairable system that can fit under a desk or on a shelf. Rather than a traditional mainboard, it features a fully interchangeable module, which is similar to what you’d find in other Framework machines. check out our review of the Framework Mini PC Framework Desktop Read our review Best Prices Today: $2515 at Framework If you want to upgrade the processor or switch platform generations, you don’t have to discard the entire Framework Mini PC–you can simply replace the motherboard. This rare flexibility is great for anyone who values long-term investments or regularly updates their hardware. The mainboard of the Framework Mini PC can be removed from the housing like a module. If necessary, the unit can be replaced with a new platform.Framework Computer The housing itself is compact but functional, with ports that can be customized via modules at the rear: HDMI, DisplayPort, USB-C, and Ethernet. This flexibility helps with changing requirements or special applications. The external power supply ensures good heat distribution, the airflow is thoughtfully designed, and the fan remains quiet even under load. The design aims to make maintenance and upgrades as uncomplicated as possible. The Framework Mini PC prioritizes modularity over monolithic design and spare parts availability over one-way thinking. Nearly every component (RAM, SSD, WLAN, mainboard, etc) can be replaced in just a few simple steps. There’s also detailed online documentation for the less technically-inclined among us. Rear modules can be replaced or added to the Framework Mini PC as required in order to customize connections and functions.Framework Computer The approach is particularly interesting for anyone looking for a compact yet fully controllable system–whether for software development, light to medium rendering, a home office, or a private media server. That said, the Framework Mini PC isn’t designed for intensive workloads or complex 3D games, as a dedicated GPU cannot be retrofitted. For those who want to forgo traditional towers, Framework’s Mini PC offers an unusually open, quiet, and upgradeable system. In an era of increasingly complexity and decreasing reparability, it sends a clear message: there is another way, and it’s actually pretty elegant. Read...