Samsung has dabbled in the smart speaker space before, but the company’s all-new Music Studio 5 and Music Studio 7 Wi-Fi speakers pose serious competition for the likes of Amazon, Apple, Bose, and Sonos—at least at the higher-end of the market. Unveiled this week at CES and planned for a March release, both models present a distinctively modern, “dot-faced” industrial design by noted French artist Erwan Bouroullec, along with some equally interesting features destined to set them apart from the pack. (Don’t get too excited about all the colors shown in the photo above, however; they’re just trial balloons. Initial shipments will be in black or white only.) Alexa, are you in there? While it probably won’t be there at launch—and voice assistants in general warrant  just a single mention in Samsung’s press release—I’ve been told the Music Studio 5 (model LS50H) and Music Studio 7 (model LS70H) will support Alexa+, the generative-AI-powered digital assistant that Amazon promises is more capable and more conversational than the original Alexa. Alexa Plus also provides advanced smart home control options and new capabilities, such as automatically ordering food it knows you’ll like from Uber Eats, or standing in a virtual line for concert tickets from TicketMaster while you do something less tedious.   Not an Alexa fan? The new speakers will also answer to voice commands spoken to Google Assistant, as well as Samsung’s own Bixby, which is optimized for interaction with other Samsung products. Spotify Tap and Spotify Connect The Music Studio series also works with Spotify Tap, which leverages Spotify Connect over Wi-Fi, so you can jump-start a favorite playlist with just a touch on the speaker cabinet—no need to pull out your phone. The spiffier Music Studio 7 is adept at delivering the new, lossless rendering of Spotify Premium music content, streaming FLAC files at up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz resolution, as well as other content at resolutions up to 24-bit/96kHz. A CES booth tender also told me that Music Studio buyers who adopt Alexa as their voice assistant will get Amazon Music as their default music-streaming service, while those who choose Google Assistant will get YouTube Music as their default. As for other services—Tidal, Qobuz, and what have you—I’m told they’ll be able to use those services’ respective apps, Apple’s AirPlay, or—ugh—a Bluetooth connection.   For those who don’t mind wires, the Music Studio 5 is equipped with a Toslink digital audio input, while the beefier Music Studio 7 boasts an HDMI port as well. I presume that will be HDMI ARC, but no one at the booth could answer my question for sure. I know for certain that up to five Music Studio speakers can be synchronized with recent Samsung TVs via Bluetooth, thanks to the company’s Q Symphony surround-sound processing. This will mix those speakers’ output with the TV’s built-in speakers. Q Symphony will also let you mix and match some Music Studio speakers with a Samsung soundbar and/or wall-hanging Music Frame speakers. Q Symphony smarts will tonally balance the bunch. Multi-room audio options Another option, for whole-home audio devotees, will be to stream music—the same or different tracks—to as many as 10 Music Studio speakers at once, including grouped speakers. Samsung’s SmartThings app will manage that trick. Unfortunately, it won’t be possible to configure two speakers as a stereo pair, as both the Music Studio 5 and Music Studio 7 output two channels on their own. With its sculpted dome and sloped back, the smaller Studio 5 ($249) offers a more distinctive look than its core competition: the $219 Sonos One, Gen 2 and the $199 Bose Home Speaker 300. The Studio 5 packs two high-performance left/right front tweeters beneath a 4.2- inch woofer (Samsung’s people insisted on calling it a “subwoofer”). An integrated wave guide and dynamic bass control contributed to the bigger and better-than-expected performance I heard in the challenging environment of Samsung’s CES exhibit space, but I’ll reserve final judgement for a full listening session in private. The Music Studio 7 ($499) is an all-in-one,  3.1.1-channel, spatial-audio speaker featuring Samsung’s own signal-steering methodology (not Dolby Atmos). Its tweeters fire separate channel information from the front, left, and right sides, as well as the top the boxy, perforated metal wrapped enclosure, while a 5-inch front-firing, rear-ported) “sub” delivers all the non-directional low-frequency information. Samsung enhances the four-direction throw and clarity of the channels with what it calls Pattern Control Technology and AI Dynamic Bass Control. Samsung is clearly appealing to the same “I only have room for one box” music/smart home buffs who are also considering the rest of the spatial audio-adept, smart-speaker competition: the $479 Sonos Era 300, the $299 Apple HomePod, and the $220 Amazon Echo Studio. I can’t wait to hear what these puppies can do in the real world. This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers. Read...

TL;DR: This is the lowest price ever for a lifetime license to SwifDoo PDF Pro — a full-featured, pro-level PDF editor for Windows. Have you ever opened a PDF and immediately felt your soul leave your body? Here’s some good news: you don’t have to wrestle with PDFs anymore. SwifDoo PDF Pro gives you all the editing, converting, signing, splitting, merging, compressing, and OCR tools you could possibly need—and this deal gets you lifetime access for the lowest price it’s ever been, just $24.97 (MSRP $129). Instead of bouncing between free trials, browser extensions, and random tools that “kind of” work, SwifDoo puts everything in one clean interface. Want to tweak text? Highlight and annotate? Merge 40 pages into one perfect file? Convert PDFs into Word docs that actually look like the original? SwifDoo makes it feel easy. Its advanced features are where it really shines: accurate OCR turns scanned documents into fully editable text, and the batch processor lets you convert, compress, split, encrypt, or print multiple PDFs at once. If you spend even a little time dealing with documents, a lifetime license for under this price is the kind of upgrade that pays for itself after your first painless PDF edit. Get lifetime access to SwifDoo PDF Pro for just $24.97 (MSRP $129) with code PRO for a limited time. SwifDoo PDF Pro: Perpetual Lifetime License for WindowsSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

For many people, a video doorbell isn’t just part of their home security system, it is the system. With a camera at the front door and an app on their phone, they jump to the conclusion that they’ll capture faces on the sidewalk, license plates at the curb, and anybody cutting across the lawn. Most doorbell cameras deliver far more modest real-world performances. They have a tight field of view that sees what’s directly in front of their lens; they’re built to frame a visitor’s face standing in front of the door, not the entire space around the door. That leaves blind spots that can surprise new owners: areas right at the threshold, where packages disappear from view; blurry depictions of passersby on the sidewalk or people walking up the driveway, because they’re outside the camera’s field of view; and side-to-side movement close to the door that slips past the edges of the frame. Doorbells still provide real awareness. But what they show is shaped by factors such as lens geometry, aspect ratio, motion-detection tech, and other factors–including AI in some cases. Let’s look at how those design choices define what your doorbell can realistically see–and what it can’t. Field of view Video doorbells that can deliver a head-to-toe view of visitors, such as the Ring Battery Doorbell Plus shown here, can also capture packages left on your porch.Michael Brown/Foundry Field of view–measured in degrees–describes the width of the viewing cone that spreads outward from the camera’s lens. This is the slice of the real world the lens can actually see. But field of view isn’t a single number. It’s split into two parts: horizontal field of view, which determines how much the camera sees from left to right, and vertical field of view, which measures how area it can capture between the ground and the sky. Most doorbells emphasize horizontal coverage. Specs commonly tout 130- to 160 degrees side-to-side, which helps pick up people moving along sidewalks, walkways, or driveways before they reach the door. That width provides useful context, especially on wide porches or corner lots where activity doesn’t always come straight in. Vertical coverage is often shortchanged. Many cameras capture much less than 90 degrees top-to-bottom, creating a wide but shallow image. Faces and torsos are centered neatly in frame, but the ground just below the lens is cut off. Packages placed against the wall vanish. Small kids or pets drop out of view as they get closer. Perspective compounds this. The nearer something is to the lens, the easier it falls outside that narrow vertical cone. So when deliveries disappear from recordings, the culprit is vertical cropping built into the lens design itself. Aspect ratios The Vivint Doorbell Camera Pro (Gen 2) delivers a 1:1 aspect ratio that can show packages left on your porch and visitors from head to toe.Michael Brown/Foundry Aspect ratio is simply the proportion between the width and height of the video image. It works alongside field of view to determine the final shape of what you see on screen. A camera can have a wide lens, but if the image format squeezes that view into a short, horizontal rectangle, the result is still an incomplete picture. Many early doorbells—and plenty of budget models today—use wide, landscape-leaning formats, including true 16:9 or similar ratios. That wide framing is good for seeing activity across sidewalks, driveways, or a front yard, but the tradeoff is vertical space. These formats crop the lower part of the scene, which often means the ground right in front of the door—where delivery packages tend to land—never makes it into the frame. Newer doorbells have shifted toward taller ratios like 4:3, 3:4, or even square, 1:1 formats, which devote more pixels to vertical coverage instead of the more horizontal spread. This enables true head-to-toe views, letting you see visitors’ faces, what they’re holding, and the area at their feet in a single frame. Resolution and digital zoom The higher the resolution your video doorbell can capture (i.e., the more pixels), the better the video will look when you zoom in to the max. The Nest Video Doorbell (wired, 3rd Gen) captures 2048 x 2048 pixels. Resolution is where marketing often overpromises and reality narrows the claim. Entry-level doorbells usually capture video in 1080p (about 2 megapixels). That’s fine when someone is standing right at the door but faces soften quickly past six to eight feet. Step up to 2K (roughly 3 to 4 megapixels) and you get noticeably cleaner facial detail at a distance. 4K (around 8 megapixels) can reveal finer features—sometimes even license plate characters—but only when lighting is good and the subject is already inside the camera’s view. Because doorbells use fixed lenses, there’s no optical zoom. When you zoom in on a doorbell image, the camera isn’t actually getting closer to the subject. It’s just enlarging a smaller portion of the image by cutting away the surrounding pixels. This is where the extra pixels in a higher-resolution camera really come into play. Higher resolution means more usable detail after zooming. When you crop into a 1080p image, details break down quickly into visible blocks. With 2K or 4K footage, there are more pixels to work with, so faces and other fine details hold together longer as you zoom. Motion detection Being able to set multiple motion detection zones lets you fine-tune the areas you want to monitor for motion. Higher-end models, like the Ring Battery Plus shown here, let you customize alerts based on how frequently motion is detected and what types of motion are detected.Michael Brown/Foundry Early video doorbells relied almost entirely on passive infrared sensors. PIR works by looking for rapid changes in heat combined with movement. It’s simple and power-efficient, but blunt. Wind-whipped bushes, passing cars, or a patch of morning sun warming the driveway can all trip the sensor and fire off an alert. Newer models layer in video-based detection. The camera feed itself is analyzed, locally on the device or in the cloud, to identify human shapes and movement patterns. Trained recognition models can also flag vehicles and pets instead of labeling everything as generic motion. That technology is what enables alerts like “Person detected,” resulting in fewer nuisance notifications and more meaningful alerts. But there are tradeoffs. Video analysis takes longer than raw heat sensing, so alerts can be slightly delayed. Detection depends on lighting and clear angles; backlighting or heavy shadows can throw it off. And small or partly hidden figures may simply be missed. Pre-roll video When a clip seems to start a few seconds before motion triggers, you’re seeing pre-roll video at work. Most doorbells don’t record continuously. Instead, they run a lightweight recording loop that stores a rolling buffer in small onboard memory—either local flash or a battery cache. Once motion is detected, the system saves that buffered footage along with the full recording, making it appear as though the camera was already rolling. On many doorbells, that pre-roll footage runs at reduced quality. It may be black and white, lower resolution, and lack audio. That downshift is deliberate. Continuous, full-quality recording would drain a battery doorbell in hours, rather than weeks. Pre-roll is the compromise—brief, low-power snapshots that provide just enough lead-in to show a person stepping into view before the main clip takes over. Night vision Night vision is a critical feature for a video doorbell, since you won’t want to keep your porch light on all night.Martin Williams/Foundry Most doorbells rely on standard infrared night vision. Small IR LEDs bathe the scene in light–invisible to the human eye–that reflects back to the doorbell’s sensor, producing a black-and-white image. Most IR systems can illuminate roughly 15 to 30 feet from the camera. That’s enough for the porch area, but not down the walkway or into the yard. IR has quirks, though. Objects close to the lens can wash out into a white glare. Fog, rain, or reflective surfaces scatter the light and create haze or sparkles that degrade clarity. That can result in an image that looks fuzzy or blown out right when you need it to be sharp. Color night vision tackles after-dark video differently. Video doorbells with this feature use sensors that are more sensitive to ambient light, preserving color. They might also include an LED spotlight that switches on in response to motion, lighting the scene when there isn’t enough ambient light. Spotlights can tip off prowlers–which might prompt them to beat a retreat–but they can also annoy your neighbors if they fire up at 2 a.m. Camera linking and multi-view triggering While video doorbell surveillance effectively ends at your porch, some Ring and Eufy systems support camera linking, where motion detected by one camera can triggers other cameras to begin recording at the same time. In this scenario, a doorbell alert might activate a side-yard or driveway camera, picking up an intruder as they move elsewhere on your property. This can fill gaps left by the doorbell’s narrow coverage and builds better movement timelines. But this isn’t the same as tracking, where you can follow a person’s movement without interruption from point to point. Most systems cap the number of linked devices; Ring, for example, allows up to three of its devices to be linked this way. Eufy and some other security cameras offer a feature that stitches the recordings from several cameras together, so that you get something close to an end-to-end recording of the path they followed around your home. Set reasonable expectations when you buy a video doorbell Video doorbells are effective security tools, but only inside the boundaries set by their lenses, sensors, and detection systems. Buying smarter starts with understanding what actually shapes the image. Look beyond headline resolution and focus on aspect ratio and vertical field of view. Think about how much zoom detail you can realistically get. Pay attention to how well alerts filter people from noise. Good security doesn’t come from expecting one camera to see everything. It comes from matching the right hardware to your space and building coverage around each device’s limits instead of assuming a doorbell alone can handle the whole job. This story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best security cameras and video doorbells. Read...

The Logitech G502 Hero wired gaming mouse might’ve been around for a few years at this point, but it’s still one of the best gaming mice on the market—especially if you can get it on sale at a steep discount. It just so happens that this mouse is on sale right now. Get it for 49% off on Amazon, which brings it down to just $36. Wow! View this Amazon deal In our review of the Logitech G502 Hero, we gave it a stunning 4.5-star rating and our Editors’ Choice award. It has everything that made the original G502 great, except now with a Hero sensor for extra performance. The only downside is no wireless, otherwise it’s great. Let’s talk about that sensor. Logitech’s Hero 25K sensor delivers precise tracking and a sensitivity range up to 25,600 DPI, ensuring pinpoint accuracy when aiming in first-person games or selecting in fast-paced real-time strategy games. One of the key features of the G502 Hero is that you can customize it exactly how you need it, with an adjustable weight system with 5 removable 3.6-gram weights. You can fine-tune the balance and feel for your specific grip and play style. The 11 programmable buttons make for an additional way to customize actions, whether for specific games or for non-game tasks like app shortcuts and operating system macros. The memory in the mouse also enables you to store up to 5 ready-to-play profiles directly on the device, making it easy to swap between them on the fly. Who knew one of the best wired gaming mice on the market could be had for this cheap? Get the Logitech G502 Hero for $36! Wow! Save 49% on the Logitech G502 Hero while you canBuy now at Amazon Read...

MSI kicked off CES 2026 with two next-generation desktop lines – the MSI Aegis RS2 AI and MSI Vision RS AI – plus a new wave of QD-OLED gaming monitors under its MPG and MEG X brands. Whether you’re building a high-FPS esports machine, a premium AAA gaming rig, or a quiet creative workstation with room to upgrade over time, MSI’s new systems aim to deliver strong performance, lower noise, and long-term reliability. Key takeaways New desktops: MSI Aegis RS2 AI (gaming-first) and Vision RS AI (quiet, creator-focused) Core specs: Up to Intel® Core™ Ultra 9, Intel® Z890, and RTX 5070-RTX 5080 GPU options Cooling: CPU watercooling standard across configurations for quieter operation Upgradeability: standard form-factor, off-the-shelf components designed for easy maintenance New displays: MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 and MEG X QD-OLED monitors with HDR tuning, Uniform Luminance, burn-in protection, and DarkArmor Film with 3H scratch resistance and enhanced pure black levels MSI Aegis RS2 AI: Performance-first gaming desktops for 2026 MSI As prices for memory and storage skyrocket all over the world and DIY builders fret over getting the hardware they need for their next upgrade, you can beat the rush and the panic with an MSI Aegis RS2 AI or Vision RS AI pre-built gaming PC. With stellar performance for every kind of gamer in any kind of game, and everything creatives need to get to work, MSI’s next-generation PCs will set you up for many years of fast and fluid work and play for years to come. The Aegis RS2 AI can be configured with: CPU: up to Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 Motherboard: Intel® Z890 chipset GPU: From RTX 5070 (powerful mid-range) up to RTX 5080 (high-end performance) Aegis comes with options to build a high-frame-rate, competitive esports machine or a high-detail system designed to make the most of the latest AAA, immersive games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. MSI Vision RS AI: Quieter Creator-focused systems built to last MSI If you’re more interested in creating or playing with the latest AI language models, MSI’s new Vision PCs are a great fit. The CES 2026 Innovation Award winning Vision PCs combine high-powered components with ultra-low noise operation, tuned thermals, and an eye-catching aesthetic that lets you show your creativity off in true fashion. Available in white and black, with a gorgeous wraparound glass panel design, and packed full of high-powered components, this is a system that looks the part and walks the walk. View MSI`s Next-gen Vision AI Desktops Reliability and sustainability: Easy maintenance and future upgrades One of the most important factors in a desktop PC for creative hobbyists and professionals is reliability and sustainability. MSI heard that loud and clear with its Vision PCs and has built them around easy maintenance and longevity. Standard form-factor, off-the-shelf components mean you can easily: Upgrade components later without proprietary restrictions Replace parts more easily if something fails Swap and service components with fewer headaches Work inside the chassis comfortably thanks to the roomy internal layout It’s a system designed to stay relevant longer, and be easier to maintain over time. Foundry / Adam Patrick Murray Watercooling comes standard for quieter everyday use Whether you choose Aegis RS2 AI or Vision RS AI, CPU watercooling comes as standard, so you can enjoy a quiet experience designed to balance performance and acoustics, whether you’re gaming, working, or relaxing after a hard day of either. If you often have to use headphones because your fans are whirring and whining away and your coolers can barely keep up, switching to a cool and quiet Aegis or Vision system will make the world of difference. Built and assembled in the USA, MSI Aegis and Vision PCs are made fast and to a high-standard, ensuring your next gaming PC upgrade is everything you want and need, and a little bit extra, so you can enjoy one of the best gaming PC experiences out there. MSI MPG and MEG X monitors: big-screen HDR gaming with smarter tuning Foundry / Adam Patrick Murray Looking to upgrade your display in 2026? MSI’s new MPG 341CQR QD-OLED X36 and MEG X monitors are the complete package. These big-screen monitors come with the 5th-gen QD-OLED panel, which vastly improves text due to the RGB Stripe sub-pixel layout, and delivers next-generation picture quality, with sharper text and images with cleaner edges. The inky blacks and high contrast look fantastic, with eye-catching colors that really pop off the screen – especially in HDR mode. These are gorgeous OLED gaming monitors that will look fantastic for many years to come. View MSI`s Next-gen MPG Monitors AI smarts to power up gameplay Foundry / Adam Patrick Murray Meg X is MSI’s flagship gaming monitor, building in several exclusive AI features to boost your gameplay like never before. AI Scene is able to detect your content type and adjust the display settings to suit, while AI Gauge syncs relevant metrics like health or ammo levels with the SpectrumBar lightbar found under MEG X’s chin. Visuals are enhanced through AI Vision+ and AI Google, which improve visibility in dark areas, and during particularly bright scenes. AI can also help you find and destroy your enemies faster, with AI Tracker and AI Scope teaming up to automatically highlight characters onscreen and zoom in closer for improved aim. Foundry / Adam Patrick Murray Uniform Luminance and reduced ABL distractions MSI’s exclusive Uniform Luminance feature gives you complete control over how your games look and feel, with specialized modes that minimize the automatic brightness limiting (ABL) that can be so distracting with other OLED monitors. Anti burn-in protection with MSI AI Care Complete with all the latest anti burn-in technologies, MSI’s OLED Care 3.0 system adds AI Sensor, which automatically powers on or dims the monitor to extend panel lifespan and reduce the chances of image retention. 3H scratch resistance for peace of mind Worried about damaging your beautiful new monitor? No need. MSI’s latest OLED displays come with DarkArmor Film, which elevates panel protection with 3H scratch resistance. Even if you accidentally bump them or the kids get their fingers on them (somehow!), the worst it will come away with is an easy-to-clean smudge. DarkArmor Film also boosts pure black visuals by 40% for superior contrast, eliminating ambient light tints. Final thoughts With the Aegis RS2 AI and Vision RS AI desktops, MSI is targeting two audiences: gamers who want maximum performance and creators who want quiet power and a premium, upgrade-friendly system. Pair those systems with MSI’s latest MPG and MEG X QD-OLED monitors – featuring HDR curve control, burn-in protection, and scratch resistance – and you’ve got a full ecosystem designed for high-end gaming and creative work well into 2026. Read...

Jacob Tierney says the `sex forward` gay drama, which is released in the UK on Saturday, features elements of romance that don`t get taken seriously enough. Read...

Microsoft recently started offering users of modern SSDs an option to significantly increase their drive speeds. Specifically, this involves a performance boost for NVMe drives. NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express and is a particularly fast protocol for SSDs that communicates directly with the processor via the PCIe interface. Because of this, NVMe SSDs outperform conventional SATA SSDs. Until now, however, Windows didn’t offer a native driver for NVMe drives, which limited their performance. This changed in December 2025 when Microsoft announced Native NVMe for Windows Server 2025, which is also available on Windows 11. However, you must manually activate it yourself to take advantage of its benefits. Here’s how to enable it and whether it’s worth doing so. The advantages of Native NVMe According to Microsoft, here are the advantages: Massive IOPS increases: Actual performance limit of the hardware is fully unlocked. Lower latency: Shorter round-trip times for each operation. Higher CPU efficiency: More computing power for applications instead of storage overhead. Support for advanced NVMe features: For example, multi-queue and direct command transmission. In specific use cases, this could improve sequential speeds by up to 500 MB/s as well as up to 80 percent more IOPS. In addition, using the native driver should save up to 45 percent in computing power. These values may vary depending on your system and SSD type, of course. In general, however, users seem to benefit significantly from the performance boost—and all you need is a compatible NVMe SSD and Windows 11 25H2 to start taking advantage now. There are some caveats, though Before you turn this feature on, know that there’s a risk. According to some reports, problems can arise with certain SSDs. Some hard drive managers no longer recognize NVMe storage after the driver is enabled, while other drives disappear completely or get listed twice. In addition, in a few cases, there was higher CPU utilization and/or lag, especially in games that use DirectStorage. Apparently, there’s a compatibility issue here that needs to be investigated further. How to activate the NVMe boost To activate the new NVMe driver in Windows 11, you should first check the driver details section of your storage drive in Device Manager and ensure that your drive is using StorNVMe.sys. Otherwise, activating this driver will have no effect on your system. If compatible, there are two ways to activate the driver: Option 1: Windows Registry Use the Windows key + R keyboard shortcut to open the Run window, then type regedit to launch Registry Editor. In Registry Editor, navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides. In this folder, right-click and add the following REG_DWORD values, each with hexadecimal value “1”: 156965516, 1853569164, 735209102. Restart your PC. If you want to undo the change, navigate back to the same folder and delete the three values. The change will take effect after restarting. Option 2: PowerShell Alternatively, you can use Windows PowerShell to enter the following commands (with admin rights): reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 156965516 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f ???????reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 1853569164 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Policies\Microsoft\FeatureManagement\Overrides /v 735209102 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f Restart your PC. These two methods are currently the only ways to activate Native NVMe in Windows 11, as it’s actually intended for use under Windows Server. The performance boost is primarily aimed at businesses, but private users can also activate it to benefit. However, there’s no guarantee that every NVMe SSD will respond to the change in the same way. The potential problems described above may still occur. If this is the case, you should undo the change and wait for Microsoft to update the drivers before trying again. Further reading: Unlock more SSD performance with these 5 tweaks Read...

Finding a good gaming monitor upgrade that won’t drain your bank account may seem impossible at times, but you just have to be patient for a hot deal to show up. Today might be that day for you, with Amazon selling the 27-inch LG UltraGear 27GR83Q-B for just $277. That’s a massive 45% off its original $500 price! View this Amazon deal This is a stellar opportunity to get a mid-range monitor at a near-budget price. The LG UltraGear 27GR83Q-B features a 27-inch IPS panel that promises great color accuracy, comfortable viewing angles, and vivid contrast. The 2560×1440 resolution is extra crisp at this size, and it’s capable of a blistering 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time for super-responsive gameplay that’ll give you an edge on the competition. To eliminate screen tearing and stuttering, this display supports AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync, which ensures the screen remains synchronized with your GPU for even more fluid gameplay. It also features both HDMI and DisplayPort, so you can connect it to your device with whichever cable you prefer, and it has several USB ports you can use to connect accessories and such. Whether you’re still stuck on a crappy 1080p monitor or want to elevate your existing 1440p display with a better refresh rate and other features, this is a fantastic get at this price. Snag the LG UltraGear 27GR83Q-B for $277 before this low price disappears! Save 45% on this 27-inch 1440p IPS monitor with 240Hz refresh rateBuy now at Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Small thumb drive form factor Both Type-C and Type-A connectors Very good 10Gbps performance with normal amounts of data Cons End caps aren’t captive Writes slow to 120MBps after 200GB Very pricey at the time of this writing Our Verdict The Kingston Portable Dual is one of the faster dual Type-C/A flash/thumb drives I’ve tested — holding its own against the top-rated Teamgroup X2 Max in some synthetic benchmarks. But peculiarly, it’s being priced way above the competition at launch. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Kingston Dual Portable flash drive Retailer Price $130.82 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Life is better if your portable flash drive can connect to both Type-A and Type-C ports without having to drag around an adapter. The Kingston Dual Portable packs both types of USB connectors into its minuscule form factor, and turned in a very good, if not chart-topping performance. The downside? It’s currently priced nearly twice the faster competition. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison. What are the Kingston Dual Portable’s features? Much like the Teamgroup X2 Max, Kingston’s Dual Portable is a small, thin 10Gbps USB (3.2 Gen 2) flash drive with a Type-C connector on one end and a Type-A connector on the other — both covered with caps. It’s fast with the average data load and hecka convenient when you don’t know what type of device you’ll need to connect to. The aforementioned minuscule form factor is around 2.75-inches long, 0.75-inches wide, and a mere 0.3-inches thick. The Dual Portable barely tipped the scales at a mere 0.4 ounces, so you might even forget it’s in your pocket. The Dual Portable with both end caps removed. The Dual Portable’s controller is a Silicon Motion SM2322 and the NAND is 3D TLC. Likely NAND of a slightly older generation given the low sustained native write rate observed during our 450GB write test. The drive carries a five-year warranty that’s only limited by, say, smashing the drive with a hammer or writing its full capacity every two hours. In other words, you’ll be fine. How much is the Kingston Dual Portable? You may have noticed, SSD prices, after a long inexorable drop, are on the rise again. That might explain why the Dual Portable is $134 in the 512GB capacity, $157 in the 1TB, and a whopping $330 for 2TB. Or it might not. The 2TB version of the mighty Teamgroup X2 Max was only $150 on Amazon at the time of this writing — less than the 1TB Dual Portable! Average price for a 1TB was around $110. Kingston’s pricing on this product is puzzling to say the least. But hey, it’s red! How fast is the Kingston Dual Portable? The Dual Portable’s performance is more than adequate for the average user, though it was 8th out of 10 flash/thumb drives I’ve tested. In other words, it’s no Teamgroup X2 Max, but neither is any other small form-factor flash drive I’ve tested. However, the Dual Portable easily bested the 10th place SanDisk Extreme Pro Dual. Though it’s 8th out of 10 flash drives, the Dual Portable’s performance is only marginally weaker than the pack’s in CrystalDiskMark 8. Longer bars are better. Thought it’s 8th out of 10 flash drives, the Dual Portable’s performance is only marginally weaker than the pack’s in CrystalDiskMark 8. While not top dog, the Dual Portable’s CrystalDiskMark 8 4K numbers were more than passable. Longer bars are better. The pattern was clear by the time we got to the 48GB transfer tests. The Dual Portable can hang with the X2 Max in some tests, but not overall. The Dual Portable can hang with the X2 Max in some tests, but not overall. Shorter bars are better. The Kingston Dual Portable was way off on the 450GB write, but like the Samsung Extreme Pro Dual, it was a 1TB drive. The Teamgroup X2 Max was 2TB in capacity, however, it still sustained around 700MBps writing even when we fed it a whopping 1.4TB. The Kingston Dual Portable was way off on the 450GB write, but like the Samsung Extreme Pro Dual, it was a 1TB drive. Shorter bars are better. Below you can see the reason for the lengthy 450GB write time. The Dual Portable drops to 120MBps when it runs out of secondary cache. Not ideal, but it didn’t occur until 200GB had already been written, so the average user will likely never see this type of slowdown. While not the slowest native write rate we’ve seen, the Dual Portable is still not the drive to write massive amounts of data to in a single session. All in all, unless you pile a whole lot of data onto it at once, the Kingston Dual Portable will get the job done performance-wise. Should you buy the Kingston Dual Portable? If Kingston comes back to earth with its pricing (our sticker shock cost the product half a star), then the dual connectors, small profile, and good performance with up to medium data sets make it a worthy purchase. That said, I mentioned the X2 Max numerous times for a reason. 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 sitting 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 first) 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. Read...

Wow. After the depressing last couple of months in hardware, CES 2026 was exactly the breath of fresh air and optimism I needed. To be clear, consumer desktop CPU and GPU news was largely a bust—for new architecture announcements, anyway. Intel focused on mobile processors, talking up Panther Lake during its press conference and taking potshots at AMD’s handheld chips. AMD barely mentioned consumer during its two-hour+ keynote presentation, instead leaning hard into enterprise. (At a “consumer” show, yes.) Team Red did announce Ryzen AI 400 processors on stage, as well as show off an ultra-compact Ryzen AI Halo mini-PC, but the reveal of the Ryzen 7 9850X3D trickled out on the side. As for Nvidia, it straight up told everyone that it would not announce new GPUs during its community update stream. Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the surprising topics on our YouTube show or latest news from across the web? You’re in the right place.  Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! But AMD also hinted that we could potentially drop a mobile Ryzen CPU into a desktop PC sometime in the future. (Wut.) Intel says the integrated graphics in its Panther Lake chips can go toe-to-toe with discrete RTX 4000-series GPUs—and initial benchmarks appear to back up the claim. And Nvidia dropped both upscaling upgrades and new monitor tech that made Brad a believer in DLSS 4.5 and G-Sync Pulsar right away. And outside of that, CES 2026 was still plenty full of the weird, unexpected tech it’s known for. HP’s simple yet captivating EliteBoard PC stuffs a whole system into a keyboard. Cooling company Ventiva demoed a fanless (!) handheld for utterly silent mobile gaming. Dell’s 52-inch ultrawide monitor laughs in the face of desk space limits. Asus took “Por que no los dos” literally and packed its new Zephyrus Duo with two full OLED touchscreens. Not unhinged enough? The show floor was filled with all kind of bonkers gear in the very best way. (I’m pining hard for that Jackery Solar Mars Bot. I don’t even spend much time in sunlight.) The ultimate sleeper PC.Michael Crider / Foundry So sure, Intel, AMD, and Nvidia all signaled that their focus would be on mobile, AI, software, AI…and AI. (By the way, when we took a count at each press conference, AMD dominated with 207 mentions in two hours. Two hundred and seven.) Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang even told our own Adam Patrick Murray during a Q&A session that “The future is neural rendering. That’s the way graphics ought to be.” And the RAM shortages still hang in the background of all the fun news, silent but heavy. Few prices were announced during the show. Analysts confirmed coming price increases of 15 to 20 percent on PCs. Both AMD and Nvidia hinted at the return of older chip technologies. But we as enthusiasts still have plenty of neat things to look forward to. Lots to make our lives simpler, lots that adapt better to the constraints (and pressures) of modern living. Also, a surprising number of $5,000+ robots that I would consider inviting into my home. I did not have that on my 2026 bingo card. In this episode of The Full Nerd  In this episode of The Full Nerd, Brad Chacos, Adam Patrick Murray, Mark Hachman, and Michael Crider recap their CES 2026 experiences—the best, the worst, and the most insane things they saw while traipsing through Las Vegas. (My nomination, sitting at home? Brad’s drink during the show, which was three feet long. I asked him how many ounces it was. He responded in distance. It’s so much liquid that it transcends the typical measuring system.) Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s flood of nerd news So in the last newsletter, when I predicted there would be a lot of news for this one, I had ballparked more than usual. Boy, did I end up understating that. Much of the big tech news is packed in the link-filled thoughts above, of course. But there was plenty of smaller, interesting tidbits too—some fun, some sobering. And some downright dangerous, depending on your viewpoint. Arctic holds its own pretty well against Noctua, according to testing done by Tom’s Hardware. Neat.Noctua Cheap, but good: Tom’s Hardware did a bit of hands-on testing to comparing the Noctua’s legendary fans and Arctic’s equally legendary alternative. (I own multiple packs of Arctic’s P-series fans, because, yeah. That value.) Turns out, us frugal types aren’t missing out on too much. I’m glad for this news: Magnetic switches are all the rage, and Cherry is still fighting the good fight for its survival with not one, but two new magnetic TMR keyboards. Happy birthday, Blu-ray: First, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since Blu-ray first appeared. Second, how the heck has it been 20 years? So cute: The deep nerdery of creating art within the intersection of time and space is weirdly profound, with adorable results. (The effort creates images of cats. Meow.) Computer Chronicles rocked: Producer and host Stewart Cheifet passed away at age 87 this past December. In addition to being part of PBS’s stellar educational programming, there’s also a PCWorld connection. Both Gordon and Will were on an episode back in the day! I’m glad I’m not alone: Game publisher Hooded Horse’s head honcho says that any titles it releases can’t have AI assets, because as the CEO says: “I [censored] hate gen AI art.” I feel less on my own in a universe currently full of endless AI slop. Who’s a good pup? I’m more of a cat person, but I still think dogs are great. Even more so after reading this Ars Technica article. And some of the hilarious comments from Ars readers—particularly this one about a dog who knows the names of about 100 toys: “Okay, there’s being a good boy, a very good boy, and then just being a show off.” ??????InWin InWin showed off yet another bonkers case? I’m in: The Aeon looks like an egg, sports a ton of glass, and requires an RFID card to open? Already a fan. Thank you, Mr. Rosen: I was always more of a Nintendo kid, but Sega was a big part of my childhood still. Here we go again! Pebble lives once more, and now it’s revived its round smartwatch. I own an original Round, and boy, this Round 2 is tempting…even though it lacks some important features I’ve come to expect from my smartwatches. (Really, no heart rate monitoring?!) Man, I’m so on the fence. Some welcome news: Color me surprised, especially after so many vendors basically kill aging hardware by refusing to support it. Good on Bose for allowing people to take further updates into their own hands. Weird, but cool: Keychron is well-known for its mechanical keyboards, but this CES 2026, they decided to bring something a little different with them to the show… (Yes, I’ve notified Adam of this.) Y’all, I’m in trouble: Brad wore a cool circuit-patterned shirt during CES. I asked him where he got it. He gave me the link. The site could be ThinkGeek reborn. I’ve already immediately fallen in love with the most fantastic and absolutely ugliest Excel cardigan. (Help.) Gosh, what a banger of a start to the new year. I thought I’d spend most of this week sneaking in complaints about crowded gyms. Yes, it’s absolutely other people’s fault I ate too much and drank a ton of Will’s excellent eggnog. (Thanks again for sharing that with us!) Catch you all next week! Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...