When Qualcomm released its first batch of ARM-based Snapdragon X processors two years ago, they worked well enough, but failed to set the PC gaming world on fire. It's not really what they were meant for, and if decades of buying computer parts have taught me one thing, it's never to buy into the first generation of a new product. I still do it, of course, as the Oculus Rift sitting unloved in its box shows, but I'm always left with the feeling that I should know better.

The main downside of the OG Snapdragon, once software compatibility issues were smoothed out, was its GPU. The Adreno cores buried somewhere in the chipset felt underpowered for anything heavier than Stardew Valley, and while DirectX and Vulcan compatibility was high, and driver updates refined the process, some games just didn't work.

With the release of the Snapdragon X2, a few things have changed. The main one is that the CPU package now comes with a lot more processing cores—18 on the Elite Extreme model we've got here—but the GPU is also a lot better. It's now putting out the sort of benchmark results you'd expect from Intel iGPUs, and in some tests can even produce better results than Panther Lake.

The ASUS ZenBook A16 we're looking at here is one of the first Snapdragon X2 laptops on the market. It boasts the Elite Extreme version of the chip, a name that makes you wonder where they're going to go next if they release an even better one. Elite Extreme Pro Max Gold Caviar Truffle Edition, perhaps. This one has 18 cores, and according to CPU-Z 12 of those are Performance cores running at 4.4 GHz, with the other six being Efficient cores running at 3.6 GHz. That's a lot of cores, and with ARM chips' ability to produce exceptional single-core performance (as shown by Apple's M5 last year) I had high hopes for this one.

And I was right. The X2 doesn't hit the same Geekbench 6 heights as the M5, but it's close, and beats the desktop Core Ultra 7 265KF and mighty Ryzen 9 9955HX in the single-core test. It beats those chips in the Geekbench multi-core test too, along with the Core Ultra 9 275HX from the Alienware 16 Area 51, and roughly the same as the 14-core M4 Pro in a 16in MacBook Pro.

The elephant in the room here is Panther Lake, which is going to be appearing in new laptops at the same time as the X2. And in Geekbench, the X2 and Core X9 388H both score over 3,000 points in the single-core test, with the X2 marginally in front, but in multi-core the gap widens, probably because the Intel chip only has four of the full-fat performance cores and 16 in total. It scores 17,924. The X2: 22,785. That's a difference of almost 24%.

Moving over to the Cinebench single-core CPU rendering test, which has been known to bring laptops to their knees and in which 100 is a respectable score, the X2 scores 151. A laptop running the X9 388H scores 130 in this test, and the multi-core rendering workout goes the same way, with the X2's 1391 beating the Panther Lake chip's 1173.

All this is assuming, of course, that the same tests applied to different CPU architectures can be directly compared. Geekbench has been designed for this, though as more of a tool for plotting broad relationships rather than a perfect one-to-one comparison between PCs.

All that single-core performance makes the ZenBook A16 very responsive, and if Microsoft's new Low Latency Profile makes its way to Windows on ARM it should make things even better. The fact that Asus has paired Qualcomm's X2 with 48 GB of fast RAM certainly helps too.

Things are looking quite good for the ARM chip until you remember it still uses an integrated Adreno GPU, and we have yet to see one that's paired with a discrete graphics chip. Still, it's not bad for an iGPU, supporting DX12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4, and putting out enough frames to play games in 1080p as long as you don't mind medium to low settings. Cyberpunk 2077 looks surprisingly good on medium, and while there are some shimmering textures in Blackmyth: Wukong, it doesn't struggle too badly as long as you remember to switch FSR upscaling on. Older titles such as Horizon: Zero Dawn look like what they are: PS4 games (albeit ones running at nearly 60 fps in this case, rather than the locked 30 fps of the console version). But it's great to see the Adreno is capable enough to play them as they were originally meant to be seen.

There are still some issues with the occasional game—F1 2024, for example (and this might be a different story with a more up to date release), putting up a notice that it's not compatible with ARM processors. This could also be because it's a fairly new processor at the time of writing, and a few software patches and driver updates will sort it right out.

On the outside, this is an unassuming laptop, though as a 16-incher it has a presence that you just don't find in smaller models. It's a kind of beigy grey, which isn't utterly unpleasant but certainly stands out from all the black and silver casings out there, and is made from Asus' Ceraluminum material that's some sort of unholy amalgam of aluminium and ceramics. It has a matte feel, and makes the A16 extremely light, but it's also stiff enough to handle by the corner without the trackpad becoming non-functional.

That trackpad is a big one, too, smoother than the surrounding casing but the same colour, and a better experience than the keyboard, which doesn't have much travel and is the worst aspect of this particular package. The screen, however, might be one of the best. It's a 2.8k 16:10 OLED, not a touch-sensitive one, with a 120Hz refresh rate. It's sharp, bright (500 nits), colourful and all the things a laptop screen should be. Battery life is exceptional—at least it is if all you're doing is looping a video, at which it kept going for almost 17 hours. Make it work a bit harder and that's going to drop, and there's a fan to keep it cool when it's under load.

So once again, Qualcomm has released a capable chip with a bit of a weak GPU, though it's nowhere near as bad as last time. Asus has then put it into a laptop with an excellent screen, though it is a little bit expensive when you could pick up something with a low-end GeForce chip for less, and have a superior gaming experience.

I can't help thinking though, that if someone could teach the X2 to talk to an RTX card, even as an eGPU, then we could have something truly fearsome on our hands.

This is the monitor I've been waiting for. As someone who has just entered another Counter-Strike arc that is sure to last an epoch, as my arcs tend to, I've been on the look-out for a 1080p monitor around the 360 Hz (ish) sweet spot that doesn't break the bank. Enter stage left: the KTC 25M1, at just $350. And I've already seen it on sale for under $300, which bodes well.

Of course, this price-to-refresh-rate ratio wouldn't matter if the monitor sucked, but I'm happy to report it doesn't. Far from it, I'm finding it a genuine pleasure to use for my late night Faceit matchmaking sprees. In what is proving to be both a blessing and a curse, gameplay is so smooth, clear, and snappy that I find it impossible to blame any blunders on the panel. Even if I could convince myself my opponents are using the $1,000, 600 Hz Zowie panel I recently tested, it wouldn't matter because the difference in practice is so slight that I highly doubt it would actually make my enemies any better.

The 24-inch, 1080p monitor, clad with detachable flappy side-wings (to prevent distraction), rear-side headphone stand, cable management feed, and the usual smattering of ports including a 3.5 mm headphone jack, is bred for one purpose: competitive shooters.

No matter how fast it is, you're probably not getting a TN panel for casual gaming or even competitive non-FPS gaming. Even though this panel's colour is damn good for TN, it's not as lush as an IPS and certainly not as vibrant as an OLED.

While it offers a solid 98% sRGB coverage, its DCI-P3 is only rated to 85%, meaning its HDR content is average at best, which is what I'd expect from a TN panel. That fits for my experience turning HDR on in Doom Eternal and eyeballing it: lighting seems a little more natural, but it's hardly night and day between that and sRGB mode.

The sRGB mode thankfully seems pretty well calibrated to my eyes. In addition to making casual gaming pleasant, this makes day-to-day use outside of gaming surprisingly comfortable, too—surprising, that is, for a TN panel.

HDR, though, is certainly not as good as what you get on the 320 Hz Alienware IPS panel I tested. Still, that was an IPS, not a TN. And more expensive esports TN panels like the 600 Hz Zowie one don't have it as an option at all.

For this monitor's real purpose, though, HDR is irrelevant. Sticking it in FPS1 mode but raising brightness a little, Counter-Strike displays flawlessly: enemies are clear and easy to spot, and movements are incredibly smooth.

I used an Nvidia Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT) to test end-to-end latency—thus indirectly testing the response time—and it reported an average of 6.42 ms in-game over 150 muzzle flashes. That's well within a threshold where shooting feels and appears instantaneous to my eyes.

Latency performance

End-to-end latency

KTC 25M1

6.42

Alienware AW2525HM

6.09

Zowie XL2586X+

6.81

012345678910

Time (ms)

End-to-end latency Data

Product	Value
KTC 25M1	6.42
Alienware AW2525HM	6.09
Zowie XL2586X+	6.81

Tested using Nvidia's LDAT over 150 muzzle flashes in-game.

It's even quicker than the 600 Hz Zowie panel (6.81 ms), and only a little slower than the 320 Hz Alienware one with overdrive on (6.09 ms). These differences are all sub-millisecond, though, meaning they're imperceptible and for all intents and purposes we can say they perform about as well as each other when it comes to response times. I certainly didn't notice any difference in snappiness between the three when playing Counter-Strike.

For whatever reason, with this KTC monitor, I can't seem to find a mode that allows me to enable its 'Ultra Fast' overdrive, the fastest setting. But that's okay, because the middle 'Advanced' setting is snappy enough, and it's usually inadvisable to use the fastest overdrive mode in monitors anyway, as it risks inverse ghosting/halo effects. With the Advanced mode enabled, I haven't noticed any pixel overshoot.

Motion clarity is impeccable to my eyes, too, thanks to that 400 Hz refresh rate. As you can see from my slapdash moving photo of an also-moving UFO test, the high refresh rate really does make a difference. The top animation shown was running at 400 fps, the second at 200, the third at 100, the fourth at 50, and the bottom one at 25.

This difference is visible when eyeballing the moving alien targets, too: 400 Hz is just that much clearer than the rest. Admittedly, playing at 240 Hz in game will still be plenty clear, but this is just another example that goes to show what I've argued previously: around 360 Hz (or 400 Hz, in this case) is the sweet spot for competitive gaming.

To my memory, this monitor is also a bit clearer than I found the 320 Hz Alienware monitor to be when I tested it. I simply can't fault it for smoothness and snappiness.

The bonus here is you're getting the 360–400 Hz sweet spot for a damn good price. The 400 Hz Zowie equivalent costs $650, while this KTC monitor costs about $350 and can even be found for just shy of $300 when it's on sale. The 320 Hz Alienware monitor comes in cheaper than this, but honestly for the extra refresh rate and motion clarity boost, I'd say the KTC is worth it if you can afford it. If not, the Alienware will serve well.

With the KTC 25M1, you're hitting the refresh rate sweet spot just before diminishing returns kick in, which means you're getting some of the absolute best competitive/esports performance you can hope for before prices start to soar.

I feel KTC has struck the balance very well, keeping the price as low as possible for the performance on offer, and keeping things within a budget that doesn't only cater to pro players but also to your average competitive FPS gamer like yours truly. This would be the monitor I'd choose for competitive FPS gaming right now if my own money were on the line.

The Asus ProArt lineup is, in essence, the company's range of fancy PC products for creative professionals—and my goodness does it contain some nice-looking stuff. Which is why I jumped at the chance to test out one of the latest additions, the Asus ProArt Mouse MD301.

It's certainly a handsome squeaker, designed to provide a subtle, refined, ergonomic option for those who have some serious work to do. It's all business, this mouse, and there's something desirable about a design that eschews gamer-like frippery and instead aims for a more executive flair.

It's also customisable, in the sense that you can remove its main button switches for something more serene, or more clicky. There's also a horizontal scroll wheel, à la the Logitech MX Master range, which feels beautifully dampened. Really, most of the controls here are of the premium, well-thought-out sort, and that's very pleasing to see.

However, this $100/£105 professional rodent has the odd quirk that gives me pause. The side buttons are a touch flimsy. The thumb rest is slightly small and a little awkward. I've also had the odd connection issue, and the software feels like an afterthought.

There's a lot to like about the MD301. But as a long-term tester of the Logitech MX Master 4, I can't help but feel that if you're going down the professional ergo mouse route, it's the better buy of the two. The ProArt MD301 is a lighter, leaner attempt at an ergonomic mouse with many admirable qualities, but it drops the ball a little too often to give it my full seal of approval.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 features

The Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 is an ergonomically-shaped mouse that feels a lot smaller than your average ergo squeaker, coming in at 114.8 mm long, 75.2 mm wide, and 46.8 mm tall. Sit it next to a Logitech MX Master 4, and it looks positively tiny. It's also cheaper, coming in at $100 compared to the Logitech's $120 MSRP.

It's got six programmable buttons, including all the usual suspects. A left and right click, a middle scroll wheel click, two side buttons, and a hidden DPI button underneath a ridged plastic surface integrated into the chassis behind the wheel. It looks, in many ways, like a default mouse—albeit with some subtle ergo touches

Oh, and it's also got a horizontal scroll wheel mounted to the left-hand side. Logitech really changed the game with the old MX Master 3S design, didn't it?

Another interesting feature to note is the switches underneath the left and right buttons. By default, the ProArt MD301 comes with two (deep breath in) TTC E169-60BB0G0 (80M) units, but these push-fit socketed models can be pulled out and replaced with supported TTC, Omron, and Kaith units, which Asus has handily listed here.

The scroll wheel has a party trick, too, in the form of Asus' SmartShift tech. This allows for precise, clicky control when spun slowly, and a free-wheeling action when you spin it at an appropriate speed. It's a lot like Logitech's magnetic solution on paper, but feels quite different.

Spin the wheel at high speeds, and you can still feel it notch underneath your fingertip, albeit very quickly. Whereas Logitech's infinite scroll feature frees the wheel up with a glass-like, smooth action, the MD301 has a tendency to keep some tactile feedback in play, which makes it easy to stop at a defined point with precision.

Asus says the MD301 has up to 180-day battery life, and can gain eight hours' worth of charge in a single minute over its USB Type-C connection. Speaking of which, it also comes with a braided Type-C to Type-A cable, and a small USB Type-A dongle for wireless connection. Bluetooth connection is also supported.

Sensor-wise, this Asus squeaker makes do with an 8,000 DPI optical unit, which, in combination with its 1,000 Hz maximum polling rate, is unlikely to set gamers' hearts a-fluttering. Still, the MX Master 4 does just fine with a similar sensor (and a much lower polling rate), so it's not unsurprising for a work-first mouse. It's also a fair bit lighter than Logitech's latest ergo effort, tipping the scales at 99.7 g compared to the MX Master 4's 150 g bulk.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 ergonomics

The first thing I noticed about the MD301 is its diminutive proportions, especially when sat next to the MX Master 4. It's a lot narrower, with a much smaller thumb rest. However, it's got a wider top "hump", which feels good underneath my palm.

Switching between the two, it's clear that the Asus is designed to rotate your hand over to the right side more drastically than most, although at nowhere near as extreme an angle as something like the Keychron M5. It doesn't feel aggressively ergo, though. More like a slightly chonkier gaming mouse with some interesting quirks.

Clicking and spinning my way around the controls, I've been continually impressed by the effort that's gone into the switchgear and material choices. The left and right switches have a very positive click action, and well-weighted buttons.

The scrollwheel feels notchy yet free-flowing in all the right ways, with its clicky, fast-speed scroll being something of a highlight. The same goes for the horizontal wheel, which is heavily dampened and weighty underneath my thumb. Nice.

I'm also a big fan of the smooth outer coating, which has a silky quality that feels rather pleasant underneath my fingertips. It's slightly fingerprint-prone, but no worse than any other black gaming mouse I test these days.

The DPI switch is hidden underneath a ridged plastic insert that runs down the middle of the design, and provides a small moment of delight when you realise it's exactly where you expect it to be, but tastefully obscured. This is a classy mouse. A device for grown-ups. A refined rodent, if you will.

The only real ergonomic drawbacks come in two forms. One, the left-side thumbrest is quite small, and dips inwards. Using the MX Master 4 on the daily, my thumb has become accustomed to lolling on its own throne-like protrusion of silicone—whereas here it needs to tuck itself into a diminutive (and firm) plastic seat. My digit has become lazy, it seems, and has a tendency to want to fall off.

And two, the side buttons don't feel as high-quality as the rest of the unit. They're perfectly functional, but sitting as they do beneath a gorgeously weighted horizontal scrollwheel, the contrast is immediately obvious. They're simply "fine," while the rest of the controls are pretty excellent.

Overall, though, the ProArt MD301 is an impressive-feeling device, especially given its relatively low weight compared to its chassis size and ergo design. If anything, I could stand for it to be slightly heavier, in return for better side buttons and a bit of extra room for my thumb.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 performance

Given this is an ergo mouse with a relatively modest sensor, it would be unfair to expect Razer Viper V4 Pro-like performance or tracking ability from the MD301. Lo and behold, it's not the sharpest-performing rodent on the block.

Still, the sensor tracks well enough for work and light gaming usage, as shown by the MouseTester charts below.

I have, however, experienced the odd connection drop out. This has manifested as a very occasional half-second pause, and has happened several times during my week-long testing. I've got a lot of 2.4 GHz wireless devices plugged into my machine, and several more around my front room, so it's possible that the dongle here is slightly interference-prone—although I haven't been able to pin down the exact cause.

I have two other gaming mice plugged into this PC at all times (the MX Master 4 and the Razer Cobra Hyperspeed), and neither have had any connection issues. I tried unplugging both mice to see if it fixed the problem, and managed a few days of solid connection—before again experiencing a very quick pause.

I also had one connection pause while using the mouse with a gaming laptop I'm currently testing, so it doesn't seem to be specific to my main machine. The problem is so intermittent as to be barely noticeable, but there's something in this room the MD301's 2.4 GHz dongle doesn't appear to like.

Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 aesthetics

I love the ProArt MD301's aesthetic design. It's somehow utilitarian, slightly luxury, handsome, and hardly noticeable all at the same time. The ridged plastic vertical insert framing the scrollwheel is about as simple as design touches come, and yet adds a certain something that both feels good underneath your fingertips, and looks ever-so-slightly special on your desk.

Do I miss RGB lighting, or a touch of gamer flair? Not a bit of it. This mouse is all business, and that by itself makes it stand out.

Asus ProArt MD301 software

The ProArt MD301 connects to Asus Gear Link, a web-based app that allows you to adjust the DPI, polling rate, and button response settings within a browser. In order to tweak macros and use some of the features, though, you also need to install a companion app as an extension, which somehow feels like the worst of both worlds.

Pick either a web app, or installed app, Asus. Having one in order to properly use the other feels like an extra level of annoyance.

The web app itself has the odd quirk, too. I regularly split my 32-inch, 4K screen into two side-by-side browser windows, but the Asus app complains that it doesn't have enough room in one panel, suggesting I "switch to a larger screen." What do you want, a 49-inch ultrawide?

There's an option to use it anyway, though that's a new one on me. It seems to scale the interface just fine if you override it, but it's a bit indicative of the software experience overall. Unfinished is the feeling I come away with.

Still, early annoyances aside, the web interface works well enough. It's a bit barebones, though, and given the premium-feel of the mouse itself, it strikes as a clunky afterthought tacked on to what is otherwise a well-put-together package.

Asus ProArt MD301 value

At its $100 MSRP, I'd say the Asus ProArt Mouse MD301 is well-priced for its bracket. It's a chunk cheaper than the Logitech MX Master 4, and looks and feels like a premium mouse for more reasonable money.

That being said, I can't help but feel you're getting a lot more for your cash with Logitech's offering. It's got a more comfortable thumb rest, near-silent switches as standard, and a set of controls that can match (and occasionally beat) the Asus in terms of feel. And, it must be said, the Logitech software experience is a lot more refined. Plus, I've not experienced any connection pauses with the Master in many months of everyday usage.

Which puts the ProArt squeaker in an odd spot. It's a lot lighter than the Master 4, which makes it more suitable as a gaming mouse. But it's still got an ergo-spec sensor, so I doubt many will be buying it for its gaming performance chops.

And while it's a good-looking object that would suit the *loudly coughs* executive-ergo-mouse-using-professional, I can't help but feel there are enough hang-ups here to cause them to sniff into their yuzu-infused lattes.

It's a good effort from Asus, and a mouse with many likeable qualities. However, the quirks slightly outweigh the advantages, and as a result, I struggle to recommend it over the competition.

The LiberNovo Omni Pro is what happens when a very good first‑gen idea goes in for a polish rather than a full redesign. If you've read my original LiberNovo Omni review, you know the bar here is high. That chair is still the comfiest thing I've ever sat in for ridiculous work‑and‑gaming days. The Pro turns that same formula up a notch in a few key areas—materials, finish, and a couple of tech tricks—but it doesn't fundamentally change how it feels to sit in.

Day to day, comfort is still excellent. The cushions are plush but supportive, and I can go from writing to gaming without my back complaining. LiberNovo re‑engineered the seat with multi‑density foam, but if I'm honest, I can't say I feel a big difference. The original already nailed it, so the Pro feels more like a refinement than a really tangible upgrade here.

The bigger change is how well that comfort can now fit your body. You can choose a 45 cm or 48 cm seat depth at checkout, which is great if you've ever had a chair either cut into the back of your knees or stop awkwardly short of your thighs. Average‑sized folks will be fine on 45 cm; if you've got longer legs, 48 cm gives you more support under there. And if you're properly tall or need something truly built for bigger frames, LiberNovo's Maxis line is really the one you should be looking at first.

The big change you notice while actually using the chair is the new five‑position recline system: 105°, 115°, 125°, 135°, and 160°. Each angle is pitched as a "mode." Deep Focus at 105° is your upright, camera‑on posture. Nudge it back to 115°—Balance mode—and your spine and shoulders relax a bit without dropping you into lazy‑boy territory.

At 125° (Solo‑Work), you're in that natural lean‑back zone that suits long editing or deep‑work sessions. 135° (Soft Recline) is where I ended up with a controller in hand, still close enough to the desk to reach controls without overextending. Then 160° is Spine Flow, the full lay‑flat angle for power naps and the motorized OmniStretch spinal stretch.

On paper it's a smart, lifestyle‑based ladder of positions. In practice, the tuning isn't perfect. The jump from 105° to 115° feels a little abrupt and less smooth in motion than the original Omni's recline. Once you're actually settled into Solo‑Work or Soft Recline it feels fantastic, but it does give off a bit of "we added more stops for the spec sheet" energy rather than solving a problem I actually had.

Where the Pro does clearly earn its name is build quality and materials. Overall construction feels a notch tighter than the original: cleaner stitching, subtle design flourishes on the wheelbase, and noticeably less creaking from the backrest when you shift around. It feels less like a Kickstarter experiment and more like a polished production chair.

The headline upgrade is that Gabriel Atlantic Danish fabric. Terrible branding, fantastic textile. It looks and feels genuinely premium—more high‑end task chair than shouty gaming throne—and it has the numbers to back it up: abrasion resistance rated for roughly a decade of heavy use, OEKO‑TEX certified, breathable, flame‑retardant, and machine‑washable without shrinking. In the real world, the question is how it handles crumbs, spills and kid‑induced chaos, and that's something only months and years of abuse will reveal. Right now, it feels like the right kind of overkill and looks stunning at my white Secretlab Magnus desk.

Ergonomically, most things are evolutionary. The 4D armrests are a bit less prone to spinning or drifting when you bump them, though they're still not perfect. The headrest has more adjustability and is lovely when you're reclined, but in a true upright focus posture it still doesn't come out far enough for my liking. It feels tuned first for lounging, second for locked‑in work.

The motorized lumbar system has been revised internally and should be more durable. The feel, though, is very similar to the OG Omni: you get depth adjustment but not height. If the default strike point doesn't line up with your lower back, it can still feel more like a mid‑back nudge than that sweet, targeted lumbar hug. In the reclined modes it's more forgiving; in upright, I still wish they'd added vertical adjustment.

Then there's the new party trick: Active Airflow Seat Ventilation. Under the seat is a centrifugal fan pushing air up through perforated foam and mesh, with two levels—Low and High—rated for up to 36 and 9 hours respectively off the built‑in 3000 mAh battery. There's a seat sensor so it automatically pauses when you get up and resumes when you sit back down, plus a memory function so it remembers your last setting.

Here's the thing: it's winter where I am, so I haven't been desperate for a cooled backside. When I did use it, the sensation is more of a gentle coolness than "there's a fan under my bum." I can see this being a genuine quality‑of‑life upgrade in summer or if you work somewhere hot, but right now it feels more like a clever extra than the killer feature that justifies the "Pro" price tag.

The rest of the electronics story is thankfully boring in the good way. Battery life remains excellent; even with mixed use—occasional lumbar tweaks, the odd Omni stretch cycle, some airflow thrown in—I never got close to killing it. Like my Omni, I don't expect to be charging this one very often which is a great convenience.

What hasn't changed is the warranty, and that's the part that continues to bug me. You get five years on the frame and only two on the electronics, even though all the Pro‑specific magic lives in those electronics. LiberNovo promises better long‑term reliability this time around, but until these have been out in the wild for a few years, that's just a promise. And the optional footrest? Still the weak link. I didn't rate it on the original and it's effectively unchanged here: okay for lounging, not something I'd build my daily ergonomics around.

So where does that leave the Omni Pro? It's clearly the flagship of the range. You're paying extra for nicer fabric, cleaner finish, a more articulated recline and the cooling seat. Comfort, however, hasn't really moved on. This is still one of the most comfortable chairs I've used, but it doesn't feel noticeably comfier than the original Omni. The gains are mostly in polish and feel rather than in raw, "my back is changed forever" ergonomics.

Does it really earn the "Pro" badge? Sort of. It's the best, most premium expression of the Omni idea, not a ground‑up reimagining. If you want the nicest version and you're happy to pay for upgraded materials and the tech flourishes, the Omni Pro will absolutely treat you well. If you're more budget‑conscious, or simply less excited about motors and fans in the thing you sit on all day, the Omni SE suddenly looks very smart: you lose the electric lumbar and airflow, keep the core comfort and ergonomics, and save around $400. For a lot of people, that's going to be the real sweet spot.

Honestly, I want to like the Geekom A9 Max, I really do. From a pure design perspective, the hardware, the engineering behind it, the connectivity bundled into this thing, it's on another level. And it's just a bloody pretty thing at that, at least as far as Mini PCs go. You'd think it'd be a shoo-in for our best SFF PC list, without question. But there's a catch, because of course there is.

I may as well rip the band-aid off right now. It's the memory. I can already see the PR team squirming as they read that sentence, and it genuinely does pain me to say it, I promise. Geekom has decided to ship the A9 Max AI with a single stick of 32 GB DDR5 @ 5600 MT/s. And that is a decision that has effectively starved AMD's Radeon 890M of any modicum of the performance it can actually generate. I know this because I have extensively tested this hardware most recently, in Acemagic's Mini PC Retro X5, which, like-for-like, practically has the same spec, bar a smaller SSD, and a slightly older CPU.

The performance impact that this one tiny decision has had on the overall architecture is nuts, and combined with the wildly high price tag being what it is, it's by far the thing that's decimated that review score. If Geekom turned around tomorrow and popped 2x 16 GB sticks in this config instead of this single-channel nonsense, I can happily tell you right now, the score would bounce up by a good 15%, because in almost every other way, the A9 Max is excellent.

And, breathe. I'll get back to that in a minute. Still, for £1,600 in the UK or $1,800 US, it's generally not a bad offering (memory aside). You get that 32 GB RAM capacity, a 2TB Kingston PCIe 4.0 SSD (it's not the best), AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 CPU, A Radeon 890M iGPU, and a hell of a lot of connectivity.

The chip itself is relatively new on the scene, only really landing with us in January of this year. Though it's effectively a refreshed Strix Point (HX 370 series) chip, still built out of the same silicon architecture as its predecessor. You get those four Zen 5 cores, and eight Zen 5c cores for a fat 12/24 multi-threaded config, and it's all still built on the back of TSMC's 4 nm process as well. What's different? Well… clock speeds have been bumped ever so slightly up (with an extra 100 MHz on boost), oh, and the "biggest" update comes in the form of the NPU, which has seen its performance flick up to 86 TOPS versus its predecessor's 80 (huzzah, our AI datacenter worries are finally solved).

Connectivity is wild, too. There's so much here if you're looking for a lightweight workstation that's not brimming with a dedicated GPU and full-fat processor. There's no less than five USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A, two USB 4.0 Type-Cs, twin 2.5 Gbe, along with support for twin HDMI 2.1 ports, as well as the other bells and whistles you'd expect. No Thunderbolt, of course, but you do get WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

Alright, I'm going to give you some numbers now, and they're quite clearly bad. But, it's important that we all collectively have context on this before I act like a wailing harpie and impale this memory situation into the dirt with my shiny shiny words (honestly, it's a miracle I get paid for this).

So, we test our SFF PCs (with iGPUs) at 1080p on the medium graphical preset. For this little wee dissection, I'm going to be using that Acemagic X5 I mentioned earlier for comparison. It has the same Radeon GPU, the same memory speed, memory capacity, a better SSD (albeit smaller), and practically the same CPU for what it's worth (technically, the A9 Max has a better chip here). On average, across all our test titles, with and without upscaling, across five separate games, separate engines, separate developers, the A9 Max landed just 23.1 fps. The Retro X5, with its dual-channel memory, 47.6 fps.

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1080p gaming performance

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium)F1 24 (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original)Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

9

7

Acemagic Retro X5

20

16

Black Myth Wukong (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	9 Avg FPS, 7 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	20 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

22

15

Acemagic Retro X5

38

22

Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	22 Avg FPS, 15 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	38 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

24

Acemagic Retro X5

73

59

F1 24 (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	73 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

23

13

Acemagic Retro X5

43

32

Horizon Zero Dawn (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	23 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	43 Avg FPS, 32 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

14

5

Acemagic Retro X5

23

8

Metro Exodus Enhanced (1080p High) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	14 Avg FPS, 5 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	23 Avg FPS, 8 1% Low FPS

You can clearly see how a memory bandwidth starved iGPU is hobbled by having single channel memory here.

1080p upscaled gaming performance

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium)Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

14

11

Acemagic Retro X5

30

22

Black Myth Wukong | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	14 Avg FPS, 11 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	30 Avg FPS, 22 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

20

Acemagic Retro X5

52

27

Cyberpunk 2077 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	52 Avg FPS, 27 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

30

26

Acemagic Retro X5

86

75

F1 24 | Upscaling (1080p Medium) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	30 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	86 Avg FPS, 75 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Geekom A9 Max

36

21

Acemagic Retro X5

63

44

Horizon Zero Dawn | Upscaling (1080p Original) Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	36 Avg FPS, 21 1% Low FPS
Acemagic Retro X5	63 Avg FPS, 44 1% Low FPS

The performance gap between the system with dual-channel memory and the one with single-channel memory doesn't get any better with upscaling enabled.

Synthetic gaming performance

3DMark Time Spy3DMark StorageFFXIV Shadowbringers

Index score

GPU index score

CPU index score

Geekom A9 Max

2301

2035

8948

Acemagic Retro X5

3532

3153

11109

3DMark Time Spy Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	2301 Index score, 2035 GPU index score, 8948 CPU index score
Acemagic Retro X5	3532 Index score, 3153 GPU index score, 11109 CPU index score

Index score

Avg bandwidth (MB/s)

Access time (ųs)

Geekom A9 Max

1306

226.22

139

Acemagic Retro X5

2460

415.65

72

3DMark Storage Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	1306 Index score, 226.22 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 139 Access time (ųs)
Acemagic Retro X5	2460 Index score, 415.65 Avg bandwidth (MB/s), 72 Access time (ųs)

Geekom A9 Max

38.96

Acemagic Retro X5

20.45

FFXIV Shadowbringers Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	38.96
Acemagic Retro X5	20.45

Contrary to what Geekom says, the synthetic performance difference is actually less than real-world in-game benchmarks.

It's not a limitation that sits solely with gaming, either. In 7-Zip, compression and decompression were markedly slower, multi-core performance in CineBench was down too, and the only times it did beat out the HX 370 was in single-threaded tasks, where memory bandwidth is less of a thing. Not exactly a riveting score sheet then. Even 3DMark's Storage benchmark came out significantly slower, which I can't believe even for a second is entirely down to the drive being just that much sloppier than the EXT X200E found in the X5 is.

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Synthetic CPU performance

Cinebench R247-zip

Single-core index score

Multi-core index score

Geekom A9 Max

119

1101

Acemagic Retro X5

107

1169

Cinebench R24 Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	119 Single-core index score, 1101 Multi-core index score
Acemagic Retro X5	107 Single-core index score, 1169 Multi-core index score

Compression (GIPS)

Decompression (GIPS)

Geekom A9 Max

98.88

130.12

Acemagic Retro X5

110.45

131.4

7-zip Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	98.88 Compression (GIPS), 130.12 Decompression (GIPS)
Acemagic Retro X5	110.45 Compression (GIPS), 131.4 Decompression (GIPS)

This is likely where Geekom's claims about limited performance difference ring true, as you can see both systems performing well.

Cooling performance

Thermal performance

Max CPU temp (°C)

Max CPU package power (W)

Geekom A9 Max

86

64.98

Acemagic Retro X5

85

69.98

Thermal performance Data

Product	Value
Geekom A9 Max	86 Max CPU temp (°C), 64.98 Max CPU package power (W)
Acemagic Retro X5	85 Max CPU temp (°C), 69.98 Max CPU package power (W)

This is likely where Geekom's claims about limited performance difference ring true, as you can see both systems performing well.

Just to be doubly sure, I re-ran the whole benchmark suite, and triple-checked GPU frequencies, temps and power draw throughout that process too, noting down average frequencies as well (not typically something we report on for these machines). The X5 maxed out at 2,764 MHz and 2,100 MHz on average, at 60 degrees and with 50 W on max draw. The A9, 3,100 MHz at max, 2,300 MHz on average, with a top temp of 63 degrees and 55 W of power usage. By all accounts, then, the GPU itself was running at full tilt, but was just starved of memory bandwidth.

Geekom knows about this, too. In fact, I was pre-briefed that this was a decision it had made in advance. The justification being that it provides end-users with the option to expand their memory solution later down the line with an additional stick of 32 GB. Which, yeah, okay, I don't necessarily disagree with.

Geekom also notes that, actually, the performance drops are only in synthetic benchmarks, and don't affect real-world performance. Which I do disagree with.

You can quite clearly see that this does massively impact real-world results. In fact, more so than in the synthetic tests, by my calculations. What's particularly frustrating about all this is that nowhere on the product pages (at least at time of writing) does it suggest that the A9 Max ships with a single stick. It's all "dual-channel compatible", "up to 128 GB", or "32 GB RAM", "High-speed memory".

It's a difficult thing to just accept, because the truth of it is the A9 Max is an outstanding piece of design. It's cool, quiet, and it's clear that the CPU in particular is seriously potent, particularly in localised AI applications if that's your jam. The sad reality is, we've already seen what this hardware can do; it just came in a beige box at half the price.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced might go down as one of the more puzzling remakes ever conceived. Not only is it bizarre that Ubisoft decided to kick off a likely streak of remakes with the sixth game of the series, but it also chose a game so recently and universally enjoyed that the only way to "remake" it is to simply put out the same game again.

A cleaned-up remaster might have been better than what Ubisoft has done here. Resynced is tirelessly faithful to the qualities that set Black Flag apart in this series—sailing the Jackdaw is as great as ever, now distinguished by a newer Anvil engine that enables dynamic weather, time-of-day, and a truly seamless open world—but fundamental changes to combat, stealth, and encounter design reveal that this is essentially Black Flag stuffed inside Assassin's Creed Shadows.

Resynced is good. It's slick, ridiculously beautiful, and improves on the original Black Flag in several ways. I'm impressed by Ubisoft's Singapore's obvious love for the source material—every story beat and cutscene has been recreated shot-for-shot with original performances intact. If you've never played the second-best Assassin's Creed game ever made, Resynced will get the job done.

For a while, I even believed it would outshine the original Black Flag—I was wooed by Resynced's breathtaking Caribbean vistas that stretched further than my PS3 could be asked, taken by its swashbuckling ship-to-ship showdowns, and impressed by the return of "advanced parkour" mechanics like back and side ejects. Ubisoft spent a generation transforming Assassin's Creed from a stealth-action power fantasy into a loot-driven RPG with spammy combat, and only now is it trying to make amends. Resynced feels like Ubisoft teaching itself how to make a proper Assassin's Creed again, and graded on that curve, it's quite good.

But then, after rolling credits, I reinstalled that original game. Even though I was retreading missions that I'd literally just played newer versions of, I had so much more fun in Black Flag 2013 that I just kept playing… and playing, and playing, until I'd completed both games front-to-back in the same week.

This turned out to be a useful exercise (I told my fiancé, puzzled by a second round of sea shanties emanating from my Steam Deck), because it took a return to old Assassin's Creed to properly appreciate mechanics, design choices, and an entire storyline that, according to internet consensus and Ubisoft, weren't worth preserving. Now having braved Black Flag's dreaded tailing missions, indulged in Ezio-era chain killing, and hacked the computers of my Abstergo coworkers, I reckon this 13-year-old game has aged quite gracefully.

I'm glad Resynced is here, but honestly? The original is better.

Jumper

Take parkour and climbing. Ubisoft is making a big deal about Resynced's parkour being a step up from Shadows, Mirage, and Valhalla, and while that's true, that's setting the bar on the floor. Compared to the original, Edward's updated movement is stilted and floaty. Classic maneuvers are there, but they don't flow very well, resulting in freerunning that looks like bespoke animations playing on a timeline rather than a fluid sequence. Whatever black magic Ubi used to hide these animation seams in the 2010s was lost in the remake process.

Perhaps Ubi is satisfied with less convincing parkour as long as it's faster. Resynced's locomotion is designed as if Black Flag's meticulous animations were a nuisance. Remake Edward wallruns straight up single-story buildings like he's Spider-Man, then proceeds to expedite larger climbs through silly-looking vertical leaps that have more in common with Sly Cooper than Ezio Auditore. When I should be punished for chancing an unwise jump, Edward suddenly gains springs in his boots to clear the gap.

For as much guff as the old AC games get for finicky climbing, Black Flag represented six games of refinements—steering Edward over rooftops, through branches, and across highwires in 2026 is still expressive, and less prone to accidents than the first few games. Climbs are smooth, but weighty and methodical. It takes some time and a little brainpower to crest a church tower or fort. In my unscientific test using the same building in 2013 vs 2026, remake Edward flew up this church twice as fast:

I find the part where original Edward carefully climbs around a window overhang, followed by remake Edward phasing straight through it, to be illustrative.

Resynced is functional and quick, but it's not cool or (dare I say) immersive. And man, that used to be a core appeal of this series. Neither system is complex, but the old climbing at least feels intentional—like we're meant to experience the effort and time it takes to scale a structure that was never meant to be climbed.

That pace has a grounding effect that extends beyond walls. Remake Edward no longer runs with any simulated momentum, meaning he can instantly change direction or flip a u-turn like he's a Dark Souls protagonist. It's a very artificial, videogame-y feel that I ended up resenting the more I played the weightier original.

Blade dance

Even when Resynced's systems are objectively better, Ubi has failed to respect the rule of cool. Black Flag's reimagined combat carries over Shadows' dodge/parry and light/heavy attacks, with the addition of Edward's signature chain kills. It's more engaging than the original's simplistic "counter and instakill everybody" approach, but confusingly, the remake actually reduces Edward's combat options by a lot.

Hidden blades are no longer a primary weapon, now relegated to finisher animations. You can't steal enemy muskets, sabers or heavy axes—temporary pickups that carried their own advantages, drawbacks, and cool finisher animations in the original.

No, remake Edward is strictly a cutlass man, except now he can kick enemies. I don't think the tradeoff was worth it, because Black Flag was never lacking challenging combat. I remember liking Edward as a terrifying pirate terminator soloing the crews of rival brigs, and that impression was backed up by my replay. It's not cerebral stuff, but the weapon pickups gave me more ways to play with my food, and fluid chainkills are gratifying for the same reasons the Batman Arkham games still kick ass.

With respect to some new, freshly gruesome Edward finishers, the remake combat is too mushy and spammy to accomplish the same fantasy. Old AC is about messing dudes up and looking awesome doing it, but new AC is about cleaving away at a health bar.

This is especially true in Resynced's occasional forced boss fights, which replace moments where you're meant to stealthily assassinate targets. You know, like assassins do.

The chase

At least Resynced wins in the sneaking department. The arrival of Shadows' crouch button instantly elevates both the complexity and fantasy of stalking targets from rooftops. The majority of Black Flag's missions involve infiltration and neck-stabbing, so this is a significant upgrade. I felt empowered to explore compounds and avoid guards more often than I killed them, which I attribute to a gracious window between guards seeing Edward and actually pursuing him. Stealth within compounds was the highlight of Shadows, so this is no surprise, but I'm disappointed that Ubi has also repeated that game's mistakes with the cities surrounding those compounds.

The remakes of Kingston, Havana, and Nassau are faithful and, in some cases, even expanded, but Ubi has rendered them less dynamic by nerfing the British and Spanish troops that patrol them. Rooftop guards are completely absent in neutral areas, which kills all the tension of freerunning from A to B. If you do manage to piss off guards, they won't even try to chase you outside of their immediate station. Caught trying to steal booty in a restricted zone? Just run outside and they'll forget you exist.

Ubi has lost the art of the chase, and it sucks. Chases were once a fun, unique feature of Assassin's Creed that forced you to take paths that guards could not easily follow, break line-of-sight to avoid gunshots, and keep your cool long enough to lose a tail in a haystack, bench, or closet. Ubi had already started to deemphasize notoriety systems by the time Black Flag came around—guards will quickly forget about Edward once he loses them, and you don't have to tear down posters of your face—but chases themselves persisted. Resynced lovingly recreated all of those benches, wells, and closets, then gave me exactly zero reasons to use them.

It's one of many ways that Resynced subtly changes the original Black Flag in the name of "quality of life," but ends up blander for it. The series' infamous tailing missions are now much easier. Thanks to no rooftop guards, you can just follow from above with zero worries, and if you do get spotted, just skip to the end of the mission by killing your target and looting the relevant info instead. I know these missions were unpopular with the impatient, but the occasional round of enforced stealth gave AC's repetitive infiltrations some variety while utilizing city space that was otherwise just there.

They also reinforced that, occasionally, stealth is the entire point. These games aren't as fun when every problem can be solved by a hidden blade.

Ship combat has been grazed by the easy beam, too. The Jackdaw is significantly more maneuverable in the remake, a small but consequential player buff that makes follow-up cannon volleys easier while in motion. I also noticed that enemy ships were generally less aggressive on normal difficulty—when I returned to 2013 Black Flag after 25 hours with the remake, I got my ass handed to me by a level one pirate hunter.

The Abstergo of it all

And, oh yeah, Resynced also surgically removes a huge chunk of Black Flag's story. The entire conceit of the original game is that you're an Abstergo Entertainment employee rummaging through Desmond's DNA so that a fictional Ubisoft can turn Edward's memories into a videogame while the Templars covertly seek the precursor technology at the heart of the story. Those sequences are just totally gone, replaced by an Animus interface only used for battle pass unlocks. What a downgrade.

I'm surprised that the removal of all Abstergo business was universally cheered upon announcement. The present day stuff was never my favorite part of these games, but I've always considered Black Flag's a net positive. The interludes were short, semi-optional, and rewarded fans with a mountain of worldbuilding through emails, voice logs, and hidden videos. My recent playthrough reminded me that the ending of these episodes is pretty terrible, but so reveals a lost opportunity. Ubisoft could have directed resources at making this integral part of the original game better, but they just deleted it and replaced it with nothing at all.

It's revisionist history that nobody liked this part of the game—I did, for one, and plenty of reviewers did too. Are we meant to take this as Ubi retconning this series as nothing more than historical action games? Assassin's Creed is a sci-fi world, damn it!

Back-to-back

50 hours across two back-to-back Black Flag playthroughs left me with a lot to chew on. It's a testament to Black Flag's triumphant sailing that it was fun enough to do twice with minimal changes. Time has not been as kind to Edward Kenway, who I'm now convinced is a dull character with an unearned hero arc I was not smart enough to see through at 17 years old.

But the long gap between playthroughs was also long enough to miss a version of these games that was getting a bit tiresome by 2013. There's a comfort to the original's plodding pace, myriad collectibles, and simplistic swordplay that actually stands out more in 2026 than Resynced's "break yet another posture meter" combat and entirely optional stealth.

Resynced's advantages are plain to see. Its world is one of the most gorgeous and realistic depictions of nature ever put to videogame, and its simplifications will likely prove broadly appealing. This is also the better PC port, offering loads of graphical options and features with relatively chill system requirements. It's even Steam Deck verified at launch, though if it's roughly as performant as Shadows, expect a jittery 30 fps target. The original, on the other hand, is finicky in ways that many early 2010s console games were on PC. There's no borderless fullscreen, it doesn't like being alt-tabbed, and will hang for 20 seconds on startup trying to load ancient Uplay stuff unless you cancel it each time. It's also locked at 60 fps by default, but there's a mod for that.

Photoreal graphics are nice (especially on my RTX 5090/9800X3D machine), but man, have you seen the old Black Flag lately? The faces are rough, but that world is still a looker. It's a bit more stylish and grimy than Resynced's polished look, and I prefer it for a pirate adventure.

I just don't think Resynced's marquee features are all that important to me. I kept going through this exercise with Resynced where a new feature would be introduced and I'd assume it was new to the remake—"Oh wow, a home I can customize and improve over time! Neat, they added more ship ammo types! I don't remember these Mayan statue puzzles. Naval contracts? That's definitely new"—only to realize all of them existed in the original, untouched by the remake process.

Resynced is decent, but it takes away more than it adds, as if Ubisoft wasn't confident in the hit game it made 13 years ago. It's a conflicted remake that's worth a look, but is ultimately inessential.

The humble mouse has been through some changes in its time. When it’s not adding extra buttons all over the place it’s twisting your wrist into unlikely positions or looking like whatever the Mad Catz RAT was. A general theme over the years, however, is that they’re getting bigger, and perhaps there's a study to be done into whether PC gamers’ hands are getting larger too, the better to cradle and envelop them.

Logitech has taken the opposite approach with the Mobi—it’s truly tiny. This is a travel mouse, a mouse for the truly short of space, a sliver of silicone-wrapped plastic that folds in half when not in use, looking rather like the Surface Arc mouse Microsoft put out in 2017, but a little bit cheaper. Where that device folded flat for transport, this one goes the other way.

Hand the Mobi to someone and the conversation goes like this: “It’s a phone?” No. “It’s a phone stand?” No. “What is it then? I can’t believe I don’t know.” Click click click on the buttons. “Oh, it’s a mouse!”

While it may resemble a Star Trek communicator or a tiny flip phone to go with your geek pie hairstyle (“that’s well weapon”), the Mobi is in fact just a mouse. It has two main buttons, two further programmable buttons, a little touch-sensitive panel to act as a scroll wheel, a PAW3222 4,000 DPI optical sensor, and a USB-C port for charging. It connects to your PC (and two other devices) via Bluetooth with fast pairing, and will play nicely with a Bolt receiver if you ask it to, though one isn’t included in the package unless you buy a special ‘business’ version.

The folding nature of the mouse is actually a stroke of genius. When collapsed, it will slip neatly into your skin-tight futuristic space-catsuit without causing too much of a bulge. And when stretched out it fits in the hand, something many compact mice that just take a normal-sized one and shrink it can’t claim. Your third finger and thumb will go underneath the 120-degree (ish) central hump if you let them, and there's certainly space for them to do this, but most of the time there's just enough height in the body of the mouse for your thumb to rest on.

Unless you have insanely long fingers you won’t run out of space on top, and the third and fourth buttons are cleverly integrated under the scrollpad, with a press at the top or bottom activating them. These click much more loudly than the nicely damped main buttons, and you can use the Logi Options+ software for a degree of customisation about what they do, including a neat double-tap auto-zoom.

And while it may look a little flimsy, Logitech has some remarkable claims about how it’s not. It can, apparently, withstand 50,000 folding actions before it starts to wear out, which Logi thinks should take 15 years (or about 5,479 days, for an average of nine folds a day). Obviously that doesn’t take into account people constantly folding and unfolding it because of the novelty of the hinge mechanism, but in 15 years we’ll be controlling our PCs with brain implants anyway. Instead of a simple switch in the hinge to detect when it’s closed and switch it off, Logitech says there's an on-device AI that protects against unintentional clicks while you’re folding it. If that sounds absurd, it’s because it is, but that’s where we are in the space year 2026, requiring an AI to tell us whether we’re wearing pants or not.

Better is the battery life of 30 days from a full charge, and the ability to use it for 22 hours after a charge of just one minute. You won’t be able to use it while it’s charging thanks to the position of the USB-C port, which isn’t quite up to Apple Magic Mouse levels of egregiousness, but with a cable connected it feels enough like you’re about to snap the plug of in the socket to make you reconsider after a few seconds. The battery cover can be pried up with a screwdriver, and it looks like the cell could be replaced, though Logitech hasn’t mentioned anything about this.

Of course it’s possible to play games with it. You can game with a trackpad or the tiny red nub on a Thinkpad, and I’ve played Age of Empires II with much worse things than the Mobi. It doesn’t require any kind of special surface to glide over, seems quite happy on a trouser leg, and the pointer is reliable and accurate. The important thing here is how much better it is to use than a laptop’s trackpad, especially if you’ve not put in the hours required to get good at using one for gaming.

Sadly, that’s almost all the praise it’s possible to muster about the Mobi. Its four buttons are fine, but scrolling is a mess. Not only is the touchpad the same texture as its surroundings, so it’s quite possible to be lovingly rubbing your fingertip against one of the buttons instead of where the action is in the middle, but even if you do get it in the right place, the web page or camera zoom you’re controlling moves jerkily, as if it’s losing track of your fingertip.

A hand that’s used to a solid-bodied mouse can rebel against being asked to cradle something so slender, and you end up moving from what should be a straightforward palm caress to a crab-like grip on the edges. It’s possible to pick the back edge up, fold your fingers underneath, and keep only the sensor in contact with the tabletop, and this might be the best way to use it despite every promotional image showing it with front and back firmly on the ground.

So, yeah. The Logi Mobi Fold is a nice piece of engineering but inevitably can’t hold a candle to a proper gaming mouse. Perhaps that’s not the point, as we don’t expect products designed for extreme portability to perform precisely like their full-size counterparts. At 79 g it’s heavier than the Logitech G Pro X Superlight and the Corsair Sabre V2 Pro, so if you’ve got it tucked in your bag and fancy a bit of Total War it’s better than a trackpad, but a modern full-sized mouse is hardly a large piece of equipment to transport, so use that instead.

You can't have too many screens. That's pretty much been the guiding moral in my life. Enter the new Asus ROG Strix XG129C and a minor existential crisis. This is a screen, but I have to ask—I can't believe I'm saying this—is there any real point to it?

For starters, this "gaming monitor" (Asus' words, not mine) measures just 12.3 inches. So, it's pretty puny. Actually, it's worse than that. It sports an ultra-wide 24:9 aspect ratio and thus isn't even as big as those 12 inches might imply. In terms of vertical viewable screen height, we're talking sub-4.5-inch.

But here's the thing. While I came in decidedly sceptical about the Asus ROG Strix XG129C, this isn't a proper monitor. It's a device for keeping track of, say, your PC's operating status or providing space for some supplementary application controls. Somehow, I ended up quite liking it. And not just because I'm a total sucker for screens. But more on my journey in a moment. First, let's cover off the core speeds and feeds.

The 24:9 aspect translates into a native resolution of 1,920 by 720 pixels and a pixel density of 166 DPI, the latter being about the same as a 27-inch 4K monitor. So, it's pretty crisp.

It uses IPS panel tech and tops out at 300 nits for brightness and 75 Hz in terms of refresh rate. Oh, and quite importantly, it supports capacitive 10-point multi-touch input. For the record, the touch functionality works essentially out-of-the-box provided you are connecting via USB-C.

Speaking of which, there are two USB-C ports. Both will drive the display, while one doubles as power in and the other supports 20 W of power out. So you can, for instance, connect via a single USB-C cable to both drive the display and power it, which is the ideal in terms of cable management.

That's easy from a laptop, but less of a given with a desktop PC. There are desktop graphics cards with USB-C out that support up to 30 W of power delivery and so would be able to power the display and drive it. But that setup would not support the touch functionality, which requires data passthrough.

So, for a true single-cable solution on a desktop, it all gets a bit complicated. In theory, you could do it with a motherboard that supports Thunderbolt and DisplayPort passthrough from the iGPU and thus have the Asus ROG Strix XG129C running from the iGPU in your CPU and your main monitor running off your graphics card.

I understand this setup is supported, for instance, on Intel Z890 motherboards, again in theory. In practice, results seem to vary and there can be issues with the Thunderbolt port supplying sufficient power. In a worst case scenario, then, you might need to use the HDMI port for the video signal, one of the USB-C ports to power the display and another to send touch data to your PC, which is pretty messy.

But I think a decent chunk of users will be able to get it working with two of the three ports hooked up. If one of those is the HDMI port, you'll then have one cable coming out of the side, one out of the top. It would have been tidier if Asus had located all the ports on one side. Never mind.

That ergonomic glitch aside, this is otherwise a really nicely built display. It feels high quality and the screw-in kick stand is very sturdy and capped with a rubberised foot to provide grip, as is the base of the display itself.

You also get a proper OSD with a joystick controller and full set of features, just like a conventional Asus monitor. What's more, you can control the OSD with the touchscreen input, which is a nice, well, touch.

If that's the features covered, what is the Asus ROG Strix XG129C like in use? Asus bundles a year's subscription to an OEM version of Aida 64, so you've got something to play with immediately.

That's handy, because it would be a nightmare to configure the standard version of Aida 64 to fit this display perfectly. As it is, you can use it to track CPU and GPU operating speeds and temps, storage use, that kind of thing. You'd have thought a permanent license would be part of the deal, but at least you have something to run immediately.

Outside of that, your mileage will vary depending on your preferences. You could use this display to do anything from keep track of social media feeds or work collab' platforms like Slack while you game, to using it to situate secondary controls or a timeline for video editing.

Much will depend on the exact applications you use and what kind of tools and controls they offer, how much configurability they support and so on. But what I would say is that, for this display to really deliver, those tools and controls need to be touch friendly.

That's generally quite a big ask, given that so many applications are either poorly or not at all optimised for touch. Ironically, that includes Asus' own Display Widget Controller app, which really doesn't work at all well on this display. Whatever, it's the ability to use the touch interface, as opposed to needing to "mouse over," and the immediacy that offers, that is most compelling.

Of course, that in itself can create problems with application focus, in-game. And there's no doubting the Asus RoG Strix XG129C works most reliably and consistently as a status display rather than something you directly interact with. But the shortcomings there are largely down to how Windows operates, rather than the display itself.

In the end, this little display is very much in the nice-to-have rather than must-have category. It's also the sort of device where your benefit from and use of it will depend on a whole range of factors.

Some people may be able to get quite a bit of value out of it as a touch device for controlling application tools and menus, such as video, image and music editing. But I would advise caution in that regard. You'll need to do a little homework to see what really works. Don't assume too much.

On the other hand, if you just like the idea of a small secondary display for keeping track of your PC's hardware status or viewing work and social feeds, you can be more confident that the Asus ROG Strix XG129C will deliver.

What's more, as someone who prefers a single ultrawide monitor to a pair of more conventional 16:9 panels, what this mini monitor offers is a way to have the status-tracking functionality that a second screen offers, but keep it small and ergonomically tidy. I don't need a huge screen to watch a bit of Slack or keep track of emails arriving in the background, in other words. The Asus ROG Strix XG129C does that kind of job rather nicely.

Which brings us to the final important factor, namely price. At $199, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is either pretty reasonable for such a specialised device or crazy money given what 200 bucks buys you these days in the monitor market. This year during Amazon Prime week, I found some KTC 34-inch ultrawides for barely over $200, while $250 will get you a 27-inch 4K dual-mode panel and $150 a decent 1440p panel. It's all a bit bananas.

In that context, the Asus ROG Strix XG129C is definitely a luxury item rather than a value proposition. You'll certainly have to specifically want a smaller, and in some ways less functional, screen to choose it over a 27-inch 1440p panel for less money.

But, personally, I actually might. I already have a large ultrawide for my primary viewing. I don't want another full-sized screen hanging miles off to the side. This nifty little accessory display can sit below my main monitor and would be just the thing to have running discretely, keeping me up to date. I've just got to decide if that's worth $200 to me…

If you're in the market for a pricey, studio-like USB microphone for high-quality audio capture, you've probably considered one of Shure's offerings. You'd do well to look at the Shure MV7+, a dynamic podcast mic that's cemented itself into our best microphone for gaming guide for some time now. Razer, however, has come up with something that might not beat the MV7+ outright, but certainly gives it something to think about.

It's called the Razer Seiren V3 Pro, and it retails for $250/£250. That's around $40-45 cheaper than the MV7+ at current prices, and while the V3 Pro isn't quite able to deliver the same ultra-refined, smooth vocal capture, it's got a lot going for it in terms of sheer flexibility.

It's more usable in a desktop position, for a start. You also get access to an AI noise reduction feature, a noise gate, a compressor, and a parametric EQ with plenty of well-tuned presets. There's also an auto setup feature, which I had some real trouble with. I'd say it was better ignored, or if needed, used to provide a rough baseline you can tweak for yourself later.

Still, many great vocal tones can be pulled from this particular unit—albeit with a touch of fiddling. It's got a tendency towards a detailed capture, but still reveals the odd rough edge that takes a little tweaking to filter out. But with the flexibility on offer here, the V3 Pro makes a good case for itself as a versatile vocal mic.

It's not quite on the Shure's level when it comes to finding that podcast-like, streaming friendly, studio-grade sound. But it's a jack-of-all-trades with a lot to offer, provided you're prepared to put a little time into it.

Razer Seiren V3 Pro features

The Razer Seiren V3 Pro is a dynamic microphone, which means it's not as sensitive as a traditional desktop condenser mic. You'll need to move some air in the near vicinity to get the most out of it, although unlike the Shure MV7+, Razer has included a screw-in stand base to allow it to function as a desktop mic straight from the box.

It makes use of a 30 mm dynamic capsule with a frequency response of 50 - 16,000 Hz, and supports audio capture up to a 32-bit/96 kHz resolution, along with 32-bit float support through a Razer Synapse setting. This format technically allows for higher peaks without clipping or distortion.

Do you need 32-bit float support? Probably not. But Razer says it's perfect for streamers who speak quietly, and then suddenly yell at… I don't know, something jumping out of a cupboard in a horror game.

The Seiren V3 Pro is a dual-connectivity mic, with an XLR socket and USB Type-C port integrated into the bottom of the chassis, although you can't use both at once. In terms of controls, you get a manual gain control wheel on the bottom, and a large tap-to-mute button on the top.

Around the bottom of the foam pop filter is a tastefully small ring of RGB Chroma lighting, and the microphone itself is attached to an adjustable one-sided arm with a ⅝-inch boom arm socket in the bottom.

It's a good-looking, professional-feeling object, with a chunky, overbuilt design that underscores its "Pro" moniker. If I had one ergonomic critique, I'd say the pop filter is a touch loose in terms of fit, which means it has a tendency to slip slightly out of position at certain angles. Mind you, some Shure mics have the same problem, and I've not had it fall off entirely under testing, so it's not a huge deal.

Razer Seiren V3 Pro sound

I'll go more into the Seiren V3 Pro's auto setup option in the software section below, but as a quick note: It's far from perfect. However, the microphone itself is a well-equipped unit, and the manual software options work fairly well. The clips below were recorded with custom settings, rather than auto setup:

Desktop position

In a desktop position, it's also rather quiet—which is to be expected from a dynamic microphone. I had to boost the gain settings to record the clip above, with a dose of compression and some AI noise cancelling to even out the volume and remove some unwanted nasties. The noise gate is a touch aggressive, which means I had to set it fairly low and allow some background hiss to remain in the final desktop-position take.

Close-up position

Still, Razer advertises this mic as delivering "studio sound", and while it takes a little fiddling in the software to get there, the close-up results sound very good indeed. The desktop position audio is also perfectly decent, if a touch noisy. It can do both, but being a dynamic microphone, it still likes being close to your lips for those toasty tones.

I'd say what we're dealing with here is a good-quality capsule that leans towards detail, with the EQ presets and software features richening things up. There's nothing wrong with that, but the Shure MV7+ sounds like a higher-quality unit from the get-go.

Razer Seiren V3 Pro software

Razer has made a pretty big deal of this mic's auto-setup feature, so I was curious to see what it made of my quiet living room in a desktop position. Upon connecting the mic for the first time, Synapse asks you to speak normally into the microphone to record a test clip, before taking a sample of the room ambience to adjust the noise-cancelling features.

It then asks you to pick a primary purpose, such as streaming, podcasting, gaming capture, etc, before adjusting all of its own settings.

Which, in my case, led to an overly-aggressive noise gate that clipped my voice so badly that every other word was missed out in my first test clip. Oh dear. Trying again, it seems that the auto setup gets very confused with my particular use case, with the mic placed 10 -15 cm away from my mouth next to a window with occasional traffic.

Desktop position, auto settings

Despite having a very good compressor, AI noise suppression, and the aforementioned noise gate to play with, the auto setup struggled to find a good gain level, set the gate far too aggressively, and chose to ignore the compressor and AI noise suppression sliders entirely. Which again resulted in an uneven sound with plenty of words being cut off.

Close-up, auto settings

Still, with a bit of tweaking (essentially, I fiddled with the noise gate settings until it stopped cutting off the start of my words, gave it a gain boost, and compensated with AI noise suppression and a touch of compression), the Razer captures a rich vocal tone overall, as you can hear in the Sound section above.

However, the auto setup feature regularly makes mistakes in terms of its settings choices, which is likely to leave many users scratching their heads. It's a nice idea on paper, but in practice, I'd leave it well alone.

Top marks, however, go to the parametric EQ presets. I leapt straight to the "podcast" setting and was presented with an EQ curve that looked very familiar. I've done some podcast audio engineering in a previous life, and Razer's EQ curve looks… well, it looks very much like one of mine. Which is obviously the best podcast EQ you'll ever find, of course.

You can tweak the EQ around to your heart's content, but each of Razer's default options is a pretty good start. I've noticed a tendency to boost the bass frequencies in each preset with a sharp drop-off in terms of sub-bass, which is often good practice when hunting for a 'rich' sound. Still, as noted above, it's the EQ that's doing a lot of the work on what is otherwise a good, but not mind-blowing capsule.

But overall? The software design is fairly straightforward, as long as you're prepared to do some of the work yourself. I wish the auto setup was better when it comes to some of its settings choices, but there are enough options here to easily correct its mistakes.

Razer Seiren V3 Pro value

At $250, the Razer Seiren V3 Pro is far from cheap. However, it is cheap-er than the Shure MV7+, and finds itself shooting for the same target market. Namely, those who want a near-studio-level microphone for semi-pro streaming audio.

The problem is, the Shure microphone is simply better at performing that goal, at least in a close-up position. While it's a chonkier unit and less versatile, its key selling point is the plug-and-play nature of both its software and its internal hardware.

I've spent half a lifetime screwing around with audio settings, and the Shure MV7+ is so darn good at finding a professional sound with the minimum of tweaks, I consider it the be-all and end-all of semi-pro vocal mics. I had hoped that the Razer's auto-setup feature would close that gap, but unfortunately it had me hunting through the settings at multiple points during testing.

That being said, the Seiren V3 Pro is a very capable microphone once you've tweaked it for yourself. It also looks great and has a chassis design that oozes refinement. And, despite its flaws, I think its sonic characteristics (after the requisite effort) make it worth considering. Particularly if you plan on mixing things up between desktop and close-up positions.

Just leave the auto setup well alone, yes?

The Dark Rock Pro 6 and Dark Rock 6 are a huge upgrade over Be Quiet's previous air coolers. Where it had previously struggled to keep up with our picks for the best air coolers, these new arrivals are amongst the top performers in my testing.

Be Quiet hasn't lost its eye for aesthetics, either. The all-black design of the Dark Rock 6 duo looks even more impressive out of the box than previous models. In that sense, Be Quiet has something of a unique selling point here: it's turned an imposing mass of aluminium into a pretty thing.

Yet there's an elephant in the room. Despite my appreciation for the upgraded performance, aesthetics, and easy installation, I just can't look past the price attached to these two coolers. Both are very expensive, at $110/$130 for the standard/Pro models, respectively. That's one helluva markup on some of the excellent air coolers we rank highly today, an added cost of around $60–$100. When air coolers are seen as the more affordable alternative, these prices just don't add up.

Specifications

The Dark Rock 6 comes with a Silent Wings 135 mm fan. That's a whole 15 mm larger than the one found on this cooler's predecessor, the Dark Rock 5. That's one clear benefit of the newer model: a big fan can push more air at lower RPM compared to a small fan. The 135 mm fan used here can spin up to 2000 rpm.

This is also a "custom-designed" fan for this cooler, rather than the off-the-shelf Silent Wings 4 found on the previous model. That said, from what I can gather, and I only have a smaller Silent Wings 4 for comparison, the main difference between this custom-designed fan and the Silent Wings 4 is a slightly smaller hub. I have measured the hub on both and they are roughly 5 mm apart—so that'd explain the 135 mm sizing on the newer custom models.

The Dark Rock 6 also comes with a semi-passive mode. There's a small switch hidden on the side of the fan shroud, marked 'P' and 'Q'. No prizes for what these both mean.

• Performance mode: runs the fans based on whatever you've set on your motherboard header—the cooler's single fan uses a 4-pin PWM connection.
• Quiet mode: overrides the fan header to reduce RPM at certain duty cycles, and switches it off entirely below 40%.

The Dark Rock Pro 6 adds another 120 mm fan into the mix. The two fans are connected together with a 7-pin connector. It also includes one extra heatpipe compared to the standard model, seven to six, which makes it that bit more capable, as you'll see in the thermals section below.

Thermals

The Dark Rock Pro 6 and Dark Rock 6 are very capable air coolers. Both manage to keep a Core i7 14700K at a reasonable temperature under load. The Dark Rock 6 generally performs similarly to the Arctic Freezer 36, if at times even outperforming our pick for the best budget air cooler, except at higher power draw. Meanwhile, the Dark Rock Pro 6 performs very well compared to the rest, if only falling short of the mighty Thermalright Peerless Assassin.

Thermal performance

The chart below shows the delta over ambient, accounting for any fluctuations in ambient temperature between tests

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V | ΔTx264 @ 1.275 V | ΔTPrime95 @ 1.275 V | ΔTPrime95 @ 1.325 V | ΔTAmbient temperature

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

34

28

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

34

30

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

37

33

Arctic Freezer 36

34

31

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

34

31

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

32

28

010203040

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	34 Max ΔT, 28 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	34 Max ΔT, 30 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	37 Max ΔT, 33 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	34 Max ΔT, 31 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	34 Max ΔT, 31 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	32 Max ΔT, 28 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

43

33

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

43

34

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

48

38

Arctic Freezer 36

43

35

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

44

36

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

40

32

015304560

x264 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	43 Max ΔT, 33 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	43 Max ΔT, 34 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	48 Max ΔT, 38 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	43 Max ΔT, 35 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	44 Max ΔT, 36 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	40 Max ΔT, 32 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

43

41

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

43

39

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

50

47

Arctic Freezer 36

44

40

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

46

42

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

44

38

015304560

Prime95 @ 1.275 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	43 Max ΔT, 41 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	43 Max ΔT, 39 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	50 Max ΔT, 47 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	44 Max ΔT, 40 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	46 Max ΔT, 42 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	44 Max ΔT, 38 Avg ΔT

Max ΔT

Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

62

54

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

58

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

70

65

Arctic Freezer 36

59

55

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

59

55

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

60

51

020406080

Prime95 @ 1.325 V | ΔT Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	62 Max ΔT, 54 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max ΔT, 58 Avg ΔT
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	70 Max ΔT, 65 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36	59 Max ΔT, 55 Avg ΔT
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	59 Max ΔT, 55 Avg ΔT
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	60 Max ΔT, 51 Avg ΔT

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

21

Arctic Freezer 36

27

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

23

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

22

07.51522.530

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	21
Arctic Freezer 36	27
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	23
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	22

They also both easily outperform the Dark Rock 5 (non-Pro) in my testing. That was, by far, the worst performer of the lot in my latest batch of testing, which shows just how significant a leap this new lineup has been by way of performance for Be Quiet.

Thermal performance

The chart below shows the CPU package temperature temperature as recorded in HWInfo

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 Vx264 @ 1.275 VPrime95 @ 1.275 VPrime95 @ 1.325 VPrime95 @ 1.4 VAmbient temperature

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

54

48

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

54

50

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

58

54

Arctic Freezer 36

61

58

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

57

54

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

54

50

020406080

Baldur's Gate 3 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	54 Max °C, 48 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	54 Max °C, 50 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	58 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	61 Max °C, 58 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	57 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	54 Max °C, 50 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

63

53

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

54

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

69

59

Arctic Freezer 36

70

62

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

67

59

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

62

54

020406080

x264 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	63 Max °C, 53 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max °C, 54 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	69 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	70 Max °C, 62 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	67 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	62 Max °C, 54 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

63

61

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

63

59

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

71

68

Arctic Freezer 36

71

67

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

69

65

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

66

60

020406080

Prime95 @ 1.275 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	63 Max °C, 61 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	63 Max °C, 59 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	71 Max °C, 68 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	71 Max °C, 67 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	69 Max °C, 65 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	66 Max °C, 60 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

82

74

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

83

78

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

91

86

Arctic Freezer 36

86

82

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

82

78

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

82

73

0255075100

Prime95 @ 1.325 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	82 Max °C, 74 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	83 Max °C, 78 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	91 Max °C, 86 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	86 Max °C, 82 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	82 Max °C, 78 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	82 Max °C, 73 Avg °C

Max °C

Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

100

99

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

100

99

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

100

100

Arctic Freezer 36

100

99

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

100

99

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

100

82

0255075100

Prime95 @ 1.4 V Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	100 Max °C, 100 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	100 Max °C, 99 Avg °C
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	100 Max °C, 82 Avg °C

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

20

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

21

Arctic Freezer 36

27

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

23

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

22

07.51522.530

Ambient temperature Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	20
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	21
Arctic Freezer 36	27
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	23
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	22

I test at a few different fixed voltages: 1.275 V, 1.325 V, and 1.4 V. This gives a decent idea of the sort of wattage each cooler can manage, which helps when sizing these up for use with other chips outside of Intel's power-hungry 14th Gen. The top level, 1.4 V, is a bit of a torture test, and most air coolers struggle to keep a chip from thermal throttling.

Aesthetics

Both coolers look great. Be Quiet has always made a good-looking air cooler, but it has tweaked a few smaller details on its latest models to offer a cleaner appearance. They're totally black, from head to toe, with only the small exception of the Be Quiet name etched onto a plate with a metallic finish—that's a little bigger on the Dark Rock Pro 6 to cover the extra fan.

They're much nicer units to look at than some of the cheaper units with bare aluminium on display. Similarly, with the fans totally covered, the newer models look a lot cleaner than their predecessors, which have one fan clear to see. So in terms of aesthetics, I think Be Quiet has made a marked improvement here with both models, even if the Pro is a bit of a lump.

Installation

Upon unboxing the Dark Rock 6, I noticed its packaging is entirely made of cardboard, an improvement over the foam previously used on the Dark Rock 5. Inside the cardboard accessories box are two mounting options: one for AMD, which covers AM5/AM4; and one for Intel, which covers LGA 1851/1700/1200/1150/1151/1155.

Be Quiet! also includes an extra long screwdriver in the box, as it has done with previous models, which comes in handy for what comes next.

Installation on Intel systems requires attaching four screws to the corners of the rear plate, held in place with small O-rings. That's the fiddly bit; the rest of the process is less so. Four thumbscrews affix to the threads on the rear plate, holding both sides to the motherboard. Onto this fit two metal brackets—being careful to note the correct orientation—held in place by four additional screws. The cooler has two more captive screws that line up with holes on the bracket, and the cooler can be tightened into place.

Installation on AMD systems is a little more straightforward. Remove the bracket included on most motherboards, replace it with the metal brackets included with the Dark Rock 6, then screw it all down with the two screws on the cooler.

Don't forget thermal paste—luckily, there's some in the box.

The whole process is more or less a match for the Dark Rock 5. The only major difference is the fan, which instead of using metal clips as per the Dark Rock 5, slides into place on the Dark Rock 6. It can also be adjusted to make room for RAM, though that's not really an issue on the Dark Rock 6, as it doesn't extend above the RAM anyway. The only downside with this sorta approach is that you can't just replace the fan with a third-party model without jury-rigging it—sometimes simplest is best.

Sound

In my testing with a TopTes TS-501B sound meter sat at 40 cm away from my open test bench, both the Be Quiet models performed reasonably well compared to the others that I've tested in the same setup. They're not the quietest by any measure—that still goes to the Freezer 36 using the older P12 fan—nor do they massively outperform the Dark Rock 5.

Noise levels

Fan noise | 40 cm away

@100% (dBA)

Noise floor (dBA)

Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6

48

35

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6

49

35

Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5

49

35

Arctic Freezer 36

40

35

Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB

47

35

Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

50

35

015304560

Fan noise | 40 cm away Data

Product	Value
Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 6	48 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 6	49 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Be Quiet! Dark Rock 5	49 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Arctic Freezer 36	40 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Arctic Freezer 36-S A-RGB	47 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE	50 @100% (dBA), 35 Noise floor (dBA)

Fan noise as measured by sound meter | 40 cm away | open test bench

Though it should be said that no air cooler I've tested makes much of a ruckus compared to a large liquid cooler.

Value

The Dark Rock 6 costs $110. It's a little cheaper than the Dark Rock Pro 6, which includes two fans, at $130, but nevertheless that's a high price in today's market. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is a fraction of the cost at $40, as are the Arctic Freezer 36 and Freezer 36-S, and all very capable coolers in their own right, as my tests show.

In terms of the Dark Rock 6, there's often only a couple of degrees between the Pro and standard models in testing, if anything. The dual fans are a benefit not enjoyed by the standard model, which will help keep temps down without needing a super aggressive fan curve. Beyond that, the standard model appears the better buy. Though I find it hard to justify either option versus a cheaper cooler—most of all the Thermalright Peerless Assassin.

Ultimately, it comes down to the cost/benefit of an air cooler. Even as someone who will happily eschew liquid for air in my own build, the draw for many will be cost, size, and compatibility. The Dark Rock 6 doesn't offer much by way of affordability—costing more than a couple of the best liquid coolers—and it's not much of a fit for an awkward-sized Mini-ITX or unusual Micro-ATX chassis. As such, I struggle to see where it fits in the market.

Both of the new Dark Rock 6 models are better than the older Dark Rock 5, and by some margin, but for considerably more money. The Dark Rock Pro 5 is $85 and the Dark Rock 5 is $65 (noted as expensive in our review), making for an increase of 52% and 69%, respectively, for the latest series.

As we know, Turtle Beach loves to put a big ol' screen on its peripherals and this decadent Hall effect keyboard is probably the apotheosis of "big screen on otherwise screen-less thing" design. It's a big 4.3-inch color touchscreen affair that does little more than what can already be achieved on the monitor directly in front of you. But it can definitely do it quicker.

More on that screen later but yes, it does confer an added level of prestige to this slab, which is no slouch in the looks department. Weighing in at just under a kilo without a palm rest, it has a weapon-like and stylish aluminium veneer body and, it almost goes without saying, RGB that's customisable on a key-by-key basis. The gun metal grey veneer gives it a slightly gritty quality, but tastefully so: it's a hardcore keyboard, but it's not overtly a hardcore gaming keyboard unless, of course, you have the Counter-Strike touchscreen template blaring on that display.

The elephant in the room is that the Command Series KB7 has Hall effect switches. If you pay attention to modern gamepad design you're probably accustomed to assuming that Hall effect equals better. Where keyboards are concerned, the truth is a touch more complicated. Mechanical keyboards trigger inputs physically whereas Hall effect keyboards do so digitally. Ultimately, it means Hall effect switches can be triggered more quickly and in rapid succession. They are, in other words, super low-latency keyboards.

There's every chance you've never noticed any meaningful latency in your (likely wired) gaming keyboard. With 8K polling, the response time on these keys is a blinding 0.125ms, but that's been achievable on mechanical slabs for a while. But among other less showy benefits, Hall effect keyboards offer a huge amount of customisation when it comes to actuation: one can adjust this metric—which basically measures how sensitive a key is to the user's press—on a key-by-key basis.

Using the Turtle Beach Swarm 2 app, actuation can also be tweaked globally on a scale of 0.1ms to 3.2ms: Drag it all the way up to 0.1ms and you'll probably start to ssssound liiike a hissssssing sssnake during moment-to-moment typing. Lower actuation can lead to accidental inputs, but where there's a will there's a way, and if you want ultra-sensitivity I'm sure you'll adapt. If you're the kind of person who slams A and D when strafing in a first-person shooter, a lower actuation may make sense. The freedom to tinker is what Hall effect keyboards are really all about, and doing so here is a breeze—especially with five onboard profiles to muck around with.

The screen seems a bit superfluous and showy at first, but over time its flexibility blossoms. Using the Turtle Swarm software I can load a bunch of pre-made templates into the onboard memory. These templates come in the form of three-by-four grids of buttons—like the missing numpad—including shortcuts for OBS, Discord, Counter-Strike, Teams, Zoom, League of Legends, Streamlab, and Photoshop.

I did miss onboard shortcuts—with useful glyphs—for Steam, which would seem to make more sense than dedicated buttons for Microsoft's Gamebar. I had to make do with creating macros which I could then assign to the touchscreen, though there's no way to customise the icon of said macros, so if I create too many there's no simple visual identifier to distinguish them: they just show as New Macro. Meanwhile, there are dozens of pre-fab macros in the Swarm 2 app that you can use, ranging from obvious choices like Apex Legends and Dota 2 through to BioShock 2 (but not 1) for some reason.

Other shortcuts, for things like cut, copy, paste, undo, redo and Microsoft's Gamebar have shortcut glyphs, but I struggle to imagine anyone wanting to access them via touchscreen instead of keyboard shortcuts we've built up the muscle memory for over decades. If you're a streamer there are very obvious benefits to having OBS and Streamlab shortcuts available at a single button press without having to mess with what's displaying on your monitor, or investing in a separate peripheral.

Even as a non-streamer though, over the month I've spent using the KB7, I have started to lean on some of the touchscreen's functionality. I love that I can add shortcuts to websites (I now have an emergency www.pcgamer.com button) and even to folders—a single button to access my Downloads folder, or the folder where Steam screenshots are kept—is something I started to use a lot. Also: you can add your very own background image. Whether you opt for Bathtub Geralt or, well, anything else really, I'm sure you'll agree this level of customisation is fun.

I love that actuation and rapid-trigger configuration can be handled on the screen itself, even though you might want to use the Swarm software instead. The latter isn't terrible—it does the job and the UI, nowadays, is straightforward and easy to use—though I did experience a few crashes.

The typing experience on the KB7 is brilliant but if, like me, you're accustomed to years of using mechanical keyboards, it'll probably take a day or so for Hall effect keys to click. The snap and crackle of a full fat mechanical slab is replaced here by a slightly more muted but still tactile sonic feedback from the low-profile keys, which are equipped with Titan switches.

I was at first concerned that my hands would brush across that big boi screen but this effectively works as a 65%er with the system keys (print screen, screenlock etc) replaced by the display. The media control knobs and switches are well-situated, while the triangular keys along the top switch profiles at a single button press, mute and unmute the mic, and toggle on and off the KB7's RGB trimmings.

And look: at $200 it's pricey, but it does beat the competition in this department. The Corsair Vanguard Pro 96 is a Hall effect keyboard with a smaller screen that retails for $240 (though it can be had for cheaper if you look). The difference, of course, is that the present Turtle Beach is a tenkeyless affair if you're not counting the ten keys it's possible to assign to the display, but if you want that extra set of physical keys you can get the KP7 add-on for an extra $100. If you must have the tenkeys and accompanying status display, that does increase the overall price significantly.

In many ways the KB7 kinda transcends its status as a mere keyboard: it's also basically a workstation. If you do buy that KP7 attachment, you may feel like you're seated at a control panel or mixing desk. I can definitely see why streamers and content creators would want to fork out for the whole kit and caboodle. As for the rest of us, once you've used the touchscreen you may struggle to live without it. Whether you want to introduce another must-have into your life is up to you, but this KB7 definitely provides me something I didn't know I wanted.

Logitech has expressed its desire to have its 'G3' products constitute its 'affordable'—but not necessarily budget—range of PC gaming peripherals. Given the general state of the economy and the fact that the quality-but-affordable market is my usual stomping ground, I was naturally excited to get my hands on this G316 X. Alas, what a disappointment.

My experience here is coloured very much by my experience with this keyboard's white 'tactile' switches, which are the switches in the version I was sent, as apparently this is all that will be available in the UK with a UK layout. The US will be able to get a version with linear switches, which will hopefully be at least somewhat better.

There are some things to like about this keyboard, such as the lighting and the sturdy keycaps, but it's impossible to look past the awful keypress experience, most pertinently for gaming. There's little more important than key feel for a keyboard, and there's little more important than having a good gaming key-feel experience in, well, a gaming keyboard. And this keyboard unfortunately struggles on the first front and completely fails on the latter.

On trying the G316 X, my first surprise was that the keys didn't feel tactile at all. Admittedly, it's been a while since I used any tactile switches (for good reason, as linear is king for most kinds of games), but to my memory, 'tactile' is supposed to mean you feel a bump partway down the keypress, and that's when the key actuates. That's good because you can press only that far, then lift back up a little, and press again, all the while being sure that your key has actuated.

That's not what you get here, though. The G316 X's 'tactile' switches essentially feel like linear switches that require a ton of initial force to get them moving. I suppose they feel tactile in the sense that such tremendous initial force is required that you can't help but slam the keys into the keybed, but that's not truly 'tactile' in the original sense of the term.

It does sound clacky—though not thocky, if that's your jam—which is a genuine plus as long as you don't mind a loud keyboard, but it essentially feels like nothing more than a very stiff membrane keyboard. I wouldn't consider it in the same class of key feel as any other mechanical keyboard I've tried, only membranes.

If you want the feel of a stiff membrane that also has a bit of clack to it, then you might enjoy it. But even then, I'm not convinced. I spent a couple of days typing on the keyboard during work, and while initially the stiff, clacky keys felt and sounded nice, by the end of the day my fingers were quite fatigued. It does sound great if you prefer more of a 'clack' to a 'thock', but it is probably only worth it if you don't spend extended periods of time typing.

The stiff switches don't just affect feel, but also in-game performance. I'm used to a linear Hall effect keyboard with rapid trigger, and switching to the G316 X was not a pleasant experience.

Playing Counter-Strike 2, I struggled more than with a standard linear mechanical keyboard to counter-strafe, which meant I missed a ton of shots and had to play the game completely differently, peeking less. And because the keys require a great amount of initial actuation force, but then not much force for the rest of the keypress, I found myself unable to get used to the amount of tension I should keep on the keys at resting position.

This meant I accidentally 'jumped'—literally, by hitting the space bar—when entering to re-take a bomb site in a clutch situation, which lost me the round. One of my teammates told me to uninstall the game, and I honestly couldn't blame him.

So other than the poor keypress experience, what does this keyboard have to offer? Well, the first benefit that I should mention is that its switches are hot swappable. So if you like the look of the keyboard but are rightly put off by my description of how the switches feel, you can buy your own compatible switches and swap them out.

You might want to do this if you simply like the look of it, with its RGB bar and 'dot matrix LED display'. I can't deny that it does look nice, provided you don't mind the more retro look of the LED display. The light bar has 30 zones and adds a bit of cyberpunk flair, but there aren't as many animations to choose from as I would like in the software. It can also be a little laggy when selecting colours, so I'd recommend typing in the RGB or hex values.

Other than the lighting, though, the keyboard is housed in a plain, plastic chassis. It's fairly sturdy, and it doesn't look or feel cheap, but it doesn't exactly look or feel particularly premium, either. Just bang-on average, I'd say.

I do like my keyboards to have a knob to control the volume, so that's a welcome addition, but I didn't find any need to switch off the volume mode to one of the others. The others, which you can change to by long-pressing the knob, allow you to switch music tracks, turn RGB brightness up or down, or change the polling rate.

There's also a dedicated button next to it to turn game mode on, which disables the Windows key and any other keys you set up in the software, and the LED screen will show whether capslock or numlock is on/off when you press those keys. Much of this could be done with function buttons, but it is nice having the options there in their own part of the keyboard.

And that's about all there is to the G316 X. It's quite a peculiar keyboard, especially considering how it's priced. I understand what Logitech was going for—an affordable, but not cheap, gaming-oriented keyboard—but for $120 it really needs to deliver more than this.

Given the gaming keyboard market today, a regular RGB-laden gaming keyboard is a tough sell at this price. And when you're failing to deliver a keypress experience that lives up to even much cheaper gaming keyboards (any using a standard Cherry or Gateron switch), it's a very tough sell. Especially when there are keyboards with Hall effect for literally a third of the price.

In all, unless you really like how this thing looks, I'd steer clear of the version with tactile switches at least. If the linear version feels better, then it might be worth a look, but even then, there's plenty of competition out there at this price point, and I'm not sure those fights are leaning in this keyboard's favour.

They say fashion has a habit of repeating itself. What was once deemed gauche and detestable by one generation becomes the next's "big thing". Yep, like your grandad's long socks to Gen Z, and skinny jeans to Millennials, the big beige retro rig has landed square and center on our desks again, at the forefront of a manufacturing boom across the PC gaming sector, desperate to take its spot at the top of the best PC cases list across the world (yeah, I'm subtle).

Thermaltake's Retro 360 TG case is exactly that. Like the Silverstone FLP02 I reviewed earlier in the year, it looks to encapsulate that late 80s early 90s PC build nostalgia, complete with beige panels, and a touch of modernity to make your pc building endeavors at least somewhat more comfortable than it'd have been in a battered and bruised second-hand eBay purchase.

The good news is the Retro 360 TG is markedly cheaper than that Silverstone offering, coming in at a far lower price of around $92 or £90, depending on where you shop. For that, you get a super lightweight plastic chassis, with a steel frame, complete with easy access panels, and a full tempered glass side panel as well.

Hardware compatibility across the board is generally pretty good. You've got support for 360mm rads in both the top and the side of the case, and you can add an additional six 120mm fans total, along the floor of the PSU shroud, up the front intake, and on the rear as well.

It does come with two fairly mediocre 120mm DC fans as standard. One in the front and one in the rear, but they're not that exciting. Certainly not quite at the same caliber as those found in the FLP02.

Speed round, though. What's worse than two poorly calibrated DC fans? Not having access to good intake, that's what. Because, yep. Although the side, the roof, and the rear are fairly well ventilated (the roof even touting a magnetic, removable dust cover), the front is frankly a nightmare. The slatted white ventilation built into that plastic fascia restricts airflow quite heavily as it is, but there's also a healthy dose of mesh inside of it glued in place, and non-removable by design, limiting access further for whatever fans you do decide to install here. Not good.

Speaking of the front panel, it's entirely fake too. Something that, for some reason, I find particularly frustrating. In the case of the FLP02, it had full compatibility for 5.25-inch drive bays, with the housing and support internally there as well. The 360 TG mimics that mildly with a removable "disk drive" cutout, which you can replace with a 6-inch LCD screen (that Thermaltake sells separately), and then an entirely fake floppy drive that sits in situ just below. That, however, is fully molded into the panel itself, and non-removable. Complete with fake non-pressy button. That obviously, I tried to press.

Inside, it's a fairly basic affair too. You've got a motherboard tray with BTF support and plenty of cutouts for cables, and a PSU shroud, well ventilated too, and, well yeah, not much else. There's no cable grommets or clever engineering to hide your wires, it's all just bare metal and gaping holes until you get your motherboard into position.

Not a lot of thought has been given to those front fans either, as there's no logical way of routing the cables anywhere where you can hide them without them being on display. During my testing with the build process, I had to literally strap the single front fan's cable to the chassis with the included clear cable ties to keep it at least somewhat neat. Given the 360 TG has a window, this should've been managed far better than that. We're not going that retro that we're just trailing cables across the interior of the space after all, certainly not with that pristine window showing off everything inside.

Cable management around the back is limited too. There's no channeling or plastic covers, or anything outside a plethora of cable tie-down points. That's wild, given all of the front I/O cables are flat white variants as well. Like, someone somewhere purposely decided that pretty front I/O cables were more important than actual cable management solutions, and I just can't get my head around that.

So yeah, no anti-sag bracket, no hard drive cages, no fan controllers, no clever cable management solutions, just a few ties and some velcro strapping, along with some plain silver screws, and that's all she wrote. There ain't a whole lot to talk about that's for sure.

I get it, I sound like I'm wailing on it for the sake of it, but when you have such fierce competition in this industry right now, particularly in the budget segment with the likes of Phanteks and its XT V3 line, and Corsair, and everyone else under the sun delivering banger after banger at even more affordable price points, it's hard to let these design decisions just sail on by without critique.

The good news is, once you've built in it, it does look bloody slick. The mid-range ATX machine I slapped together in this really pops, particularly with the pink RGB, and I can almost forgo the fake front fascia elements to an extent when I forget about them. Combine that with that comfortable sub $100 price point, and it's well worth considering if you don't want to spend the big bucks on something like the FLP02. But, in many ways, the 360 TG feels like this Frankenstein's monster, blurring the lines between modern design and retro styling, yet without enough finesse to make either department really pop.

I want to apologize in advance to anyone who might find themselves in a Meccha Chameleon lobby with me.

I'm sorry for turning our casual game of manhunt into a harrowing contest of wits. I'm sorry for painting myself into each map's least-conspicuous corners. I'm sorry for imitating the surrounding stonework's surface texture so well that I achieve a maddening invisibility. I'm sorry for being that bush, and that party decoration, and that saddle on that horse statue.

I'm sorry that Meccha Chameleon is the special sort of game that can remind me how much fun I can have being a top-tier bastard.

Vanishing point

Meccha Chameleon is a delightfully elevated take on hide-and-seek. It's in the spirit of the cherished Prop Hunt gametypes that have graced countless lobbies over the years—but where Prop Hunt has players donning the shapes of preexisting models as camouflage, Meccha Chameleon demands a more manual mode of disguise.

Once the hiding phase begins and you've found a promising spot to stick your featureless marble figure, you have whatever seconds remain to hand-camo yourself with an MS Paint-style brush and eyedropper, making yourself as indistinguishable from your surroundings as time, artistic talent, and strategic positioning will allow. It's a fantastically satisfying ritual—particularly if you have an impish streak.

Since first launching Meccha Chameleon, I've spent my steadily accumulating hours of gametime with the Grinch's sicko grin perpetually plastered on my face. Just as my scampering doll-self is a canvas for slapdash camouflage, Meccha Chameleon's detail-dense maps—bolstered by an already-lively mapmaking community—are themselves a canvas for a higher art: the art of bamboozling.

It'd be a mistake to think Meccha Chameleon is just a matter of slapping the right colors on yourself. It's a game about manipulating visual perception: It's one thing to wait out your shotgun-toting pursuers in a secluded nook, but it's another to sculpt yourself into such a seemingly natural fixture of the geometry that hunters can look directly at you without suspecting for a moment that there's anything to see.

For our brains, a player properly posed and painted among party decorations is just another balloon. If you have a sense for where sightlines naturally gravitate, you'll know the best hiding place can sometimes be an open expanse of bland hallway wall, tucked just above where our eyes tend to fall as we walk towards somewhere more interesting.

There might be a dozen hunters stomping by just inches away, but I'm sitting here, just below their notice: carefully splotched with swatches of green and chortling in a tuft of Minecraft grass. And I've never felt more alive.

Technical study

It's been somewhere around a decade since videogames last stoked much of a competitive fire in me. After enough years of online shooters and PvP lobbies, they all started to feel like they were testing the same skill: My ability to internalize a game's mechanics well enough to contend with someone else's training. Eventually, proving that same proficiency stopped being a compelling proposition.

Meccha Chameleon is the first breakout game in years where I feel like I'm applying skills and understanding with broader relevance, and as a result it's more rewarding. Finding my ideal hiding spot means I'm weighing how well I can sketch the surrounding environment, whether it'll look believable under the current lighting conditions, and how well the illusion will hold up from likely angles of approach. Am I in a spot where the shadows cast by my player character will draw attention, or will a hunter's eyes glide right over them?

Those considerations are mediated through the game's structure, but executing them is more than a matter of mechanical proficiency: In my case, I'm weaponizing the visuospatial sensibilities built from a lifetime of habitual doodling. Meccha Chameleon lets me use those combined hours of notebook sketches and artist process videos to psychologically torment strangers around the world.

But, you know, in a way that's fun for them. Probably. They'd be having a worse time if I hadn't decided against going to art school, at least.

Rough sketch

My only complaints stem from the fact that this game is made by just two Japanese developers: It's a heroic effort, but the limitations of its shoestring production are extremely visible. Those constraints lend each round of Meccha Chameleon a charming, handmade character—but they're a source of frustration that, even for $6, aren't always easy to ignore.

Collision mishaps and desync issues aren't uncommon. Bugfix patches are sometimes rolled back after introducing more issues than they fix. There are, in fact, two eyedropper tools, but the one that's worth using is less obvious—and even that one doesn't always nail the selected material's reflective traits. At its best, the UI is endearingly crude; at its worst, it feels incomplete. Joining a game requires both patience and prayer: There's no quick match, and the server browser's lack of ping estimates means there's little to guide your lobby selection beyond the hope that the host chose the correct region tag (they did not) and whether or not there's a slur in the name.

On that note: There's functionally no moderation to speak of. Based on certain clickable portions of the menu, it seems like there's intended to be a report function—but it's hard to know for sure when the associated buttons and fields don't have any labels. In the likelihood that you encounter a player who thinks painting a hate symbol on themselves is peak humor, your options are a host kick or—in my experience—driving them to ragequit because they can't find where I'm huddled against a gingerbread man.

If you can stomach those risks and rough edges, Meccha Chameleon's competitive wrapping and painterly brain combat coaxes out the joy of carefree creativity. Even if you didn't also spend your preteen years filling middle school notebooks with drawings of dragons and orcs, it's an approachable introduction to the satisfaction of creative visual problem solving. That's what art is, after all—and Meccha Chameleon is a great lesson in how little it takes to start enjoying it.

It's finally here. The much-anticipated Steam Machine, a mini gaming PC designed for your living room, is in my possession—and it's a lovely device to behold. It's sleek, futuristic, and very, very Valve. I've been testing it thoroughly over the past week, and I'm sure you're anxious to know the results. Have all my mini gaming PC Christmases come at once?

Well, not quite. Because while Valve's attempt to bring PC gaming to your TV—and thereby the masses—has plenty of admirable qualities, it's got one giant caveat hanging over it: The price.

The 2 TB, Steam Controller-included Steam Machine bundle in my possession costs $1,428 (£1,208 / AU$2,228). The controller-less 2 TB variant is $1,349 (£1,149 / AU$2,109), while the 512 GB version, again without controller, is $1,049 (£879 / AU$1,609). Add a controller to the 512 GB variant, and you're looking at $1,128 (£938 / AU$1,728).

Much has been made over the Steam Machine's delayed launch and increased price tag, brought on by the ongoing memory crisis crippling the consumer electronics market right now. But holy moly, that's a lot of money for a mini gaming PC. Especially one with internals that, in 2026, feel underpowered before it's even officially released.

The RDNA 3-based GPU inside the Steam Machine has left me feeling, if I'm honest, rather deflated. It's certainly possible to drop the settings, bump up the upscaling, and squeak some smooth gaming performance out of the little black box. But the drawbacks feel like a step too far when you're paying this sort of cash.

The idea might be to bring the PC gaming experience to your living room, but if that experience includes smooth frame rates in demanding games, you're going to have to make some major compromises. And, because of its Linux origins, it hasn't been a flawless experience getting some of those games to run properly to begin with, either.

I want to get excited about the Steam Machine, I really do. It's a fascinating piece of design, and an admirable attempt to bring PC gaming from your desktop to your couch in one bite of the cherry. But like so much hardware these days, it's been hampered with a price tag that, given what you actually receive, feels like far too much to pay.

Steam Machine features

The Steam Machine is, by default, a black cube. Measuring 15.2 x 15.6 x 16.2 cm, its top is a touch smaller than a handspan. Or mine, at the very least. Underneath the removable magnetic front face plate (two extras are included in the box with the 2 TB bundle) is a small panel consisting of a power button on the right hand side, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, and a microSD card slot.

Above them lies an RGB strip, which by default lights up in blue while you're gaming or downloading, and turns off at idle. Around the back are two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port rated to 10 Gbps, and a 1 Gbps ethernet connection. For display options, you've got a choice of a DisplayPort 1.4 connection, or an HDMI 2.0 port.

And of course, it can be bundled with a Steam Controller, which is a sizable symmetrical-style unit with twin TMR thumbsticks, eight face buttons, four rear grip buttons, two trackpads, haptic rumble, gyro controls, and a 35+ hour battery life. It's perhaps not the prettiest of objects, but as our Jacob found in his review, it sure is comfortable. Useful, too.

On the outside, the Steam Machine is a very unassuming little device, which is certainly by design. It's the internals, however, where things get really interesting.

Under the hood lies a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU with six cores and 12 threads, alongside 16 GB of system RAM. The GPU is also a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 job, with 8 GB of dedicated GDDR6 VRAM, 28 compute units, a sustained max clock speed of 2.45 GHz, and a 110 W TGP.

Being a semi-custom GPU, it's difficult to make a direct comparison with existing RDNA 3 graphics cards—although the budget RX 7600 XT from the same generation features 32 compute units and a similar game clock speed.

The Steam Machine comes in two different storage flavours: 512 GB and 2 TB. I've got the 2 TB model, which provides plenty of storage for many, many games. Should you opt for the 512 GB variant, you'll want to keep an eye on install sizes.

Speaking of games, the Steam Machine makes use of SteamOS 3, an Arch-based Linux implementation with the KDE Plasma interface, allowing you to directly interface with your Steam library and the storefront. Steam Deck users will be very familiar with this design, although there are of course more options to tweak in the settings menus for the Steam Machine itself. More on that later.

For connecting to the outside world, beyond the already-mentioned ethernet port you also get a 2x2 Wi-Fi 6E connection and Bluetooth 5.3 support. The Steam Controller connects via an integrated 2.4 GHz wireless adapter, although requires the included puck or cable to be used for pairing on initial setup.

It's pretty impressive to think of the sheer amount of hardware and connectivity options Valve has crammed inside such a relatively small chassis design. Especially when you consider that, in terms of cooling, air is moved by a single 120 mm fan around the back.

As our Jacob found when he held a caseless prototype model, inside is a substantial heatsink which obscures the motherboard almost entirely, distributing heat away from all of the internal components.

Overall, the Steam Machine feels… solid. More solid than I was expecting, actually, despite its reasonable 2.6 kg weight. Given the form factor, you could easily shove it in a decently sized backpack to take around a friend's house. Although the design here is definitely specced to fit within an under-TV living room unit—where it'll live, faceless and mysterious, next to your other consoles and set-top boxes.

Steam Machine performance

And so we reach the first major sticking point. The Steam Machine 2 TB bundle is, in essence, a $1,428 mini gaming PC. As a result, it's only fair the little black cube goes up against our gaming PC benchmark suite in competition with similarly-priced machines.

Put aside the tidy form factor, the SteamOS experience, and the delightful "Valve-ness" of the thing for a second. If you're buying one of these, you're going to want your games to run well, and for it to deliver comparable performance to a gaming PC you could have spent your cash on instead.

And I'm not going to sugar-coat it—the benchmarking results are a little ugly.

Gaming benchmarks

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra)Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium)Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium)Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra)Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High)Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High)Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra)

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

21

17

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

44

38

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

33

25

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

28

24

015304560

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	21 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	44 Avg FPS, 38 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	33 Avg FPS, 25 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	28 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

16

12

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

32

26

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

24

19

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

26

23

010203040

Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	16 Avg FPS, 12 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	32 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	24 Avg FPS, 19 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	26 Avg FPS, 23 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

28

20

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

86

69

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

49

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

81

74

0255075100

Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	28 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	86 Avg FPS, 69 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 49 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	81 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

46

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

59

42

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

60

40

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

57

24

015304560

Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	46 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	59 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	60 Avg FPS, 40 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	57 Avg FPS, 24 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

20

16

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

26

20

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

23

17

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

17

13

07.51522.530

Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	20 Avg FPS, 16 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	26 Avg FPS, 20 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	23 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	17 Avg FPS, 13 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

31

26

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

37

33

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

48

42

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

27

17

015304560

Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	31 Avg FPS, 26 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	37 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	48 Avg FPS, 42 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	27 Avg FPS, 17 1% Low FPS

Avg FPS

1% Low FPS

Steam Machine

45

30

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

52

36

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

53

36

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

50

31

015304560

Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra) Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	45 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	52 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	53 Avg FPS, 36 1% Low FPS
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	50 Avg FPS, 31 1% Low FPS

Yes, that's a 28 fps average result in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p Medium RT, with Quality FSR enabled, no frame gen. RDNA 3-era graphics hardware usually struggles with ray tracing, and the Steam Machine's 28 CU semi-custom GPU is no exception.

It's particularly shocking when you compare it with the AtomMan G1 Pro, an RTX 5060-equipped (albeit with 1 TB of storage) mini PC currently available for around $10 more, which manages 58 extra frames on average at the same settings.

Similarly, the Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora benchmark gives the Steam Machine some serious trouble, resulting in a 21 fps average at Ultra settings. Compare that with the G1 Pro, which churns out over double the frame rate. In fact, even the RTX 4060-equipped Lenovo Legion Tower 5i manages a respectable 33 fps result at the same settings, which goes to show roughly where we're at.

That's not to say the Steam Machine gets completely trounced in every benchmark. It beats one of our custom, Intel Arc B570-equipped PC builds in Black Myth Wukong, both with and without upscaling. If we were to build that PC today, it would be slightly more expensive than the Steam Machine 2 TB bundle—mostly due to the beefy Core Ultra 265K CPU and pricey RAM.

Still, you could save some money with a weaker CPU and (slightly) cheaper RAM, and get very similar gaming performance. Again, the RTX 4060, Intel Core i5 14400F-toting Legion Tower 5i powers ahead of the Steam Machine in Black Myth (with upscaling enabled) quite convincingly. That's a budget gaming PC with last-generation components, no two ways about it. And it's got the little Steam Machine thoroughly licked across almost all of my benchmarks.

Steam Machine real-world testing

It's important to remember that the Steam Machine is designed for your living room TV, which these days is likely to be a 4K-native model. So, putting our comparative benchmarks aside for a second, I decided to jump into three relatively demanding (and very popular) PC games at 4K resolution, and see how far I had to drop the settings to get a mostly-solid 60 fps.

In the case of Cyberpunk 2077, I managed to get a 58-61 fps average by dropping the settings to Medium (no ray tracing), bumping FSR into its Performance mode, and enabling 2x frame generation. That means the base frame rate is still trundling away at somewhere around the 30 fps mark, even with the upscaler working at its hardest.

Which means added latency, and some messy visuals. It's not a straight-up bad experience at these settings, but you can definitely see the FSR/frame gen combo struggling with details and fast movement on a regular basis. Could I play Cyberpunk 2077 like this? Sure, I guess. Would I feel good about it, having dropped $1,000+ on a new piece of hardware? Hmm. Pass, I think.

In the case of the newly-released (and fairly well-optimised) Forza Horizon 6, you can forget ray tracing if you want 60 fps at 4K. At this point, that's probably no surprise. However, you can just about keep things smooth with a combo of FSR Performance and High settings.

There's the occasional dip into the low 50s in downtown Tokyo, but it's plenty playable. Cutscene characters look a bit fuzzy, though, and given that frame gen in this game is an Nvidia-only option, you'll need to drop things further if you want higher/more consistent frames.

And then there's Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Night. At Medium settings, with FSR set to Performance and with frame generation enabled, you can indeed live your best Batman life at 4K 60 fps. Just about. Again, there's the odd dip, and the base frame rate is pretty low, so the extra latency is definitely palpable.

And again, FSR in all its older iterations looks rough around the edges at Performance settings. Valve says it's working on FSR 4 support for the Steam Machine, but for now, older FSR is what you get as an AMD-specific option.

You might be finding this all a bit obvious. The Steam Machine isn't particularly powerful, so why would I expect high resolution and 60+ frames from my tiny under-TV box? Well, Valve said as much when it first unveiled the Steam Machine last year, stating that 4K60 in your Steam games was its benchmark. And 4K TVs are pretty much the standard at this point. While you can drop the res below native, you're really not going to want to if image quality is a concern.

And as for smooth frame rates? It's sort of PC gaming's thing, man. Especially when you're spending proper PC gaming money.

Can the Valve box deliver in the demanding stuff? Sometimes. As long as you're prepared to make some pretty major compromises in the upscaling, frame generation, and settings departments.

Steam Machine software

First time setup involves attaching the included power cable (and the rather meagre 1.8 metre HDMI cable), booting up the box, and connecting the Steam Controller via the wireless puck. After entering your Wi-Fi details and your Steam account login (and adjusting your screen scaling, which I'll go into below) you're then presented with the SteamOS interface, after any incidental updates.

Anyone who's used a Steam Deck (or indeed, the Steam interface in general) will feel like they're in familiar territory here. A press of the central Steam Controller button opens up a side menu to access your Library or the storefront itself, while also providing a litany of options menus. More still can be accessed with the three-dot button at the bottom of the input device.

One slight hang-up I experienced involved connecting the Steam Controller to the Steam Machine itself, so I could ditch the wireless puck. The menu system is a little obtuse, as the settings appear to want you to shutdown the controller while connected to the puck, boot it up, disconnect it, and then hold down a combination of buttons and bumpers to pair it with the internal connection while booting it up again. A three finger job.

I think. It took a few goes, and I'm not quite sure which combination I used to eventually cause it to pair. In fact, if I had one overall critique of the Steam Machine software experience, it's that the option menus often feel overly complicated.

Some are simple toggles, others are drop down menus, some are sliders, some are in strange orders, some are accessed with one button, some another… it's all a bit much when you're trying to lie back on the couch and game.

The onboarding process has other quirks, too. This could be user error, but on first setup I adjusted the scaling to fit my particular (ancient) 1080p TV, which the Steam Machine merrily ignored once I was booted into the OS itself. This led to much head-scratching as I figured out how to adjust it again from within the slightly unclear (and now poorly scaled) menu options.

Switching over to my 4K monitor, SteamOS seemed to recognise the native resolution immediately, and displayed the appropriately-scaled menus. I then jumped into several games, only to find the resolution maxed out at 1080p. According to Valve, this 1080p default is deliberate Steam Machine behaviour, designed "to ensure a good gameplay experience out of the box."

Though I thought this was supposed to be a 4K-ready device?

After some hunting around in the SteamOS menus, I discovered a secondary resolution option under the Advanced Display settings that was set to "default" in a dropdown menu. Adjusting this manually to the native resolution of my 4K screen allowed me to select higher resolutions in games. It had me stumped for a good 10 minutes or so, though, as the main resolution scaling settings didn't do the trick.

I've had the odd game-specific issue, too. Baldur's Gate 3, for example, repeatedly crashed on boot—until some searching revealed a similar issue with the Steam Deck. The fix is to enable a Proton experimental setting in the Compatibility menu, which handily works for the Steam Machine, too.

So, does Valve's new box provide a seamless PC gaming experience? Well it hasn't for me, I have to say. And while this sort of tweakery is common for those of us who do battle with the PC gaming gods—especially those of us who run Linux operating systems on the regular—I had hoped for a smoother ride from a living room-first machine. Valve says it's working on various aspects of the interface for a better experience, but for now, it definitely feels like a work in progress.

Steam Machine aesthetics

Opinions will vary here, but I'm a big fan of the Steam Machine's design. There's something high-tech, slightly ominous, and very Valve about the aesthetic. It looks and feels like an ancient artifact you'd find in a sci-fi shooter, some sort of key that unlocks a machine designed to bring about the end of the universe. I'm riffing here, but if you pick up one for yourself, you'll see what I mean.

Should the all-black, all-knowing cube design not be to your tastes, there's always the option to swap out the faceplates. These are attached with small magnets at all four corners to the front of the chassis, and pull themselves into place with a meaty thock.

Something I accidentally discovered is that, such is the force of the magnets, you can stack two together at once, although a single plate locks smoothly in line with the front I/O panel below. My top-end 2 TB Steam Machine bundle includes two extra plates, one covered in red fabric, and the other with a wood finish.

Tapping my finger against the latter, it appears to be an actual piece of tree—rather than a cheap walnut-style veneer. Very nice indeed, if you're into that sort of thing.

My main point, however, is just how unassuming the Steam Machine looks when tucked among my other set-top boxes and routers, even with a jazzy face plate attached. It looks like it'll blend in just about anywhere, and the front LED strip can be configured in a multitude of ways. You can set it to pulse through the RGB spectrum to deliver a gaming PC-like aesthetic, or you can turn it off entirely, among other options.

At which point, you may end up forgetting you've got a Steam Machine under your TV at all. It's well-sized enough that I don't think anyone will have a problem integrating it into their setup with ease.

As for the controller? Well, it's a sizable beast, that's for sure. Still, with an all-black, relatively muted design, I don't think your average non-gamer would notice much of a difference between this and a standard Xbox controller unless they picked one up.

Temperatures and noise

The Steam Machine is quiet. I mean, really, really quiet. The single, geometry-optimised 120 mm fan at the back does an admirable job of moving large amounts of air at whisper-like levels, so much so that I don't think you'd notice it at full pelt over any other ambient noise.

Temperatures

Gaming TemperaturesIdle temperatures

Avg CPU Temp (°C)

Max CPU Temp (°C)

Avg GPU Temp (°C)

Max GPU Temp (°C)

Steam Machine

68

74

65

69

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

89

91

77

67

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

64

76

67

71

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

57

81

66

71

0255075100

Gaming Temperatures Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	68 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 74 Max CPU Temp (°C), 65 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 69 Max GPU Temp (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	89 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 91 Max CPU Temp (°C), 77 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 67 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	64 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 76 Max CPU Temp (°C), 67 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 71 Max GPU Temp (°C)
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	57 Avg CPU Temp (°C), 81 Max CPU Temp (°C), 66 Avg GPU Temp (°C), 71 Max GPU Temp (°C)

CPU (°C)

GPU (°C)

Steam Machine

38

41

AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX

51

38

Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F

29

30

Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K

37

46

015304560

Idle temperatures Data

Product	Value
Steam Machine	38 CPU (°C), 41 GPU (°C)
AtomMan G1 Pro | RTX 5060 | AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX	51 CPU (°C), 38 GPU (°C)
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i | RTX 4060 | Intel Core i5 14400F	29 CPU (°C), 30 GPU (°C)
Custom PC #11 (issue 413) | Arc B570 | Intel Core Ultra 7 265K	37 CPU (°C), 46 GPU (°C)

It runs relatively cool, too. Certainly much cooler than the AtomMan G1 Pro when you crank it up to its top whack, which is significantly noisier, too. Valve has clearly prioritised refinement when it comes to both the Steam Machine's size and sound, which is a good instinct to follow when it comes to a living room-friendly box.

Steam Machine value

When the Steam Machine was first announced, we on the PC Gamer hardware team took a look at the specs and all came to the same rough conclusion. It's relatively low-powered, it's designed for your living room, and it's gunning for a position next to your other consoles. Therefore, it'll have to be reasonably priced.

That was in the before times, of course. Back when cheap memory modules were abundant, and the idea of a $550-$600 base-level Steam Machine seemed quite possible. Then the AI server market hoovered up all the manufacturing capacity, the consumer market got stuffed, and we've been living in a world of ridiculous pricing ever since.

Given all this, on the surface, the $1,049 Steam Machine 512 GB seems almost reasonable. Let's put it this way, it's not as highly-priced as we feared, given everything that's going on at the moment and the recent price hike of the Steam Deck. But the unfortunate truth is that budget gaming PCs—while being much larger, noisier, and more unwieldy than Valve's magic box—can still be found for the same sort of figure.

A perusal of our cheap gaming PC deals page reveals several 1 TB-equipped, RTX 5060-toting models for under $1,000. And, as I've shown with the AtomMan G1 Pro, anything with Nvidia's current-gen budget card is likely to give the Steam Machine a good thrashing in the performance stakes.

Speaking of which, the AtomMan machine can be found (at the time of writing) for $1,439 at Amazon. That's pretty pricey for a mini PC, but it does come with a beastly laptop CPU, said RTX 5060, and 32 GB of RAM. You only get a 1 TB SSD, it's true. And like the PCs above, it doesn't have an included controller, nor a couch-native SteamOS interface.

But it's only $11 more than the top-spec Steam Machine 2 TB. And Steam Big Picture mode in Windows works great for gaming on your TV. As for the controller? A suitable model doesn't cost a whole lot extra (particularly if you go for something budget-yet-brilliant, like the GameSir Nova Lite).

I just can't square the Steam Machine's performance with any idea of consumer value. I really can't. The first question you need to ask yourself as a hardware reviewer is this: Would I buy one?

And despite the little black box's lovely design, excellent controller, and sheer curiosity value, the answer is no. Not when I can still pick up a regular gaming PC for the equivalent cash, with much better overall gaming performance.

Because, when it comes to the PC gaming experience, I think you should ask yourself what it means to you. To me, it means better graphics than consoles. It means higher frame rates. It means flexibility, and it means spending more money in return for a better experience when I actually play the games.

Having a neat little PC gaming box tucked away underneath your TV is all well and good, on paper. But when it feels underpowered (and internally outdated) right out of the gate, while still costing north of a grand for the base-level model? I'm simply not sure it makes much sense.

Special commentary on this classic PC Gamer review provided by:

Dishonored review - PC Gamer issue #246 (UK, December 2012)

From the archives: The review below appears as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and presentation. By Tom Francis

I think I can jump onto another light fitting from here. I’m wrong. I slip, fall, and land inches behind a gold-masked Overseer looking out of the fifth-story window. I only have a split second headstart in getting over our mutual surprise at the situation, and I use it to stab him in the neck.

A second after his body hits the ground, I hear carpet-softened footsteps coming down the hall. Panic. After mentally rejecting three even crazier ideas, I hoist the Overseer’s body over my shoulder and jump out of the window.

Dishonored is mostly a stealth game, where you play a kind of assassin, in a somewhat steampunk city. Those floundering qualifiers are part of the fun: you don’t have to hide, you don’t have to kill anyone, and while the city of Dunwall mixes matchlock pistols with crackling Tesla tech, it’s a rusty, crumbling place that feels unique.

If you don’t manage the stealth part, the first-person swordfight that breaks out is surprisingly fun, and surprisingly survivable. Time your blocks right and you can take out a squad of guards with vicious counter-attack executions. It’s not always viable later on, and I’m keen to avoid it on this mission anyway. My target is the Grand Overseer, head of Dunwall’s witch-hunting religion, and any alarm will send him running to his underground bunker.

As I sail out of the window, still holding the dead guard, I twist round and Blink back onto the window ledge. There are only six magical powers in the game, and you probably won’t use them all, but you’ll definitely use Blink. It’s a short-range teleport spell that’s almost free to cast, and quickly becomes your main way of getting around the game.

It’s silent, so it makes stealth faster and more versatile: you can Blink past the path of an approaching guard to stab him in the back when he investigates your former location.

And it also gives you a precise and reliable way to climb on the scenery. The game shows you the spot you’ll jump to as you aim the spell, so the kind of player who habitually falls off light fittings can still blink to a fifth- story window ledge without falling to his death.

City blocked

The ledge is safe and out of sight, but I don’t think it’s wide enough to drop the body on. And the huge, rainlashed courtyard below is crawling with guards. I circle half the building before I finally see an open dumpster at ground level. I think I can toss him into it from all the way up here.

I’m wrong.

Dishonored’s missions unfold across huge chunks of this plague-infested city. The best of them spend that space in breadth as much as length, letting you explore several city blocks outside of the building you plan to infiltrate. You’re free to sneak through the rat-riddled alleyways, clamber up to the rooftops and Blink between them, or dive into every open window and ransack the buildings for secrets and loot. It’s a fantastic sense of freedom.

There are even side quests in these extensive regions, and masses of incidental storytelling. Books, notes and diaries offer you enigmatic clues to stashes of loot, safe combinations and magical items.

The city watch patrol most of it, but other sections are ruled by thugs, the gutters crawl with plague- zombies, and some apartments are inhabited by stranger folk altogether.

This courtyard, though, is patrolled by Overseers. And a very dead Overseer has just fallen out of the sky and landed heavily on a spiked metal fence, dangling from it like a gruesome warning. I freeze.

They haven’t seen it yet. I slip quietly back in through a different window.

I’m in the meeting room my target is headed for, and there are two glasses on the table. My mission is to kill the Grand Overseer, but there’s an optional extra: he’s about to poison one of the few good men left in the city watch, and I’ve been asked to prevent it. I’m just about to do something clever with the glasses (see ‘Who to poison’) when the doors swing open.

Underseers

I Blink behind a screen in the corner of the room and hold my breath. The guards yell in alarm, I switch to grenades and brace for them to... rush out through the other doors.

They didn’t see me! They must be responding to something else going on. Oh, the bloodied Overseer I just threw off the building? I guess that might be it.

An objective note tells me I’ve prevented the poisoning, with my ingenious and totally intentional distraction technique, so now I just need to take out my target. I slip back out of the window before the metal shutters come down, and Blink down to street level. There’s a gutter down here with a tiny window into the Grand Overseer’s safe room, so all that’s left to do is to load my crossbow and wait.

As well as the openness of the levels themselves, there’s a pleasing amount of flexibility in how to tackle your targets. Prescribed solutions like the poisoning are blended with emergent ones, like planting a razorwire tripmine on the route to the target’s saferoom, or rewiring security to kill him for you.

Sometimes key information about your targets’ location or identity is randomised each time you play, so you have to gather clues through exploration and eavesdropping every time. And there’s even a nonlethal way of dealing with every target.

I won’t spoil what it is in this mission, but it’s a good one. In general, too, I like the ridiculous idea of a game about a ‘supernatural assassin’ going to such lengths to cater to the extremist player who’d want to leave every single person alive. And how many people you kill actually changes the later levels: the more corpses you leave in your wake, the more rats and plague zombies you’ll encounter.

I like all that. But Dishonored goes further. Characters start to moan at you if you kill too many people. The nonlethal objectives sometimes involve substantial side-quests that you miss out on if you don’t want to take that weird path. The game itself even says ‘Optional objective failed’ if you’re so audacious as to actually assassinate the person you were sent to assassinate. And if it feels you’ve killed more than it deems morally acceptable, you’re punished with a deeply unsatisfying ending.

It’s a strangely sanctimonious attitude for a game whose most interesting features all revolve around arranging inventively horrific murders. Particularly when the nonlethal objectives are often crueller than death—one of them leaves a woman unconscious at the mercy of a terrifying creep who’s in love with her.

If you take the hint and try to avoid killing, you hit a practical problem: there’s only one nonlethal weapon.

Your trademark retractable blade, your upgradeable pistol, crossbow bolts, incendiary darts, explosive rounds, grenades, proximity- triggered springrazors, the Jedi-like Wind Blast, the rat-powered Devouring Swarm, rewired Arc Pylons, Walls of Light and Watch Towers all kill.

Sleep darts don’t, so the merciful play style is limited to those and a very slow sleeperhold move. There’s still a quiet satisfaction to playing this way, but it’s much more repetitive than messing around with all the rest of the horrible toys the game gives you.

Gilded cage

The other thing that makes Dishonored slightly less exciting than it initially seems is that it peaks early. The most liberating missions are all in the first half of its 13-hour story. Some of the later ones are too plot-driven to give you that same freedom, and others are just too crowded with guards. One is set on a bridge, but if you drop down to the water to swim around part of it, you’re stopped by invisible barriers.

The game never becomes as straightforward or restrictive as a conventional shooter, it just doesn’t manage to play to its strengths all the way through.

What it never loses is the feeling of a world full of interesting systems to tinker with. Take the technology: every security device is wired to a control panel, and everything that needs a lot of power is wired to a whale-oil battery. Every panel can be rewired to turn the device to your side, and every battery can be removed to turn it off.

At one point I couldn’t find a way past an Arc Pylon: a Tesla-coil that obliterates any intruder in a certain radius. The panel to rewire it was in range of the Pylon itself, impossible to reach alive. The battery that powered it was on a low platform that I also couldn’t get to without going near the Pylon. But I could see it, and I happen to know that whale oil batteries are highly explosive.

I shot it with a crossbow bolt, the battery blew, and the Pylon powered down. While the guards investigated the blown battery, I crept over to the control panel and rewired it. There were a few more batteries in a nearby storage room, so I stole a new one and powered it back up, now working for me. It fried so many guards that I eventually had to replace the battery.

A perfect swarm

Part of the reason Dunwall’s oppressive government installs automated security like this is to curb the spread of rats, which are a system in themselves. They’re everywhere, but they don’t pose a threat unless they gather into a bona fide swarm. That tends to happen around corpses, which they flock to wherever they find them. Once they’ve picked the body clean, the swarm will happily move onto living targets: you or your enemies.

I got cornered by a swarm while sneaking through a manor house. I’d slipped past two thugs to get into a bedroom, but now the swarm was between me and the door. So to solve two problems at once, I shot the wall.

The thugs ran over to investigate the noise, the rats ran over to investigate the thugs, and while the seething mass of vermin and flesh wrestled with itself, I skirted round it and sneaked upstairs.

Then there’s the Possession spell: once you’ve invested enough in it, you can take control of any man or beast for a few seconds. The limitations are pretty strict: you can’t attack, you die if they die, and when the spell ends, you step out of your victim rather than returning to your original location. But you can use Possession to slip past security systems without hacking them, or to escape a crowd of angry guards. I loved taking control of a Tallboy, the towering archers on stilts. The rest of the guards just see you vanish, and search for you while their heavy backup mysteriously wanders off to be alone.

Something else Dishonored never loses is its aesthetic flair. Dunwall is a rotting city port defined by the sharp divide between rich and poor.

Everything is weathered, faded and crumbling except for the pristine soapstone mansions of the aristocracy, and the game art relishes that grotesque contrast. Every monied bureaucrat wears a caricature of a sneer, every plague victim an exaggerated look of permanent dismay.

The masquerade mission is the visual centrepiece: a silk draped party in a manor of dazzling opulence, attended by nasty socialites whose monstrous masks seem like an externalisation of their ugly indifference to the plague. In the street outside, its vomiting victims are cut down by the guards’ explosive arrows if they stumble too far out of the gutter.

Dishonored’s whole world is textured with an oil-painted smudge that brings out the 19th-century vibe—despite the sci-fi tech. That’s part of what makes its atmosphere so intoxicating: we don’t often get to explore a setting like this.

For all those reasons, I recommend turning off almost every part of the interface. There’s a thrillingly nerdy array of options for this, and I found myself getting more and more lost in the game once I’d tinkered with them: I learned to listen for the noise of my mana recharging, read street signs to figure out where I was going, and notice the way I was holding my weapon to check whether I was in sneak mode.

This is all PC specific, and our version gets all the special attention we like: field-of-view options, responsive mouse movement, graphics options—you can even ‘Disable rat shadows’. +5 to the score right there.

Assassin’s speed

The only thing I can’t vouch for is performance: Bethesda aren’t letting code out of their office at time of writing, so I’ve only played it on a 2.8GHz Core i7 with a 2GB GeForce GTX 670 graphics card.

On that setup—contain your shock—it ran smoothly.

The fact that someone’s still putting real effort into the PC version of their multi-platform game is one good reason to buy it. But with Dishonored, there are quite a few. The fact that it doesn’t have any unskippable boss fights. That it’s one of the few major new games that isn’t a sequel or a remake. That a developer went to huge lengths to allow players this much freedom, and a publisher gave them the time and money to make it this slick.

It’s a big, shiny example of so much we keep asking for in games, but rarely get. Luckily, the best way to vindicate it is to buy and then play an amazing game.

For years, Logitech's egg-shaped G305 has been a budget beast, offering a comfortable feel, decent sensor, and solid shape at a reasonable price. It was so good, in fact, that it was our pick for the best budget wireless gaming mouse until the copycat Mchose G3 V2 Pro showed up. Incredibly, it claimed a spot on top of the budget gaming mouse hill for eight entire years.

Almost as if it were perturbed for losing that spot, Logitech has just launched a refresh, the G305 X Superlight, with an upgraded sensor and ever so slightly different look. Now it's got RGB that shines through a translucent patch in the base, to match the look of the G316 X 98 gaming keyboard.

But, in return for those upgrades, you are paying more money now, so it doesn't just need to be better to actually be better. It instead needs to be better for the money. Okay, I'll stop saying "be better".

That's all before mentioning that, like almost every bit of PC gaming gear, the competition has gotten fierce over the years. Logitech doesn't just need to compete with itself; it has to throw hands with a dozen other mouse brands to come out victorious.

At 59 grams, the G305 X Superlight has a pleasant feel to it. It's not very weighty at all, but there's certainly enough that it gives some resistance as I use it. The skates give resistance, too, and I'm not a fan of them. They catch just a little, sticking more to my mouse pad than I'd like. It definitely feels like more of a subjective thing, but I would like a light mouse to glide more in use, especially in snappy first-person shooters.

As well as this, I can hear a defined scratching sound with the mouse skates (we had the same problem with the Protoarc EM25 recently), which doesn't appear to do damage but can be quite annoying. Once I really started to take note of it, the mouse actively annoyed me, which is a bad sign for long-term use.

I even found myself cautious of making wide motions because it was loud enough to distract. You should be able to fix this by replacing the skates with after-market ones, but that's something you really don't want to have to do with a mouse just to get it feeling okay, especially a budget one.

One thing that I do appreciate about this mouse is its tiny visible screws on the bottom. You can get in there and replace the battery, should you want to, and easy access is a good thing, as far as repairability is concerned.

Speaking of internals, Logitech's Hero sensor is still potent. You are getting a max DPI of 44,000 here, and it's snappy and responsive enough to handle high DPIs well. It also technically supports 8,000 Hz polling, but you have to buy an optional receiver to actually use that. If doing this means getting a cheaper mouse, I actually think making 8,000 optional is a fairly smart play. It's a niche polling rate that most won't see the benefit of.

In shooter Mouse: PI for Hire, I had no problems blasting away all the baddies, and the easy-to-access DPI switch on the top of the mouse means I can flit between sensitivities with ease. The switches are satisfying to click and produce a rather loud noise in response.

I almost never found myself double-clicking, though I think part of that is the comfortable shape. It's a sturdy shell (get it? Because of the egg thing), and though it's plastic, it's certainly strong plastic. The round base means that I am often encouraged to squeeze the sides with the bottom of my palm. It's a comforting hold that feels very natural in play. I'd say it's better suited to small hands, thanks to its tiny frame, but I didn't particularly mind it with my fairly big hands, either.

At just under 60 grams, it's relatively light, though again, those skates just let it down somewhat. On a heavier frame, I can see the appeal of more catchy skates, but I really want the G305 X Superlight to feel breezy in use.

One thing I always try to test with gaming mice is Counter-Strike 2, as its short time to kill makes precise, quick aiming so important. For the most part, the G305 X performs admirably here. The sensor never cut out, and shots are easy to make.

The G305 X's specs are almost approaching competitive esports level, and that's certainly nice to have at this price point, though there will always be some compromises. For instance, moving from it to my daily driver, the 8BitDo Retro R8, it has a better sensor but worse polling, and the R8's skates gave me instant relief when I swapped. And the R8 does all of this, with an included charging dock and great aesthetics, for $30 less. I didn't realise until I'd swapped mice how much the skates impacted my enjoyment of the G305 X.

The G305 X is impressive in more than one way, though. Its 35-hour battery life is certainly quite strong. It's also the type of mouse you can just throw in a bag and bring places. I know, as I've done that. It's sturdy, light, small and comes with a small compartment on the bottom for the 2.4 GHz connector. This means it's a very neat little package.

And that package is partly so neat because of its subdued aesthetic. I've had my hands on the black one, and outside of the RGB strip at the top, it's all very understated. It looks clean on a desk and doesn't distract much from the screen. Its rounded base is not only comfortable but looks neat too.

But Logitech aren't even the only one doing that egg shape anymore. I recently had the chance to test out the rather impressive Mchose G3 V2, which comes in at less than half the price, and honestly, I'd be picking that instead if it were my cash. The 12,000 DPI in the G3 V2 is lower, but you get the same base polling, a stronger battery life, the exact same weight, and its Omron mechanical switches are very pleasant too.

That's before mentioning the G3 V2 Pro, which is around ten dollars more than the standard G3V2, comes with an upgraded sensor, and packs a 26,000 max DPI. Mchose's mouse feet are also substantially better, to me.

The G305 X Superlight does seem like a noticeable improvement over the standard G305 on paper, and in practice, it's a solid mid-range device with strong stats, a solid feel, and a clean look. However, the G305 has partly stood the test of time because you'd always find it on sale, and thanks to a price bump, the G305 X doesn't actually feel like a no-brainer upgrade, especially when the market is more vibrant, varied, and interesting than ever before.

I recently had the chance to test two different Melgeek keyboards at the same time. They are the space-themed Centauri 80 and the black and gold Real 81. Though they're made by the same company, they couldn't be more different in approach.

The Centauri 80 is heavy, flashy, with a built-in OLED screen, and it costs $360. The Real 81, on the other hand, is more practical at $140, or at least as practical as you can get from a competitive gaming keyboard.

If I could compare it to keyboards I've tried before, I'd say it's a similar feel and design to Lemokey, specifically the Lemokey L4. It's small but blocky and a little chunky. It's the type of keyboard you could throw into a backpack, but you probably wouldn't want to because it's pretty heavy. Still, I don't think I'd fear it breaking on the train.

It also comes with many of the features you would want out of a competitive keyboard. It can go all the way up to 8,000 Hz (should you have the reaction speed for that to matter), and its keys are all rapid trigger capable, which means they can register presses and unregister presses based on a specific actuation. In practice, this means being able to stop walking quicker or button bash more effectively.

Immediately, it's a more attractive package for the average gamer than the Centauri 80. Where the Centauri shows up in the looks department and feels impressive, the Real 81 is simpler in approach. It doesn't have any gimmicks and comes in at a reasonably competitive price.

Naturally, I still wouldn't call $140 cheap, or even budget, but the Gamakay x NaughShark NS68 sits in a league of its own for 8,000 Hz pricing. And Gamakay give up build quality in return for that super cheap price point. $140 feels about right for the keyboard I've had my mitts on, factoring specs and build.

In the looks department, the Real 81 has a few flourishes, with a gold trim and a small LED bar down the bottom right, but it's not too flashy either. It's all black otherwise, and the keys have a dark gold lettering.

Unfortunately, like the Centauri 80, the Real 81 is quite hard to make out in a dark environment. If I don't have at least a light on in the room, I have to rely mostly on feel to make out where the keys are. This isn't a huge problem for me, as I'm fairly familiar with where to put my hands, but it's still an odd issue to have. Keys are, thankfully, well spaced and easy to get to, though.

The RGB underneath keys does look pretty good, and that's because its keys are translucent. It even has per-key RGB, which can be adjusted in Melgeek's own software. That software can also be used to set custom controls, which does help make up for the lack of any media buttons on the keyboard itself. You can download that software, or use it on the web, and the web app is super solid. I like that customisation is straightforward and easy here. The Real 81 is simple to use out of the box and doesn't even require software, past the first update.

As far as typing feel is concerned, the Real 81 performs okay. Keys are a tad springy for my liking, and are less smooth than I would have hoped. I feel like I'm simply putting in a little more effort than I expect when trying to bash them down in a flurry for a piece of news. Mine came equipped with Melgeek's Honey magnetic switches, and Honey is an apt name, as they just feel a tad sticky. The space bar and caps lock also have an uncomfortable clack feeling, which is less nice than the somewhat muted sounds of the rest of the keyboard. I wouldn't say it's bad, as far as sound is concerned, but just inconsistent.

Melgeek employs a 5-layer sound-dampening gasket mount to help flatten that sound, and it's mostly rather satisfying. The majority of keys have a 'tick' sound that's just quite enough that it hasn't bothered my partner on a late night when inspiration has suddenly struck me. The feel of the keys would certainly send me to bed before the sound would, anyway.

In games, the Real 81 does perform pretty well, though. Keys are responsive and super quick in Counter-Strike 2, and I can stop walking nearly instantaneously. Your reticule is smaller when standing still in Counter-Strike 2, so this feels like a boon to me. I'd say competitive games overall perform quite nicely. The slightly tougher keys are actually pretty solid in the likes of Battlefield, where a stray misclick is rather common.

In more casual single-player games, I find the Real 81 does its job, but it's less comfortable to use after a few hours than other keyboards I've had my hands on. That's because the springy keys just require a bit more effort. Longer gaming sessions feel ever so slightly tiresome.

I noticed this after a few hours with roguelite city builder Super Fantasy Kingdom, where I just wished I could control it all from my mouse, as the combination of its hardy keys and my leaned posture made it feel like a little more effort than necessary.

Most keyboards have to make compromises, but I can't help but feel like Melgeek's compromises are by accident here. It's a solid set of competitive keys, but not amazing for everyday typing. It has vibrant RGB and gold lettering…which you will struggle to see in the dark. It has a solid dampening solution that works well… but not on every key.

The Real 81's monkey paw curls on almost every good side, and there's certainly enough good to outweigh the bad points, but there's still far more bad than I was expecting. Or hoping for.

Oh, there's some new DLC for Dave the Diver where you do more spearfishing and restaurant management, but this time it takes place in a little village where you can do quests and win favor with the locals like it's Stardew Valley? And it only costs $10? Sounds like a cute little distraction, perfect for the weekend.

Except the weekend is long gone and I'm still playing. I've sunk more than 25 hours into the new "content pack" for Dave The Diver, called In The Jungle, and I'm happy to say I'm not finished yet. In addition to Dave's usual scuba diving and bartending, I've battled a half-dozen new bosses, hunted birds with a rifle, become an expert beetle manager, been in a car chase, and watched my friend get swallowed and regurgitated by an enormous frog. Heck, I've even gone fishing the old-fashioned way: with a rod and a reel. Imagine that! Finally, fishing comes to Dave the Diver.

Just like the base game, In The Jungle is packed to the gills with activities and swimming with quirky characters—and it's big enough it almost feels like it could be a standalone game.

Deep dive

In the DLC, Dave has been asked by his pal Dr. Bacon to investigate a remote village where a dead dinosaur has washed up next to a lake, and Dave, as he always does, agrees to help out. Bancho the legendary sushi chef comes along and sets up shop in the little village, where the locals are a bit wary of the newcomers. Soon, Dave is making routine dives to spearhunt and Bancho is cooking up his catches. There's no sushi this time (you can't serve freshwater fish raw), but that doesn't stop Bancho from dramatically researching and grilling dozens of new recipes.

The daily dives for dinner work like they do in the base game, though Dave has some new upgradable gear to play with like his "Jungle Gun" which can quickly switch between a sniper rifle, shotgun, net gun, and assault rifle. I know that sounds extreme for catching fish, but this lake is a dangerous place, filled with ravenous piranha and enormous crocodiles. The lake is just the beginning, as the deeper Dave dives, the more dangerous and bizarre the sea life gets.

What's more exciting this time around is the surface world, where the side-scrolling of the dives is swapped for a Stardew Valley-like perspective. You can explore the village and visit the homes of the more than 30 new characters stuffed into this DLC, running around in all directions instead of just back and forth. This perspective extends to Bancho's outdoor restaurant, meaning you have to navigate around tables and chairs while serving meals, grilling appetizers, and mixing drinks for your evening visitors.

This perspective shift adds a lot: the base game was segmented into the different gameplay sections, but here it all flows together. Walk from Dave's customizable cabin in the morning right out into the village, gather some resources like plants and herbs, chop down a tree and chip out some ore to make a bit of new furniture for the restaurant, stop and chat with a few locals, then stroll down to the lake, pop on your scuba gear, and dive right in. In the Jungle makes it feel more like Dave is really living in the world than the original game ever did.

Jungle gym

Then there's the jungle itself. You'll grab your trigger-happy pal Cobra and your new gadget-making friend Muna and carefully explore the branching paths of the jungle, which is filled with dangerous creatures like giant spiders, venomous frogs, vicious baboons, and massive snakes.

That's where another new system appears: turn-based combat. You control Dave and his friends as they battle, using their offensive and defensive skills against the threats, leveling up after wins to unlock even more abilities. There's a timing element to much of it, too, so tapping a button at the right time can mean doing more damage or blocking your enemy's attacks. It's a refreshing addition to the mix, especially Cobra's abilities, which involve flinging sticks of dynamite or using his incendiary sniper rifle on the monsters. Cobra is anything but subtle.

Why explore a jungle when you're supposed to be looking for lake monsters and running a restaurant? Well, there's an ancient temple hidden in there somewhere, and, yes, it's got even more new challenges like a series of ever-more intricate block-pushing puzzles. If Link ever quits the Zelda series, I'm starting to think Dave could fill in nicely.

What else? Well, you can manage a collection of horned beetles, battling them against each other in a rock-paper-scissors combat system. You can go bird hunting, which works just like the old Duck Hunting game for the NES. Fancy a bit of Rock Band? There's a minigame with the local musician. There's a block-stacking activity, lots of fishing to do in jungle ponds, and a mobile app that lets you use the distance you've walked and swam to level up a virtual flower…

I guess I should stop being surprised at just how many different activities Mintrocket packs into Dave the Diver, but I can't. Every morning you wake up in the DLC, you really have no idea where the day will take you and what new game or system it'll place in your path.

New in town

Motivating me beyond all the minigames is Dave's evolving relationship with the villagers. While they live in the jungle in modest huts far removed from modern society, they're anything but primitive. They read manga. They use mobile phones. One villager gave me his CD player because he streams all his music these days. Each has a disposition meter and the more you gently interact with them, the more you'll learn about their likes and dislikes and find ways to win them over.

What really makes it all work is that Dave is just such a lovable character. He's constantly risking his neck for others to take on fearsome sea creatures and horrifying jungle monsters, yet he's completely bashful when anyone tries to thank him, always deflecting the praise to give someone else the credit. Just like in the base game, Dave once again won me over with his humble charm, and that made it completely believable that he was capable of winning over the villagers by being so kind and selfless. It was pretty heartwarming when the prickliest of all the villagers eventually approached me with a small gift near the end of the game. And Dave, of course, was completely bashful in accepting it.

What else is there to say? In the Jungle is great, it's inexpensive, and just as filled to the brim with charm and activities as the base game. I was expecting this DLC to be a tasty snack, but turns out it's a big ol' meal.

I always thought history was boring as a kid. Nuts to the past, I want cool tech, body mods, and lightspeed travel! But maybe I would have felt differently if I had a game like The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales back then. What better way is there to appreciate the past than violently cutting down a million monsters in a ye olde fantasy Philadelphia?

Centered around the—you’ll never guess—adventures of a guy named Elliot, this is a classic top-down action adventure through and through. I can taste a healthy smattering of Zelda in its recipe, a smidge of Ys, a dash of Quintet’s informal Gaia series. Traveling through time to explore the history of the magic city Philabieldia (no relation to the real magic city of cheesesteaks stateside), all the elements you’d expect of the genre are here: a condensed map, various tools to help uncover secrets, and plenty of puzzle-filled dungeons, all spruced up with Square Enix’s now-iconic HD-2D style looking the best it ever has. You’ve even got a little blue fairy friend yapping your ear off.

And boy does she talk.

With her portrait sitting in the corner of the screen so she can mug gameplay and cutscenes alike like a hungry react YouTuber, Faie the fairy truly loves to yap. All I'm trying to do is fight my way through a tiny cave, and yet there she is complimenting me after every fight, pointing out every item that drops or chest sitting out in the open or immediately explaining how to solve the world's simplest block pushing puzzle the second I see it. Luckily for my sanity, there's an option buried in the menus to cut her rambling down significantly, turning her from borderline unbearable to a charmingly optimistic companion. It’s frankly baffling that’s not the default.

Besides making sure you’ve always got someone to listen to, Faie provides The Adventures of Elliot’s biggest addition to a style of turn-based RPG Square Enix has gotten comfortable with in recent years., She has an entire host of abilities of her own to experiment with. I can urn her into a body double to clear out a host of monsters while sitting safely in another room, or have her warp me past entire sections of dungeons. Faie specializes in producing moments that make me feel like a genius cheating the system.

Controlled with either the right stick or by a friend, taking full advantage of her freeform powers can be brain-breakingly busy (and sometimes left me gripping my controller in a monstrous double claw), but the satisfaction of whacking an evil elephant with a hammer into Faie right as she’s turned into a mini tornado to hurl them into a pit is incredibly satisfying.

Timed events

Not that I wasn’t swinging a sword plenty myself. The Adventures of Elliot is a lightning fast game. Classic JRPG electric guitar wails while I hop over boulders that are sinking into lava. As soon as I land in a locked room, half a dozen murderous monsters are beelining right for me. At its best it’s positively exhilarating, a total high-octane thrill ride. Many of the bosses especially, these gorgeous behemoths of detailed pixel work, call to mind the furious action of Ys, dashing and jumping and blocking and parrying in an endless back and forth ballet of violence.

And while there’s not many graphic options—mostly the prerequisite smattering of resolution sliders and depth of field toggles—the HD-2D style ensures a strong visual look while keeping the requirements humble, and on my rig it all ran at a perfectly constant 120 fps; ideal for a game that has a tendency to get chaotic.

It’s too bad, then, that the game is so obsessed with making sure I’m never without a rogue rodent to explode that the puzzles suffer. Most about as complex as pushing a single block left a couple inches. Worse, without any memorable puzzles or interesting layouts, the dungeons all lack a strong identity, slipping right out of the mind the moment they’re done.

Acting your age

The Adventures of Elliot will have you hoping through a handful of time periods. Here's what to expect.

Link to the past

Still, it’s nice that the game treats its story with a similar sense of speed. You can easily hit the end of the of this adventure in under 20 hours, and while the narrative itself is mostly fine—every single beat is extremely familiar and wrapped up in a well-meaning if clumsy fantasy racism metaphor—it shows a real knack for connecting its mechanics to the story and endearing me to the cast with only a few lines of dialogue.

That cast gets plenty of love in sidequests. From helping a grieving widow find a way to remember her late husband to helping a researcher preserve the dreams of those who came before, they're all about the past, memories, and dreams, building out a sense of thematic unity and interconnectedness as Philabieldia's NPCs big and small see their stories cross in surprising ways.

It’s in that interconnectedness where the warm spirit of The Adventures of Elliot really lies. Setting the entire game in the same fairly small area across four time periods is a bold move, and one that pays off wonderfully. The game is deeply enamored with the very idea of history, with the joy and sense of adventure that comes with seeing how a single home or batch of trees might change with the years, with the way the past reflects the present and stories continue over generations. Just look at the world map to see the proof, each new age stacked up on top of one another exactly the same as the floors of its cavernous dungeons, layers of history peeled back as you dive deeper into the past.

Like that map, The Adventures of Elliot is built on a long and ever-evolving history of a genre. And while it might not stand quite as tall as its towering influences, its dedication to brevity, thrills, and a genuine passion for the past gives its own adventure a solid place to stand in time.

Between online video calls, streaming, content creating, and messing with music, I really appreciate a good microphone for my PC setup. Once upon a time I'd be hard pressed to find a high-quality USB mic, but with many gamer brands stepping into the space great PC mics have become more commonplace.

What I haven't seen before is an exceptional quality PC mic that can also switch over to XLR interface for analogue use like Rode's NT1 5th generation release.

Rode may not be super familiar to gamers, but for those into music production and other content creation, the brand is a household name. Known for putting out excellent recording options, Rode has often been revered as delivering audiophile quality, often a bit cheaper than some of the other contending brands like Sony. The NT1 5th Generation microphone is yet another example of this, but in a mic that's so flexible you can use it for basically anything you can dream of.

Unboxing the mic is a neat experience as it's immediately obvious by the heft that this is a premium product, which you'd want for $259 USD. There's a lot more metal than I'm used to, including an aluminium body and full mesh over the actual mic portion.

The box also includes a shock mount, pop filter, and USB C and XLR cables that are thicker than the oceans (seven Cs) so it's usable straight out of the box. There's no stand, but it'll work with the standard threading for anything you already own. I've also had success on a box with a hole cut out for the cable and simply holding the mic.

The first thing I noticed when recording is how low the sound floor is on this microphone. Being a large-diaphragm cardioid condenser microphone, it is designed to pick up every little noise, but I also realised that my voice wasn't coming across as much louder than many ambient noises around me. Still I was impressed with the plug and playability across every device I tried it with. This noise gate issue isn't ideal for things like streaming but that's where Rode's free software comes in.

While there are no controls on the microphone itself, when plugged in via USB you get access to extra functionality through the free Rode Central app. This lets you set a gain input to raise the volume so your voice is crystal clear as well as manage the high pass filter to get rid of those background noises and it works a treat. Using it I managed to get my stream sounding like this in only a few tweaks.

Rode offers a few other apps to do even more, but for most this is probably all you'll need to play with. Though, after all this tampering I was worried about clipping, but that's another thing this mic handles wonderfully.

As low as the sound floor is, the ceiling appears to be just as high with a frequency range from 20Hz to 20kHz which outdoes our current fav mic the Shure MV6. Rode boasts that the NT1 5th Gen is an unclippable mic, and under the right circumstances they might be right. It's pretty hard to make this thing clip without the gain turned up a fair bit. If you're using Rode's suite of apps you can even recover sounds when this happens or alter them. The pop filter and mount also do a great job of keeping harsh sounds away, and the microphone itself is dead quiet which makes for very clean recordings.

This is partially because of high quality the recordings are, but also just thanks to the classic sound this mic offers. It really does have a lovely warm tone to it, which has been loved by singers since Rode started offering the NT1 mic. This same timbre applies to spoken voice, so if you're a streamer who values the tone of your talk, this will likely bring out the best in it. Though it's worth noting there's no native mute button on the physical mic, so you may need to setup a digital option.

The lack of on-mic controls seems odd, but it's because this isn't a mic designed for PC gaming, it just happens to be one that works excellently with it.

Instead, this mic is designed to be plugged into other things that control it which can take some setting up, but it also allows you to take this mic to different projects with different settings held to the computer, rather than accidentally layering things onto the microphone. It keeps it clean, so when you take this mic to a gig and plug it in via XLR you don't have to worry about your gamer settings getting in the way.

It does mean this isn't the right choice for many gamers. Most would be fine with something a fraction of the price like the budget friendly Amazon Basics USB Condenser Microphone or even a midrange option like NZXT's Capsule Elite.

But if you're a gamer who in any way dabbles in other content creation this could be the answer for you. It's a steep price difference, but the NT1 5th Gen almost feels like getting multiple mics in one package. By no means does it seem unfair for a studio quality mic with massive range, a fair bit of customisation, and the ability to use it wherever you want.

I know, I get it. I've waxed lyrical quite a lot recently about Phanteks' current line of cases. It's genuinely becoming mildly problematic from a tech journo standpoint. But I do think the company's on to a bit of a winning streak with its latest line-up of big metal boxes that we put very expensive memory into. The XT View Matrix is another golden boy in big P's arsenal, and for good bloody reason.

By definition, technically, this isn't really a new chassis. Phanteks launched the XT View back in 2024 to pretty broad acclaim. In fact, I wrote about it in Maximum PC magazine back in the day, and, to plagiarize myself, it was frustrating to write about because it was almost too good. Bit of an inside-line here, but tech journalism on the whole? Generally a lot easier to write a review when you've got things to complain about.

Back then, this thing rocked in at just $80 or so. It had broad compatibility with AIOs, supported E-ATX, and more impressively came with an extraordinary amount of shiny, shiny lights baked in it as well. You got two 120mm RGB reverse blade intake fans, one 120mm exhaust, and a full-size 16-inch ARGB light strip tucked away nicely down by the side of that glass window, chucking up some gorgeous internal illumination directly into your machine. Oh, and that's all controllable via a single button on the front I/O (or integrated into your mobo's RGB header of choice).

Good news is, that's all still there.

So, what's new? Massive dot-matrix configurable LED strip hidden behind a beautifully clean mesh panel situated along the external PSU cover (and breathe). Better yet, the price is still ridiculous. The XT costs £80 in the UK and $120 in the US (thanks, tariffs). That is utter madness for what you're getting here. This is the best budget PC case of the year, I have no doubt. Although that comes with one minor caveat.

Now, let me talk the positives before I get to that. The XT View Matrix? Beautiful. Paint job? Lush. Glass panels? Multiple. Glistening with a seamless edge. RGB fans? Check, check, check. And then you get to the matrix strip.

It's hidden behind a stunning piece of grey mesh canvas that absolutely looks the part. If you've seen a modern fabric gaming chair, same stuff basically. And I've never stroked a PC case more in my entire life. I know that sounds ridiculous. It's not exactly a sentence I thought I'd be writing after 11 years in this profession, but here we are. It's so soft.

But it's the panel behind it that's most controversial. Purely down to taste. Like it's 2001 all over again, and we're all pretending we're Dominic Toretto in that film with all the cars in it.

Now, I built in this thing, set it all up, got the beauty powered on, stuck the RGB lighting to what I liked, then called in arguably the second most well-experienced tech reviewer I know, my long-time fiancée. I went, "phwoar, look at that, that's bloody sick, ain't it?" She responded, and I quote: "I hate it, it looks like the pc case equivalent of a crushed velvet sofa". Thanks Dani.

She has a point, though, as much as I hate to admit it. Take a quick glance at this thing, configured how you like it, and there's this semblance of gauche about it that's sort of hard to ignore. You can, of course, configure it all up in Phantek's NexLinq software quite easily, and it'll showcase date, time, hardware temps, loads, etc., but it is such a bold addition to the overall aesthetic, you'll either love it or hate it, and honestly, I'm torn now.

Panel shenanigans aside, the build process is generally super easy. Chuck your motherboard in, then your power supply, get all that wired up first (trust me, you'll thank me when it comes to CPU power), then pop your cooler in and finally your graphics card, and you're good to go. There's plenty of space around back, and plenty of cable tie-off points too, with a comfortable number of mounting locations for those inevitable 2.5-inch SSDs we're all going to be dusting off in the coming months.

I'm also convinced someone at Phanteks made an error in the shipping manifests when they built these things, because the accessory box came with no less than 30 cable ties (that's not hyperbole, I can confirm, I counted them). Which makes a big difference in the build process, compared to the time I had with the Silverstone FLP02 I reviewed last month, and its two included ties.

So any other negatives then? Aside from the do-or-die display? Well, it really could use a GPU anti-sag bracket built in somehow or included somewhere, and my one and only major complaint is that, with the included fans, the cables are a bit "eugh", to say the least. You can daisy-chain them, but that does mean you've got random headers popping out near the 24-pin ATX motherboard connector and the rear I/O, which looks a bit awkward.

Otherwise, though, it's a stellar piece of work, and for the cash, you won't be disappointed. Good news doesn't stop there either. If you have the View but want the display, Phanteks sells it separately, and if you're like future Mrs Storey, and detest it with every fiber of your being, the stock model is still available too, without it.

SteelSeries' original Arctis Nova 7X Wireless was one of my favourite gaming headsets when it launched a few years ago, so I was certainly very excited to see what had changed with this flashy second-gen model to hopefully keep it towards the top of my own headset rankings.

Having tested this shiny new model for the last couple of weeks, I've been simultaneously surprised and disappointed at what's changed. On one hand, the list of changes isn't that substantial, with things such as improved battery life and added support for SteelSeries' Arctis companion app, which I'll get into more in a minute, while the fit and finish and audio drivers inside haven't changed one iota as far as I can tell.

Depending on your perspective, it's either laziness or refinement—for me, I'm going to be positive and choose the latter.

The fact is that there wasn't anything wrong with how the original Arctis Nova 7X Wireless sounded, so cocking about with it for this second-gen model would have been a bit of a shock to the system if you're already coming from the original. It means we're still getting the excellent all-round audio I liked so much from the previous model, which is characterised by more low-end grunt than typical headphones, helping its chops for listening to my movable feast of rock tracks from Marillion, Rush, Steven Wilson and others, plus adding a more immersive quality for explosions and gunfire in Counter-Strike 2.

Moreover, we're still getting some lovely detail retrieval and a crisp mid-range that helps to accentuate details such as footsteps in Counter-Strike and well-handled vocals in mellower tracks from the likes of Jimmy Buffett or James Taylor, helping to make the Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 a versatile headset for music, games and more besides.

There is also quite a wide soundstage for a set of closed backs (open back and wired cans at this price, such as the new Sony Inzone H6 Air, will be stronger, though) with good imaging for things such as footsteps, distant chatter and gunfire or nearby grenade explosions in CS:2.

Likewise, SteelSeries has retained the same retractable ClearCast Gen 2 microphone as the original model, which I liked for offering clear and decently clean comms with surprisingly decent body and noise rejection, and it's much the same story with the Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2. Of course, a dedicated USB or XLR microphone will provide you with better definition and a fuller sound, but in a pinch, this headset mic is perfectly cromulent.

Where this headset has upped its game, especially, is on the front of software support, which is evidently where SteelSeries has spent a lot of its time. SteelSeries GG handles desktop duties for customisation of things such as the EQ and surround sound settings, plus it comes with over 200 game-specific presets to optimise the headset's sound for whichever game you're playing.

What is new with the Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 is that it'll also work with SteelSeries' Arctis companion app, which I've used with some of its other, more recent headsets. This sizes down the desktop app into an even lighter and slicker medium, providing a lot of the same presets and such that can be quickly selected before you jump into a mobile or console game. There isn't more granular EQ control in the companion app, though, which is a little bit of a shame.

On the point of connectivity, this -X suffixed model maintains its edge as the model variant of this headset that'll work with the most things. It connects either via Bluetooth or the bundled 2.4GHz wireless USB-C receiver, allowing it to work with both modern Xbox and PlayStation consoles, PC, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, Android and iOS mobile devices, VR and more besides. That's a lot of devices; oh, it'll also work with both simultaneously if you're a power user, and you can connect via 3.5 mm wired to boot.

The Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 also benefits from increased battery life over its predecessor, promising up to 54 hours over the 2.4 GHz receiver and up to 42 hours over Bluetooth—connected via both means, it'll go for up to 38 hours. By contrast, the original could only muster up to 38 hours over 2.4 GHz and up to 26 hours over Bluetooth. In my testing, I found SteelSeries' claimed improvements to be about right, getting about 50 hours or so on a charge before I needed to charge it back up again.

If you're caught in a pinch, there is a 15-minute fast charge available via USB-C that takes you back to six hours' worth of run time, while a full charge will take around 90 minutes if you can wait a little longer.

I'm a big fan of the new magenta colourway that my sample of the Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 shipped in. There are more conventional colour choices available with black and white, but for an added splash of colour, it looks fantastic, perfectly matching the QcK Heavy mousepad and SteelSeries Aerox 3 Wireless Gen 2 rodent, which I also have knocking around.

The fit and finish of this headset haven't changed much from its predecessor, though. This means we're getting a hard-wearing plastic finish for the outer chassis at a price I'd expect to see a little more metal, although it feels reasonably sturdy. The earcups are made of a breathable fabric and feel decently roomy around my ears, alongside providing decent passive noise isolation for a headset with no ANC. They also fold flat for easy stowage.

SteelSeries' classic suspension headband also makes a return with a semi-elastic suspension strap with some adjustment with the pins on either side to make it looser or tighter depending on the size of your noggin. By default, the headset felt on the smaller side, so I adjusted it to the next level to get a more comfortable fit, a better seal and a more optimal clamping force. It doesn't clamp down too much on your head and is quite pleasant.

The dedicated multimedia controls are well distributed across both earcups and take the form of tactile buttons and wheels. On the left, you'll find a volume wheel and a microphone mute button, while on the right, there's a game and chat mixer dial, plus dedicated power and Bluetooth pairing buttons. Intriguingly, the volume dial on the headset works independently of the system-wide volume, so you’ve got that little bit of extra control.

I think it's fair to think of the Arctis Nova 7X Wireless Gen 2 as a further optimisation of a headset that worked especially well the first time around, rather than an outright reinvention. After all, it still sounds good with powerful and surprisingly precise audio, is decently comfortable and has some of the most versatile wireless connectivity you'll find on any gaming headset, beating out the likes of the wired-only Sony Inzone H6 Air and the Logitech G522 Lightspeed.

SteelSeries has made upgrades where it matters, such as extending the battery life, adding a fetching new colour option and adding in some new software options to complement the versatile connectivity on offer. I appreciate that this is still quite an expensive set of cans at £180/$200, but I think you'll be hard-pressed to find a more versatile wireless headset than these in 2026.

If the thought of buying an office chair from an AI-focused company is giving you pause for concern, then let me allay those fears now. The Autonomous ErgoChair Ultra 2 is a good chair that's well-built, comfortable, and genuinely fine to use for a full day of work, followed by a night of gaming. It's not perfect, and the price tag doesn't quite match what you're getting, but those are criticisms that can be cast at any gaming chair these days.

I am getting ahead of myself, though, so let me start with the basics. Autonomous has designed its chair with the 'all-day PC enthusiast' very much in mind, and the ErgoChair Ultra 2 (sometimes listed as the Chair Ultra V2) ticks off every box you'd expect for such a product, such as 4D adjustable arms and an expansive seat.

One difficulty with reviewing chairs, office or gaming, is that there is a considerable degree of subjectivity to it all, rather like with keyboards and mice. What's comfortable or convenient for one person can be awkward and annoying for someone else, so it's worth knowing my own specifications before I discuss those of the Autonomous chair.

With a height of 184 cm (72.8 inches) and a weight of 68 kg (149.9 lbs), I'm the human equivalent of a giant stick insect, all arms and legs, and not much in the way of any padding around my posterior, if you catch my drift. I generally avoid mesh chairs, favouring dense foam ones, because they often lack enough support for my bony frame.

The ErgoChair Ultra 2 is the first mesh chair I've used where I've had no problems with back or seat comfort, and in the case of the former, the flexible spine helps by no small degree. Rather than using a rigid steel or aluminium frame, Autonomous designed a polymer structure that looks like alien cartilage.

That holds the seat back in place but also permits it to twist and flex slightly, and along with the polymer back itself, the whole thing does a good job of supporting my frame. There are no dials, knobs, or levers for adjusting anything: You just sit back, and the whole thing effectively moulds to, and fully supports, your shape. By not using metal here, the chair is also quite a bit lighter and easier to move about than your average gaming chair.

A similar approach has been used for the seat, in that underneath the foam pad, there is an array of polymer 'springs', though it's not quite as supportive as I'd like. I can sit all day in the ErgoChair Ultra 2 without too much issue, but I'd prefer a few more centimetres of foam in the pad. As it is, the seat doesn't feel as plush as the back, even though it's very spacious.

One function I do appreciate about the Autonomous design is that the seat depth is adjustable. Simply pull out a handle in the seat base, and the whole thing can easily slide back and forth by a few inches, giving taller people more thigh support. The only thing I don't like about this system is that shuffling the chair around while sitting in it causes the seat to 'clunk' about. That movement is only very small, but it does reduce the overall feeling of sturdiness.

Speaking of which, while the overall build quality is very good, the 4D adjustable armrests let down the package a touch. They're altered for height by pressing a small catch on the underside, but everything else (lateral and horizontal location, rotation) is done by simply pushing or pulling the rest into the desired position.

That's very easy to do, but it's actually too easy, and if you grab or lean on the armrests to move the chair about on a thick carpet, the rests will quickly slide out of position. Conversely, the height adjustment is quite stiff, and the arms tend to stick a little in the housing. A dose of silicone spray helped, though a better design would remove the problem altogether.

If you've just spent a good amount of time setting up the arms to suit your needs, you'd be rather annoyed that you'd have to do this all over again, simply because you needed to move the chair by pushing on the arms. On a smooth floor, tiled or laminated, this doesn't happen, but if your office/gaming den is carpeted like mine, it's something to be aware of with the Autonomous chair.

The armrests can be tightened up, and Autonomous provided me with a guide on how to do it: essentially, you need to fully dismantle them, screw down the respective bolts more firmly, and then reattach everything. Not a convenient solution, but at least there is a solution. They will still be 'light' to reposition, though that's an intended design.

There are a couple of rough edges on parts that have been manufactured using injection moulding, too. Nothing to cause any harm, and unless you look for it, you're unlikely to notice it. But it's just one more thing that takes a little bit of shine off the Autonomous' otherwise high levels of quality.

More so when you consider it costs $499. That's not super expensive for the market sector Autonomous is targeting, but neither does it have the playing field to itself. For example, ThunderX3 and Flexispot both make excellent mesh office chairs and are highly competitive on price and features. Meanwhile, the ErgoChair Ultra 2 doesn't sport footrests, and if you want a headrest, then you'll need to spend $50 more for the Plus model.

With $75 to $100 knocked off the price tag, you'd have no reason at all to complain, and I'd recommend the Autonomous ErgoChair Ultra 2 without hesitation. At a dollar shy of five hundred bucks, however, I'd suggest that you weigh up the chair's strengths—flexible back support, low weight, adjustable seat depth—against your specific needs and what the competition offers first.

There's no shortage of great chairs to choose from these days, after all.

2026 seems to be the time of the open-back gaming headset. After years of not seeing much in this sector (bar the Corsair Virtuoso Pro), we've seen a return to form for this admittedly niche sector that I'm all for. First, it was the turn of Asus with the Hifiman-collab Asus ROG Kithara with its audiophile credentials, huge planar magnetic drivers, and an equally hefty price tag that m'colleague Phil liked, although with the caveat that it's $300/£285 and misses some very basic features for a headset. Y'know, like physical controls or any form of software control.

Now it's the turn of Sony with the lightweight and breathable Inzone H6 Air, which immediately wins against Asus in my head for coming in at virtually $100/£100 less. Granted, the $200/£180 price tag is still dear for a strictly wired headset when versatile wireless choices such as the Beyerdynamic MMX 150 and Logitech G522 Lightspeed exist. Whether it can match in features or quality is a different matter entirely against any of these, though, which is why hardware overlord Jacob is paying me for these very words.

The first thing that was immediately noticeable for me when plonking the Inzone H6 Air on my bonce is how lightweight it is. It's technically under 200 g at 199 g without the additional boom microphone affixed to the front to make it look more like a conventional pair of headphones (adding the mic adds an extra 12 g—I know, immense) and the lack of a more avant-garde design, a la Kithara, means you're less likely to get funny looks on Zoom calls or if you bravely decide to use this as normal headphones out and about.

The sub-200 g weight makes these cans supremely comfortable for my head for extended periods, and it almost feels like you don't have them on your head half the time. My only criticism is how light the clamping force feels, as the headset feels as if it's resting on your head more often than not, arguably due to the suspension-style headband Sony has opted for.

It adjusts in the same funny way as on the Inzone H9 II, requiring you to pinch a hinge and adjust each side independently. It's fine, but I think that's where the clamping force issue derives from.

To be clear, I don't mind the lighter force afforded by the Inzone H6 Air, but some folks may prefer a tighter fit, which can mostly be achieved if you take a few moments to adjust the headband properly.

Outside of this, this Sony headset carries a clean and modern look, with strong build quality thanks to a combination of metal earcup outers and some solid plastics used elsewhere. The headset also folds down for easy stowage, although there isn't an egg bag to store the cans in if you want to take them out anywhere.

One area where Sony has improved over Asus is that this gaming headset actually has on-board controls! Granted, it's only two, with a mic mute button and a volume wheel, but there are controls, and they are present. Otherwise, it's just jacks for connecting the detachable 3.5 mm wired cable, and for affixing the boom mic to the front of the unit.

Strictly wired connectivity is handled by the 3.5 mm jack with devices that support it, although Sony also bundles a similar external USB-C DAC and 'audio box' with the Inzone H6 Air, as it did with the Inzone E9 IEMs. This opens up USB-C compatibility for PlayStation and for Windows, opening up access to Sony's Inzone Hub software—again, righting the wrong of Asus' Kithara that's bereft of software controls. That's two for two, Sony—well done.

Software control is similar to the Inzone H9 II, minus the ANC settings, as there isn't any (this is an open-back headset after all), but there is still a wealth of settings for things such as fiddling with different EQ presets for different types of games alongside a 10-band EQ for more custom options, toggles for spatial audio settings and a couple of bits for microphone. What's here is a little more basic, but it's fine for most folks.

And now the important bit, sound quality, and it's here where things get particularly tasty. The Inzone H6 Air isn't using huge planar magnetic drivers like the Kithara does, and instead goes for more typical 40 mm dynamic drivers. With this in mind, they aren't just any dynamic drivers. Sony has taken a leaf out of its own book and uses drivers from its vast range of headphones, opting to use drivers derived from its MDR-MV1 studio monitoring headphones for this headset.

Normally, these more reference-style, monitoring cans will be tuned for a flat curve so studio engineers get the truest representation of the music possible to make mixing as painless as possible. I believe Sony has tuned the drivers a smidgen here to make them more suitable for the target audience of gamers rather than audio engineers.

Likewise, being open-back should give these cans a greater sense of width and space against the more traditional closed-back headsets out there, yielding a greater sense of immersion at the expense of disturbing those around you with audio seepage.

The upshot of all of this preamble is that I love how the Inzone H6 Air sounds. They're an entertaining listen, not least with a surprising amount of meat on the bone when it comes to the bass. Human hearing may not be able to strictly hear the 10Hz these cans can go down to, but you can certainly feel it with a tight low-end, complete with good extension. I found strong punchiness in my usual array of rock testing tracks, be it the brooding Invisible Man from Marillion or Luminol from Steven Wilson, the latter of which has a relentless bass groove in the track's opening couple of minutes.

Combined with this, there's a rich and detailed mid-range for elements such as vocals in the above tracks and in mellower stuff from James Taylor or Jimmy Buffett. On the gaming side, it meant footsteps and voices in Counter-Strike 2 were crisp and clear, helping this headset to emerge as a strong choice for more competitive gaming.

If there's one area where I expected these cans to perform, it was on the front of the soundstage, especially given the mere fact that these are open-backs. Nonetheless, the precision and sheer width are what set these apart from the closed-back cans at this price. It was very easy to place things in Counter-Strike 2, be it far-off gunshots, nearby grenade explosions (helped also by the tight bass) and footsteps.

In addition, in Forza Horizon 5, the sense of width and space was excellent for discerning between different folks I was racing against, making it a little bit easier to give cars I overtook (or was overtook by, I'm not that good, don't judge) the space, so neither of us got punted by someone with no racecraft or the ability to use the brakes.

The Inzone H6 Air's cardioid microphone is a tale of two halves, offering clear and surprisingly full-bodied pickup in my testing, meaning this headset could happily be used for voiceover work and streaming without much hassle. Noise rejection from things immediately in front of the cardioid capsule, be it my loud mechanical keyboard or music I had in the background, was reasonable, although I did find the pop filter and such didn't do the best job with plosives. In my test audio, there are some noticeable thuds with letters such as P or B, which is just something to bear in mind.

So, where does all this leave us? The fact is that I'm a large fan of the Inzone H6 Air for a myriad of reasons, and I think it may well be one of the best gaming headsets you can buy: the comfortable fit, the immersive and surprisingly bassy sound that helps games, music and more besides. Plus, it rights the key wrongs of the Asus ROG Kithara in that it has physical controls, it costs less (although it is still quite expensive for a wired-only headset), it has some software, and you probably won't get as many funny looks with these on in meetings. That's a win in my book.

MSI might not be the first name you think of when it comes to gaming mice, but the brand has been quietly toiling away with its peripherals in recent times and has come up with the Versa 300 Wireless 8K as its latest entry. On the face of it, with a 26,000 DPI sensor, 8000 Hz wireless polling rate and a light 66g mass, it looks as if this humble rodent could be up there with some of the best gaming mice we've tested—I've been putting it through its paces to find out.

On first impressions, the Versa 300 Wireless 8K comes across a little generic, with an all-black plastic chassis with a rougher texture and little contouring for comfort. That being said, the plastics used in its construction feel quite dense, and there's some pleasant texturing on the sides of the unit to supplement extended use.

At 66g, too, it's quite a lightweight choice, helping wrist flicks and quick movement without feeling like you're lugging around something heavy, and I'm a fan of how tactile this mouse feels with those textured surfaces, the large rubberised scroll wheel and all the rest of it.

The button placement here makes sense, with two main options: a DPI switch and a scroll wheel on top, and navigation buttons on the side. On the underside is a selector switch between Bluetooth and 2.4 GHz wireless connectivity modes, and even a little cubby hole for the USB-A receiver that this mouse comes with—neat.

You do get a small amount of RGB-based flair, with a light-up MSI logo that attempts to protrude through the rear of the chassis—it's there, but seems on the dim side. Likewise, the MSI Center software that's used to control the Versa 300 Wireless 8K is a little bereft of features, allowing you to only remap input and trigger macros, plus some more advanced features such as angle snapping and the debounce time for the mechanical Omron switches this mouse has. If you want to control that singular RGB lighting zone, you'll need to use another app—Portal X—which just seems like more needless faff.

With this in mind, Portal X is web-based, meaning you can configure the mouse across different operating systems than just Windows, although with the RGB lighting here and not in MSI Center, there isn't feature parity across both suites.

On the point of those mechanical switches, the Omrons inside here have a firm and tactile click under finger, although they feel as if they've got a longer travel than the more common hybrid or optical switches we're beginning to see on a lot of gaming mice. I don't mind this, but for outright speed and precision, you may want to look at key rivals with a different switch type.

And now to where things matter: performance. MSI has put a 26,000 DPI PixArt PAW3395 sensor inside the Versa 300 Wireless 8K, which I've tested in other gaming mice over the years, and it provides ample sensitivity and responsiveness to make my usual test runs of Counter-Strike 2 a breeze.

Admittedly, using the full 26,000 DPI on offer all the time is likely to be especially jittery, but you can move it down in software between 100 and the full 26,000 to get a more comfortable level. In my instance, that was between 1600 and 3200 DPI for more accurate aiming in Counter-Strike 2, and for more comfortable navigation in Windows.

The 8000 Hz wireless polling rate is also a pleasant move for this rodent, especially against similar rivals such as the Endgame Gear OP1w 4K and the Be Quiet! Dark Perk Ergo, for added responsiveness and potentially lower latency for the pro players who are likely to notice that sort of thing. A higher polling rate means a device reports its position and inputs more frequently (hence Hz as the measurement).

All of this combines to make this MSI choice feel responsive in shooters, such as CS2, with brisk and responsive movements and inputs with little noticeable latency that make this a strong choice for FPS titles. The switches inside are mechanical ones rated for up to 60 million actuations, making them a durable choice for even the hastiest of spam clickers when you need to get a shot off first.

Connectivity is handled either by Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz, with the latter supporting the 8000 Hz wireless polling rate. The fact that this mouse also comes with Bluetooth adds some versatility against the competition, which eschews that in favour of outright performance in one device. I found the mouse's connection over either method to be reliable and stable, using Bluetooth on my MacBook Pro and the bundled receiver on my Windows gaming PC.

As for battery life, MSI rates the Versa 300 Wireless 8K to run for up to 196 hours via 2.4 GHz at a more standard 1000 Hz polling rate. Up it to 8000 Hz, and you'll throw a lot of that endurance away, with my testing putting it at around 75 hours at full pelt. That's still not bad against other choices, which tend to have a larger drop-off when you run them at full power.

And then we come to quite a useful piece of information I've purposefully left out—price. MSI has attached a $100/£60 price tag to the Versa 300 Wireless 8K, making it surprisingly affordable against rivals mentioned above for the feature set on offer here. On the whole, it helps this choice stand out if you're after a powerful and lightweight rodent for FPS titles that doesn't break the bank.

With this in mind, I think other options from the likes of Endgame Gear or SteelSeries look a little more eye-catching and have stronger software features for a similar outlay. This MSI one does well on features and performance, although I think it lacks a certain polish to make it a real top contender.

Special commentary on this classic PC Gamer review provided by:

Cave Story+ review - PC Gamer issue #236 (UK, February 2012)

From the archives: The review below appears as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and newly taken screenshots. By Chris Donlan

Over on a Cave Story messageboard, X-Calibar has a problem with Cave Story+. It’s to do with Balrog, a boss who looks like a suitcase. In the old days, his catchphrase used to be “Huzzah!” Now, thanks to the HD upgrade’s alternate translation, it’s “Oh yeah!”

X-Calibar isn’t happy. “‘Oh yeah’? What kind of charge is that?! Even ‘Booyah!’ might make more sense.” If you’re wondering how a game could inspire criticism of this granularity, you probably haven’t played Cave Story. Daisuke Amaya’s homebrew classic is a uniquely polite 2D platform adventure in which you’re dropped into a subterranean world where a villainous doctor threatens a group of bunny people.

You save the day by exploring, shooting weird animals, fighting bosses, and collecting items that, more often than not, open up new parts of the environment, where the whole thing repeats.

Except the whole thing never feels like it’s repeating. Cave Story’s levels manage to be intricate without appearing confusing, and they retain a clear sense of forward momentum even as the storyline branches and the Easter eggs pile up.

An orderly series of unlocks brings shape to the game’s wayward narrative, and each new gadget you’re handed broadens your options, allowing you to double-jump with special boots, for example, or use the kickback from the machinegun to pogo your way from one ledge to the next.

There’s a levelling system, but it focuses on your weapons rather than your character, and it rewards skilful players with more powerful attacks while punishing the careless with regular downgrades if they take too many risks. It’s a reminder that, while Cave Story is sugary on the surface, it’s pleasantly tart underneath. Even before you turn to Cave Story+’s new bonus challenges—a boss rush, some pitiless platforming gauntlets, and the option to repeat the campaign with a different lead—you’re going to struggle to see absolutely everything on your first playthrough.

By the time you’re considering that second playthrough, you’ll have crossed over to the other side, joining the informal community of speedrunners, FAQ writers and Cave Story cartographers who have fallen into this deceptively slight platformer never to emerge again.

It’s not so bad down here, though: there are secrets to find, endings to unlock, and plenty of lovely weapons to master. Cave Story’s upgraders, Nicalis, may have instigated a contentious dehuzzahification of the original, but they also delivered a perky and stirring soundtrack remix, and new art that evolves the retro stylings of the first game without lapsing into twee indulgence.

It’s a sensitive reworking, and Cave Story is entirely deserving of the attention. Huzzah—as a dear old friend of mine used to say.

If you're looking for an ergonomic PC mouse, you're probably already considering the Logitech MX Master 3S, or the Logitech MX Master 4. I've used both as my main productivity meeces for extended periods of time, and can tell you that either make for excellent picks. But, if they're a little pricey for your liking, ProtoArc has made an ergo mouse with many similar design features for much, much less.

The result is the ProtoArc EM25, a wireless ergonomic mouse that knows what it's about. Right from the off, it screams "budget MX Master" from the nearest rooftop. It's got a similar chassis shape, an extended thumb rest, two scroll wheels (one with a clutch, no less), quiet main switches—the whole kit and kaboodle. The problem is, at every turn, this mouse reminds you of why the Logi mice are brilliant, and why this one doesn't meet the mark.

It's got all the right features on paper, but most of them prove to be a disappointment in practice. It's also got some odd material choices, some strange-feeling mechanisms, and an overall lack of refinement. Dancing around this mouse's various controls over the past few weeks has caused me to pull a vast array of facial expressions, and none of them have been a smile. Almost every control here feels slightly wrong, in a plethora of different ways.

There's a certain solidity to the chassis design that makes the EM25 verge towards consideration—especially given its very reasonable $50/£29 price tag. However, unless you're absolutely desperate for an MX Master-a-like for less, I can think of lots of less-ergo, but much better standard mice for your money.

Features

3.5

Ergonomics

1

Performance

2.5

Aesthetics

4

Software

2

Value

2

Group 1 Data

Product	Features ()	Ergonomics ()	Performance ()	Aesthetics ()	Software ()	Value ()
ProtoArc EM25 gaming mouse	3.5	1	2.5	4	2	2

We scored the ProtoArc EM25 out of five in six distinct categories.

ProtoArc EM25 features

The ProtoArc EM25 is an ergonomically-shaped mouse with a clutch-controlled main scroll wheel, a horizontal side scroll wheel, and an enlarged thumbrest on the left hand side, à la the Logitech MX Master 3S/4. It's also got twin forward and back buttons, and a small button mounted on the front left corner for switching between its Bluetooth and regular 2.4 GHz connections, the latter of which makes use of a small (some would say, nano-sized) dongle.

Said dongle can be retrieved from the bottom of the mouse via a magnetically-sealed hatch compartment, which is a nice touch. The polling rate is switchable, topping out at 1,000 Hz.

The sensor is an 8000 DPI max optical unit, while the battery is a 500 mAh internal rechargeable model. ProtoArc doesn't list the battery life in among the specs, but I've only had to charge my review sample once (straight from the box) over several weeks of on and off testing.

Software comes in the form of a web app rather than an installed application, which I'll be going into a bit later. And, again like the MX Master 3S and 4S, it's got quiet click switches underneath the main left and right buttons, for your serene, productivity-clicking needs.

The weight isn't listed on the product page, but some searching around suggests it's about 90 grams. What I will say is that the EM25 is light enough to give my scales trouble measuring it, and it feels significantly less porky than the 150g MX Master 4.

Still, it's definitely built for productivity purposes—those looking for something fast and genuinely light would be better off elsewhere.

Plenty of control options

Features

3.5

Plenty of control options Data

Product	Value
Features	3.5

ProtoArc EM25 ergonomics

Testing out all of the buttons, wheels, and ergonomic features of the ProtoArc EM25 is something of an adventure, and that's because almost all of them, in some form or fashion, feel a bit… wrong. I'm going to need to go through them individually here, because each is worthy of note.

Let's start off with the good. The two main switches underneath the left and right buttons feel very positive. They're quiet, too, while still providing plenty of clicky feedback. You can tell most of the money went into these two switch units, and that's a sensible place to put it. They're the ones you'll be interacting with most, after all.

Then there are the traditional forward and back thumb buttons on the left hand side. These are hollow-feeling, bendy, and springy in all the wrong ways. Still, there's a positive click underneath them, and I'm sure you'd stop noticing their drawbacks over time.

My true ire, however, begins with the big orange clutch button behind the main scrollwheel. It's got an astonishingly long travel, a surprising amount of springy resistance, and seems to engage and disengage the scrollwheel clutch at differing points, somewhere along the way.

There's a physical mechanism working behind the scenes to switch the scroll wheel from free scroll into a more clicky affair, unlike Logitech's magnetic solution, and the difference is pretty stark. Which brings me on to the main wheel itself.

In free scroll mode, it feels disconcertingly light. So much so that it can be quite difficult to control, and the wheel moves from side-to-side in its housing more than I'd like. In ratcheted mode, it feels slightly graunchy and overly-loud, although fairly positive. The middle click, though, takes far too much force to activate, and results in the wheel inadvertently moving as you press down on it.

Despite all this, my biggest critique has to be left for the skates on the underside. They look acceptable in person, and feel fine when you run a finger over them. But, no matter the mouse pad, it feels like there's a raised edge somewhere that should have been sanded down.

I can actually hear (and feel) this mouse scraping against my smooth Corsair pad as I move. I'll be honest, that's a new one on me. And I've tested lots and lots of budget mice over the years. Unmute the video below and turn your sound up for an example:

Shape-wise? It's actually quite nice to palm, and perfectly fine for fingertip usage, too. I'm not convinced by the satin-style finish, though, which is a bit tacky. And by that, I mean literally. Tacky, as in it tacks against your skin. Eesh.

Oh, and there's a side scroll wheel as well, which is somehow totally different-feeling and yet similar to the main scroll wheel itself. It's… fine. A little loose, a little hollow-feeling, a little tinny. But fine. Mercy me.

The main switches are fine, but as for the rest? Nope.

Ergonomics

1

The main switches are fine, but as for the rest? Nope. Data

Product	Value
Ergonomics	1

ProtoArc EM25 performance

At no point does ProtoArc advertise the EM25 as a gaming mouse, and given its specs, I don't think many will be buying it for such a purpose.

However, I game with the Logitech MX Master 4 all the time, as it's perfectly reasonable to use for several thousand turns of Civ 7, or a slower-paced, singleplayer shooter. So, I thought I'd try out the EM25 for the same purpose. And you know what? It's also fine.

However, the MouseTester charts above show some odd inconsistencies in the polling rate, although I can't say I noticed the mouse feeling particularly laggy or inconsistent in practice. It's not super-accurate or particularly fast to respond, but it's decent enough to get by. Can you do some light gaming with an EM25? Yes. Should you? Probably not.

For day to day usage, the sensor feels smooth and reasonably accurate, and I've had no dropout issues with either the 2.4 GHz or the Bluetooth connection. In terms of the internal, movement-tracking components, this mouse delivers acceptable performance for a pure productivity squeaker. In terms of the experience of actually using it, see all the ergonomic issues above.

Acceptable, for an ergo mouse

Performance

2.5

Acceptable, for an ergo mouse Data

Product	Value
Performance	2.5

ProtoArc EM25 aesthetics

Despite the drawbacks of the satin finish in terms of hand-feel, the coating actually looks pretty great in photos, and in person, too. I also like how the EM25 is highly reminiscent of Logitech's offerings, while having a neater, tidier design of its own.

The orange button sticking out of the top also adds a nice splash of colour to the black-and-chrome aesthetic. It's a mouse that looks good on your desk, that's for sure. I just wish it felt anywhere near as good when I put my hands on it.

Quite the looker, it must be said

Aesthetics

4

Quite the looker, it must be said Data

Product	Value
Aesthetics	4

ProtoArc EM25 software

Your software options here are webpage-based, which, on my Chrome browser, renders all the text in a Times New Roman font. I know that's a small thing to point out, but it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the design. However, there are plenty of options to reassign button functions, create macros, and tweak the general settings of the mouse. By default, the EM25 sets itself to a 250 Hz polling rate, but it can be upped to the full 1,000 Hz here.

Despite the functionality, the interface really does feel basic, with some confusingly-labelled features. An "Advanced Controls" tab allows you to switch on "maximum sensor performance" for limited amounts of time, from 10 seconds to half an hour.

It "runs the sensor at peak performance with high LED brightness" says the menu page, although with a warning of increased power consumption. Fair enough. I've left it off for my testing, as you can only enable it for a 30 minute maximum, and in my opinion, you're bound to forget the option exists. You can also adjust the click debounce time, or activate an Extended Range Mode which supposedly boosts the range from 8-10 meters to 10-12, again, diminishing battery life.

I tested it, and I couldn't tell the difference in terms of using the mouse from different ranges. Still, it manages to transmit successfully over the whole distance of my large front room with the setting turned off, so hooray for a bit of extra juice.

Barebones, and full of head-scratching moments

Software

2

Barebones, and full of head-scratching moments Data

Product	Value
Software	2

ProtoArc EM25 value

I really want to like the ProtoArc EM25, honestly I do. I've used lots of 'Amazon special' gaming mice and ergo mice over the years, particularly as I enjoy a quiet mouse for sociable gaming, and there aren't too many big brand options.

You know all those $20-$30 "silent mouse" options in the listings from manufacturers you've never heard of? I've tried a lot of them. My drawers are absolutely full of the not-so-squeaky squeakers, alongside the many high-end, mid-range, and budget gaming mice I've tested at PC Gamer.

Honestly? I'd take almost any of them over the EM25. It might be cheap, but it really hasn't made me cheerful. And while I appreciate the effort that's been taken to make an MX Master competitor for a more reasonable price point, the end result is something I've found very disappointing.

It's got the MX Master's rough shape and feature set—but in terms of value, I really think you'd be better off looking elsewhere. The sensor is fine, the main button switches are decent, and it looks good on your desk. But I could say the same of many other ultra-budget mice that are even cheaper than this one.

The question I'd be asking myself, if I was considering one of these, is whether I really need those trick scroll wheels in combination with the quiet switches and an ergo shape. If yes, then it's the Logitech MX Master offerings for you.

If you just need a cheap, comfortable-yet-not-ergo mouse, though, how about the Mchose G3 V2? Or this Inphic cheapo-beepo unit I've been messing around with recently. It's $20, it's got a thumb rest, quiet switches, and a single scroll wheel that's perfectly acceptable. Or, if you've decided to save some more pennies and want an ergo mouse that's a bit different (yet still cheaper than the Masters), what about the weird and wonderful Keychron M5?

Overall, it's very difficult to recommend the ProtoArc EM25, unless you must have an MX Master-alike for around $50. Even then, I'd say saving your cash for the real thing is a much better bet.

Cheap, but that only counts for so much

Value

2

Cheap, but that only counts for so much Data

Product	Value
Value	2

It's rare that I review something that I would actually buy right at this moment in time. Even if it's a good product that I recommend, it's usually out of my own budget or just not quite at the top of my PC priority list compared to other upgrades. But with the Alienware AW2525HM, I can say that I would 100%, for reals, be considering hitting the purchase button right now if I didn't already have this review model in front of me.

That's because it seems designed for people exactly like me: people who are into competitive FPS gaming more than anything else, but who are also on a strict budget.

Not too long ago, I tried out the 600 Hz Zowie XL2586X+. That monitor is perfect for serious tactical FPS players like me, but it also costs *gulp* $1,000. This Alienware is a much more sensible proposition: $250 for a 320 Hz panel. Plus, here you're getting an IPS rather than a TN panel, and some pretty nice HDR to boot. That's irrelevant for competitive FPS gaming, but even if you only very occasionally dabble in casual games, it's nice to have.

Make no mistake, though, both the Zowie and the Alienware here are for a particular market, and that is the competitive FPS gamer. While most similarly priced panels are 1440p, 27-inch deals, monitors for this market skim off a couple of inches and drop down to 1080p resolution.

That's great for giving a full view of a tactical FPS scene and permitting split-second reactions, and it can help boost your FPS a little, but for other games, higher pixel density and a wider view are probably where it's at, even if you have to sacrifice some smoothness by dropping the refresh rate.

Jumping into Counter-Strike 2 with the Alienware AW2525HM after gaming on a 144 Hz IPS monitor for so long was a surreal experience: I couldn't quite believe just how much of a difference doubling my refresh rate could make. Flicking my aim felt incredibly smooth, and I felt like I was seeing animations—including, importantly, enemy movements—in more detail and more quickly than I had seen them before. It's hard to convey just how much better 320 Hz feels than 144 Hz if you're a competitive FPS gamer; all I can say is the difference is more than noticeable.

That being said, there's more to smooth and snappy gameplay than just the refresh rate, and this monitor isn't perfect in at least one other area. That area is motion clarity, which shouldn't be overlooked for competitive shooters. Unfortunately, the Alienware has significantly more noticeable blur—caused by pixels taking a long time to change colour—than a monitor like the Zowie one, which uses backlight strobing to keep motion very clear. I checked how the Alienware performs in the UFO test, and there's a definite blur behind the friendly green creature's flying machine.

Swapping from something as smooth and clear as the $1,000 Zowie, I certainly noticed the difference, even with the Alienware's overdrive settings enabled and on their highest. (Side note: I noticed little contrast between the three overdrive options, so I kept the middle one selected just in the name of caution, given the 'extreme' option would be the most likely to cause inverse ghosting.)

Saying all this, coming from another 144 Hz IPS—as I swapped back and forth between the two for comparison—I didn't really spot any additional blur in practice. The only thing I noticed was the buttery smooth, increased refresh rate. My brain simply doesn't register any perceived blur in the face of such a step up in refresh rate. If I had the choice between a 144/165 Hz panel with great motion clarity or this 320 Hz Alienware panel, I'd choose the latter without a doubt.

There is some competition in this budget, high refresh rate space, such as the 210 Hz KTC H27T22C-3, for instance, which our Jeremy rated pretty highly after testing. But we're talking 320 Hz here, and while going from 210–320 isn't going to be as big of a jump as from 144 or 165, it's still noticeable, and every little helps if you're playing competitive FPS games.

Going from 144 Hz to 320 Hz gives a night and day difference in terms of how enjoyable the gameplay is, and it can even improve your personal performance. Using Nvidia's Latency and Display Analysis Tool (LDAT), I witnessed an end-to-end response time of 7.9 ms at 144 Hz, but a noticeable decrease to 6.1 ms at 320 Hz, tested over 150+ runs each.

It's also worth noting that this kind of response time matches—in fact, even beats—the response time I saw with the Zowie monitor. It's as snappy as you could want for competitive gaming, and you'll only really get better if you opt for an OLED, but even then, any extra you gain won't be perceptible.

I should also note that I found the darkness stabilisation feature (on its lower setting) genuinely beneficial, which I didn't expect. This essentially boosts darker areas, which can help you spot enemies more easily in shadowy parts of the map. I now only play CS2 when this is enabled, although I do turn it off when I play casual games, to make sure I'm getting the fully contrasted experience.

Given all this, I'd say this monitor is aimed at, and is ideal for, competitive FPS gamers looking to upgrade from a 144 Hz or 165 Hz monitor on a budget. Assuming their PCs can churn out the 300+ fps needed to make the most of the Alienware AW2525HM, it will be well worth it.

If this doesn't describe you, it might still be worth it if you're setting your sights on 1080p gaming. Setting aside the main 320 Hz appeal, the monitor itself looks lovely, with nice thin bezels and an understated but nevertheless distinctly Alien-like adjustable stand. It also has two USB ports with pass-through and a handy shoot-out headphone hook on the left side.

From a casual gaming perspective, one thing I'm pleasantly surprised by is the HDR experience. I didn't expect much, but actually, after calibrating everything, playing Doom Eternal with HDR on is wonderful. Everything just feels that much more immersive and realistic with it enabled, thanks to the improved colour space and contrast. It's not advertised as being full-blown HDR, and it doesn't even seem to have a VESA certification for it, but the colour gamut seems to be wide enough to make for a very eye-pleasing experience.

In fact, the panel is pretty nice in general, too, even without HDR enabled. Brightness seems very uniform to my eyes, and colours seem accurate enough once greens are toned down ever so slightly. But I suppose the question is whether all this is enough in the face of 1440p monitors, which definitely do look sharper thanks to increased pixel density. Given the monitor isn't bad in respect to colour and brightness, if you think you can crank out the frames to make the most of the refresh rate at 1080p, I'd certainly not rule it out even for casual gaming.

That being said, for casual gaming, I'd still lean towards a 1440p panel. My 1440p BenQ monitor, which is now pretty old, looks better in terms of clarity and vibrancy than this Alienware, and I'd prefer using it for non-HDR games that I can't hit 200+ fps on—which will presumably be a lot of games for a lot of people.

So, that brings me back to the primary use case: competitive FPS gaming. If that's your jam and you're on a budget, the Alienware AW2525HM is ideal. It even works fine for some casual gaming and movie watching on the side. But if the latter are your primary use cases, I'd say steer clear.

First, a confession. I'm not much of a mini-LED fan. You might even call me a dimming-zone snob. I've never found LCD panels with full-array local dimming terribly convincing, and of late it's been hard to argue with the latest OLED gaming monitors. So, it's definitely a surprise to discover that one of, if not the best mini-LED monitors I've yet seen is this new budget-priced model, the KTC M27T6S.

Am I giving away too much, too soon? Perhaps. But the fact that I came into this review pretty sceptical of LCD monitors with local dimming hopefully means that when I say I was impressed by the KTC M27T6S, it carries a bit more weight. This monitor does the local dimming thing remarkably well. Does it do it well enough to convert me to mini-LED technology? Now there's a question.

We'll answer that momentarily, but first let's cover the basics. This is a 27-inch model with a 2,560 by 1,440 native resolution. For gaming, that's just great. 4K is dandy in theory, but at just $290, this is not a premium-priced monitor and it's implausible to think the KTC M27T6S will be paired with the kind of $1,000 GPU you need to really make the most of 4K.

As for refresh, we're talking 200 Hz with an optional, and rather pointless ability to "overclock" to 210 Hz, plus pixel response of 1 ms (by the MPRT metric). The panel type is, as you would expect, IPS.

Of course, the whole point of LCD panels with full-array local dimming is to enable improved HDR performance. The KTC M27T6S duly has VESA DisplayHDR 1000 certification and can do fully 1,000 nits courtesy of 1,152 dimming zones. Youch.

Then again, so can plenty of other LCDs with local dimming, and I haven't liked many of those.

Rounding out the details are a stand that adjusts every which way, including pivot into portrait mode, plus DisplayPort and HDMI connectivity. The HDMI ports will only hit 144 Hz, for the record, and there's no USB-C for single-cable connectivity, nor a USB hub. That's probably not a surprise given the competitive price point.

Still, it's pretty nicely put together monitor, albeit largely from plastic, and the design is certainly slick with slim bezels and a mix of black and pale grey plastics from which many more expensive gaming monitors could learn quite a bit. It doesn't look or feel cheap.

Perhaps more importantly, they could learn a lot from its image quality, too. As an SDR monitor, the KTC M27T6S is impressive enough. It's awfully bright, cranked right up, and the basic calibration is pretty nice in sRGB or DCI-P3 modes, although for those who are particular about such things, the calibration of SDR content in HDR mode is a bit off with clearly over-saturated SDR colours.

It's fast, too, subjectively on a par with any remotely comparable IPS monitor. You'll need to be running something with ultra-high refresh and black-frame insertion, or similar, to experience a substantially better experience in terms of pixel response from an LCD monitor.

But where the KTC M27T6S really delivers is with HDR content. There are all kinds of drawbacks to local dimming technology applied to LCD panels. You get blooming around bright objects, dimming zones visibly popping on and off, the inability to light up smaller bright objects on a dark background, weird brightness gradients across the screen, and so on.

The KTC M27T6S doesn't solve or avoid all of those issues. But the algorithm KTC has come up with to control the zones does it as well, or better than any other monitor with a full-array mini-LED backlight that I've yet seen. At this price point, that's remarkable.

First off, there's no "zone popping" at all. That's a term I just made up and it concerns the really obvious switching on and off of individual backlight zones. You can induce it in many full-array dimming monitors by displaying a star field panning across the screen. And it can look absolutely awful as you track the zones popping on and off as stars pass across the screen.

The KTC M27T6S doesn't do that at all. It also handles a particular 4K HDR video of fireworks on a night sky—which I use as a mini-LED torture test—better than I've seen before on this class of display. It's not perfect. There's still some light bleed and some blooming. But the brighter explosions really light up your retinas. It's very impressive.

In-game is where I was really blown away, however. The brighter desert scenes in CyberPunk 2077 tend to find the weaknesses of OLED monitors; they simply can't handle how much of the panel needs to be driven hard to render the desert sun really well and so tend to look a bit dull.

But this dirt cheap KTC monitor absolutely smashes it. The sun is so bright, it almost hurts your eyes. This is a genuine HDR experience and a level of realism that's completely different from your usual entry-level HDR 400 monitor.

That said, if brighter scenes are where this monitor both literally and figuratively shines, it's after dark in Night City where things don't work quite so well. This is ultimately a backlit IPS panel and there's no avoiding light bleed and a bit of glow behind darker scenes and textures that also have some small, bright objects.

The dimming zones are handled deftly, but you can still ultimately see where the zones are firing hard and where they are not. The subjective black levels also aren't helped by the fairly coarse matte anti-glare coating, which tends to make everything look just a little grey.

There's actually an interesting comparison to be made here between this remarkably affordable mini-LED monitor and Alienware's budget QD-OLED offering, the AW2726DM. Okay, at $350 the Alienware is still more expensive, but it's not a huge chasm, price-wise, to this $290-ish monitor. So, it's plausible to think people might cross-shop. But which should they buy?

The full-screen brightness from this KTC is on another planet, and one awfully near its host star. But then the black levels from the OLED and the lighting precision and overall sense of balance and naturalness are far superior, there's none of the slight weirdness where you can see the backlight working harder in some areas of the panel than others.

That said, speed-wise, the subjective difference is remarkably small versus that cheap OLED. It's definitely lighting precision, not pixel response, that is the most telling difference. You also have to factor in superior font rendering on this LCD panel. There are now OLED monitors with conventional RGB-stripe subpixel structure that will render text as well as any LCD, but they are new and more expensive models, for now.

Ultimately, I'd still go with the OLED option; it does the things I care about most better. But I can absolutely understand why someone else might prefer this mini-LED option. It's really very good. It also solves a conundrum that's been bothering me for a while.

I have never understood why local dimming has historically added so much to the price of a monitor. This KTC confirms that not only that it needn't, but also there's no reason why affordable local dimming can't also be very good local dimming. At the price point KTC has hit, this is a pretty incredible monitor.

When it comes to gaming monitors, it feels like 2026 has been all about lording it with a long list of OLED displays. So, it's nice to be back among the proletariat with a mere LCD panel. I give you the Koorui 34E6UC.

Of course, this is a 34-inch ultrawide model, which is one of my favourite form factors and pretty generously proportioned. So, the Koorui 34E6UC isn't a truly poverty-spec display. It's just the panel tech is pretty pedestrian and the price positively punchy. There's no mini-LED backlight, no full-array dimming. Just plain old VA running at 165 Hz.

So the appeal here is that, at the time of writing, you can snag this 34 incher on Amazon for just $264 in the US or £199 in the UK. That's far less than you'd pay for an equivalent OLED monitor and, frankly, looks downright reasonable compared to many PC components of late, the prices of which are spiralling out of reach thanks to the AI bubble.

The other issue of interest here is Koorui itself. It's very much a lesser known brand, but part of a large Chinese corporation known as HKC that specialises in display semiconductor tech. So, the question is, can you add Koorui to your list of monitor brands that generally make decent displays?

Hold that thought while we cover off the main speeds and feeds. Aside from the 34-inch ultrawide proportions based on a VA-type LCD panel, you're getting the familiar 3,440 by 1,440 resolution, 165 Hz refresh, and claimed 1 ms pixel response performance. For the record, brightness is pegged at 400 nits and there's basic VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification.

Perhaps ill-advisedly, Koorui actually calls out esports as a primary remit for this panel. But here in 2026, 165 Hz isn't really the stuff of online domination. And, in any case, if you're really into esports, you're probably not going to be gaming with an ultrawide monitor.

Elsewhere, you get DisplayPort, plus two HDMI inputs. Just note the latter two top out at 100 Hz, so you'll need to use DisplayPort to get the full 165 Hz. Unsurprisingly given the value positioning, there's no USB-C and no USB-A hub.

Oh, and the stand offers height, tilt and swivel adjustments, plus the chassis is actually as well made as more expensive brands. So, at least no corners have been cut there.

That 34-inch panel, meanwhile, sports a fairly gentle 1000R curve and a matte anti-glare panel coating. So, it's all pretty conventional. Which is no bad thing. Ultimately, this monitor looks pretty sweet, on paper, for the money. But is it actually any good in practice?

Initial impressions are indeed thoroughly conventional, which is mostly for the better. This is a VA panel with 3,000:1 static contrast, so it blocks a bit more light and offers better black levels than a similar IPS screen.

The slight catch is that VA has worse viewing angles than IPS, so there's a bit of glow at the top and bottom of the panel when viewing dark backgrounds or gaming scenes. It's not a major problem, but it is one of many reminders that you're not looking at an OLED panel.

Still, it's certainly pretty punchy and also well calibrated in both sRGB and DCI-P3 modes, presets for which, incidentally, are provided in the OSD menu. Again, so far, so reassuringly similar to more familiar brands.

Where things are less impressive involves pixel response. VA panels obviously have a reputation for offering the worst pixel response of the major LCD panel types, which also include TN and IPS. Unfortunately, the Koorui 34E6U does little to dispel that notion.

You do get the option of three different levels of pixel overdrive in the OSD menu. But even set to the most aggressive mode, there's a fair amount of blur and smear visible in certain situations.

Exactly how much of an issue that is, well, that's a subjective call. It'll depend to a some degree on your frame of reference. Personally, coming from a series of OLED reviews, the in-game blurriness as you whip your mouse around was all too obvious.

That's especially true, actually, when playing more demanding games at lower refresh rates. Darker game scenes are the worst, suffering quite a bit of visible smear. However in, say, a brighter Counter-Strike 2 map like Dust 2 at native resolution, you can reach the panel's 165 Hz refresh with a fairly modest GPU and the clarity in that scenario is reasonable.

More to the point, none of this is out of the ordinary for this type of display. By way of example, it's about the same as the ASRock Phantom PG34WQ15R2B, which I rated pretty highly. Of course, I rated that screen pretty highly back in early 2023. So, what you're getting is pretty much the same experience, just for $100 less.

In the end, then, this screen is all about context and value. Put it up next to the latest OLED panels, and the shortcomings in terms of contrast, black levels, lighting control, viewing angles, pixel response, and more are pretty stark. But they're also pretty irrelevant if your budget is $250, or thereabouts.

At that price point, the Koorui 34E6UC is a decent effort and definitely buyable. Long story short, this kind of VA panel has weaknesses. But they're not specific to this particular monitor, which is generally well executed. All I would say is that if you can find a good 34-inch ultrawide with an IPS panel for not too huge a premium and you can afford the step up, that would be clearly preferable just for the pixel response.

I can't help but point out that you can also get a 27-inch high-refresh 4K IPS monitor for about $300 these days, too. But if $264 is already a stretch, and it's 34-inch ultrawide you want—and it certainly is a compelling form factor and a good fit with a reasonably attainable graphics card—this Koorui offering ain't half bad.

Indeed, in the current context, what with RAM prices going into orbit and GPUs increasingly costing more than their weight in unobtainium, gaming monitors are one of the few vaguely affordable PC component categories. So, it's great that you can get a decent 34-inch ultrawide experience for this kind of money, it really is.

Finally, on the broader question of Koorui as a monitor brand, the signs are positive from this first viewing. They're backed by a large Chinese corporate and this monitor is covered by a three-year warranty, much like the more familiar competition.

I'd also go so far as to say the simple fact the Koorui reached out to us seeking a review is a sign of a company that wants to engage with western markets, as is the fact that the company runs both US and UK websites with ecommerce facilities where you can order their monitors. Obviously I'd want to see a decent range of Koorui monitor models first hand to give a really authoritative recommendation in that regard. But I like what I've seen so far.

I have spent the last two weeks in a blissful kind of agony. When I'm not playing Derelict Star, a very humble-looking 2D exploration platformer that looks like it could run on a Commodore 64, I'm thinking about it. At least a half-dozen times I decided I'd had enough. Faced with an impossible-seeming obstacle, against which I'd beaten my head for hours, I figured it's my duty as a time-conscious adult person to move on. I've seen what Derelict Star is doing and can appreciate it: isn't that enough? Nope.

I have to confess I'm obsessed with this humble but quietly ambitious lil' conundrum. It's a bonafide work of art. It's enveloping and gorgeous, and the way it makes me feel reminds me why I fell in love with videogames.

Derelict Star is a momentum-based 2D platformer with a 1:1 aspect ratio. Its spartan pixel art style makes Celeste look like a Naughty Dog splurge. It has a strict, rigorous but masterable physics system. There's no boss battles, combat or kill rooms. It's about a little pixel person stranded in space who must retrieve from a sprawling old space freighter at least eight power cells to power up their ship in order to get home.

This freighter is a massive world of ultra-parsable grids, ridden with secrets: it's austere and beautiful in its own way, but purely functional in its visual design. It's basically a landscape of squares. The pixels are so chunky and parsable that I know the difference between dying to a lava coral and standing as close as possible next to it, all the better to gain enough momentum to reach a nearby platform that—five hours ago—I thought I couldn't possibly mantle. The pixel art is primitive by most modern measures but the precision it confers is absolutely crucial to this game's design.

It's tough. I have no qualms with abandoning games, even games I like. But Derelict Star feels too good in my hands. Even when I felt like I'd reached my skill ceiling in this superlatively twitchy platformer, I kept going back to noodle in it. And every time I returned, I happened upon a whole new region of its sprawling map that taught me how to tackle those areas that seemed insurmountable before. This is a special kind of metroidvania—like Öoo—whose inaccessible regions aren't gradually reached with the aid of a new power-up or skill, but for unlocking the mysteries of how the player-character works.

This is a game about learning how to move. It has a lot more in common with a Codemasters F1 game than it does a vaguely puzzly metroidvania (which it also is). It trades in perfect but vibe-driven execution. It wants you to feel out curves, sometimes right angles, just so and at the right speed. It needs you to be locked in. A challenging movement is never obviously possible until you pull it off. When you learn to pull it off with aplomb, the game sings anew with endless potential. Moment-to-moment experimentation is baked into its design. It demands that you keep trying.

Now that I've finished Derelict Star, the 30 odd hours I've spent with it could be dilated into, I dunno, maybe two hours max. And now I feel forlorn because I want to do it again.

Star Jumps

My little pixel person has a jetpack. At the bottom of the screen is a meter that shows how much speed I've accrued via running on flat ground. If I jump and use my jetpack from a static position it's piddling, but if I fill the meter from blue, through orange, into red, via running, and then jump, I can leap vast distances. Sometimes I can maintain a red-level momentum even if I slow down, so long as I don't collide with any momentum-killing surface, all the better to effectively float upward through impossible vertical gauntlets.

There are endless subtleties to the way this jetpack person can be thrown and weaved upwards, downwards or through tight corridors of instant death, in a way that seems bizarrely untethered from the world's steadfastly gridlocked expanse. That is your superpower in Derelict Star, basically: the world is a grid, but you are not fixed to it.

This collision of ultra-readable obstacles with expressive play is where the heart of Derelict Star's compelling tension and agency lies, and it's what makes it stand out among dozens nay hundreds of similar looking platformers. The rules during the first hour are the same as the rules 30 hours later; you are never better equipped, but you're constantly learning.

Importantly, Derelict Star doesn't sidescroll: the world unfurls as discrete rooms. Sometimes I use my momentum, my speed, my amazing ability to float, not just to reach platforms but to peek into places it might be possible to reach. In this world of discrete "rooms" there is always usually a regional novelty: maybe there's slippery ice, or maybe there are vines that stop me from jumping (but which can give me a huge amount of vertical momentum if I grasp onto them at speed when they're on walls). Maybe there are collectible dots that give me a brief vertical boost. Maybe there are bouncy airborne bubbles, or bouncy blocky nodes that can propel me great distances, if only I hit them from the correct angle at the right speed. Along the route to every crucial power cell lies a new confusion to my jetpack fellow's path.

Checkpoints are abundant, and from each it's possible to fast travel to another via a map which plainly shows where each power cell is. This gives Derelict Star its freewheeling, explorative atmosphere: if things are too tough, it's three button presses towards another region you might feel better equipped to master. It's a sandbox of platforming physics problems, and once I understood its pace and cadence, I realised that it isn't designed to thwart me. This isn't a masochistic game: it gives me all the time and space to learn, and a whole sprawling world in which to figure it out. It's easier than, say, Super Meat Boy. It's like Celeste: you can finish it. This is not a masocore platformer. It's a patience platformer.

I am always conscious of my hands when I play Derelict Star. I am amazed by what they can achieve. It is extraordinary when I realise that I'm not even thinking too hard about what I'm doing: my hands bleed into the game, and my brain bleeds into my hands. No other medium can capture this zen-like, trance-like expressiveness. Derelict Star is a Rez-like, or a Foddy-like, in this way.

It's essentially a toy, yes, but this focus on fine-tuned movement emboldens the quieter thematics in Derelict Star: this is a game of exquisite, quiet loneliness. Nothing (or at least, nearly nothing) wants to kill you. It's a little puzzle box escape room. There is music, but it seems to creep into the foreground delicately; it's a spacey, synth-laden variant of silence. In Derelict Star you're adrift, and you have all the time in the world. It feels good to just poke around.

This is a maturing medium with countless, and growing, forms of player expression. But Derelict Star is about your hands, man. It's an evolved and aberrated take on the arcade. It's an interplay between hands and eyes. It's unapologetically a vintage game, but a very serious one. It executes on its concerns with formidable severity and quiet technical prowess. It knows that mastery is the province of obsessors; but it also knows that the route to obsession crosses through the pastures of the pleasure of simply trying. And it makes trying feel delectable, sublime.

When I think about Derelict Star, a few days after completing the wily beast, I admittedly struggle to articulate the pleasure of interfacing with it, save for what I've written above. I reckon it feels a lot more like a gorgeous song than a piece of software. It definitely made me dance with my fingers. My fingers are still operating to its logic.

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Guild Wars 2 review - PC Gamer issue #245 (UK, November 2012)

From the archives: The review below appears as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and newly taken screenshots. By Chris Thursten

Players gather on the staircase leading down to the Ascalonian catacombs, filling local chat with group requests. A few run about, periodically charging up a nearby hill to repel another assault by harpies on a Durmand Priory dig site. Others dance, or run a sleep emote. A significant number are crammed in underneath the waypoint that links this part of the plains of Ashford to the rest of the world of Tyria.

Within the Catacombs, a norn ranger—Eir Stegalkin—searches for an ancient weapon that could help reforge her old guild, Destiny's Edge. These heroes are the key to defeating Zhaitan, the Elder Dragon threatening the world. They also serve as mentors for each of the game's five races, accompanying you on personal story missions. Another Destiny's Edge member, Rytlock, has followed Eir into the catacombs, angry that she's trespassing on his people's land. We're here to stop them from killing each other.

I'm grouped with an asura warrior, a tiny sword-wielding gremlin in red and gold armour—Pinky and the Brain in platemail. He's telling me about his build. He has stacked an array of slottable utility skills—passive bonuses, in this case—and combined them with an advanced character trait that grants an extra boost for having several abilities of the same type. This is one of many builds that are possible across Guild Wars 2's eight professions and dozens of weapon combinations. He's proud of it: his critical hit chance, he tells me, is very high.

This is what waiting to do a dungeon has looked like since World of Warcraft first placed a swirling portal between five players and the rest of the world. That slight disconnection between theory and heroism, that tension between action and boredom. The moment stands out now because it's the first time in over 30 hours with this character that I've found myself in it.

Long story

As a human, I began my journey in Queensdale—rolling farmland ransacked by centaur warbands during a time of political discord, a symptom of a once-dominant race now in decline. If I had been an asura, I would have come from the jungles of the southwest, via a science fiction-fantasy story that drags in everything from mind-controlled golems to time travel. Tyria's youngest race, the sylvari, are plant-people inspired by celtic folklore and Arthurian myth, making their home among the branches of a big tree.

The bestial charr, Guild Wars' former villains, have been reintroduced Klingon style: Ashford is their homeland now, but the fragility of their warrior culture creates tension both within and without their race. The gigantic norn, who spend their early levels working their way down from the frozen mountain where they spend their exile, struggle the most to stand out: their Norse-derived society, which values individual glory above all else, is a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for what most MMORPG players spend their time doing.

Whatever choices you make at character creation, the result is a breathless charge into this new world, and it's only when the game delivers its first instance at level 30 that the brakes are applied.

I'm not disappointed, exactly.

MMO downtime produces friendships—even marriages, from time to time. It's just that the journey to this point has been about anything but waiting. I've charged off into the countryside and fought bandits. I've intervened to defend towns from centaurs and disguised myself as a pirate to win a drinking competition.

I've painstakingly customised a suit of armour—from stats to colouring—and warped sideways into a wholly different game, a sprawling fantasy conquest mode where whole servers crash into each other in the phenomenal, punch-the-air return of Dark Age of Camelot's much missed factional PvP. Theorycrafting while waiting for groupmate number five is like getting the bus to work on Monday morning after a spectacular lost weekend.

It's easy to make flash judgements at moments like this. Here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of your massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. We queue and talk shop: we sit on the bus and wait patiently for the next fun thing. Look closer, though, and every aspect of this picture has been made strange by ArenaNet's bottom-up recalibration of the genre.

Those group requests? They're not class-dependent: Guild Wars 2 has no healers or tanks, and therefore no roles that must be filled before fun can be had.

Those players charging up the hill? They range from level eight to eighty, with more powerful characters downscaled to match the encounter, the elite player rubbing winged pauldrons with Jimmy Leatherjerkin.

That waypoint? It links to every part of the game I've previously visited, allowing me to instantly go off and do something else if I want to.

These are the innovations and conveniences that make the game so enjoyable, that make it a viable prospect for players traditionally unwilling to step onto the MMORPG treadmill.

Old habits

Fast-forward 25 minutes, and our group is falling apart. We've died multiple times while trying to crack basic enemy encounters. We're making progress, thanks to instant in-dungeon respawns—but it's slow, frustrating, and we're racking up a debilitating repair bill. The asura warrior rushes back into the fray, and allows a hammer-wielding ghost to smash him in the face. Our ranged companions—a necromancer and a ranger—stand still and pour on damage from the sidelines. When one of them is wounded, they're left to bleed out: after all, a wipe is a wipe, right?

The asura starts talking again, this time to complain. These monsters hit too hard, and have too much health. The maths is wrong, and this encounter is impossible. You can't even level up or get better gear, because everyone in the Catacombs is functionally level 30 and there's no core power differential between equipment of a certain level, regardless of rarity. You can't beat this MMORPG encounter by making your numbers bigger: therefore, the logic goes, this encounter is broken.

"Then get out of the way," I snap, before feeling bad and clarifying. "Dodge or block. Wait for the tell—that hammer attack is slow."

Guild Wars 2 isn't a game where a melee attack will connect because the server determined that it would three seconds earlier. It's not a game where a fireball will turn in mid-air to hit you. A clever build might save you, but planning isn't enough—you need to react, pay attention, and improvise. It's not even that prior MMORPGs downplayed these things: most actively discourage them. The worst thing a traditional raider can do is disrupt the status quo. Once upon a time, Leeroy Jenkins was the model of the bad groupmate—a view that ignores the fact that he's the most compelling person in that video. He's the one charging in, odds be damned. He's the hero.

Guild Wars 2 isn't Leeroy's MMO—its tougher fights certainly demand coordination—but it is the MMO that figured out that Leeroys have all the fun. Its combat mechanics allow for accidents to be wrestled into victories, be that by heroically intercepting a killing blow in PvP or using a knockback strike to punt an annoying NPC down some stairs in a dungeon. The funny thing about learning these systems is that it's a case of remembering how things would work in any other type of game.

It's a case of thinking past tanking and healing and DPS—abstractions that have been piled on by the need for successive MMOs to refine and codify the experience of beating up a ghost. If someone was trying to batter you with a giant hammer in an FPS, you wouldn't just stand there: you'd duck.

How much of a hands-on role you take depends on your profession. Warriors spend a lot of time in the middle of melees, and as such will either learn quickly to counter or avoid damage, or get used to life as a fine paste. Guardians match heavy armour with magic, setting up shields and flinging out bolts of damaging energy. Thieves specialise in quickly disengaging, leaping and vanishing across the battlefield to subdue enemies. Mesmers create duplicates of themselves, necromancers use pets and status effects to manage the flow of battle and elementalists flip between four elemental attunements to reduce foes to ash. Engineers and rangers control battles from the sidelines, using turrets and gadgets or pets and traps to maintain a position of ranged dominance.

Mix and mash

Without traditional class roles, you're free to create the character you have in your head—the rifle- wielding warrior, the pistol duellist mesmer, the engineer with a flamethrower—without worrying that you'll lock yourself out of a group further down the line. Best of all, you can jump into eight-on-eight PvP at any time and be instantly levelled up to 80 and handed your entire profession to play with.

Completing a linear 10-minute tutorial with any class allows you to try them out at the high end straight away. With a little experimentation, it's very difficult to create a character you won't ultimately like.

ArenaNet have taken MMORPG combat, disassembled it, and put it back together with some of the original promise of having a fantasy adventure with your friends restored. To my mind, it's a resounding success, but one that doesn't play its hand until you've committed time and thought to figuring it out. That process takes longer the more experience you have with other MMORPGs, and it's not until level 30 and beyond that the game forces you to really learn the ways in which it is different. It's substantially innovative, but quietly so, and in trying to keep the game's first few hours quick and painless ArenaNet have set themselves up for a fall in the eyes of players like my asura groupmate, who was playing an entirely different game until the hammer came quite literally crashing down upon him.

This is the model for Guild Wars 2 across the board. It's also true of the events system, where static questing areas known as renown hearts are accompanied by dynamic happenings that act as a breadcrumb trail of adventure to lead players through the world. Chasing these events from place to place is what the game wants you to do, and the large experience bonuses for exploration make rambling the quickest way to level up.

Exploration has other rewards, too: Tyria is a beautifully designed and masterfully executed world. The game's hub, Lion's Arch, is a multi- tiered pirate city made of ships repurposed into bridges and houses.

The charr live in a steampunk Death Star built into a crater. Wander south-east in the human area of Kessex Hills and you'll find a village in the shadow of a massive floating fortress patrolled by trained elementals. This isn't an emergent online world, but it does have a tremendous sense of life and it's a wonderful place to level a character.

Chasing down points of interest and panoramic views not only earns you experience but can lead to entire adventures. In one case, I followed a player who had offered to show me the way up to a particular vista: this lead to a precipitous dive down a water-slide built into a cave, a chase through a magic maze, corridors full of traps, and a jumping puzzle that takes place in total darkness before emerging into the throne room of a ghostly pirate. Why is this here?

Seemingly, because it can be, because it's fun. The knowledge that these secrets can be stumbled into at any time makes the whole game a more compelling prospect.

Fools rush on

ArenaNet have built a cooperative model that superficially reflects what has come before—you're still filling progress bars—but reworked it to support a different psychology of play. More adventure, fewer boxes to tick—and it works! Unfortunately, it isn't enough to stop many players from wanting to stay in one place to tick boxes, and a lack of participation can leave those players feeling underleveled, particularly if they're determined to endlessly rush on to the next step in their ongoing personal story chain.

At this point it usually falls to local chat to point out that you could be crafting, or playing world vs world PvP, or just climbing that hill over there, and that any of these things will earn you the experience you need by the dopamine trigger-load. The game desperately tries to teach these things, but it uses dismissible tool-tips and mouse-over explanations that no one in the history of computers has ever actually read. The experience can be overwhelming, both for players who don't get it and for those who do and don't understand why other players keep complaining. There are features in place to solve these problems, but the game could do more to tackle them.

These issues are defensible because they result from innovations that make the MMORPG fresh and enjoyable in a way that it hasn't been for years. Second, and perhaps more importantly, they come from an attitude to game-making that seems to think more of its players than other games do. Guild Wars 2 expects you to want to charge off and help a villager—or to discover new items in its experimentation-based crafting system, or to leap into player vs player—because it assumes that you've got an active interest in playing and an inherent ability to excel. Its core design casts you in a flattering light, and as such it stands in stark contrast with MMOs that'll crown you God-Emperor of the Universe if that'll get you to shut up and get back into the machine.

This is why the lack of a subscription fee is such a masterstroke. Just as Guild Wars 2 takes apart the mechanical absurdities of its genre, it strikes a killing blow to the old business model. Players have come to expect that you need to pick a pocket or two if you're going to finance a game like this, and Guild Wars 2's rejection of that assumption should be the moment that we finally see the idea for the anachronism it is. By being free beyond an initial purchase—which frankly makes it one of the best value propositions in gaming at the moment—Guild Wars 2 suggests, quietly, that you should rethink your policy vis-à-vis recurring hammer blows to the face.

There have been a few teething problems at launch. The game's overflow server system means you can almost always get into the game, but you may find yourself in a separate shard to your friends, and it can be difficult to group up. Support systems such as guild chat, the auction-house-style trading post, and the in-game store are sometimes down. World vs world PvP queues can be lengthy.

These are the chief frustrations in a game that is otherwise remarkable in its comprehensive attention to the player's urges, and when they're solved then there'll be very little that Guild Wars 2 does not do as well if not better than its contemporaries. PvP on both large and small scales, freeform cooperative roaming and tight, focused group play. Branching storylines for each race that never stray far from the fantasy wheelhouse but manage to be packed with enjoyable characters and variously funny and dramatic set- pieces. It's all here, on day one.

Altogether now

ArenaNet seem to have wilfully ignored the fact that gamers have, over the last decade, segregated themselves into camps: PvPers and PvEers, hardcore and casual. GW2 wants you to be a generalist.

Overcommit to a single part and the experience suffers: you'll either burn out on chasing down vistas, grow weary of competing over the same four PvP maps, or lag behind the levelling curve of your personal story. The experience suffers when the pace falters, but it's a solvable problem. You can always do something else.

Whether you consider Guild Wars 2 revolutionary depends and, appropriately, it depends on you. If you'll accept nothing less than the fall of the house of Warcraft, then no. If you'll accept nothing less than EVE's green light, the player-driven persistent world that seems to get further away every year—then no.

Guild Wars 2 isn't chasing a single vision. It's pluralistic and the pointed critical thought apparent in each of its component parts belies a whole that is smooth to the touch. Trying to impress upon someone why Guild Wars 2 is important is like trying to stab them with the sharp end of a ball. The temptation is to bludgeon.

It's important, ultimately, because of that pluralism, the collective egoless talent on display. In losing the monthly fee ArenaNet have given themselves the freedom to excise the MMORPG's accreted dross: the subscription-prolonging treadmill, the trickle-down economics of fun that says that only your elites have paid enough to get to see the cool dragon. Then, that spirit of change has passed through every other assumption that MMOs make about themselves and their players and touched each in turn. Nothing is ever so fixed that it shouldn't be broken and remade. It's not perfect, but it is ideologically and structurally sound in a way that few MMORPGs manage at launch, if ever.

Guild Wars 2 is not a revolution, but it is a call to arms. Tomorrow's MMORPGs will be held to account against its standards: generosity, variety, and respect for the player's ability and time. Of course, by that point, it won't be Guild Wars 2 waving the banner. It's not a revolution. It just quietly suggests that we start one.